Suspect arrested in Idaho student murders
There will be a news conference soon, but here’s what we know so far:
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was taken into custody by local police and the FBI at 1:30 a.m. in eastern Pennsylvania on a warrant charging him with four counts of murder and burglary for the deaths of Ethan Chapin, 20; Xana Kernodle, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; and Madison Mogen, 21.
The PhD student, who is studying criminal justice, appeared before a judge Friday in Monroe County Court.
A PhD student studying criminal justice – that’s quite something. A sort of Raskolnikov situation?
More information can be found here as well as here.
All murders are heinous, but these seem particularly heinous, in terms of viciousness and the youth of the victims.
Motivation is a great field for speculation.
There was some report on his efforts to fit in, being awkward. There are people like that, and some really, really have a hard time being in some kind of society.
But if you want to see people having the best life it is possible to imagine at that age, it’s the life of good-looking college students who mix well with other good-looking college students. It’s an in-group to die for, particularly if you don’t fit in and it’s been made obvious.
Resentment can become incandescent, and I don’t mean solely the incel phenomenon.
This dude, with a PhD in criminal justice didn’t likely see his career starting by chasing tail lights. Speculation as to choice of major can be premature, but he’d certainly be involved in how-to of many kinds of crimes.
Just by random, in a conversation recently, the subject of Leopold and Loeb came up. They thought they were sufficiently important and smart enough to get away with something. Ah, well. Too much speculation.
I guess the doctorate candidate wasn’t that smart after all.
Cornhead. Moral choices aren’t the same as intelligence.
But spending a lot of time figuring out how to do this, with all the supposed resources available and still getting busted is not a good look.
Probable cause and details are sealed until he is arraigned in an Idaho courtroom, which will be a while. The police sound confident that they’ve got the killer, so that’s good news.
Raskolnikov did occur to me, too, but it’s too early to tell. Was he the “stalker” one of the girls was afraid of?
He asked if anyone else had been arrested.
My wife has the TV on while cooking, and I’m hearing all about it in my office: The talking heads are killing themselves exploring each and every single potential rabbit hole possible to put their ‘expertise’ on display. And listening to the flow of this river of verbal diarrhea, never once did I hear the word ‘alleged’ nor did I hear any reference to ‘innocent until proven guilty’. He’s been found guilty, as it stands right now. In the Cancel Culture of the Legacy Mainstream Corporate Media, there is no daylight between an accusation and an admission of guilt; one is good enough for assuming the other.
One interesting aspect, I am hearing it mentioned from ‘sources’ that the suspect has been nailed by genealogical DNA, get this, that a connection has been made between recovered DNA at the scene and some existing record from another person that has a genealogical connection to the suspect – and that this connection is what identified him and placed him under suspicion in the first place. If that turns out to be the case, wow. Future Crime, can it be far away? Consider the amount of computing power that would take to sift through all of the data in this time frame……
Not surprised to read about the dietary habits- he has the typical vegan/soy look to him.
Interesting, Aggie, if it turns out to be true. Cold crime cases have been solved that way.
fullmoon, that detail does stick out, but since he’s a criminal justice guy, it might just be something to throw off the investigation or plant seeds of reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury later on.
One report said Nancy Grace was going to have a go at this.
Recall a short-lived series a couple of years ago which had, in one episode, a Nancy Grace-like character, complete with southern accent not being particularly useful.
Aggie. I’ve read something about the genealogical DNA thing. Takes some doing. Others have to be in the data base, and they have to know about somebody in the family, no matter how distant, who might be in the right place at the right time.
But, if you can run that down, you get to the Actual and then match the DNA in the conventional sense.
If that Ethan guy weren’t dead, he might be kicking himself for letting three women get killed. At least marked the perp, for honor’s sake.
Not sure where a change of venue would do the suspect any good. Far as the public relations aspect is concerned, it might have been in everybody’s back yard.
