Bryan Kohberger returns to court for Idaho murders hearing with ‘surprise witness’: Live updates

Earlier this year, the Idaho Supreme Court denied a request by Bryan Kohberger, the man charged with the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students, for his grand jury indictment to be thrown out.

Mr Kohberger’s attorneys argued, based on their interpretation of Idaho law, that grand jurors were inaccurately told that the standard for an indictment is that there is “probable cause” of the defendant’s guilt, instead of the higher threshold of “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The request was first made on 8 February for the Idaho Supreme Court to appeal Latah County District Court Judge John Judge’s decision not to toss Mr Kohberger’s grand jury indictment in the quadruple murder case.

Catch up on the details here.

Bryan Kohberger’s defence attorneys have warned that people’s lives may be in danger during his trial for the University of Idaho murders.

Mr Kohberger, a 29-year-old PhD criminal justice student, is accused of killing four students in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. His trial date has not yet been set.

His attorney Anne Taylor filed a motion with the prosecution on 4 April requesting that discovery requests be placed under seal because “the documents contain facts or statements that might threaten or endanger the life or safety of individuals”.

The motion warns that the full release of discovery “would constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy”.

Andrea Cavallier reports.

Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the deaths of four University of Idaho students in late 2022, was out for a drive the night they were killed, his attorneys said in a court filing last month that lays out more details of the alibi defense he intends to use at his trial.

Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were stabbed to death at a rental home near the university campus in Moscow, Idaho, early on Nov. 13, 2022.

Kohberger, who was then a criminal justice student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, has been charged with four counts of murder. Prosecutors say they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

More details below.

The family of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the four murdered University of Idaho students, have responded to suspect Bryan Kohberger’s alibi statement, saying that they now “feel even more confident in the prosecution of the Defendant”.

Mr Kohberger was on an early morning drive at the time of the killings in November 2022, according to a legal filing from his defence offered late on Wednesday.

“Mr. Kohberger was out driving in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022; as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars,” the document reads.

More details in our full story.

Bryan Kohberger scored a minor win last month in the University of Idaho murders when the judge ruled that his defence attorneys will be allowed to continue conducting phone surveys of potential jurors.

Mr Kohberger has been charged with the murders of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves after the four students were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.

A judge previously entered a not guilty plea for him, paving the way for the case to head to trial where prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty if he’s convicted.

Graig Graziosi has the story.

A former roommate of the slain University of Idaho students broke her silence this month, revealing the moment she realized her friends were dead and the final text she sent to them.

Ashlin Couch told KXLY that she moved into the doomed off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, in 2020, with her friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen.

She moved out in May 2022 and Xana Kernodle took over the lease.

Six months later, in the early hours of 13 November 2022, Goncalves, 21, Mogen, 21, Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death inside the student home.

Andrea Cavallier has the story.

The murder of four college students rocked the quiet town of Moscow, Idaho, and led to the arrest of prime suspect Bryan Kohberger.

Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – all students at the University of Idaho – were ambushed in their rooms and stabbed to death with a military-style knife that has yet to be found. Police were called to the gruesome scene at the off-campus residence almost eight hours after the vicious attack.

For weeks, only scant details about the carnage were revealed as the community reeled from the tragedy and grappled with fears of a murderer on the loose. That changed with the December 2022 arrest of Washington State University student Mr Kohberger, whose apartment, office and family home were raided and searched for evidence.

Here are some of the key things you need to know about the case, compiled by Andrea Blanco, Rachel Sharp, and Sheila Flynn.

Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger appeared in a Latah County courtroom as part of his defense team’s efforts to compel prosecutors to reveal more of the evidence they plan to use in his upcoming trial.

The 29-year-old criminology PhD student is awaiting trial for the stabbing deaths of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were killed on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus house in Moscow.

Mr Kohberger’s defense team has claimed he was driving around looking at stars at the time of the murders and argue prosecutors have not handed all the evidence over for the defense to review, filing multiple motions to compel since Mr Kohberger’s arrest in late 2022.

As Mr Kohberger looked on in silence, his public defender Anne Taylor grilled Moscow Police Detective Lawrence Mowery about a series of records related to cell phone data police plan to use in the case.

The hearing also concerned police efforts to look for evidence on Idaho transit cameras and windy.com, a weather site that temporary displays shots from state transit feeds. The detective said that while police consulted these feeds as potential sources of evidence, they didn’t retain anything of value in the case.

Thursday’s hearing ended without a ruling on the motion to compel, and further proceedings are scheduled for 30 May, which will feature testimony from Leah Larkin and Bicka Barlow, two DNA experts called by the defense.

Moscow Police Detective Lawrence Mowery faced tough questioning on Thursday about records suggesting he didn’t save a file as he was analyzing cell phone data related to Bryan Kohberger’s location during the 2022 murders.

The defense this could mean key pieces of evidence may have been deleted or made inaccessible, but the detective pushed back against this framing.

“I didn’t delete anything,” he said.

Rather, he said during his testimony, he briefly used a police system called CASTViz to make a data analysis of Mr Kohberger’s phone records to be presented to a grand jury in the case in 2023.

Even though he didn’t save his work on the analysis he eventually presented to the grand jury, he continued, all the underlying evidence records were still being retained, meaning the purported evidence agianst Mr Kohberger could be fed back into the program and re-analyzed at any time.