Unidentified DNA at Idaho college student homicides home could aid Kohberger defense

Detectives who investigated the Moscow college student homicides found blood at the crime scene from two still-unidentified males, attorneys for the man charged with murder revealed at a recent hearing, hinting to a possible legal defense strategy at trial.

An unknown individual’s blood DNA was discovered on a handrail in the off-campus home where the four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed. Another unknown blood sample was found on a glove that police located just outside the home, Bryan Kohberger’s lead defense attorney told the court late last month.

In the bed of one of the stabbing victims, police said they also found what many regard as the case’s key piece of evidence: a leather sheath for a fixed-blade knife. During processing, DNA was discovered on the sheath and later matched directly to Kohberger, police and prosecutors said. In legal filings from June 2023, his defense said the state’s claim is not from blood, but rather touch DNA on the sheath located at the violent scene.

In those same filings, the defense said, DNA from two additional males was found inside the home, as well as the male DNA found on the glove outside. Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson told the court at a hearing in August 2023 that those DNA samples were not uploaded to try to identify them through the FBI’s national DNA database, known as CODIS, because they were not eligible based on the criteria.

It was not publicly known until last month’s court hearing that at least two of the unknown male DNA samples came from blood. And the type of the third male DNA sample remains unclear, as does if its source has since been identified.

But police did not disclose the unidentified blood DNA samples to a magistrate judge in December 2022 when they sought a warrant for Kohberger’s arrest, defense attorney Anne Taylor alleged at last month’s hearing, and prosecutors did not dispute. That decision amounted to detectives intentionally omitting the information to the judge for her determination of probable cause, and should disqualify some evidence, Taylor said.

Ada County District Judge Steven Hippler pushed back on the defense at the January hearing.

“How does that, even if disclosed, preclude a finding of probable cause when there’s a DNA match between the DNA on the sheath and Mr. Kohberger?” he asked Taylor. “Isn’t that probable cause every day and twice on Sunday?”

Probable cause shouldn’t be considered in a vacuum, Taylor responded. She indicated that the decision before Hippler had greater implications for the overarching criminal justice system.

“If that’s the only thing she’s told, I can see why she’d find probable cause,” Taylor said of the magistrate judge. “It’s these other things that are withheld that create a context around it. … Do we want to have one thing with no context around it when there’s this other context that really matters?”

Kohberger’s defense seeks to challenge several search warrants and evidence obtained with them at what’s known as a Franks hearing. The request is akin to appealing the magistrate judge’s probable cause finding, and rarely succeeds, legal experts told the Idaho Statesman. The prosecution objected to the granting of that hearing and Hippler has yet to issue his ruling.

Kohberger, 30, a former graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, is accused of the November 2022 college student killings at the off-campus home on King Road in Moscow just over the Idaho state line. He is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.

The four victims were Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington. The three women lived in the rental home at 1122 King Road with two other women who went physically unharmed in the early-morning attack, while Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night.

A grand jury in Moscow unanimously found probable cause and indicted Kohberger on all five felony charges. In May 2023, a not guilty plea was entered by a Moscow judge on Kohberger’s behalf when the defendant declined to speak at his arraignment. The high-profile case has since been moved to Boise, with trial scheduled for this summer.

‘Muddy the waters’

The unknown male blood DNA samples police found inside and just outside the King Road home raise important questions about the investigation, Taylor told the court last month. That evidence, which she argued is material and exculpatory — meaning it supports Kohberger’s claim of innocence — was deliberately kept from the judge ahead of her client’s arrest, she said.

The information is not necessarily exculpatory for Kohberger, Hippler countered. Rather, it could suggest the possibility that other suspects were involved, ”if you assume that that blood was related to the victims, and not some earlier event in the house,” he said.

Regardless of if the defense prevails in convincing Hipper to grant a Franks hearing, or to suppress other state evidence, it’s likely that Kohberger’s attorneys will use the unidentified blood DNA from the crime scene to try to “muddy the waters” at trial to create reasonable doubt, Boise criminal defense attorney Edwina Elcox told the Statesman in a phone interview.

