The Idaho Stabbings Vol 3: An Arrest is Made
The Idaho Stabbings Vol 3: An Arrest is Made
Bryan Christopher Kohberger arrested, Social Media Rumours abound, Justice for the Idaho 4?
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, born November 21 1994, was arrested on December 30 in his home in Chestnuthill Township. Some sources claim Kohberger graduated from Pleasant Valley High School, while others claim that according to an alumni website, he was a 2012 graduate of Jim Thorpe Area High School. He may have attended both.
Nick Mcloughlin, of Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania, told the Daily Beast he was friends with Bryan Christopher Kohberger in high school, and that they spent half their days at Pleasant Valley High and the other half taking heating and air conditioning work classes at the Monroe County vocational school.
Moscow Police Chief James Fry confirmed at a press conference that Bryan Christopher Kohberger, of Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, was arrested that morning on a warrant on four counts of first degree murder and burglary and was detained without bond at the Monroe County Correctional Facility in Stroudsburg. He was arrested by an FBI SWAT team in cooperation with local authorities.
The Moscow Police Chief also said at the news conference that the Hyundai Elantra has been located, but investigators are still looking for the murder weapon used in the killings, thought to be a large, fixed blade knife. The Elantra was seized by police shortly after the arrest.
After being arrested, Kohberger is reported to have asked if anyone else had been arrested. This curious question leaves us all to blindly speculate at nothing, because there is no information even in rumor about possible accomplices.
There are some posts on 4chan claiming the involvement of local frat members, however they are not credible and the rumors do not claim they were accomplices but the “real killers”.
Nick McLaughlin told the Daily Beast that by the time senior year began, Kohberger was "thinner than a rail" and had become "aggressive". Since deleted social media reports on Facebook claim Kohlberger was abusing methamphetamine during this time. You can see his dramatic weight loss by comparing his yearbook pictures.
Nick Mcloughlin said, "He was very leveled and somewhat imposing. There wasn’t much emotion displayed by him. He took care with how he spoke." Mcloughlin said, "He always wanted to fight somebody, he was bullying people. We started cutting him off from our friend group because he was 100 percent a different person."
Mcloughlin also said Kohberger's dead stare dated back to high school. Their relationship ended when Kohberger approached Mcloughlin's girlfriend. "He was, like, reaching out to her, saying, ‘I can get us a bottle and we hang out tonight.'"
Thomas Arntz remembered him as mean-spirited. “He was a bully,” he said. “I never thought he would do something like that but at the same time it doesn't really surprise me.” He said Kohberger would constantly “point out flaws and insecurities of others to distract himself from his own struggles with his weight”.
Arntz said, "He did that to me all the time. He would go after my intelligence. He would basically insinuate that I’m kind of slow-witted and that I’m forgetful and I lack the intelligence to be his friend." Arntz said he ended his friendship with Kohberger because of the constant bullying.
Arntz’s sister, Casey, said Kohberger told her at a wedding they both attended that after graduating that he had entered rehab for heroin addiction, and his life seemed to be on the up. He worked as a security guard at the Pleasant Valley High School in Brodheadsville, PA as well.
He resigned from the position in mid 2021, presumably to attend grad school across the country.
After high school, Kohberger attended Northampton Community College in Pennsylvania and graduated with an associate's degree in Psychology in 2018. Kohberger then attended DeSales University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he received his bachelor's degree in 2020, and completed his graduate studies in June of this year, graduating with an M.A. in Criminal Justice.
In between, he worked at the Pleasant Valley High School in Brodheadsville, PA as a “casual security guard”. He resigned from that position in mid 2021, presumably to attend grad school across the country.
He began studying for his PhD in Criminal Justice at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, about 10 miles west of Moscow, where he worked as a teaching assistant, and reportedly graded papers on the subject of the killing he was ultimately arrested for.
He also uploaded a survey for a Criminology study to Reddit, creating a post (which reddit has since deleted) inviting users with criminal backgrounds to participate in research on "how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime."
Kohberger’s study asks questions like,
"What was the first move you made in order to accomplish your goal?"
"What steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target? Detail your thoughts and feelings.”
“Why did you choose that victim over others?"
"How did you leave the scene? Did you struggle with or fight the victim? Detail any thoughts or feelings at this point."
"Before leaving, is there anything else you did?"
