Bryan Kohberger Affidavit: DNA, Elantra, and Cell Data

The probable cause affidavit against Bryan Kohberger, unsealed on January 5, 2023, laid out four interlocking categories of evidence tying him to the November 13, 2022 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students: DNA on a Ka-Bar knife sheath left beside one of the victims, a surviving roommate’s description of a masked intruder, surveillance footage of a white Hyundai Elantra registered to Kohberger, and cell phone location data placing him near the King Road home the night of the killings and on at least a dozen prior occasions.¹

The 19-page sworn statement was authored by Moscow Police Corporal Brett Payne and filed on December 29, 2022. It was unsealed the same day Kohberger, a 28-year-old first-semester criminology PhD student at Washington State University, made his first Idaho court appearance following extradition from Pennsylvania.²³ The victims were Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, all killed with an edged weapon in the second- and third-floor bedrooms of the rental home at 1122 King Road in Moscow.¹

The Knife Sheath and the DNA Match

Investigators found a tan leather Ka-Bar knife sheath stamped with a U.S. Marine Corps insignia on the bed next to Madison Mogen’s body.⁴ The Idaho State Police Forensics Lab identified a single source of male DNA on the sheath’s button snap, designated Q1.1. That profile returned no matches when run through CODIS, the national DNA database.⁵

The FBI and a private lab, Othram, then turned to forensic investigative genetic genealogy. Othram built a detailed genetic profile from the crime scene DNA and uploaded it to two commercial databases, FamilyTreeDNA and GEDMatch Pro. The search surfaced several partial matches, including four brothers who were distant relatives of the DNA source. Othram’s work was transferred to the FBI on December 10, 2022, and agents expanded the search using additional databases, among them MyHeritage. By December 19, the FBI had assembled a family tree pointing to Bryan Kohberger and passed his name to Idaho investigators.⁵

To confirm the lead, investigators arranged for the trash collector at the Kohberger family’s gated community in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, to set aside the family’s garbage. DNA from one item in the trash was identified as belonging to the biological father of the source of the sheath DNA, with a 99.9998% probability of excluding any other unrelated male as the father. After Kohberger’s arrest, a buccal swab obtained under a search warrant produced a definitive match: he was 5.37 octillion times more likely to be the source of the crime scene DNA than a random unrelated individual.⁵

The Surviving Roommate’s Account

Two roommates in the house were unharmed. One, identified in court papers as D.M., told investigators she was awakened around 4:00 a.m. by sounds from upstairs, including what she believed was Kaylee Goncalves saying, “there’s someone here.” After opening her door and initially seeing nothing, she heard crying, a male voice saying, “it’s okay, I’m going to help you,” a loud thud, and a dog barking.⁶

When D.M. opened her door a second time, she saw a figure in black clothing and a mask covering his nose and mouth walking toward her. She described a “frozen shock phase” as he passed and continued toward the rear sliding glass door. She told investigators the intruder was male, at least five feet ten inches tall, “not very muscular, but athletically built,” with “bushy eyebrows.”⁶ Payne noted that Kohberger’s driver’s license listed him at six feet tall, 185 pounds, with bushy eyebrows.⁷

The White Hyundai Elantra

Investigators canvassed neighborhood video and identified a white sedan near the victims’ home in the hours around the murders. An FBI forensic examiner with 35 years of experience concluded it was a 2011–2016 Hyundai Elantra. Footage showed the vehicle making three passes by the residence starting at 3:29 a.m., entering the area a fourth time at approximately 4:04 a.m., and departing at a high rate of speed around 4:20 a.m.⁷

Cameras on the Washington State University campus in Pullman, about nine miles from Moscow, captured a white sedan consistent with the suspect vehicle heading toward Moscow at 2:44 a.m. and returning near campus around 5:25 a.m.⁸ On November 29, a WSU officer queried registrations of white Elantras at the university and located a 2015 model registered to Kohberger at his Pullman apartment. Records showed he had originally registered the car in Pennsylvania and had been stopped driving it in Moscow in August 2022 and at WSU in October 2022. Five days after the killings, on November 18, 2022, he registered the car in Washington and received a new plate.⁷ When Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ home on December 30, a white Elantra was parked there.⁹

Cell Phone Location Data

Kohberger’s phone records tracked his movements the night of the murders. At approximately 2:42 a.m., the device was located near his Pullman apartment. By 2:47 a.m., it was connecting to towers southeast of his home, consistent with travel toward Moscow. It then stopped reporting to the network entirely, a gap the affidavit described as consistent with the phone being turned off or placed in airplane mode. It reappeared at 4:48 a.m., pinging a tower south of Moscow, and followed what the affidavit called a “roundabout route” back to Pullman, arriving shortly before 5:30 a.m.¹⁰

Payne noted that killers may disable or leave behind their phones to avoid location tracking during a crime. Beyond the night of the murders, historical records showed Kohberger’s phone had pinged near the victims’ residence on at least a dozen occasions between late June 2022 and November 13, typically late at night or in the early morning.¹⁰

What the Affidavit Did Not Establish

The affidavit built probable cause around opportunity, presence, and identification. It did not offer a motive, and none was ever established on the record. At sentencing, Judge Steven Hippler remarked that Kohberger’s motive “may never be known.”¹¹ Nor did the affidavit describe any prior connection between Kohberger and the victims.

