Bryan Kohberger files reveal terrifying new evidence including signs of a practice run a MONTH before murders
Moscow Police Department released a trove of 314 previously-sealed records related to the investigation into the November 13, 2022, murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin on Wednesday afternoon - just hours after the mass killer was sentenced to a lifetime behind bars.
Within the huge document dump, new details emerged about the police investigation which ultimately led to the capture and conviction of 30-year-old criminology student.
In a bombshell revelation, the records show that the roommates at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, had experienced disturbing incidents at the home just one month before the murders.
Goncalves had told at least two friends that she had seen a man watching her in the trees around the home.
Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen - who bravely spoke out in Wednesday's sentencing hearing - told police Goncalves described seeing the 'shadow' when she took her pet dog Murphy outside.
Another friend echoed this accounts, telling police Goncalves had seen a dark figure staring at her from the tree line when taking Murphy outside.
Mortensen, who was 19 at the time, also recalled one time when she came home to find the door to their three-story house open.
The survivor told police Goncalves had also mentioned someone following her around two or three weeks before her murder.
The other friend, whose name is redacted in the documents, told police they would make 'lighthearted talk and jokes' about a possible stalker - but that the girls 'were slightly nervous about it being a fact.'
The friend also said she knew the front door of the home had issues with locking and sometimes could be unlocked without a code.
Around that same time, a female student living on Queen Road - close to the King Road home - said a man tried to break into her home.
At around 1am on October 14, 2022, the woman heard what she thought was a man walk up to her door and try to open it, the police records reveal.
But the door was locked with the deadbolt on.
It is not clear if the incidents are related and if it is possible Kohberger was carrying out a practice run for the murders one month later.
It is also unclear if the man Goncalves saw was Kohberger surveilling the victims' home, or if he may have broken into the home prior to the night of his attack.
But the details of these bizarre incidents come as prosecutors have been able to confirm Kohberger was surveilling the home for some time.
From July 2022 through to November 13, 2022, Kohberger's phone placed him in the vicinity of the King Road home at least 23 times, mostly at night.
Who Kohberger was watching and why he chose the home - and the students inside - only he knows.
Despite his guilty plea and sentencing, the killer's motive and target for the murders remain a mystery.
Speaking at a press conference after the sentencing, Moscow Police Corporal Brett Payne told reporters that while they know Kohberger 'targeted' that house, they still don't know why.
'The evidence suggested that there was a reason that this particular house was chosen. What that reason is, we don't know,' he said.
Investigators also remain in the dark about whether one or more of the victims inside the home was his intended target.
Around one month after these incidents, Kohberger broke into the student home and stabbed the four victims to death.
At around 4am, he entered through the back sliding door on the second story of the property and went straight up the stairs to Mogen's bedroom on the third floor.
He found her and Goncalves sleeping in her bed and fatally stabbed the 21-year-old best friends.
On his way back downstairs or on leaving the property, he encountered Kernodle on the second floor, who was still awake on TikTok, having just received a DoorDash food order.
Kohberger attacked the 20-year-old with his knife and then also murdered her boyfriend Chapin who was asleep in her bed.
Kohberger then left through the same back sliding door of the property, passing Mortensen who had been woken by the noise and peeked around her bedroom door.
Mortensen - the sole person who came face-to-face with the killer that night and made it out alive - described seeing a masked man, dressed in all black and with bushy eyebrows.
Terrified, she and roommate Bethany Funke - whose bedroom was on the first floor - frantically called and text each other and their four friends. But the victims were already dead.
Mortensen ultimately ran down to Funke's room where the two survivors stayed until daylight.
Just before midday - still unable to contact the four victims - they called friends round to the home and the bloodbath was discovered.
The newly-unsealed documents reveal harrowing new details about the injuries Kohberger inflicted on his victims.
One officer on the scene described seeing Kernodle's body on her bedroom covered in blood, with defensive wounds to her hands, including a deep gash between her finger and thumb.