One of mil hist’s writers, John Keegan, mentioned “hand strokes” in ancient combat. Hardy, in “The Great War Bow” suggested that archers were confessed differently from the line guys on account of they didn’t actually kill a guy they were looking at. This guy didn’t shoot, kill by a gentle pull on a projection on a complicated piece of plumbing. He didn’t bludgeon–see Bundy–where you’re committed by half way through the swing and the impact is over in an instant.
He likely didn’t grow up on a farm, knifing the family pets for dinner with all that involved.
Whoever did this had a lot of mad to assuage. No matter how irrational his conclusions were.
No idea now, but I’d put a couple of bucks on hating the representatives of the best life imaginable completely closed off to him. One he sees every day, every hour. Flashing in front of him–couple of good-looking blonde gals walk by, say a cheery hello to a guy who, by dress and carriage, is obviously in the Life as well, and they may as well be on a large flat screen from a thousand miles away. “No Trespassing for You and Your Type!”
Yancey Ward– Kohberger and Sam Bankman-Fried could co-author a vegan cookbook.
Just by random, in a conversation recently, the subject of Leopold and Loeb came up. They thought they were sufficiently important and smart enough to get away with something.
They’d have gotten away with it if (1) Loeb hadn’t inserted himself into the investigation and blabbed to investigators and reporters and (2) Leopold hadn’t dropped his eyeglasses. The frames were such an unusual model that the police in 1924 could poll the local optical shops and discover to whom they’d been sold. Leopold was hauled in and asked how he might have lost his glasses.
Police have said there’s no evidence of sexual assault in the case. They haven’t found the knife. So, since they say they have DNA from the scene, and some of the victims had signs of having fought the attacker, possibly there was DNA under someone’s fingernails, or one of them drew blood from the killer. Either police looked at endless surveillance tapes for someone hanging around, or driving a white Elantra, and checked such persons for DNA from coffee cups and so on; or, they found a connection through arrest records or ancestry testing of someone related to the suspect. Either way, this explains why it’s taken so long. Very slow and painstaking work would be required.
Moral choices aren’t the same as intelligence.
–Richard Aubrey
The Unabomber’s IQ was measured at 167.
Crime and Punishment was also the first thing I thought of. Then I thought, no, I don’t expect the perpetrator to have a spiritual rebirth.
DNA connections for crimes are usually not done through Ancestry or 23AndMe, which supposedly will nor divulge that information. But there are other websites where people voluntarily disclose their DNA sequences and those are public and not confidential. The people who post there are often trying to find a longlost relative or adoptees trying to find biological parents or siblings. Police have access to those DNA sequences and the perp can be partially traced even with second cousins or relatives of that degree. Then it’s a process of elimination to get to the actual suspect. Sometimes that person’s closer relatives will cooperate with police and give voluntary samples too.
Art Deco. Amazing. I had forgotten that.
There’s what used to be a farm in Michigan belonging to one of the families. It’s gotten fixed up ten million dollars worth and is now a place for destination weddings.
I dunno. Been a long time, but still bad juju.
Richard Aubrey: Art Deco:
I thought of Leopold and Loeb as well.
By the way, when Leopold was called for questioning, he said the glasses must have fallen out of his pocket while he bending over while birding at that spot. But when he tried to demonstrate to police how it happened, he couldn’t get the glasses to fall out.
I don’t bird. Does one usually bend while birding?
Jail birds don’t ?
Nancy Grace did an hour on the case tonight with an expert panel.
Hed was smart, a strict vegan and had a mean streak or vindictive personality.
They found the white Hyundai Elantra at his parents’ home. The home is in an upscale gated community.
Several on Grace’s panel said he seemed like another Ted Bundy. One panelist opined that there may have been other killings. Maybe, but it’s just wild speculation.
They said he had no social media presence that could be detected yet.
A weird guy, but that won’t convict him. The evidence from the murder scene, from his
apartment in Pullman, WA, and from the Elantra will be required to make the case airtight.
We can hope they’re right and have the right suspect. Stay tuned.
JJ. Given the public fuss, do you think having the right guy is relevant?