How the Defense Attacked the Affidavit

Kohberger’s attorneys challenged the affidavit and the seventeen related search warrants under Franks v. Delaware, which lets defendants attack the truthfulness of sworn statements used to obtain warrants. Their claims included that different officers had sworn to a “collectively drafted” probable cause statement as if it were their individual work, that a sergeant misstated who discovered the knife sheath, that officers took credit for cell site analysis actually performed by an FBI agent, and that investigators omitted the fact that D.M.’s recollections were variable, that she questioned her own memory, and that she failed to identify Kohberger from a photo after his arrest.¹²

Judge Hippler denied the motion on nearly all issues in a February 2025 ruling. He called the knife sheath dispute “a quibble over semantics” and the collective-drafting argument “hyper-technical,” finding that readers of the affidavits could reasonably infer the work was performed by a joint investigation. He found D.M.’s descriptions had been consistently summarized and that her difficulty recognizing a photo of a masked intruder was “of no consequence.” The court granted a limited hearing on the omission of genetic genealogy information from the affidavits but concluded that including it “would have only bolstered probable cause.”¹²

The defense also moved to suppress the DNA evidence on three grounds: that extracting a genetic profile from the sheath without a warrant violated the Fourth Amendment; that the warrantless “trash pull” at the family home was unconstitutional; and that searching commercial genealogy databases invaded Kohberger’s privacy. Judge Hippler rejected all three. He ruled that Kohberger had abandoned any privacy interest in the DNA on the sheath, analogizing shed DNA to latent fingerprints left in a public space. On the trash pull, the court applied longstanding precedent that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in discarded garbage. On the genealogy database search, he found that the FBI’s internal policy governing such searches did not create enforceable legal rights for the defendant.⁵ A separate motion to exclude data from AT&T, Google, Apple, Amazon, and a USB drive was also denied; the court found the material was lawfully obtained through warrants and that Kohberger had relinquished any privacy interest in records held by third parties.¹³

What Happened After

The evidence in the affidavit never went to a jury. On July 2, 2025, weeks before his August trial was set to begin, Kohberger pleaded guilty to all five counts — one burglary and four first-degree murders — under an agreement that took the death penalty off the table and waived his rights to a jury trial and to appeal.¹⁴ The Goncalves family said prosecutors “never consulted” them and called the arrangement a “secretive deal”; Moscow Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson defended it as a “sincere attempt to seek justice” that would avoid the “uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals.”¹⁵

On July 23, 2025, Judge Hippler sentenced Kohberger to four consecutive fixed life terms for the murders and ten years for the burglary, along with a $50,000 fine on each count and $5,000 in civil penalties per murder charge payable to the victims’ families. Under Idaho law, a fixed life sentence carries no parole eligibility.¹⁶ He is housed at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna.¹⁷

1
Boise State Public Radio. Probable Cause Affidavit in Case of University of Idaho Murders Released
2
Citizens’ Voice. Key Takeaways From the Bryan Kohberger Affidavit
3
NBC News. Bryan Christopher Kohberger, University of Idaho Murders
4
Idaho Statesman. Ka-Bar Brand Leather Knife Sheath Details
5
Idaho State Courts. Order on Defendant’s Motion to Suppress Genetic Information
6
NPR. Idaho Murders Suspect Charged Bryan Kohberger
7
Idaho State Courts. Affidavit, Exhibit A, Statement of Brett Payne
8
ABC27. Affidavit: DNA, Cell Records, Car Link Kohberger to Idaho Killings
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ABC7 New York. Bryan Kohberger Update: Idaho Murders Affidavit Court Documents
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NBC Philadelphia. Cellphone Data Shows Idaho Suspect in Crime Scene Area Around Time of Attack
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ABC News. Idaho Families Slam Bryan Kohberger at Emotional Sentencing Hearing
12
Idaho State Courts. Order on Defendant’s Motion for Franks Hearing
13
NBC News. Judge Denies Bryan Kohberger Motions to Exclude Key DNA Evidence at Trial
14
Idaho State Courts. Plea Agreement, CR01-24-31665
15
CNN. Bryan Kohberger Update: Plea Deal
16
CBS News. Bryan Kohberger Sentence, Idaho Murders
17
Idaho Attorney General. Attorney General Labrador Commends Life Sentences for Bryan Kohberger