After graduate criminology student Bryan Kohberger was extradited to Idaho and appeared in a Moscow, Idaho, court, police unsealed the probable cause affidavit. The affidavit supporting the warrant for Kohberger’s arrest in Pennsylvania revealed significant new details about a months-long investigation.
Kohberger faces four homicide charges for the November 13 deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. He is also charged with felony burglary in connection with the University of Idaho students murdered in their King Road residence.
The probable cause affidavit was prepared by Moscow Police Officer Corporal Brett Payne. Payne outlines the events and evidence discovered about the four students murdered around 4 a.m. at 1122 King Road.
Payne recounted he first discovered Xana Kernodle’s body lying on her second floor bathroom floor with wounds apparently caused by an edged weapon. He also found the body of her deceased boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, later determined to have been caused by “sharp-force injuries.”
Along with another MPD officer, he headed upstairs to the third floor. They entered Madison Mogen’s bedroom, on the east side of the building.
“As I entered this bedroom, I could see two females in the single bed in the room,” Payne attested. “Both
Kaylee Goncalves and Mogen were deceased with visible stab wounds. I also later noticed what appeared to be a tan leather knife sheath laying on the bed next to Mogen’s right side (when viewed from the door).”
The sheath was later processed and had the inscription “Ka-Bar USMC” and an eagle, globe and anchor insignia of the Marine Corps stamped on the outside of it, he added. Payne noted the Idaho state lab later found a single source of male DNA on the button snap of the knife sheath.
“I think that’s where the attack initiated, and that’s important,” said Joseph Morgan, an applied forensics scholar with Jacksonville State University in Alabama. “[It] goes to progression, and it goes to who the target was.”
“That was perhaps the specific location he was bound for,” he added, according to a Fox News report.
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