“That evidence could be any variety of things: It could be something, or it could be a lot of things that are nothing,” said Elcox, who briefly represented Lori Vallow Daybell in her Idaho murder case. “There’s at least something to be made of it, and it’s better than having nothing as a defense.”

The primary challenge for the defense in Kohberger’s capital murder case will be explaining to jurors why a knife sheath, which the state alleges had the defendant’s DNA on it, was found inside the home where the victims were fatally stabbed, Elcox said.

“That’s the thing that squarely puts him there,” she said. “The magnitude of that evidence to the state’s case is critical, and cannot be understated.”

‘The ultimate question’

Kohberger’s public defense team has said on several occasions that he is innocent of the crimes for which he’s accused. Taylor reiterated at last month’s hearing that no connections exist between her client and the victims. In spite of the allegations, Kohberger has never been to the King Road home, she said.

Police executed a search warrant at Kohberger’s student apartment and sought a variety of evidence if found. That included all DNA evidence, which entailed any items with blood, bodily fluids, human tissue, skin cells and hair. Initial analysis from “presumptive chemical tests” on a stained mattress cover and pillow taken from Kohberger’s apartment came back positive for blood, records showed.

“The King Road residence contained a significant amount of blood from the victims including splatter and castoff (blood stain pattern resulting from blood drops released from an object due to its motion), which, based on my training, makes it likely that this evidence was transferred to Kohberger’s person, clothing, or shoes,” Moscow Police Sgt. Dustin Blaker wrote in a sworn statement in support of the warrants.

But none of what was seized related to the four victims, according to Kohberger’s attorneys. During the search of their client’s apartment — in addition to three searches of his white Hyundai Elantra — police found “absolutely no connection between him and anybody from 1122 King,” Taylor said at last month’s hearing.

“There’s no blood in his car,” she added. “He wasn’t connected to that house, to the people in the house.”

During their court-approved search, police pulled apart components, including the brake, gear shift and key fob remote, of Kohberger’s car, Taylor said. Nothing tying Kohberger to the victims was found on his steering wheel either, she said.

Victim Kaylee Goncalves owned a dog with her ex-boyfriend, and Moscow police found it in her third-floor bedroom when they arrived at the crime scene, according to the probable cause affidavit. The door to her bedroom was open, as was Mogen’s third-floor bedroom where Goncalves and Mogen were found dead, Taylor told the court at the hearing.

“This dog had not tracked any blood around,” she said. “The dog had no blood on it whatsoever, but it was just sitting in an open room a day later.”

Police suspect Kohberger returned to his Pullman apartment after the violent knife attack.

“At that time, it is likely that he still had blood or other trace evidence on his person/clothes/shoes, including skin cells or hair from the victims or from Goncalves’ dog,” Blaker wrote. “It is likely that some trace evidence was transferred to areas in his apartment through contact with the items worn during the attack.”

A search warrant return with two dozen items includes 10 possible hair strands — one that was possibly from an animal — and three more possible hairs among all that police seized from Kohberger’s apartment. On a list of more than 50 exhibits the defense team submitted to the court in support of a Franks hearing, they included two FBI lab reports for hair fibers, each noting: “no connection.”

It is unclear if the two FBI reports the defense submitted relate to the possible hairs police located during the search of Kohberger’s apartment.

Hippler told Taylor last month that a direct DNA comparison between the defendant and the knife sheath at the location of a quadruple homicide would seem to “close the book” on the matter of probable cause. The question jurors will have to weigh for a possible conviction is the proof beyond a reasonable doubt standard, he said.

“There may be, as you say, other people that creates concern or issues about that need to be investigated further,” Hippler said. “But I’m not sure that that diminishes the probable cause for Mr. Kohberger if his DNA is found on a knife sheath found on or near the victim — who was stabbed with said alleged knife, that would have been in said alleged sheath.”

So how did a sheath for a fixed-blade knife get there, and how did Bryan Kohberger’s skin cells allegedly wind up on it if he was not involved? Taylor acknowledged that is the most significant issue ahead at trial.

“I mean, that’s the ultimate question that will be before a jury,” Taylor said. “What does a knife sheath at a scene mean?”

Hippler shot back: “If you’re killed with a knife, that probably means a lot.”

“It might,” she said.