Idaho university student murder suspect Bryan Kohberger won’t fight extradition from Pennsylvania, lawyer says
The man suspected of fatally stabbing four Idaho students will not fight extradition from Pennsylvania to Idaho, his defense attorney said Saturday.
Bryan Kohberger, 28, was arrested Friday in Monroe County, Pa., and charged with fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13.
Idaho authorities said Friday that if Kohberger chose to fight extradition, “it could take awhile” to get him to Idaho. However, Monroe County’s top public defender, Jason LaBar, said that wouldn’t be the case.
LaBar described Kohberger as “eager to be exonerated” in Idaho.
“He should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise — not tried in the court of public opinion,” LaBar said in a statement.
Kohberger is charged with four counts of first-degree murder for the fatal stabbings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
All four were students at the University of Idaho. They were sleeping in an off-campus house when they were killed, according to investigators.
Kohberger is a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, a 10-minute drive west of the University of Idaho. The school confirmed that Kohberger’s apartment and office were searched after he was arrested Friday at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.
Police revealed Saturday that Kohberger had been on their radar for weeks, CNN reported. Cops said it took time to compile evidence for an arrest warrant.
While Kohberger drove across the country from Idaho to Pennsylvania, police followed his journey, according to CNN sources.
“Sometime right before Christmas we were zeroing in on him being in or going to Pennsylvania,” one person told the outlet.
LaBar told CNN that Kohberger’s father traveled to Idaho and then the two drove cross-country. He said they arrived in Monroe County, about 80 miles west of Manhattan, on Dec. 17.
Kohberger drove a white Hyundai Elantra on the trip, police sources told CNN. Cops in Idaho said they were looking for an Elantra on Dec. 8, but that apparently did not stop Kohberger from using the vehicle.
Once cops located Kohberger in Pennsylvania, they began surveilling him around the clock, CNN reported. An FBI team monitored his movements from Monday through Thursday, until he was arrested early Friday morning.
After his arrest, one of Kohberger’s undergraduate supervisors at DeSales University told the Philadelphia Inquirer that Kohberger was “a little awkward with his peers” and “liked to work alone.”
Kohberger completed his undergraduate studies at DeSales in 2020, then got his master’s degree in criminal justice in June 2022. Kohberger continued his university career as a graduate student at Washington State’s department of criminal justice and criminology.
Before attending DeSales, Kohberger spent multiple years at Monroe County Technical Institute but didn’t graduate, the Allentown Morning Call reported.
“He was always a strange person,” classmate Lawrence Rosenberg told the paper.
With News Wire Services
