Attorneys for Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger have claimed he was not at the students’ house on the night of the murders but declined to submit an alibi to the court before the deadline on Monday.
Instead, they suggested in a filing that his presence elsewhere will be proven later during the cross examination of witnesses at his upcoming trial in October.
The state has claimed Kohberger’s DNA was recovered from a knife sheath left behind at the scene of the murders and that a white Hyundai owned by him was seen nearby at around the same time.
The 28-year-old is accused of fatally stabbing students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at their home in Moscow, Idaho, in the early hours of November 13.
His trial is currently set for October and in June prosecutors said they would be seeking the death penalty.
Attorneys for Bryan Kohberger (pictured in June) have claimed he was not at the students’ house on the night of the murders
The infamous murder house in Moscow where Bryan Kohberger allegedly slaughtered four University of Idaho students
Idaho law stipulates that defendants must submit an alibi defense to the court within ten days of a written demand from the prosecuting attorney.
When the Latah County prosecutor in this case made that request in May, Kohberger’s defense team appealed for an extension on the grounds they had not had enough time to review the prosecution’s evidence.
A new deadline was granted and set for July 24.
In a notice filed on Monday evening, his attorney, Anne Taylor, wrote that her client would be invoking his constitutional right to silence and would not be submitting an alibi defense.
‘Mr. Kohberger’s defense team continues investigating and preparaing [sic] his case,’ she wrote.
‘Evidence corroborating Mr. Kohberger being at a location other than the King Road address will be disclosed pursuant to discovery and evidentiary rules as well as statutory requirements,’ she added.
There is a suggestion therefore that Kohberger’s team may have additional evidence that has not yet been provided to the court.
‘It is anticipated this evidence may be offered by way of cross-examination of witnesses produced by the State as well as calling expert witnesses,’ wrote Taylor.
Last week, Kohberger’s team filed a separate defense suggesting that DNA linking him to the knife sheath may have been planted.
‘What the State’s argument asks this Court and Mr. Kohberger to assume is that the DNA on the sheath was placed there by Mr. Kohberger, and not someone else during an investigation that spans hundreds of members of law enforcement and apparently at least one lab the State refuses to name,’ they wrote.
The defense also wanted more information on how the FBI used the DNA to create family trees that led them to Kohberger to begin with.
Kohberger is accused of fatally stabbing students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at their home in Moscow, Idaho
Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for a hearing at the Latah County Courthouse on June 27 in Moscow
When DNA is found at the scene of the crime that does not belong to victims, the first thing police do is run it through their own database to check if it matches the DNA of any previous offenders.
This process is referred to as a short tandem repeat (STR) comparison and tests the sample against 20 DNA markers – enough to identify the person if their own DNA is already in the system, or, in some cases, if the DNA of an immediate relative is in the system (eg. a parent or a sibling).
A criminal affidavit that was filed in January, shortly after Kohberger was arrested, says that DNA matching the suspect’s was found on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene close to the bodies of Mogen and Goncalves.
Investigators later closely matched the DNA on the sheath to DNA found in trash taken from Kohberger’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested in December.
‘A traditional STR DNA comparison was done between the STR profile found on the Ka-Bar knife sheath and Defendant’s DNA. The comparison showed a statistical match,’ a filing read.
Ka-Bar, the company that made the knife believed to have been used in the slayings, has said it has no record that anyone named Kohberger bought such an item from them, but it sells to both retailers and directly to consumers.
Sources say the sheath found at the scene belonged to a seven-inch utility knife, which is traditionally used as a hunting tool for chopping firewood or cutting wire and rope. That knife has not been found.
Kohberger is scheduled to stand trial on October 2.