A timeline of the University of Idaho quadrupole murder case, as well as key evidence used to identify Bryan Kohberger as the main suspect has been revealed as the affidavit was unsealed Thursday.
Genetic genealogy in the traditional sense—which involves the searching of publicly available databases and the construction of a family tree—was not used, although parentage testing did play a vital role.
Two victims, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, were found stabbed to death in Goncalves's bedroom. It was in that bedroom that Moscow Police Department officer Brett Payne found a tan leather knife sheath laying on the bed near Mogen. Once submitted for processing, Idaho State Police Forensic Services found a single source of male DNA on the button snap of the knife sheath.
Over a month later, DNA found to be that of the biological father of Kohberger—collected and analyzed from trash outside the family home—was linked to the DNA profile the forensic lab recovered from the button snap of the knife sheath left at the crime scene.
In the time between the murders and arrest, police and the FBI were also gathering cellphone data and surveillance video that overwhelmingly pointed to Kohberger as a suspect.
Timeline and surveillance footage
Initially, it was not made public that one of the two roommates also living in the house—who was not attacked at all—encountered the suspect immediately after the murders. According to the affidavit, however, the female identified only as D.M. saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask inside the house. She described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The man walked past D.M. toward the back sliding glass door exit. D.M. “stood in a frozen shock state” before locking herself in her room.
It is unclear why she did not call 911 at this time, nor why the police were not called until noon the following day.
However, the sighting of the suspect gave police a narrow, concrete timeline of when the murders occurred—between 4:00 a.m. when one of the victims received a DoorDash, and 4:25 am when D.M. saw the suspect leave. Police then tracked down numerous surveillance videos in the area from both residential and business addresses, locking in on the time around the murders.
The police honed in on a white sedan, which we now know was registered to Kohberger. The car’s first pass by the victims’ home was recorded at 3:29 a.m. on Nov. 13—less than an hour before the murders. The vehicle then drove by twice more and was recorded a fourth time at 4:04 a.m., according to the affidavit. The next time it was seen on footage was 16 minutes later, when it was recorded speeding away. An FBI forensic examiner determined the car to likely be a 2011-13 Hyundai Elantra, though subsequently said it could be a model as late as 2016.
On Nov. 25, the Moscow Police Department asked regional law enforcement to look for a white Elantra. Three nights later, a Washington State University police officer ran a query for any white Elantras on campus. One came back as having a Pennsylvania license plate and being registered to Kohberger. Within half an hour, the vehicle was located parked at Kohberger’s apartment complex. It came back as having Washington state tags. Five days after the killings, Kohberger had switched the registration from Pennsylvania, his home state, to Washington.
Now armed with a name, police confirmed that Kohberger’s driver’s license photo matched the suspect description given by D.M. Police also found out that Kohberger had been pulled over by a Latah County, Idaho, sheriff’s deputy in August while driving the Elantra—then still registered in Pennsylvania. He gave the deputy a cellphone number, which allowed Payne to obtain search warrants for the phone’s historical data on Dec. 23.
The phone’s location data pinged near Kohberger’s home in Pullman until about 2:42 a.m. on the morning of the killings. Five minutes later, the phone started using cellular resources located southeast of the home—consistent with Kohberger traveling south. There was no other location data available from the phone until 4:48 a.m., suggesting Kohberger may have turned it off during the attack in an effort to avoid detection, says the affidavit. At that point, the phone began taking a roundabout route back to Pullman, traveling south to Genesee, Idaho, then west to Uniontown, Washington, and north to Pullman just before 5:30 a.m.—around the same time the white sedan showed back up on surveillance cameras in town.
Police also revealed that location data from Kohberger’s cellphone showed he had traveled to the area of the victims’ residence at least a dozen times between late June and the night of the killings. Those apparent visits to the victims’ neighborhood all occurred late in the evening or in the early morning.
DNA and a genetic link
On Dec. 27, Pennsylvania police, at the request of the Moscow Police Department, recovered trash from the Kohberger family residence in Albrightsville, Penn. That evidence was sent to the Idaho State Police Forensic Services for testing. The next day, the lab reported that a male DNA profile obtained from the trash was 99.9998% likely to be the biological father of the DNA profile recovered on the knife sheath left at the crime scene.
This parental link was the last step to retaining an arrest warrant for Kohberger, who was taken into custody on Dec. 30 at the Pennsylvania family home.
Thus far, no motive has been revealed.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.