According to court documents unsealed Thursday, male DNA left on a button snap of a knife sheath was used to link a doctoral student in Washington state to the November slayings of four University of Idaho students — and a surviving roommate came almost face-to-face with him the night of the killings.
According to a probable cause affidavit prepared by Moscow, Idaho, police Officer Brett Payne, investigators used video surveillance in the area to link the quadruple homicide to a white Hyundai Elantra driven by Bryan Kohberger, 28.
Payne wrote that when he arrived at the off-campus apartment house on Nov. 13, he noticed a tan leather knife sheath laying on the bed next to one of the victims, Madison Mogen.
“The sheath was later processed and had ‘Ka-Bar’ ‘USMC’ and the United States Marine Corps eagle globe and anchor insignia stamped on the outside of it,” Payne wrote. “The Idaho state lab later located a single source of male DNA (suspect Profile) left on the button snap of the knife sheath.”
Investigators claimed they tracked Kohberger’s movements using his cell phone and collected trash from his family’s Pennsylvania home. According to the affidavit, the DNA extracted from the trash and the sheath revealed a link.
Payne also stated that one of the two other housemates who were present at the time of the killings had contact with the suspect, who was described as a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her.”
The roommate claimed she didn’t recognize him and was in “frozen shock phase” as he approached the back sliding glass door.
After allegedly breaking into the students’ house with the intent to commit a felony, Kohberger was arrested Friday at his family’s home and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary.
The arrest of a suspect about seven weeks after the students’ deaths — Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20 — capped a period of fear and frustration in Moscow’s college community.
The murder weapon, believed to be a large fixed-blade knife, has yet to be recovered, according to Moscow police.
Kohberger, a doctoral student in the criminal justice and criminology department at nearby Washington State University at the time of his arrest, was not immediately linked to the victims.
The newly released court documents also do not indicate a motive for the attack, which Moscow police have said from the start appeared to be “targeted,” though they did not know if the killer’s focus was on a specific occupant or the home itself.
