Two months after four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in their beds, a picture of how the crime likely unfolded is slowly taking shape.
WARNING: Readers might find some details in this story distressing.
Early in the morning on November 13, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kaylee Goncalves were murdered in the house three of them shared with two other students.
The crime shook their tight-knit college town, Moscow, Idaho, while theories about what happened swirled in the national media and online.
In late December, a six-week investigation culminated in a dramatic arrest.
Bryan Kohberger, who attended a nearby university, was taken into custody nearly 4,000 kilometres away at his parents' house in Pennsylvania.
The 28-year-old has since been extradited back to Idaho, where he waived his right to a speedy trial and is now being held without bail until his next hearing in June.
He could face the death penalty or life in prison if convicted of the quadruple homicide.
In the weeks leading up to his arrest, as reporters swarmed the small town and amateur sleuths breathlessly dissected clues on TikTok, police faced pressure to move faster.
But Idaho authorities have now revealed the trove of evidence they have been quietly gathering, which they say ties Kohberger to the murders.
It includes DNA, a white sedan, phone data and the eyewitness account of a surviving housemate.
What the survivor told police
November 12 had been a typical Saturday night for the residents of 1122 King Road, Moscow, according to various witnesses.
Long-time couple Kernodle and Chapin had attended a fraternity party, while best friends Goncalves and Mogen had visited a local bar, then stopped for a late-night snack at a food truck on the way home.
By 2am, all four were in their bedrooms. The two survivors were also home asleep.
The three-storey share house usually bustled with life — friends came and went, Goncalves had a dog and Chapin often stayed the night with his girlfriend.
But at around 4am on November 13, one housemate, referred to by police as "DM", was woken up by strange sounds from upstairs, according to a recently released affidavit.
At first, she told police, she thought it was Goncalves playing with her dog.
Then she heard words that sounded like: "There's someone here."
DM peered outside her bedroom door but didn't see anything.
The next noise that echoed through the house was chilling.
DM told police she heard crying coming from the direction of Kernodle's room, followed by a male voice saying, "It's OK, I'm going to help you".
She did not say whether the voice sounded like Kernodle's visiting boyfriend Chapin or a stranger.
At around 4:17am, a neighbour's security camera picked up a distorted sound like a whimper, followed by a "loud thud" and a barrage of dog barks, the affidavit said.
When DM opened her door again, she saw a "a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose" walking towards her.
She told police she stood in "frozen shock" as an intruder with "bushy eyebrows" passed her in the hallway and headed out the back sliding glass door.
Terrified, she locked herself in her bedroom.
According to the affidavit, police arrived at the scene 12 hours later and learned what had unfolded.
The weeks leading up to the murders
The grisly crimes captured the public's attention because they triggered many people's deepest-held fears, according to Xanthe Mallett, a forensic anthropologist and criminologist from the University of Newcastle.
"It's partly wrapped up in that they were a group of young people asleep at home. They should have been safe," Dr Mallett said.
"They have their lives ahead of them. We've got these pictures of them looking happy and healthy in the media.
"I think it really plays to that ideal victim who's struck down, and you've got the victim and the offender being pitched against each other as like the devil and the angel."
The five housemates were close friends and active members of their college community.
Kernodle, 20, was a marketing student and a sorority member. Her boyfriend Chapin, also 20, was a triplet who dreamed of a career in sports management.
Goncalves and Mogen, both 21, were childhood best friends.
"I wouldn't have wanted anyone else to be the main character in all my childhood stories," Goncalves wrote on Instagram in May last year.
"I love you more than life! My best friend forever and more," Mogen replied with a heart emoji.
The young women attended high school together and then moved to Moscow for college.
"They shared everything," Steve Goncalves said of his daughter and her best friend.
"In the end, they died together, in the same room, in the same bed."
The ABC is choosing not to name the survivors to protect their privacy.
In the months leading up to the murders, the housemates seemed unaware they may have been being watched.
Police have since seized phone data that places the prime suspect in the vicinity of the share house at least a dozen times before the night they were killed.
Dr Mallett said this type of stalking is often dismissed as a low-level offence, but in some cases it can escalate into violence.
"Somebody doesn't break into a home, kill four people in that home and leave without having a link to those victims," she said.
"It could well be that none of the victims knew the assailant, but there will [have been] some superficial contact. [The killer] clearly knew one or more of them."
Two vital clues are found
In the aftermath of the slayings, police found a litany of evidence.
A shoe print was discovered outside DM's bedroom on the path to the back door.
Video footage collected from the surrounding area, including from neighbours' security cameras, showed a white sedan circling 1122 King Road.
According to the affidavit, the sedan passed the victims' house three times after 3:29am, before returning a fourth time at around 4:04am, parking nearby, then speeding away at around 4:20am.
A complicating factor for police was that the car didn't have a front number plate. Some US states don't require one or it may have been removed or obscured.
And while the murder weapon — believed to be a US Marines combat knife — has not been recovered, police found its sheath on one victim's bed.
On the sheath, police identified another vital clue: DNA from an unknown male.
The tiny speck of genetic material without any matches in police databases and glimpses of a common car may not have seemed like much to go on.
But they led authorities to one man.
Frenzied speculation and a tarot card sleuth
As the murders became a national story, nearly 20,000 tips flooded the Moscow Police Department.
But as investigators methodically worked through the evidence over six weeks, frenzied speculation and anger filled the void online.
A self-styled sleuth on TikTok accused a University of Idaho professor of the massacre, basing the theory on a tarot card reading.