'It was obvious an intense struggle had occurred,' the officer wrote.
'There was blood smeared on various items in the room and all over the floor.'
She had suffered more than 50 stab wounds.
Chapin was partially covered with a blanket in her bed, with his jugular severed, the police files said.
On the floor above, officers found the bodies of Mogen and Goncalves.
As well as more than 20 stab wounds, Goncalves' face was so badly damaged she was 'unrecognizable.' Mogen had wounds to her forearm, hands and a gash from her right eye to her nose.
Both were covered in blood, which had covered the pink blanket they were sharing.
Kohberger left behind a Ka-Bar leather knife sheath next to Mogen's body.
DNA on the clasp was traced back to the killer using Investigative Genetic Genealogy.
Surveillance footage on multiple homes and businesses close to King Road had also captured his white Hyundai Elantra driving to and from the crime scene at the time of the murders.
Kohberger was arrested on December 30, 2022, at his parents' home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania.
After more than two years of fighting the charges, Kohberger finally confessed to the murders in a change of plea hearing earlier this month.
He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in an emotional hearing on Wednesday, where the families and friends of the victims were finally able to confront the man who slaughtered their loved ones while they slept.
Dressed in orange prison garb with his wrists and ankles shackled, the 30-year-old stared blankly at the families showing not even a flicker of emotion or remorse.
When it was his chance to speak, he maintained his silence.
'I respectfully decline,' he said boldly when asked by Judge Hippler if he would like to take the opportunity to address the court.
Those were the only three words he spoke, keeping the victims' families in the dark about the murders.
Kohberger has now been transferred to the custody of the Idaho Department of Correction, which will determine which prison will become home for the rest of his life.
Due to the severity of his crime - and the high-profile nature of the case - Kohberger is expected to be sent to the state's only maximum security facility, Idaho Maximum Security Institution.
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The Guardian
4 minutes ago
- The Guardian
‘I shouldn't have to fight for answers': David Amess's daughter on the MP's murder and her fury at his friends and colleagues
The last time Katie Amess saw her dad, the Conservative MP Sir David Amess, he was dropping her at Heathrow for her flight home to Los Angeles. Usually, she would cry when they said goodbye, but this time neither were sad – they were both excited. In six weeks, Katie would be back for her wedding. 'It was going to be in the House of Commons and my dad could not wait to walk me down the aisle,' she says. 'He'd been practising, taking my arm, walking me around. We joked about it – we were calling it the 'royal wedding'. At the airport, we hugged goodbye and he kissed me on both cheeks. I skipped off thinking the next time I saw him would be the best day of my life.' Instead, just four weeks later, her father was murdered at his surgery, stabbed 21 times by an Islamic State sympathiser. He was buried in the suit he was going to wear to the wedding. The music planned for walking Katie down the aisle – Pachelbel's Canon – was instead played as his coffin was carried into the church. The murder of David Amess in October 2021, while serving his constituency in a church hall in Leigh-on-Sea, sent shock waves across the country – and the details that have since emerged should have deepened the outrage and furthered the questions. Amess's killer, Ali Harbi Ali, was a once bright, motivated teenager planning to study medicine who had self-radicalised during Syria's civil war. The teachers at his Croydon school had noticed – one described it as a light going out and that his 'eyes were dead'. Ali's attendance fell, his grades plummeted and attempts to talk to him only raised more concerns, leading the school to contact Prevent, the government-led counter-terrorism strategy designed to identify and deradicalise extremists. One home visit was made, followed by one brief meeting between Ali and an 'intervention provider' in a McDonald's. Conversation was limited to two subjects: whether western music and student loans were unlawful in Islam. Ali was deemed a 'pleasant and informed young man'. (He later said: 'I just knew to nod my head and say yes and they would leave me alone afterwards and they did.') There was no follow-up, no further consultations or contact with his referring teachers. There was no monitoring. Despite the atrocity Ali went on to commit, Katie believes there has been little scrutiny of any of the above, no accountability or consequences for the anonymous officials involved and no requirement to give a public account of their actions and lessons learned. For almost four years, Katie, on behalf of the Amess family, has pushed for an inquiry. Partly as a result of this pressure, the Home Office commissioned Lord Anderson, the interim Prevent commissioner, to produce a rapid review of the case in order to identify whether questions remain unanswered. It was published last week and concluded: 'Though the information available on [Ali's] case is not complete and likely never will be,' the 'unhappy story' of his engagement with Prevent had been 'squeezed almost dry'. Katie doesn't agree. 