BOISE, Idaho — Bryan C. Kohberger was taken into custody Friday on a “fugitive from justice warrant” in connection with the fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students seven weeks ago in a house near campus.
Who is Kohberger? Here’s what we know.
He attended Washington State University
Born in November 1994, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, now 28, was arrested at a home in Chestnuthill Township in Monroe County, Pennsylvania. A court record says he is from Albrightsville, a nearby hamlet in an adjoining county.
Kohberger is a Ph.D. student studying criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University, according to a page on the university’s website that was taken down later Friday.
The school’s campus is less than 9 miles west of the house on King Road where the students were stabbed to death on Nov. 13.
Police confirmed in a news conference Friday afternoon that Kohberger lived in Pullman and was a WSU graduate student.
Kohberger is listed in WSU’s fall course catalog as an assistant instructor for three undergraduate criminal justice courses led by Professor John Snyder, the department’s criminal justice club adviser and global director. The three courses finished on Dec. 9, according to the online course catalog.
Reached on his cellphone Friday, Snyder declined to comment, and directed an Idaho Statesman reporter to the university. WSU officials have not responded to multiple requests for information, including requests to confirm whether Kohberger was employed by the university and lived in university housing.
Emailed requests for information from the criminal justice department’s chair, its graduate program director and the graduate student association adviser, as well as Kohberger’s three fellow Ph.D. students listed as assistant instructors for the undergraduate courses, were not immediately answered.
No clear connection to victims
Law enforcement has not identified a connection between Kohberger and the victims, seniors Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; junior Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington.
Stacy Chapin, mother of Ethan, told the Statesman in a message that her family does not know of any connection between her son and the suspect.
A former U of I sorority member who used to live in the King Road neighborhood, and who agreed to speak on the condition of anonymity, said Kohberger was not known to several friends of the victims.
“Never seen him or heard of him before. No one I know knows him,” she said Friday in a Facebook message to the Statesman.
Goncalves was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, while Mogen and Kernodle were members of Pi Beta Phi..
He was from Pennsylvania
Albrightsville is a hamlet in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Kohberger was jailed just to the east in Monroe County, near the New Jersey state line and about 75 miles west of New York City.
He recently graduated from a Pennsylvania college
After enrolling in 2020, Kohberger graduated from DeSales University in Allentown, Pennsylvania, with a master of arts degree in criminal justice in May 2022, according to Carolyn Steigleman, associate vice president of marketing and communications.
“On Friday, December 30, DeSales University learned of the arrest of Bryan Kohberger in connection with the murder of four University of Idaho students,” Steigleman said in an email to the Statesman. “... As a Catholic, Salesian community, we are devastated by this senseless tragedy. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families during this difficult time.”
He had no criminal history
A review of court records in Washington, Idaho and Pennsylvania showed no criminal history for Kohberger aside from an August 2022 infraction for failing to wear a seat belt in Latah County, which includes Moscow.
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