I am not sure why we don’t have this topic here already; because it has been in the news since before Thanksgiving, but I searched and didn’t find it. To catch up on the story….. it involves 4 university of Idaho students who were murdered by stabbing last November. There were other students also renting rooms in the same house who somehow did not hear the noise or any kind of struggle, and they were not hurt at all. It was not until almost 12 hours later that the crime was reported, and then there seemed to be no suspects for quite a while. The police were keeping any information quiet, so it was not released what the other students living in the house told the police; but it is hard to imagine that four people could have been stabbed to death, and the other tenants not realized something was terribly wrong. Eventually, it came out that the police were looking for a white Elantra, and then the news reported that the police have arrested a suspect who had gone to Pennsylvania , where he was from. The suspect was a student at the University of Washington, around 10 miles away from the University of Idaho at Moscow. Apparently, his father had flown out to Washington in December and together they drove the Elantra back to their home, which is where Bryan Kohburger was arrested by the FBI. Kohburger had studied criminology at the university in PA, but for some reason was attending college in Washington to finish up his masters degree. This seems like he would have been the kind of person you would expect to see becoming a career person in some sort of law enforcement, and not someone who would end up killing four college students. This seems like it will be an interesting topic to follow and discuss as the case progresses.
As a minor correction, he had earned his master's degree in Pennsylvania and was in Washington as a doctrinal student. Some reports said that he was a doctrinal candidate but he wasn't. He was in his first semester in the doctorate program. Oddly, according to one story that I saw, there were several (from 50-100) Google searches prior to the murders on the address and on the people who were killed, but not on those who weren't, but no searches on other random addresses on the same block. The searches came from Washington, but the story didn't speculate whether it was the killer who made the searches.
As a minor correction, I believe you meant "doctoral" candidate. I haven't paid much attention to the case, but it wouldn't surprise me if the perpetrator hadn't been creeping on one of those pretty girls, she rejected him so he killed her, and the others were collateral damage. (Strictly supposition on my part.)
There is just such a lot going on with this story. I feel sorry for his mom and dad, who very likely had no clue that he was capable of something like this, and thought they had a son who was well educated and headed for a high paying career with some kind of law enforcement. Now, they are having to look at that their son could be a horrible killer. I know that would be devastating to me, and I am sure that it would for most any parents to have to deal with.
I wonder if the police also had a search warrant in addition to an arrest warrant, as he was arrested in someone else's home? Being a criminology student, you can bet that will be brought up by him.
It looks like he was arrested at his parents home, and reports said the glass in the door was broken, which sounds like they had to make a forced entry, although they are also saying that the parents are fully cooperating with the police. There are pictures of the Washington police searching his apartment at Pullman and carrying out his computer and other things. Now that he is arrested, they are definitely getting warrants and searching everything they think might have evidence. It is puzzling me why he chose to go to WSU to study after getting his masters in PA ?
I had the same question and thought perhaps (1) he had a reputation in PA that would have made further study difficult, (2) WSU was the only school that would accept him as a doctoral candidate, (3) someone he was following led him to Washington, (4) there was a particular course of study he wanted to follow that only WSU would allow. etc. It is an interesting question and if someone gets a clue, please let us know.
A lot of advanced-degree students attend different schools. My ex got his undergrad at Kansas State, master's in ChE at the University of Houston and his doctorate from Georgia Tech.
Lots of stories around here that don't make the news. The entire thing was too close to home for me. I think much of what was released to the news was meant to be misleading as they had a suspect in mind early on, but since he studied criminology, didn't want him to know. The crime scene was a lot more secure than what the news said. That was another shout-out that the police had nothing and the investigation was dead-ended. According to a friend's daughter that is a criminology specialist with the state, what they are trying to piece together is where the murder weapon is and where it was purchased. That is the final nail in the coffin in a case like this. They have the DNA which is 90%, but to shut the door on this sicko, they want a solid case which means finding the weapon and establishing a motive. You can bet this guy had thought all this out and it may be a game for him to win in court and get away with murder. OJ got away with what should have been a slam dunk case. Why someone so knowledgeable left DNA and so many clues make top investigators wonder what he might pull off with a great attorney. You can bet the sickos that fund criminals will make sure he has a top lawyer. It is all so sick and I hope he gets the death penalty which Idaho still has. Without the murder weapon, prosecutors probably won't seek the death penalty.
I'm gonna blame autocorrect. Probably, there was a typo and it chose the wrong word to replace it with. I think they made the arrest at 3:00 a.m. and they like to make dramatic entrances, so they probably came in under a no-knock warrant.
I am always suspicious when there is too much evidence when it involves someone who is savvy about forensic evidence, especially DNA. Since law enforcement always jumps on DNA to the exclusion of other evidence, the best way to frame some is to leave their DNA at a crime scene since "DNA doesn't lie"....
I suspect there's a whole lot of information we don't know about. According to news reports, the main thing they have is DNA but I doubt that's it. Given that there were several college students living there, it's probably fair to say that they had parties, and there could be reasonable doubt about whether he may have simply attended one or more of these parties. Most of those who might be able to swear he wasn't there are dead. I'm guessing they have more than that, however.
What I read was that his DNA was not on file, and when they ran the DNA, it showed a relative , which was what led them to him. Now, they can get his actual DNA and compare it to the DNA at the crime scene/. Rumors are that they are also comparing it to other similar murders which happened in Washington and Oregon that they have unknown DNA for. So, this might be one of those times when someone in his family used an ancestry service and that led them to the suspect.
I wouldn't doubt that whoever was responsible for these murders had killed someone before. I'm not an expert, but I think there's usually an escalation or, at least, a provoking incident involved.
My point was the DNA evidence probably can't be relied on, as a criminology student, especially an advanced one, would know how to keep his DNA from the scene, while his fellow students would know how to plant it. This was the plot of a novel that I have read, where a convicted felon whose DNA was on file was killed by an unknown killer and the felon had been previously killed and his DNA collected and used to "seed" several crime scenes.