On Thursday, it was revealed that the man suspected to be behind the gruesome quadruple murder in Idaho, Bryan Kohberger, was identified as a suspect because he left DNA on a knife sheath found by police at the crime scene.
During his first appearance in a Moscow, Idaho, court, police revealed paperwork which detailed what led them to find Kohberger as the primary suspect behind the stabbing of four University of Idaho students as they slept on Nov. 13.
The affidavit explains that officers discovered a bloody scene over two floors, revealing that they also found a leather knife sheath in one room where two victims were discovered in a single bed.
“I later noticed what appeared to be a tan leather knife sheath laying on the bed next to Mogen’s right side,” officer Brett Payne wrote in the affidavit released Thursday, adding the sheath had “Ka-Bar USMC” and “the United States Marine Corps eagle globe and anchor insignia.”
“The Idaho state lab later located a single source of male DNA (suspect Profile) left on the button snap of the knife sheath,” he added.
The affidavit explains how investigators used surveillance camera footage, cell phone data and FBI analyses to link Kohberger to the crime scene at the time of the killings.
The affidavit discusses that Investigators identified the white Hyundai Elantra which was seen driving near the students’ house in Moscow, Idaho, between 3:29 a.m. and 4:20 a.m. The vehicle circled the area three times, entering it a fourth time at 4:04 a.m. The car matches the description of one owned by Kohberger and was later seen departing the area around 4:20 a.m. at “a high rate of speed,” investigators wrote.
After putting out a query on white Hyundai Elantras to the public on Nov. 25, police at Washington State University Pullman, where Kohberger was a Ph.D. student, alerted investigators that they had found one in the parking lot of student housing on Nov. 29.
Kohberger had been pulled over driving the vehicle at a traffic stop in August, during which he provided police with his phone number. Police were then able to link the number to cell tower data to find his location.
Kohberger’s phone pinged around 2:47 a.m. on the night of the murder in Pullman, Wash. It went quiet until approximately 4:48 a.m. when it showed him traveling on the highway south of Moscow, Idaho, near the murder scene. The phone pinged a few more times before he returned to Pullman around 5:30 a.m., leading investigators to believe he took a purposefully circuitous route home.
“The route of travel … is consistent with Kohberger attempting to conceal his location during the quadruple homicide,” the affidavit said.
Phone records dating back to June revealed that Kohberger may have been stalking at least one of the victims before the murder. His phone pinged to the coverage area of the student house “on at least twelve occasions prior to November 13, 2022. All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days.”
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