PC affidavit reveals how Pennsylvania man implicated in U of I murders

By Mike Weland

Bryan Kohberger

According to affidavits of probable cause, released today, one of the surviving University of Idaho students living at 1122 King Road in Moscow where four other students were slain awoke at about 4 a.m. Sunday, November 13, heard victim Kaylee Goncalves say "there's someone here." Then she heard what sounded like crying coming from victim Xana Kernodle's room, then a man say, "it's okay, I'm going to help you." She opened the door of her room and saw a man dressed in black, five feet ten or taller, a mask covering the lower half of his face, bushy eyebrows, slim.

As he walked past her toward the back sliding glass door, she locked herself in her room. A shoe print with a diamond pattern found just outside her door corroborated her testimony.

That was one of the myriad pieces of evidence leading investigators to believe that the shocking quadruple homicide occurred between 4 and 4:25 a.m. that claimed the lives of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, all who lived at 1122 King Road, and Ethan Chapin, 20, there visiting his girlfriend, Xana.

A collection of security camera videos from homes and businesses in the neighborhood showed a white sedan with no front license plate, "Suspect Vehicle 1," pass by 1122 King Road four times beginning at 3:29 a.m., a time with sparse traffic, if any, last seen departing the area at a high rate bof speed at 4:20 a.m., heading towards Whitman County, Washington, and Pullman, 10 miles away. Analysis of the video indicated the car was most likely a Hyundai Elantra, 2011 to 2016 model.

A subsequent review of Washington State University security camera footage shows a white sedan matching Suspect Vehicle 1 traveling southeast on Nevada Street in Pullman at about 2:53 a.m., toward SR270, which connects Moscow and Pullman. At 5:25 a.m., a white sedan consistent with Suspect Vehicle 1 was picked up on five Pullman security cameras, heading back to WSU.

On November 25, Moscow police put out a regional BOLO, "be on the lookout," for white Hyundai Elantras. On November 29, 16 days after the murders, WSU police officer Daniel Tiengo queried the school's database, There was a white 2015 Elantra, Pennsylvania plates, registered to Bryan Kohberger, 1630 NE Valley Road, Pullman. On the same day, WSU officer Curtis Whitman came across a white 2015 Elantra, bearing Washington plates, in a student parking lot on NE Valley Road in Pullman.

It came back to Kohberger, whose Washington drivers license shows him to be six feet tall and 185 pounds. His license photo shows him to have bushy eyebrows.

On December 13, the Elantra is picked up by a license plate reader in Loma, Colorado. On December 15, a law enforcement officer in Hancock County, Indiana, ran a plate check. On December 16, surveillance video shows the white Hyundai in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, where he has family.

Cell phone records on Kohberger's phone matched the travels of the white Elantra from November 13 to present, and that the phone was used at least a dozen times in the area of 1122 Kings Road prior to November 13, all but one in the late evening or early morning.

On December 27, Pennsylvania agents collected the trash from the Kohberger family home in Albrightsville and sent it to the Idaho State lab. The next day, Idaho forensic scientists reported a 99.9998-percent DNA match that a profile of DNA obtained from a knife sheath found beside a victim at the crime scene in Idaho was the biological son of a man who'd discarded material in that trash can, just over 2,500 miles away in Pennsylvania.

Kohberger, who maintains his innocence and waived extradition from Pennsylvania, made his first appearance before Latah County Magistrate Judge Megan Marshall at 9:30 a.m. today. Marshall denied defense attorney Ann Taylor's motion to set bail but approved her request for a status hearing, setting it for 10 a.m. Thursday, January 12.