Richard Aubrey, one might bend to get a glimpse of a bird in low undergrowth, or to go under a low-hanging branch on a trail.
Kate, Aubrey,
Bending while birdwatching:
Maybe simply to pick up something you dropped, or pick up a rock or feather that caught your eye.
Yes, all kind of reasons.
Mars.
I guess I was wondering about why specify ” birdwatching”.
Neo,
I wouldn’t be surprised if this practice has changed in recent years, but Ancestry & 23AndMe have dumped their entire databases to the FBI. Past tense. But don’t worry, the integrity of the FBI is beyond reproach.
Richard A @ 1:12— When I first saw an item on the arrest, I thought of Richard Jewell, what with the FBI involved and the need to “do something”. Also their public persona could use some polishing.
@ 9:03 — Birdwatching would be an excuse to be out in the woods/fields, when he knew his home and history would show no evidence of other outdoor activities such as camping or hunting. Or not.
Another Mike;
Agree on both.
The victims were such sympathetic characters, pictures all over the media, compared to the victims of the Atlanta bombing, he Must be guilty. Even more guilty.
I guess we’ll get a taste of the prosecution’s case by looking at the defense.
Is it “He didn’t mean to, but he tripped.” Or, “We can conclusively prove he was in Spain that week.”
The interest in criminology and the weird project he was involved in, asking criminals about how they got away with it. The vegan thing is more signs of an odd guy. I agree about Leopold and Loeb. I also thought of William Heirens, who committed a series of murders in 1946. I was a child and became obsessed with that case, reading the newspapers every day. Until he was caught and convicted, I was frightened of him. His defense lawyer was a family friend. He was convinced Heirens was guilty and “helped” put him away for three life terms.
Leopold was eventually released from prison. Loeb was murdered in prison.
I can see why some of you are skeptical, considering the FBI involvement, but so far this looks like it’s probably really the killer. We won’t have any law enforcement details until his arraignment in an Idaho courtroom, per Idaho law. Until then, we have just “experts” who are “profiling” him. I’ll wait for facts.
Re Leopold, the glasses, and birding –
The murderers disposed of the body in a place Leopold knew because it actually was where he often went birding. His presence there was fairly well known, but he was not initially a suspect. Here’s the story. Apparently my memory was slightly off in that he didn’t tell police the glasses must have fallen out while he was bending over, he told them they must have fallen out when he tripped and fell. But when he tried to recreate the incident, he couldn’t make them fall out. However, they really HAD fallen out when he’d been bending over disposing of the body.
The famous profiling of the DC sniper comes to mind. Some folks, back then, made the case, given the timing, that looking for a middle aged white guy with a military background allowed for two more deaths. Can’t actually prove it, but the timing is supposedly suggestive.
TommyJay:
Obviously they could be lying, but Ancestry et al say that they have not done so and will not do so. All the cases I’ve read about that use DNA services to trace criminals through their relatives use the public ones, not Ancestry and the others. There are enough people who post their genomes on the public ones that I don’t think the police even need to turn to the private ones.
neo. Sheesh. Talk about luck, huh?
After Twittergate, I don’t think I would believe any tech company based on just their word. Besides, my guess is it was not a random DNA search but a matter of getting this guy’s DNA in some legal way. For example, if his car was registered in WA, then it would have turned up in a DOL search of potential suspects. Also, if the Feds used their illegal panopticon, they have been known to make up a fake back story to cover it up.
my guess is it was not a random DNA search but a matter of getting this guy’s DNA in some legal way.
If samples of his DNA are in that house, especially if they were found in a blood sample, he has a lot of explaining to do.
For example, if his car was registered in WA, then it would have turned up in a DOL search of potential suspects.
There are roughly 5 million vehicles registered in Washington State. A list of white Hyundais among them is likely to be a long one.
Also, if the Feds used their illegal panopticon, they have been known to make up a fake back story to cover it up.
Huh?
