Search for the suspect in the murders of University of Idaho students in Washington, D.C. Two law enforcement sources say Kohberger is due in court Tuesday

A suspect in the case of the murders of University of Idaho students has been taken into custody, according to two law enforcement sources.

Kohberger is due in court Tuesday, when his attorney has indicated the suspect would waive extradition. An attorney for Monroe County, Pennsylvania, has said that the chief public defender there expected Kohberger to be returned to Idaho within 72 hours of the hearing.

The FBI and Pennsylvania State Police made an arrest in the fatal stabbing case, according to a law enforcement source.

In the nearly seven weeks since the students were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home, investigators have conducted more than 300 interviews and scoured approximately 20,000 tips in their search for the suspect. Moscow, which hadn’t seen a murder in seven years, has been rattled by the news of the killings, as well as the long period of time without a suspect or significant developments.

Police said they have received over 20,000 tips, through emails, calls, and digital media submissions, while interviewing over 300 people.

An Idaho student charged with the murder of four high-school students in Rathdrum, Idaho, arrested on December 19, 2006, in the apartment building of the University of Idaho

The students — Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington — were members of the university’s Greek system and close friends. Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle lived in the three-story rental home with two other roommates. A man was visiting the house that night after he and his partner were dating.

Moscow police say they have worked with a property management services company to remove “potential biohazards and other harmful substances used to collect evidence,” the update said. The home will be turned over to the property management company.

According to CNN, authorities carefully tracked the man charged in the killings of four Idaho college students as he drove across the country over the Christmas season, then arrested him on Friday.

At a news conference on Friday, Bill Thompson of Latah County, Idaho said they believe that the University of Idaho students’ home was entered with the intent to commit murder. The bodies of the two people were found in the middle of the night.

investigators have not said whether he knew the victims or his motive. Moscow Police Chief James Fry said that the weapon of the murder had not been found.

Police discovered that he was subject to a traffic stop in August after identifying him as a possible suspect. At that time, he gave Moscow police his phone number.

According to a law enforcement source he arrived at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania after driving all the way from America in a car. Authorities began tracking him at some point during his trip east from Idaho.

An FBI surveillance team tracked him for four days before his arrest while law enforcement worked with prosecutors to develop enough probable cause to obtain a warrant, the two law enforcement sources said.

The suspect has the option to waive extradition and return to Idaho voluntarily. It may take a few months if he decides not to and the police have to begin the process of extraditeng him through the governor’s office.

Thompson urged people to continue submitting tips, asking anyone with information about the suspect “to come forward, call the tip line, report anything you know about him to help the investigators.”

Kohberger, 49, is not a student of the Pullman, Washington, campus of the killings of four U.S. college students

Kohberger is a resident of Pullman, Washington, a city just about nine miles from the site of the killings, authorities said. Law enforcement searched his apartment on the Washington State University Pullman campus Friday morning, according to the university.

In June 2022, he finished graduate studies at DeSales University, where he also was an undergraduate, according to a statement on the school’s website. He obtained an associate degree from Northampton Community College.

Mary Ellen O’ Toole told CNN on Sunday that they had had cases where offenders were trained in areas of study to commit a crime. If he is guilty, Kohberger’s “area of study is not a result of cause and effect,” she stressed, noting studying the criminal mind did not “cause him to do this.”

The post said the study would focus on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience of your last criminal offense.

CNN reached one of the principal investigators of the study, a professor at DeSales University, but they declined to comment on the matter. The university has not responded to any inquiries.

The suspect in the killings of four University of Idaho college students plans to waive his deportation hearing this week to make his return to Idaho quicker, his attorney said.

LaBar did not discuss the murder case with the suspect when they spohke for about an hour Friday evening, the attorney said, adding that he did not possess probable cause documents related to it and is only representing Kohberger in the issue of his extradition, which the attorney called a “formality.”

“It’s a procedural issue, and really all the Commonwealth here has to prove is that he resembles or is the person who the arrest warrant is out for and that he was in the area at the time of the crime,” LaBar said.

Why is Kohberger under arrest? It’s expected to be revealed in a courtroom presentation after the shooting death of a young student in Idaho

The community has grown frustrated as investigators have not been able to give a clear description of how the night unfolded. The victims activities leading up to the attacks, as well as the people they ruled out as suspects, were released by authorities.

LaBar was not sure how fast his client would return to Idaho after waiving his rights at the hearing. The proceeding was supposed to return the man to Idaho within 72 hours.

The families of the four Idaho University students who were slain expressed sympathy for them but also pledged to support the man who was arrested in Pennsylvania.

The lawyer for the suspect said he believes the suspect is going to be vindicated.

His parents, Michael and Maryann, and his two older sisters, Amanda and Melissa, said in a statement released Sunday by his attorney that they “care deeply for the four families who have lost their precious children. Each day we pray for the sadness that we feel, and there are no words that can properly express it.

The family said that relatives will continue to let the legal process unfold, and that “as a family we will love and support our son and brother.” They cooperated with law enforcement to try to get the truth and promote their presumption of innocence instead of using unknown facts and assumptions.

Latah County prosecutors have said the affidavit for four charges of first-degree murder in Idaho will remain sealed until he is returned. He is charged in Idaho with a felony. Many details of the case are expected to be released after Kohberger’s first appearance in an Idaho courtroom, Dahlinger said.

Joey Jackson, CNN’s legal analyst and criminal defense attorney, said that the document will tell them a lot. “It will speak to the issue of probable cause – why is he under arrest, what is the justification for holding him and for going after him from a prosecution perspective.”