The professor, who was not in the state that night, is suing the tarot card reader for defamation.
With the killer on the loose, many University of Idaho students were too scared to return to campus after the Thanksgiving break.
And the families of the victims became increasingly frustrated with what they perceived to be a lack of progress in the investigation.
Goncalves's mother Kristi said she felt "left in the dark" by the authorities as weeks passed with no named suspect.
"Families want answers. [Police are] very conscious of the trauma that's associated with crimes of this nature. But they have to do their job," Dr Mallett said.
"What they can't do is release information to the family, and risk it getting more broadly disseminated. That will actually harm their investigation."
The media, looking for its next headline on the case, seized on the grieving families' angst.
Soon, a narrative set in that the local police were "too inexperienced" to handle such a complex investigation.
"A lot of this, the public doesn't get to see because it's a criminal investigation," Idaho State Police spokesman Aaron Snell said on November 22, nine days after the murders.
"But I guarantee you behind the scenes, there's so much work going on."
Dr Mallett says true crime podcasts and police procedurals have skewed many people's perceptions of how long complex criminal investigations take to resolve.
"People want answers, and they think that they can find them. If the police aren't providing the answers, then they're obviously not doing a good job," she said.
"But unless you're inside that investigation, I think it's very difficult for anyone to judge, and ultimately, it puts more pressure on the police."
The white sedan circling Moscow
Amid the cacophony of criticism, investigators were collecting and analysing hours of CCTV recordings from across Moscow.
From the video footage, they concluded the white sedan likely headed to the southern edge of town, then across state lines into Washington.
The road they believe the driver took leads to Pullman, another college town, roughly 16 minutes by car.
It's home to Washington State University, where Kohberger was a PhD student in criminology.
It's also where he lived in an off-campus apartment.
Footage of the car was given to a forensic examiner with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), who identified it as a 2011–2016 Hyundai Elantra.
The FBI expert also reviewed additional video footage from around Washington State University on the night of the murders, which showed a matching white sedan leaving the area at around 2:44am and heading towards Moscow shortly before 3am.
In late November, Moscow Police Department had told nearby law enforcement agencies to be on alert.
And more than two weeks after the murders occurred, a police officer at the university had a breakthrough.
He checked for white Elantras registered on the campus and found one — a 2015 vehicle owned by Kohberger.
Investigators then reviewed Kohberger's licence and found he matched DM's description: roughly six-foot tall with a slim build.
His licence photo showed he had bushy eyebrows.
When delving into his driving history, police found that he had been pulled over for failing to wear a seatbelt in Moscow just three months before the murders.
He was just a five-minute drive from King Road, passing through the area at 11:40pm on August 21.
Investigators obtained Kohberger's cellular data in the days and hours leading up to the crime.
Going back to June, his phone was in the vicinity of the house at least 12 other times.
"All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days," the affidavit said.
On November 13, at around 2:42am, his phone was near the King Road residence, the affidavit said.
Investigators reviewed data from cell phone towers covering the King Road house between 3am and 5am and found no trace of Kohberger's phone.
Rather than absolving him, police say that may indicate the phone was turned off or left in another location.
"This is done by subjects in an effort to avoid alerting law enforcement that a cellular device associated with them was in a particular area where a crime is committed," a police officer wrote in the affidavit.
"I also know that on numerous occasions, subjects will surveil an area where they intend to commit a crime prior to the date of the crime."
A controversial but powerful tool
A new DNA tool also appears to have played a vital role in this case.
Since the Golden State Killer was nabbed with the help of an ancestry DNA website in 2018, investigative genetic genealogy has been a controversial but effective police tool.
The affidavit filed in this case makes no mention of investigative genetic genealogy, but police sources have told US media outlets, including CNN and Slate, it was used to zero in on Kohberger.
That would mean DNA taken from the crime scene was entered into public databases to find potential matches for family members, perhaps as distant as third cousins.
Coupled with Kohberger's car and proximity to the crime scene, a partial match in the database may have been enough to prompt authorities to surreptitiously gather another sample.
On December 27, Pennsylvania agents took the rubbish from the Kohbergers family home and sent it to the Idaho State laboratory for testing.
The next day, the lab confirmed the DNA taken from the knife sheath and the genetic material on the rubbish were a near-definitive match for biological father and son.
Kohberger was arrested two days later.
What we know about the suspect
Kohberger, who has not yet entered a plea, was flown under the cover of darkness back to Moscow in handcuffs on January 5.
Dressed in an orange t-shirt and pants, he appeared in court before a judge, who asked if he understood he faces the death penalty if convicted.
"Yes," he responded.
The judge ordered he be held without bail on five charges — four counts of first-degree murder and one of felony burglary for allegedly entering a house with the intent to kill.
In a brief second court appearance, Kohberger gave the judge one-word answers and waived his right to a speedy trial.
The preliminary hearing was set for June 26 and is expected to take five days.
Authorities say the PhD candidate has a master's degree in criminal justice from DeSales University and undergraduate degrees in psychology and cloud-based forensics.
He once posted a survey in Reddit, according to the affidavit, which "asked for participants to provide information to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision making when committing a crime".
With prosecutors and observers now shifting their focus to the trial, Kohberger's fate lies with the judicial system.
For Dr Mallett, the public's interest in crime is a double-edged sword for investigators.
"Media strategy is incredibly important to investigators now. They know that they need to engage with the media," she said.
"But they need to do so in a way that assists their investigation. And that is not always a strategy that's easy for the public to understand as it plays out."
