Bryan Kohberger’s attorneys say he was driving alone the night of Idaho murders, but won’t say where
Bryan Kohberger acknowledges he was out driving alone the night four University of Idaho students were murdered — but he won’t say exactly where, or when, he was driving.
That’s according to an objection filed this week in Idaho’s 2nd District Court by Kohberger’s defense in response to prosecutors’ attempt to get the precise location of his alibi and the names of witnesses who could corroborate it.
Kohberger has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21; and Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20. All students of the University of Idaho, they were found murdered in their apartment in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13. For the next two months, police remained tight-lipped about a suspect and motive, until Kohberger was arrested on Dec. 30 in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.
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According to an affidavit, police believe the murders took place between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. A white Hyundai Elantra — the same car owned by Kohberger — was seen leaving the home in Moscow at about 4:20 a.m., the affidavit notes, citing statements from a surviving witness.
Now, in the objection filed by his attorneys, Kohberger claims he has “long had a habit of going for drives alone. Often he would go for drives at night,” stating that he did so around the time of the murders.
“Mr. Kohberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time; at this time there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohberger was at each moment of the hours between late night November 12, 2022 and early morning November 13, 2022. He was out, driving during the late night and early morning hours,” the court filing reads.
His attorneys claim that information could come out through cross-examination of witnesses called by the state. They note that case law requires specific locations to be disclosed in an alibi, but state “Mr. Kohberger has complied to the extent possible at this time.”
“At this time, Mr. Kohberger cannot be more specific about the possible witnesses and exactly what they will say. The defense has been hampered by the state’s own choices,” the objection reads, because it chose “a secret grand jury rather than the planned preliminary.”
Had the state chosen to conduct a preliminary hearing, Kobherger’s attorneys say, they could have developed “testimony through cross-examination and witness presentation.”
Kohberger had just completed his first semester at Washington State University, where he was pursuing a doctorate in the school’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, according to the university. He lived in Pullman, about a 15-minute drive from the University of Idaho.
Kohberger is pleading not guilty, and prosecutors are pursuing the death penalty. He is also charged with one count of felony burglary. The trial is scheduled to start in October.
“A previous version of this story misspelled Bryan Kohberger’s name as ‘Brian Kohberger.’”