Investigating the case of Kohberger, the man responsible for the shooting of two teenage girls, police and police in Moscow, the day afterward, CNN reported

Kohberger’s parents and two sisters plan to attend Tuesday’s hearing, public defender Jason LaBar told CNN Monday. They will not be permitted to visit him while they’re there.

Authorities have not said publicly whether Kohberger knew any of the victims, who all were found dead hours after a Saturday night out: Chapin and Kernodle had attended a party on campus earlier that night, police have said, while Mogen and Goncalves went to a downtown bar before ordering food at a late-night food truck.

“No. 1: I’m looking for DNA,” he said. “Was his DNA (in the residence)? … Is there any reason to explain the DNA, is there a basis to know or understand why he would be there?”

Families of the victims and law enforcement are going to “go back and look and see if there’s any connections between any of the victims and this defendant in this case,” Shannon Gray, an attorney for Kaylee Goncalves’ family, told CNN Monday.

“We would encourage the community to send any leads or information to the Moscow Police Department regarding any contacts or any information they may have about the defendant and any of the victims in the case,” the attorney said.

“He’s interested in this, but the ideation of committing a violent crime had to already be there in order to motivate him to commit the crime,” O’Toole said. This was a way for him to explore what he was interested in doing.

When was Kohberger arrested? Telling a family member about a celebration of life, or when a friend’s car ended up in Pennsylvania

It is not clear why someone was not arrested after the victims were found dead. Fry would not reveal Saturday when Kohberger came onto law enforcement’s radar, saying details in the case would be released in time.

In the middle of December, after the semester at Washington State had ended, he drove his car back to his family’s home in Pennsylvania and his father had travelled to Washington so they could take the long drive together.

“I was very excited, because it was a celebration of life – the same day that we were doing that event,” he told CNN’s Bianna Golodryga. His wife wanted to have the event behind us so she could focus on our girls, and that is what happened.

“We’re definitely going to look at this guy, look him in his eyes. He’s going to have to deal with us,” said Goncalves, who plans to attend the suspect’s court appearances. “He hasn’t been dealing with us for seven weeks, it’s not about to end.”

Fry said Saturday that they wanted information on that individual. “We want that updated information so that we can start building that picture now. Every tip matters.

New clues to the four-year murder suspect’s murder spree at Washington State University in Pullman, Idaho, said a male passenger woke up and was greeted by a strange stranger

The man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November is on a flight back to the state to face murder charges, a source familiar with the case said Wednesday.

The suspect is a PhD student in the criminal justice program at Washington State University in Pullman, a 15-minute drive west of Moscow.

The Idaho authorities released the most complete evidence yet linking the University of Idaho students deaths to a suspect in their murders.

Among the new information is the recovery of a DNA sample from a leather knife sheath found in one of the victims’ beds that appears to be a strong match for Kohberger, and the revelation that a roommate of the victims had been awoken during the night and saw a strange, masked man exit the house.

Two other roommates were not attacked. The affidavit released Thursday stated that “D.M.” awoke at 4 a.m. by sounds from upstairs and said there was someone else in the room.

D.M. looked out her bedroom door but didn’t see anything and then heard a male voice saying “It’s ok, I’m going to help you” and a dog barking.

As she “stood in a ‘frozen shock phase,’” the man walked past her toward the house’s rear sliding door, after which the roommate locked herself in her room, investigators said.

The house on King Road was canvassed to collect video footage, in which a white sedan was found travelling towards the house, making several passes around the house, before departing the area around 4:20 a.m. “at a high rate of speed.”

A white sedan headed in the direction of Moscow shortly before 3 a.m., and then coming back around 5:30, was captured by security cameras on the Pullman campus of Washington State University.

Police found a vehicle that was previously registered in Pennsylvania but later registered in Washington during their search of vehicles that were used by students at the school.

The disappearance of the Kohberger cell phone two hours before the quadruple murders in Pullman, Texas, according to an affidavit

The cell phone he had that night did not ping any cell phone towers even as the crime was taking place.

Expanding their search, authorities discovered Kohberger’s phone pinged cell towers in Pullman around 2:47 a.m., consistent with the phone departing Kohberger’s residence “and traveling south through Pullman,” the affidavit said.

Then, at 4:48 a.m., the phone appeared on the network again, pinging along highways south of Moscow, then west across the border into Washington state, and then back north toward Pullman — a timeline that aligned with security footage of the white Elantra, investigators noted.

The disappearance of the phone from the network for two hours was consistent with an effort “to conceal his location during the quadruple homicide,” the affidavit said.

But his phone had pinged cell phone towers in the area of the King Road house at least 12 times before the murders, investigators found, including as early as Aug. 21, the day before his classes as a graduate student were set to begin at Washington State. The affidavit said most of those occasions were late at night or in the morning.

The phone returned to the scene of the crime around 9:15 a.m., about five hours after the stabbings were reported to police.

The video of a couple of traffic stops along I-70 east of Indianapolis was released earlier this week, showing two officers pull over the same couple for tailgating.

The footage showed the father and son in a car. Both times, after a brief discussion, the officers let the Kohbergers go.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/01/05/1147112440/idaho-murders-suspect-charged-bryan-kohberger

An affidavit states the person left the knife sheath was the biological father of the suspect’s father, and that most of the male population is unlikely to be his biological father

The affidavit says the sample found in the trash likely belonged to the biological father of the person who left the knife sheath.

The affidavit said that most of the male population wouldn’t be likely to be the suspect’s biological father.