'I'm not going to give up,' she says. 'All we want is for someone to say: 'We're sorry. This is what happened, these are the mistakes made and this is what we're doing to make sure it never happens again.' I shouldn't have to fight for answers.' Born in Basildon to an electrician father and a dressmaker mother, David Amess was a working-class, Catholic Conservative and had been an Essex MP for 38 years when he was murdered. He was approaching his 70th birthday – on that last airport trip with Katie, she had broached the subject of retirement. 'He didn't want to retire any time soon,' she says. 'He felt he had so much left to do.' Having an MP father was all Katie had ever known, but Amess was not an absent figure, away at Westminster. He was committed to his constituency with no ambitions for higher office. 'When I was young, I used to ask: 'Do you think you could be prime minister?' He'd say: 'Absolutely not!'' For Katie, the second of five children, all born within seven years, he was present and fun and always loomed large in her life. 'My dad was absolutely hilarious and completely inappropriate,' she says. 'He'd do the craziest things and sometimes they were a bit dangerous.' He would booby trap the house at Halloween. He would take all five children to water parks even though he couldn't swim and would have been unable to rescue any of them. At toll booths, on family road trips, all five children were instructed to blow raspberries while he paid the operator. 'He was obsessed with animals, so we had dogs, cats, chickens, bunny rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, a goat called Tinkerbell,' says Katie. 'He wanted a small pony at one point, but Mum vetoed that. He had fish and birds in his office even though no animals were allowed, but he didn't listen to rules. At Halloween, he'd go to Westminster in full goblin outfit. At Christmas, he'd put a tree on his balcony at Westminster, which was definitely not allowed, and his whole office was lit up with flashing lights.' From the age of four, Katie accompanied him to constituency events. 'My elder brother was out playing football and my mum had my three younger sisters to look after, so I was all dressed up and dragged to garden parties and village fetes.' Later, when she moved to London for drama school – she is now an actor – she stayed in her dad's London flat. 'I'm so glad I spent all that time with him so I could just be around him and soak up what he was about,' she says. 'I never knew I wouldn't be with him for another 30 years.' Amess was very well known in his Southend West and Leigh constituency. 'He spent so much time there,' says Katie. 'Everybody knew his name and face. 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Two home secretaries – Priti Patel and Suella Braverman – assured the family that they were working on it, but their successor James Cleverly refused to meet them. Instead, there has been only a Prevent learning review, completed in February 2022. This gives a glimpse of Prevent's failures in the case – the strange decision‑making (why focus on student loans and western music only?), the lack of record-keeping, the absence of communication, returned emails or follow-up. 'I was absolutely gobsmacked when I read it,' says Katie. 'I could run Prevent better with my friends. If these are the people entrusted to save us from terrorism, we've got a huge problem.' Equally striking is the sparsity of the review. No one involved is identified or even interviewed. It's a review of secondhand accounts and the records kept (and not kept). 'The main conclusion it seems to draw is that so much has changed with Prevent, it's all been fixed, so we don't need to look any harder,' says Katie. 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Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Daily Mail
29 minutes ago
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I was deeply shocked by my tenant's bizarre act after she moved out - yet she's calling ME dramatic
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The Guardian
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