The survey lists Jeffrey Clutter as co-principal investigator and Michelle Bolger as principal investigator, both associate professors at DeSales.
Authorities narrowed their focus to Kohberger after tracing ownership of the white Hyundai Elantra seen in the area of the killings to him, according to a law enforcement source speaking to CNN.
Genealogy helped identify the suspect, a source with inside knowledge of the case told them. DNA found at the crime scene in Idaho was searched against a public DNA database to find potential relatives with genetic matches. Once potential family matches were found, investigative work by law enforcement led to his specific identification. His DNA was then found and matched with DNA recovered at the house where the students were stabbed to death, according to CNNs sources. The FBI is said to have been watching him for several days.
Bryan is thought by social media to have called in to a true crime podcast to blame some local fraternity members for the murders:
And he is rumored on social media to be the author of several posts on 4chan as well, boasting of his cruelty and blaming local frat members for the murders. I will not include posts of the latter as there is no real evidence of the involvement of those named:
The boasts conflict with some of the conflicting statements made by police, but square better with reports from the victims parents. The father of Kaylee Goncalves told Fox News that Kaylee had "big open gouges" that were the work of a "sadistic male" and called police “cowards" for not sharing more with the public, endangering other women.
Steven Goncalves said he asked the coroner, Cathy Mabbutt, how many times the victims were stabbed. "She says, sir, I don't think stabs is the right word, it was like tears, like this was a strong weapon, not like a stab," he told Fox.
Kaylee Goncalves and Madison May Mogen, best friends since the sixth grade, were ambushed in their sleep and found in the same bed, according to their families, who said they take comfort in the fact that they were together when it happened.
Steven Goncalves said his daughter's injuries did not match Mogen's. "They may have individually died from the exact same thing, being stabbed, but there are more details," he added. "They're not even close to matching." Goncalves guessed that they had died in Maddie Mogen's bedroom on the third floor since "there are photos of Kaylee's room with no blood on the bed."
The coroner told Goncalves that the victims died quickly and did not suffer, but he's not convinced. The knife slashed open Kaylee Goncalves' liver and lungs, he said. Kaylee and Maddie were on the third floor. Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both of whom reportedly had defensive wounds, were found on the second floor.
Ethan Chapin was reportedly very tall, and also very athletic. He loved sports from basketball to surfing to pickleball, his family said. Xana Kernodle was also athletic, with six years in gymnastics. Ethan’s body is rumoured to have been found on the floor and not in bed, possibly even in the hallway, and he reportedly had defensive wounds on his hands.
Xana’s Jeffery Kernodle reported that the coroner told him Xana had bruising and torn skin consistent with defensive wounds. "Bruises, torn by the knife," Jeff Kernodle told CBS 5, adding that her injuries showed she put up a fight against her murderer. "She’s a tough kid. Whatever she wanted to do, she could do it," he said.
"It was a hell of a battle going on down there [on the second floor] from what the coroner told us," Goncalves said, telling Fox News that he pressed law enforcement to elaborate but was told that specifics could not be revealed.
Some social media users have speculated that Ethan and Xana disrupted the killers plans, sparing the room mates on the floor below after got spooked.
A reddit user speculated, “I think he [Ethan] heard the killer and got up to check what the noise was. He was caught off guard and killed and then the killer went after Xana. She had time to realize what was happening because of Ethan and fought for her life."
A police source close to the investigation told media, “There was blood everywhere. We have investigators who have been on the job for 20, even 30, years, and they say they have never seen anything like this.” There were reports of blood oozing through the walls by most major media outlets.
Ms Mabbutt, confirmed that each victim was stabbed multiple times, describing their wounds as “pretty extensive”. “I’ve been coroner for 16 years... we have had multiple [victim] murders in the past, but nothing, nothing like this.”
The coroner told KXLY that “there were no signs of sexual assault during the bloody rampage, however, each victim was stabbed more than once.” There was no sign of sexual assault on any of the victims but they each suffered “pretty extensive” wounds, she told NBC News, adding that each victim was stabbed “a different amount of times and in different places on the body.”
Though far from conclusive, some of this information, and some of the specific language being used, suggestively corroborates the lurid claims in the anonymous 4chan post, which correctly identified the state that the killer would ultimately be found in, Pennsylvania.