The case against Kohberger is not yet a slam dunk.
Bryan Kohberger, the suspect who’s been charged with four gruesome murders on Nov. 13. in Moscow, Idaho, is set to appear in court on Thursday morning. It’s a crucial status update in the case of the deaths of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, and there will surely be lots to unpack.
Robert Sherman is a national correspondent for News Nation, and he was the network’s first boots-on-the-ground presence in Idaho after the horrific quadruple homicide took place. KCM spoke to him ahead of Kohberger’s hearing, during which his attorneys will discuss how they plan to proceed — and during which Kohberger could waive his right to a speedy trial to give him more time to enter a plea. If he chooses not to do so, he will return to court for a formal preliminary hearing by Jan. 19.
Katie Couric Media: Give us the latest updates on this case.
Robert Sherman: The latest is a completely different perspective than what we initially had at the onset of this investigation. For all of the criminal cases that I’ve covered, I’ve actually never really seen a case in which law enforcement has played their cards so close to the vest.
Our initial understanding was that this was a killing that happened in the victims’ sleep. The person was in and out, and then two surviving roommates woke up to see the potential horrors that had been left behind here. Now we know that one of the roommates, according to that affidavit, was actually awake, heard some of the commotion that was happening inside of the home, heard a male voice saying, “I’m going to help you,” and then actually saw somebody clad in black clothing and a mask — which paints a very different, much more petrifying image than I think that we initially had at the beginning of this whole investigation.
We also know that some of the pieces of evidence in this case that investigators were telling us to be on the lookout for ended up proving crucial. For one, they were talking about a white Hyundai Elantra that, at one point, they said actually might not be that big of a deal. It turned out it was the be-all and end-all in leading investigators to the suspect that they ended up arresting.
Another piece of evidence that was found at the crime scene was the sheath of a knife that was left by two of the victims, and it had one single piece of DNA on it that investigators ended up linking to the parents of Bryan Kohberger (more than a 99 percent familial match) by going through the trash in their Pennsylvania home. So, in the span of a couple of weeks, we went from a whole community believing there won’t be any finality in this case and losing hope in law enforcement, to all of a sudden having a suspect in custody, lauding law enforcement for the way that they played this so close to the vest and being in a position where they’re much closer to potentially having a conviction than they were several weeks ago.
Tell us the latest about the probable cause affidavit that was released last week and what it’s revealed about the case.
This affidavit ended up being the tell-all document that showed what exactly law enforcement had in order to make this arrest of Bryan Kohberger.
Several key pieces of information are there, and one of them was finding Bryan Kohberger’s car on certain surveillance cameras in the area near the murder, which ended up being a key piece of information that tied the car back to Bryan Kohberger. Another chilling detail was discovered from his cellphone records, which found that Kohberger had been in the area of that home 12 times in the months leading up to the quadruple homicide.
And then there was a piece of evidence that was found inside of the home itself, this knife sheath, which had a single piece of DNA on it, which investigators ultimately linked to Bryan Kohberger’s family. That’s what investigators are really going off of at this point.
One thing that is really important to note here: Law enforcement believes that they have the right person, but experts would warn that with the evidence that they have right now, it’s not what they would describe as a slam-dunk case. From that standpoint, you’ve got one piece of DNA evidence, you have cell phone records, which corroborate that the suspected car was in the area, but that’s it. You don’t have a murder weapon. You don’t have an eyewitness who saw exactly who that person was, because the one roommate who was inside the home noted that he was wearing a mask, had a hood, and was in all-black clothing. Investigators emphasize that they believe that this is the right person, but there’s still more work to be done on the prosecutorial front.
The affidavit also revealed that prior to initial reporting, one of the roommates actually encountered the suspect that night.
It seems as though, for every question that was answered, we now have two new questions, and this is without question the most burning issue that avid followers of this story have right now: Why did one of those roommates wait about eight hours from seeing that person inside the home to making that call to 911? The short answer is that we don’t know.
The affidavit says that the roommate was left in a petrified state of shock once they saw that individual inside the home. That was really all we heard from the roommate after that point. Because of that, there has been a movement on social media to criticize this roommate as a result. What I would say to that is, every time we’ve tried to draw a conclusion from this story with the given facts that we have, once new facts are introduced, our initial thoughts have been totally thrown out the window. It stands to reason that that question, which a lot of people have right now, is going to be answered if and when this case goes to trial. We should get a little bit more clarity on that. At this point, though, everything is purely speculation.
Tell us what you know about the alleged suspect, Bryan Kohberger.
Bryan Kohberger is an interesting suspect in this case — 28 years old, a Ph.D. student at Washington State University, which is merely 15 minutes away from the University of Idaho down one single road. And the greater irony here is that he was a Ph.D. student in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology. So there have been a lot of connections made online: Did this program give him the tools to commit such a heinous crime? In talking with people who have graduated from that same Ph.D. program, they have told us that much of the program at Washington State focuses on theory — why people commit crimes, the economics of crime, the efficacy of law enforcement, things like that.
However, something interesting about Bryan Kohberger is that he did engage in a master’s program at another university in which he was actually asking people on Reddit, who had committed crimes, what their thought processes were in committing a crime — which is extremely rare. Criminologists typically do not focus on things like that. As one professor put it to us, if you had 100 good students in a room, zero of them would take an interest in that. If you had a hundred bad students in a room, maybe five of them would take an interest in that. So it’s very peculiar to see someone really taking a keen interest in that because, for the most part, that’s not what criminologists study.
On Thursday, Bryan Kohberger will appear in court. What can you tell us about this hearing?
Bryan Kohberger has not formally pleaded one way or another, but he has definitely given a strong indication that he will be pleading not guilty at some point. The status hearing was asked for by Kohberger’s attorney, and this is going to go over some of the logistics of the trial and will lay out some of the frameworks of the process as this carries forward.
And again, we know that there are a lot of people out there who have a lot of burning questions in this case, and they want this process to go through as swiftly as possible because they want to know more about what happened and they want justice for the four victims. It is important to remember that Bryan Kohberger is innocent until proven guilty. He’s entitled to a strong defense, and he’s entitled to his day in court.
What are you expecting to see during the hearing?
It could be a hit-or-miss day. It could end up really shedding some light as to exactly what direction this case is going in, or we might not be able to glean a whole lot. We’re really all just playing this wait-and-see kind of game.
One other aspect here that I think is worth mentioning is, Idaho is a state that has the death penalty on the books. There have been a lot of questions about, if there is a conviction in this case, would it go to that point? There are four victims’ families, and three have remained pretty quiet on all subjects so far, but one of the families of Kaylee Goncalves says they are adamant that if there is a conviction in this case, they will be pursuing the death penalty with all possible emphasis. So that really raises the stakes here in this case, which is going to be something to watch over the weeks to come.