A killer was caught here in Raleigh some years ago through DNA. Police had developed him as a suspect for other reasons, and he had left DNA on his victim’s body. They got someone at his office to save a paper coffee cup he had used, and the DNA matched. He committed suicide in jail.
Sounds like this one went in reverse. They found him, according to reports, through a genealogical DNA connection. Now they will need to investigate for other evidence.
I understand the rush to judgement. A horrendous crime that the public demands “action” on. My concern is that no media outlets are using the term alleged. He seems already convicted in the court of public opinion.
I hope they have the killer, but much more has to be revealed to convince me he’s guilty beyond a shadow of doubt.
DNA technology has made solving crimes easier. Wouldn’t a criminology student be aware of that? Also, cell phone technology makes tracing one’s whereabouts pretty easy. Again, wouldn’t he know this?
I’m not trying to say he’s not guilty, but as others here have opined, the FBI has not covered itself with distinction the past twenty years. I’m ready to wait for more before I accept that this case has been solved.
His apartment and Elantra may provide much more evidence. We’ll see.
The glasses led them to Leopold. What cooked him I suspect wasn’t the lack of an explanation of how he dropped his glasses. While questioning him the police asked what he was doing on the day Franks disappeared and he tells them he was out in his car joyriding with Richard Loeb. They speak to the Leopold family chauffeur, who tells them that Mr. Nathan’s car was in the garage all day as I was working on it.
You have three police services other than the FBI working this case, not including the deputies in Monroe County, Pa who arrested him.
Art Deco:
Actually, they made many mistakes despite their intelligence. It turns out the “perfect crime” isn’t as easy to commit as they thought.
What is the evidence again?
A great many homicides are unsolved and occur in parts of town where it’s a reasonable wager only a modest minority are of above-the-median intelligence.
My sister, soon after she’d quit working as a special ed teacher, was adamant that intelligence and cunning we’re distinct properties and you often saw the latter without the former. Police did not have any trouble breaking Leopold and Loeb once the two of them were under observation.
“There are roughly 5 million vehicles registered in Washington State. A list of white Hyundais among them is likely to be a long one.”
So what. I could have filtered this list into priority order using old fashion unit record equipment (i.e. punch cards) in no more than a day or two.
“Also, if the Feds used their illegal panopticon, they have been known to make up a fake back story to cover it up.”
See these guys at the FBI are liars. They lie. They do things that would get thrown out of court and create a fake (or maybe quasi-fake is a better term) investigation to hide that fact.
Has he denied it ?.
How does this work?
Presume it comes down to DNA.
The defense wants a lab to check the evidence which comes from the crime scene. They have to take law enforcement’s word for it coming from the crime scene and not from some other post-arrest DNA processing.
Various lab atrocities come to mind, from bite mark experts to lead-batch matching. And the prosecution’s shenanigans in the George Zimmerman case.
Were I ever on a jury–too old to be called–I think I would vote to acquit no matter the evidence provided. And that doesn’t even include the additional skepticism if it’s the feds.
Can’t be too careful. Better than one guilty man go free…..
And the prosecution’s shenanigans in the George Zimmerman case.
That did not involve the forensic evidence, all of which undermined the prosecution case.
See these guys at the FBI are liars. They lie. They do things that would get thrown out of court and create a fake (or maybe quasi-fake is a better term) investigation to hide that fact.
You’re dealing with the municipal police in Moscow, Idaho, the Latah County Sheriff, and the Idaho state police.
Art Deco
Doesn’t matter if it’s forensic or not. What matters is a history of corrupt prosecutorial practices in various jurisdictions and deciding if the one on hand might be corrupted as well.
One can be as honest as the day is long and still….have to depend on the crime lab.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/behind-boston
-crime-lab-chemists-alleged-deceptions/
https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/news/houston-crime-lab-scandal-escalates
Doesn’t matter if it’s forensic or not.
Oh yes it does.
if it’s dna evidence, how did they know it was his, did the attendant at the gas station identify him,
Art. DNA evidence can be faked. Sometime in the process, likely after his arrest, he had a blood draw. For his testing. Is that available for the defense’s analysis? I imagine it is. But for the defense’ purpose, it has to match or not match that taken from the crime scene.
