Bryan Kohberger Says he was alone in his car the night of four University of Idaho student’s murders.
Mr. Kohberger is a long-time habitual driver. Often he would go for drives at night. Kohberger did it late on 11/12/2022, and even into the next day. Anne Taylor is Kohberger’s Public Defender in a court document that was filed Tuesday at Latah County Court.
She goes on to say that Kohberger “is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time” and that there is no “specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohberger was at each moment of the hours between late night November 12, 2022 and early morning November 13, 2022.”
As required by Idaho law, prosecutors have filed this new information after Kohberger submitted an alibi in court last week.
The motion asked “the specific place or places” at which [Kohberger] The defendant must provide “a claim to where he was at the time the burglary or homicide occurred in this case”, as well as, the names and addresses of any witnesses on whom he intends to base his alibi.
The defense has filed a response to the motion for compulsion.
Taylor affirms that her client, “who has stated he anticipates corroborated witnesses,” is expecting them but does not provide any names.
She goes on to say that corroboration of Kohberger’s alibi “may be brought out through cross-examination of the state’s witnesses” or “expert witness presentation.”
BRYAN KOHBERGER ALIBI
Kohberger presented his alibi before the court in August, according to Idaho law.
“Mr. Kohberger’s defense team continues investigating and preparing his case,” Taylor wrote in that court filing. According to the rules of discovery, evidentiary and legal requirements will be followed in order to disclose evidence that Mr. Kohberger was not at his King Road home.
In the probable cause document filed in Decembre, it is stated that Kohberger’s cellphone disconnected from the network shortly before 3 am on the evening of the murders. The phone then connected again just before 5 am that morning.
In the affidavit, Officer Brett Payne writes: “At about 2:47 am, the 8458 phone used cellular resources to provide coverage south of the Kohberger residence consistent with it leaving the Kohberger residence and travelling through Pullman in Washington.”
According to the affidavit, at this point in time the phone had been offline for nearly two hours.
Payne writes that “the 8458 phone does not again report to the network until around 4:48 am, at which point it used cellular resources to provide coverage for ID State Highway 95, south of Moscow near Blaine in ID.”
Blaine lies approximately 10 miles to the south of Moscow. Kohberger then drove north, looped back south before returning to Pullman.
Kohberger’s lawyers and he outlined in court documents last month what they believed to be perceived gaps in the prosecution case. In one of the briefs, Kohberger claimed that DNA from three men were found on the crime scene.
The filing also claims that there is a “total lack of DNA evidence from the victims in Mr. Kohberger’s apartment, office, home, or vehicle.”
The defense also claims that there is a lack of identification evidence for the car of the suspect.
Kohberger was the owner and driver of a 2016 Hyundai ELantra.
Jay Logsdon wrote in a legal brief that “it is not clear how police officers came to think the vehicle was an Elantra.” The FBI’s March 21st 2023 report shows an analyst heavily depending on video evidence of a car driving in the wrong directions and at the wrong times on Ridge Rd.
The prosecution has not yet stated a possible motive, but claims to have DNA evidence that a sheath of a blade left on the scene matches DNA taken from Kohberger’s buccal swab.
Authorities believe that a hunting knife with a fixed blade was used. Four University of Idaho Students are killed—Madison Mogen, 21;Kaylee Goncalves, 21;Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20— it apparently has not been recovered.
Kohberger told his public defender, who was assigned to deal with the extradition of Kohberger from Pennsylvania to Idaho, that he expected to be cleared at trial.
A judge entered on behalf of the defendant a plea of not guilty.
This year, the trial will begin.