Bryan Kohberger will appear before a judge in Idaho on Monday to face the charges that he brutally murdered four University of Idaho college students in their off-campus rental house last fall.
Kohberger, 28, was indicted by a grand jury last week, cancelling the need for a preliminary hearing that had been scheduled for next month, as CrimeOnline has reported. Instead, he will be arraigned on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary for the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, on November 13.
He is expected to enter a not guilty plea Monday morning in Latah County District Court.
Kohberger was a Ph.D. student in criminal justice at Washington State University, less than 10 miles across the state line from the University of Idaho, at the time of the murders. After a lengthy and dogged investigation, he was taken into custody in December at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania, where he’d traveled in a cross-country drive with his father to spend the holidays.
Kernodle and Chapin, her boyfriend, had returned to the house after attending a fraternity party on campus. Goncalves and Mogen had been out at a bar and stopped a food truck before heading home early in the morning of November 13. Two other roommates were home at the time but were unharmed — but one of them reported seeing a masked man with bushy eyebrows inside the home at about the time of the murders.
Investigators later began looking or a white Hyundai Elantra seen in the area on surveillance tape, and a car matching that description was traced to Kohberger. When he and his father drove from Washington to Pennsylvania in the Hyundai, they were stopped twice in Indiana, reported at the request of the FBI.
A knife sheath was found at the scene of the murders, and investigators said they connected Kohberger using DNA found on the sheath’s snap.
Monday’s arraignment is scheduled for 9 a.m. PT (noon ET). The court has barred live broadcast of the hearing, but it will be recorded and made available afterward along with still photographs.
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[Featured image: FILE – Bryan Kohberger, left, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022, looks toward his attorney, public defender Anne Taylor, right, during a hearing in Latah County District Cour, on January 5, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool, File)