Any way to guarantee that the post-arrest draw isn’t put into the crime-scene evidence? you have to take somebody’s word that it wasn’t.
I’m just giving a rhetorical question:
I remember being a teen in high school, + a young person in college, however-
This mystifies me.
It just mystifies me, and horrifies me, when so many [kids], from ages 12-30 years old, decide that there is going to be nothing worthwhile or greater in their 80-90 years, or even their 90+ plus years- that they DECIDE to do a crime so great, that they will get sentenced to 99-years in prison, or risk a death penalty.
I remember being hot and bothered by a great many things, from ages 12 to 18, and from 12 to my 20s, but I [never] decided that- throwing everything away, + my possible next 60 years, by doing a killing that could put me in a prison, (for the REST of my life), was a possible path for me.
What exactly went wrong for these people?
Did they see nothing good in their future, and no possibility of good in their future, and that made them throw their young lives away?
TR:
No, I don’t think it’s that at all. That impulse, if strong enough, might cause a person to commit suicide. It would not fuel the rage for a murder. The rage in a murder is directed outward, in a murder/suicide it’s directed in both directions.
I believe that most and perhaps all murderers have large elements of sociopathy or psychopathy in their nature. What makes a sociopath or a psychopath, I have no idea.
Art. DNA evidence can be faked.
Yeah, and eyewitness testimony can be perjured.
Any way to guarantee that the post-arrest draw isn’t put into the crime-scene evidence? you have to take somebody’s word that it wasn’t.
They’ll have a recorded chain of custody of each piece of crime scene evidence and they’ll have the date on the test which recorded the DNA profile.
if it’s dna evidence, how did they know it was his, did the attendant at the gas station identify him,
If he has a cousin whose DNA is in a public database, they can establish a suspect list and then winnow.
Hi neo,
I agree with most of what you have said in your reply.
However, In my opinion- I think that a number of people have turned to murders and/or killings because they have come to a horrid idea, the idea that- the killings were the only way that they could get away from a situation.
What motivates some people to do murders, or as you have mentioned, murder/suicides, are motivations that I view as unspeakable acts.
For example- Art Spiegelman has written, in my words, what I’ll call a graphic novel/novel.
This graphic novel is named- Maus.
A warning- I find a lot of this book, about World War 2 death camps, to be very sad, and very disturbing.
Please don’t read this book if these topics are too sensitive for you to read about.
However- In his book, Mr. Spiegelman writes about [what I think is a true event].
This event is where- his aunt is living in Europe, in WW2.
She believes that she, and some of her child-relatives, relatives who are maybe 10 and younger, might be discovered, and then murdered, by The Third Reich’s police.
To prevent this horror from happening, she then decides to murder these relatives, and then she decides to murder herself.
To me, that is a very chilling series of events.
But the point that I’m trying to illustrate is: I feel that the motivations of people who have done: murders, suicides, suicides/murders, and other killings, can be various and difficult to discover.
So I guess I’d rather let the criminologists and the psychologists discover these [suspects’] motivations, rather than have myself try to discover these suspects’ motivations.
TR:
That is not murder by any usual definition. I don’t even think it’s manslaughter, although it might be that.
And you can’t decide to murder yourself. That’s suicide.
Here is my review of Maus.
Art. And somebody has to be honest and competent to do that right. My point is, backed up by references to crime labs, there’s no reason to believe it is a matter of honest competence in any given case, particularly one with great public interest.
“You’re dealing with the municipal police in Moscow, Idaho, the Latah County Sheriff, and the Idaho state police.”
You really are thick as brick when you want to be.
Now we hear that Daddy traveled to WA and drove back to PA with the suspect in the wanted vehicle. Mighty strange. And the FBI monitored them on the drive.
You really are thick as brick when you want to be.
