Bryan Kohberger is being held for extradition in a criminal homicide investigation in the killings of four University of Idaho students. Photo / Monroe County Correctional Facility / AP
Bryan Kohberger is being held for extradition in a criminal homicide investigation in the killings of four University of Idaho students. Photo / Monroe County Correctional Facility / AP
A PhD student who researched how emotions influence criminals has been arrested over the brutal killing of four Idaho university students in their home last month.
Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, all aged between 20 and 21, were murdered as they slept in a student house in Moscow, Idaho.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was arrested in a dramatic 3am raid on Friday local time by a Swat team about 4000km away in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
Four University of Idaho students were found dead in off-campus housing. Pictured here are Kaylee Goncalves, left, and Madison Mogen. Photo / Instagram
A PhD student by the same name is listed in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, a short drive from the University of Idaho.
Kohberger graduated from Pennsylvania’s DeSales University this May with a master’s degree in criminal justice.
His study included examining how “emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime”, according to the Daily Mail.
As part of his research, he posted an appeal on social media for participants to take a study to help “to understand the story behind your most criminal offence”.
Bryan Kohberger is being held for extradition in a criminal homicide investigation in the killings of four University of Idaho students. Photo / Monroe County Correctional Facility / AP
Kohberger was being held for extradition to Idaho on a warrant for first degree murder according to a filing in Monroe County Court, eastern Pennsylvania.
The filing showed that Kohberger was detained without bail and was due to return to court on Tuesday for an extradition hearing.
The records did not state the charges for which he was arrested.
His arrest is the first major breakthrough in a case which has shocked the country and appeared to mystify investigators for weeks.
The four students were found in a student house near the University of Idaho campus sometime in the morning of November 13.
Their multiple stab wounds suggested the students were ambushed in their sleep.
Two other students were in the house at the time and appeared to sleep through the attack.
Fearful students flee city
Fears of a repeat attack prompted nearly half of the University of Idaho’s over 11,000 students to leave the city and switch to online classes.
The first break in the case came in early December, after detectives asked the public for help finding a white sedan seen near the student house around the time of the killings.
The four University of Idaho students who were found dead in off-campus housing were identified as Madison Mogen, 21, top left, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, bottom left, Ethan Chapin, 20, centre, and Xana Kernodle, 20, right. They are pictured just hours before their untimely deaths. Photo / Instagram
By the next day, the Moscow Police Department had to direct tips to a special FBI call centre because so many were coming in.
A white Hyundai Elantra, the same make and model of car sought by detectives, was towed from outside Kohberger’s home, US broadcaster NBC News reported.
Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; and Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington, were members of the university’s Greek fraternity and sorority system and close friends.
Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle rented the three-storey student house with two other roommates. Kernodle and Chapin were dating and he was visiting the house that night.
Autopsies showed all four were likely asleep when they were attacked. Some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times. There was no sign of sexual assault, police said.
The murders shook the small town of Moscow, Idaho, a farming community of about 25,000 people, including roughly 11,000 students, tucked in the rolling hills of northern Idaho’s Palouse region.
The case also enticed online sleuths who speculated about potential suspects and motives. In the early days of the investigation, police released relatively few details publicly.
Fears of a repeat attack prompted nearly half of the University of Idaho students to switch to online classes for the remainder of the semester, abandoning dorms and apartments in the once bucolic town for the perceived safety of their hometowns.
