Suspected due to overwhelming circumstantial evidence and doomed by DNA evidence he left at the scene, Bryan Kohberger will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering four students at a house in Idaho.
The killer: Mr. Kohberger was a Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University who had trained in criminology and researched high-profile murders. He was identified as a suspect several weeks after the crime, when investigators used DNA on a knife sheath to build a genetic family tree that led to him. Read more › The victims: Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, had spent a typical Saturday night out before returning to the three-story house in Moscow, Idaho, that several of the students shared. Prosecutors have said Mr. Kohberger had no known relationship to the victims. Read more › The survivors: Text messages from the hours after the killing show that the surviving roommates discussed a masked person that one of them had briefly seen inside the home. But neither seemed aware that something horrific had happened to their friends. A 911 call was made more than seven hours later. Explanations wanted: Some family members have expressed outrage that prosecutors agreed to drop the death penalty in exchange for a guilty plea.
The case was also notable for the FBI's decision to break its own rules to get access to Kohberger's genetic profile through data held by consumer geneology companies—ultimately ruled legal, though not without controversy.
