Bryan Kohberger had may have broken into the victims’ home to scope out the layout and where each of the students slept in the lead-up to the slayings.
The 30-year-old criminology PhD student had also likely stalked other potential victims around the college town of Moscow, Idaho, before he settled on the chosen target of his murderous rampage on November 12, 2022.
These chilling theories were revealed by Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson in a new interview with CBS ’48 Hours’ podcast, days after Kohberger was sentenced to a lifetime behind bars for the murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Thompson said Kohberger showed knowledge of the layout of the home at 1122 King Road and who slept in which room on the night of the murders – meaning it is possible it was not his first time inside.
‘The layout of the house is unique – it’s a little bit confusing,’ the prosecutor said.
‘Admittedly, if he was parked up behind the house on that bank, which we believe is where he parked, he would be able to see into the house at night and he would be able to see whose rooms were where.
‘Whether he was actually in the house at some point before November 13, we don’t know for sure. We can’t exclude that.
In the early hours of November 13, 2022, Kohberger broke into the three-story home in the heart of the college town and stabbed the four victims to death.
Mass killer Bryan Kohberger (seen at his sentencing on July 23) had possibly broken into the victims’ home at 1122 King Road before the murders
The home at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, on November 20, 2022 – one week on from the murders
He entered through the sliding door in the kitchen on the second floor and went straight up to Mogen’s room on the third floor. Finding 21-year-old best friends Mogen and Goncalves in Mogen’s bed, he stabbed both multiple times.
On his way back downstairs or on leaving the house, he encountered 20-year-old Kernodle who had just received a DoorDash order. He attacked and killed her, before fatally stabbing her boyfriend Chapin, 20, who was sleeping in her bed in her room on the second floor.
Kohberger then left through the same door he had entered, passing surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen who had opened her bedroom door after hearing concerning noises in the home.
In total, Kohberger was inside the home and murdered all four victims in less than 15 minutes.
While Thompson said police could not confirm or deny Kohberger had been inside the home prior to that night, there is evidence to prove he ‘was certainly stalking that neighborhood’ in the run-up to the murders.
The prosecutor revealed the slain victims might not have been the killer’s only targets.
‘Certainly there may have been other potential victims that he was looking at,’ Thompson said.
Who those potential victims were and what led Kohberger to ultimately pick his chosen targets, only he knows.
Best friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen (left) and young couple Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle (right) were murdered by Bryan Kohberger
After more than two years of investigating, no connection has ever been found between the killer and the victims.
In a press conference after Kohberger’s sentencing on July 23, police said 1122 King Road had been targeted but that it is unclear if Kohberger was specifically targeting one or more of the victims inside.
Cell phone data, previously revealed in court documents, shows Kohberger was surveilling the student area in the lead-up to the murders.
From July 2022 through to November 13, 2022, his phone placed him in the vicinity of the King Road home at least 23 times, mostly at night.
Newly-released Moscow Police records reveal the victims had seen a man lurking in the trees outside their home and noticed a string of bizarre incidents in the weeks before the murders.
Around one month earlier, Goncalves had told multiple people including surviving roommates Mortensen and Bethany Funke and her ex-boyfriend Jack DuCoeur she had seen a man watching her in the trees around the home when she took her pet dog Murphy outside.
Friends also recalled multiple occasions when, during parties at the home, Goncalves’ dog Murphy would run barking into the tree line and wouldn’t return when he was called. This was out of character for the dog, they said.
On November 4, 2022 – just nine days before the murders – the roommates had come home to find the door to their three-story house open.
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson has revealed his theories about the shocking murders
Funke said that they had grabbed golf clubs and gone room to room, thinking there was an intruder, police records show.
Goncalves had also mentioned someone following her around two or three weeks before her murder.
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 but the door was locked.
Thompson told ’48 Hours’ that Kohberger was surveilling or stalking the area to get a sense of the neighborhood and the likes of the students’ living patterns.
But investigators had not been able to verify if those strange occurrences of a man lurking in the trees were connected to Kohberger.
‘The cell phone experts were not able to correlate Mr. Kohberger’s phone being in the area at the time of those occurrences,’ Thompson said.
‘But they were able to show that he was in that area of some 20 plus times other times at night, between like 10 and early morning hours, 10 in the evening when there would be no legitimate reason for him to be over here to shop here being Moscow, being in Moscow to shop which was his routine practice.
‘So we certainly believe that those trips were – involved Mr. Kohberger looking and surveilling or stalking, whatever the case may be.’
Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen sobs while giving a victim impact statement at Kohberger’s sentencing in Ada County Courthouse on July 23
Kohberger has offered no answers to these lingering questions.
At his sentencing in Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on July 23, he refused to reveal any details about the murders or his motive.
Kohberger stared blankly at the families, friends and loved ones of his victims as they delivered heartbreaking victim impact statements inside the courtroom – with no flicker of remorse or emotion.
When it was his opportunity to speak, he said just three words: ‘I respectfully decline.’
Thompson told ’48 Hours’ he ‘saw nothing’ in Kohberger’s eyes when he was confronted by the families he had torn apart.
‘I saw nothing in Bryan Kohberger while the impact statements were going on. It’s as though his eyes were empty,’ he said.
‘He’s an enigma to me. The evil that he committed is incomprehensible.’
When asked if he had a message for Kohberger, Thompson said: ‘Goodbye and good riddance.’
Bryan Kohberger seen in a new mugshot after he was sentenced to life in prison for murder
Judge Steven Hippler sentenced Kohberger to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole on each of the four counts of first-degree murder, as well as 10 years for burglary.
Under the terms of a plea deal struck on July 2, Kohberger also waived all right to appeal.
Kohberger is now being held in solitary confinement inside the Idaho Maximum Security Institution where he will see out his dying days.
