Bryan Kohberger finally reveals vague alibi for night of Idaho murders
The 28-year-old criminal justice PhD student claims he went on a solo drive in the middle of the night – but admits there are no witnesses to back up his version of events
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Bryan Kohberger has finally offered up a vague alibi for the night that he is accused of brutally stabbing four University of Idaho students to death in their beds.
The 28-year-old criminal justice PhD student claims that he was out 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 back up his version of events.
“Mr. Kohberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone. Often he would go for drives at night,” his attorney Anne Taylor wrote 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.”
The claims about Mr Kohberger’s unusual nighttime habits – and his whereabouts on the night of the murders – come after prosecutors demanded that his legal team reveal his alibi ahead of his October trial.
Under Idaho law, defendants have 10 days to provide a written statement about where they claim to have been at the time of the alleged crime and offering information about any witnesses who can support their claim.
On 23 May – one day after he was arraigned on four murder charges – Latah County Prosecutor’s Office put in a demand for Mr Kohberger’s notice of alibi.
Back then, Mr Kohberger’s legal team asked Judge John Judge for an extension, saying that they needed more time due to the wealth of evidence in the high-profile case, and the deadline was extended to 24 July.
But the deadline came and went, with Mr Kohberger’s legal team hinting that he has evidence placing him in another location at the time of the murders – but stopping short of revealing where and instead saying it may come to light at trial.
The prosecution subsequently filed a motion seeking to compel an alibi.
While Mr Kohberger’s attorney said that there is no specific witness to say where he was throughout the time of the murders, she wrote in the new filing that she anticipates “corroborating witnesses” will back up his explanation at trial.
Mr Kohberger is facing the death penalty over the brutal 13 November murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
He is due to stand trial on 2 October after being indicted by a grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder and one burglary charge.
His explanation that he was out on a solo drive that night comes as prosecutors tied him to the murders, in part, through surveillance footage showing his white Hyundai Elantra travelling to and from the crime scene.
The affidavit, released in January, outlined some of the evidence against the accused killer – including his DNA on a knife sheath left behind at the scene of the murders, the surveillance footage and cellphone activity.
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 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.
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”.