No, I’m pointing out to you that the investigation is in the hands of local officials, so you want to accuse people of fabricating evidence, you have to start there. Of course, you might just suspend judgment on that question, but you cannot seem to manage that either.
Ive heard much insinuations but little evidence
Now police are overstretched but the handling of this case is federal
I am not accusing anyone of fabricating evidence. I happen to think they got the right guy.
Here is an example from my own career. About 40 years ago one of the spacecraft that I worked on went tumbling out of control. To recover it was necessary to determine the axis of rotation. The official story is two engineers (that I knew) figured it out from the radio noise from the spacecraft. The mission was totally unclassified, and everyone involved had a clearance anyway. I was told a couple of years later that the truth was this: the USAF imaged our spacecraft with a classified asset and only about five people involved knew the truth (not me).
I grant the bad reputation of the FBI, and some local police, but deciding — without evidence — that police are cooking the books in this case just to get someone under arrest is also wrong. I began seeing reports early on that the killer had left some DNA at the scene. Framing the wrong man would mean that local and state police were willing to let an actual brutal murderer in their area stay loose just to close the case.
If there’s something wrong with the investigation or the evidence custody we’ll hear about it when the details are made public.
but the handling of this case is federal
There is no indication that the FBI’s role is anything but supplementary.
Hi neo,
For what it’s worth- for the word, murder, I’m going by some accepted definitions of the word, murder.
One example is from the merriam-webster [dot com] site, which defines murder as the following:
murder- “the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought”.
From the story of the aunt, which I have provided above- I have decided to see the killings of the children, which she had done, as murder- since, 1) she did not get permission from police or a government to kill these people, and 2) more importantly- she did not get permission from these children, or even from those children’s parents, to kill these people.
It can be argued that her killing herself could be a legally allowed killing, of herself, since a case can be formed, saying she had her own permission, to kill herself.
Regardless of that argument- since I believe she killed these people, and then herself, out of a, [in my words- [a temporary loss of reason], where she took the action of: I-will-kill-these-people-and-then-myself-so-that-the-bad-people-can’t-kill-them-first], it can be questioned whether she was in her right mind, when she decided to kill others, and then kill herself.
Did she consider- have people, in past wars in Europe, been targeted by the Third Reich, or armies that were just as murderous as the Third Reich, and then they survived those wars?
Did this woman know that she and these children would [not] survive the war?
Would they have survived WW2 if she had left these people alone?
It can be argued that her killing these people was a criminal act, or that it was a wrongful act, since- she did not know that these people would or would not survive the war, or that their killing was a needed thing.
Regardless, I believe that you and I have different definitions for the words- murder and suicide, and that is an OK thing, in my point of view.
I suppose that thought of people being killed, and/or the thought of the deaths of others, can bring out intense or strong feelings, in myself and other people, when we read about these histories.
Thank you for showing me the link to your very good review of the
historical book, Maus.
I think that the book may be too strong of a historical book for some people’s emotions, but I’m glad that Mr. Spiegelman wrote the book, so that- the story of his parents surviving the WW2 holocaust, and his story, can be heard by other people.
Cheers.
Wanting to have another driver when traveling from WA to PA in December is basically “prudent,” but that would be using Occam’s Razor, not rocket science.
Are the “we knows” out already?
This guy lives and works in WA. The drive is odd period. It is suspicious. More suspicious by daddy coming cross country to help. Was he going to repeat the process when school started? 2000-mile drive in winter. Who does that? I would have flown.
Suspicious warrants investigation. I await his explanation.
Who does a 2000 mile drive in winter? People, for their own reasons. Who has had flights canceled over Christmas, lots of people.
I’ve heard of people who won’t fly; weird, creepy, suspicious are they too? Or not. College students, grad students, have theirs reasons. Panopticon, indeed.
But, “we knows?”
Chases Eagles:
Maybe the dad is retired or self-employed, has some time to spare around the holidays, and likes to drive and see the country and spend some time with his son. I know plenty of people who might do that. I don’t find that suspicious, although of course it doesn’t rule out suspiciousness.