Bryan Kohberger finally reveals vague alibi for night of Idaho murders

Bryan Kohberger has finally revealed a vague alibi for his movements on the night that he is accused of brutally stabbing four University of Idaho students to death in their home.

The 28-year-old criminal justice PhD student claims that he went on a solo drive throughout the night of 12 November and into the early hours of 13 November – but admits that there are no witnesses to corroborate his alleged whereabouts.

“Mr. Kohberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone. Often he would go for drives at night,” his attorney Anne Taylor writes in a new court filing.

“He did so late on November 12 and into November 13, 2022. Mr. Kohberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time; at this time there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohberger was at each moment of the hours between late night November 12, 2022 and early morning November 13, 2022.

“He was out, driving during the late night and early morning hours of November 12-13, 2022.”

Mr Kohberger was tied to the brutal 13 November murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin through a knife sheath left behind at the scene.

The sheath – for a military or Ka-Bar style knife – was found partly under Mogen’s body after she and Goncalves were found stabbed multiple times on Mogen’s bed on the third floor of the home.

DNA on the button clasp of the sheath was then found to match that of the 28-year-old accused killer.

Mr Kohberger’s attorneys have sought to cast doubts on the strength of this DNA evidence, in particular the use of genetic genealogy.

According to the affidavit in the case, the FBI used genetic genealogy databases to try to identify the DNA source.

Trash was then collected from the suspect’s parents’ home in the Poconos Mountains and a familial match – from Mr Kohberger’s father – was made to the sheath, according to the criminal affidavit.

Following Mr Kohberger’s arrest on 30 December, DNA samples were then taken directly from the suspect and came back as “a statistical match”, say prosecutors.

Mr Kohberger faces the death penalty if convicted of the murders of Goncalves, 21, Mogen, 21, Kernodle, 20, and Chapin, 20.

He is scheduled to stand trial on 2 October after being indicted by a grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder and one burglary charge.

Mr Kohberger is accused of breaking into an off-campus student home on King Road in the early hours of 13 November and stabbing the four students to death with a large, military-style knife.

Two other female roommates lived with the three women at the property and were home at the time of the massacre but survived.

One of the survivors – Dylan Mortensen – came face to face with the masked killer, dressed in head-to-toe black and with bushy eyebrows, as he left the home in the aftermath of the murders, according to the criminal affidavit.

For more than six weeks, the college town of Moscow was plunged into fear as the accused killer remained at large with no arrests made and no suspects named.

Then, on 30 December, law enforcement suddenly swooped on Mr Kohberger’s family home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania and arrested him for the quadruple murders.

The motive remains unknown and it is still unclear what connection the WSU PhD student had to the University of Idaho students – if any – prior to the murders.

However, the affidavit, released in January, revealed that Mr Kohberger was tied to the killings through his DNA on the knife sheath, surveillance footage showing his white Hyundai Elantra close to the crime scene and cellphone activity.

The murder weapon – a fixed-blade knife – has still never been found.

As a criminal justice PhD student at WSU, Mr Kohberger lived just 15 minutes from the victims over the Idaho-Washington border in Pullman.

He had moved there from Pennsylvania and began his studies there that summer, having just completed his first semester before his arrest.

Before this, he studied criminology at DeSales University – first as an undergraduate and then finishing his graduate studies in June 2022.

While there, he studied under renowned forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland who interviewed the BTK serial killer and co-wrote the book Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer with him.

He also carried out a research project “to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime”.