Bryan Kohberger was first tied to the Idaho murders two weeks after the slayings because of two Washington State University campus cops who located the suspect’s 2015 white Hyundai Elantra, an affidavit released today revealed.
Investigators in Moscow observed a white sedan speeding away from the crime scene on November 13 toward Pullman, Washington, another small college town about 10 miles from Moscow, Idaho.
On November 25, Moscow police put out a call for law enforcement to be on the lookout for the car and just a few days later, two campus cops came through.
Washington State University campus police officer Daniel Tiengo conducted a search of white Hyundai Elantras registered at WSU and discovered one that was registered to Kohberger.
Later that day, WSU Officer Curtis Whitman located the 2015 white Hyundai Elantra in the parking lot of Kohberger’s apartment complex. He ran the tags which returned a match for Kohberger, according to the affidavit.
After a months-long investigation, Kohberger was arrested and has been formally charged with the murders of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin on November 13 in Moscow, Idaho. He is being held on bail and will reappear in court on January 12.
Bryan Kohberger was first tied to the Idaho murders two weeks after the slayings because of two Washington State University campus cops, Daniel Tiengo (left) and Curtis Whitman (right) who located the suspect’s white Hyundai Elantra, an affidavit released today revealed
Kohberger has been formally charged with the murders of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin on November 13 in Moscow, Idaho, and is being held on bail
In affidavit released on Thursday, it describes where the officer first on the scene found the bodies of the murder victims, and discovered a leather knife sheath on the bed of two of the victims.
Kohberger’s DNA was discovered on the button of the knife sheath, and genealogy experts matched it to samples from trash taken outside his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.
For weeks after the killings, police and FBI kept tight-lipped about the evidence they accrued. But following his arrest and appearance in court, cops have revealed the steps they took to track down the suspect.
After the November 13 murders, Kohberger and his father, Michael, drove 2,500 miles in a white Hyundai Elantra from Idaho to Pennsylvania.
Police obtained surveillance footage where they observed the white Elantra in the vicinity of the crime, around the relevant time frame, but the absence of a front license plate made it harder for police to track down its owner.
On November 29, police obtained surveillance footage from the parking lot of Kohberger’s apartment building, some 10 miles from the murder scene, in Pullman, Washington State.
Moscow Police officers visited the parking lot to obtain a license plate for the vehicle – as it matched the description of the car they saw on footage the night the students were killed.
Police reviewed the ‘driver license information and photograph’ which ‘shows that he has bushy eyebrows’ and is six-feet tall.
‘Kohberger’s physical description is consistent with the description of the male [Mortensen] saw inside the King Road Residence on November 13th,’ the affidavit says.
Investigators in Moscow observed a white sedan speeding away from the crime scene toward Pullman, Washington, another small college town about 10 miles from Moscow, Idaho
A police depiction of the route they believe Kohberger took on the night of the murders that was included in the case files
They ran a search, and found multiple incidents in which the car and its owner – Bryan Kohberger – had been pulled over multiple times in the past.
With Kohberger’s name, police honed in on him and reviewed historic surveillance camera footage, along with phone records, going back several months.
Then following their initial suspicions, Kohberger was pulled over over twice as he passed through Indiana on December 15 – once for speeding and the other for following a car ahead too closely.
It’s believed that he was actually pulled over at the request of an FBI surveillance team tailing him to see if he had any injuries on his hands after brutal slayings.
Kohberger, 28, was arrested by the Pennsylvania State Police at a home in Albrightsville, a small town in the heart of the Poconos Mountains on December 30 -more than 2,000 miles from where the gruesome killings took place.
On December 27, an undercover team of police seized trash from Kohberger’s family home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania
