A roommate in the house where four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in November told authorities she saw a tall, masked man in black inside their home at the time of the early morning attacks, according to newly released court documents Thursday.
Police said they zeroed in on suspect Bryan Kohberger through a combination of DNA evidence left on a large knife sheath found at the scene of the attacks, trash collected from his parents’ Pennsylvania home, cell phone records and license-plate readers that tracked his car on a cross-country drive after students Ethan Chapin, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Xana Kernodle, 20, were killed.
Although they released information detailing why they believe Kohberger killed the four, authorities did not reveal any possible motive. But they noted Kohberger’s phone was registered as being near the home on “at least twelve occasions” before Nov. 13, mostly in the late evening and early morning hours.
One of the roommates, identified only as “D.M.,” told law enforcement she was awoken at 4 a.m. the night of the killings by what she thought sounded like Goncalves playing with her dog in one of the upstairs bedrooms, located on the third floor, the documents say.
The roommate then heard Goncalves say something like “there’s someone here,” according to the roommate’s statement to law enforcement in the affidavit.
The roommate opened her bedroom door and saw nothing. She opened it again when she thought she heard crying from Kernodle’s room and heard a man say something like “it’s ok, I’m going to help you,” according to the affidavit.
The roommate said she opened her door a third time and saw “a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose” walking toward her, according to the affidavit. The roommate said she stood in “frozen shock” as the man walked past and out a sliding glass door, and she locked herself in her room, the documents say.
The roommate’s account, phone records and videos led investigators to believe the killings happened between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.
Authorities said they discovered video footage in the neighborhood that captured Kohberger‘s vehicle in the area of the killings between 3:29 a.m. and 4:20 a.m.
Cell phone location records were also consistent with the path of Kohberger’s vehicle, according to the affidavit. But the phone appeared to turn off for about two hours, “consistent with Kohberger attempting to conceal his location during the quadruple homicide,” the affidavit said.
Kohberger is scheduled to make his first appearance in a courtroom Thursday morning in Moscow, Idaho, where the killings occurred.
The hearing comes a day after Kohberger was flown back to Idaho by the Pennsylvania State Police to a small airport near the Idaho state border and handed over to local authorities that evening.
Local media outlets, including NBC affiliate KHQ-TV, showed footage of Kohberger in a red jumpsuit being escorted by authorities on the ground.
Authorities announced Friday they arrested Kohberger, 28, in his parents’ home in northeastern Pennsylvania, about 2,500 miles from where the November stabbings happened in Moscow, Idaho — an attack that left the small college town on edge for more than a month. The suspect was a doctoral student in the criminal justice and criminology department at Washington State University, about 10 miles from Moscow.
Kohberger’s return to Idaho came after he agreed to be extradited during an initial appearance in a Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania courtroom on Tuesday.
Not much is known about why authorities suspect Kohberger in the Nov. 13 murders at an off-campus rental home, other than that they analyzed DNA evidence at the crime scene and were able to match it to him, law enforcement officials told the Associated Press and other media.
Contributing: Associated Press