Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger has until the end of the day to submit an alibi accounting for his whereabouts on the night of the quadruple killing – as his defense team suggests DNA on knife sheath may have been planted.
The alibi would feature evidence placing Kohberger elsewhere at the time of the killings and is considered one of the most important elements to a strong legal defense.
Last week, Kohberger’s team filed a separate defense suggesting that DNA linking him to a knife sheath found on one of the victim’s beds may have been planted by ‘someone else during an investigation that spans hundreds of members of law enforcement’.
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 were seeking the death penalty.
Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger’s defense team has one day left to submit an alibi accounting for his whereabouts on the night of the quadruple killing
Kohberger is accused of fatally stabbing Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20
The first deadline for the submission of an alibi to the court was in June, but Kohberger’s public defender Anne Taylor requested an extension on the grounds they had not had enough time to review the prosecution’s evidence.
His defense team could now either not file a response at all or they could again request more time.
Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer told Newsweek that it was unlikely that an additional extension would be granted and that it was unlikely they would make a submission at all.
Coffindaffer told the publication she thought that if Kohberger had a reasonably strong alibi it would have already been submitted to the court and might hinge of witness statements or ‘digital evidence’.
‘We didn’t see any of that,’ she told Newsweek. ‘We see the opposite.’
Although Kophbergher, who was a criminology teaching assistant at Washington State University prior to the killings, was initially tied by law enforcement to the using DNA, further evidence has been submitted to support their case.
Evidence presented by prosecutors suggests that Kohberger’s phone was either off or in airplane mode on the night of the killings. A 2015 Hyundai Electra linked to Kohberger was allegedly spotted in the area.
‘It’s very hard to prove an alibi when your alibi options prove you were there,’ Coffindaffer said.
Detectives found a Ka-Bar knife sheath on the bed with the bodies of Mogen and Goncalves. The sheath was partially under Mogen’s body and the comforter on the bed, according to court documents filed on June 16.
A sample of DNA left on the sheath is ‘at least 5.37 octillion times more likely to be seen if (the) Defendant is the source than if an unrelated individual randomly selected from the general population is the source,’ prosecutors said in a filing.
The defense has revealed in its latest submission to the court that it will contest the notion that Kohberger’s DNA was left at the scene on the sheath by him.
Investigators allegedly matched the DNA on a Ka-Bar knife sheath to that of Kohberger. Pictured is a similar Ka-Bar seven inch hunting knife
General view of the infamous murder house in Moscow, Idaho, where Bryan Kohberger allegedly slaughtered four University of Idaho students
‘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 wants more information on how the FBI used the DNA to create family trees that led them to Kohberger and his father.
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 last 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 2022.
‘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 they sell 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.