Prosecutors: Kohberger defense to argue in Idaho murder trial DNA evidence was planted

BOISE, Idaho — Attorneys for Bryan Kohberger, who is charged with murder in the deaths of four University of Idaho students, are set to acknowledge “there is good support” that their client’s DNA was discovered on a key piece of evidence police said they found at the crime scene, but are expected to argue at trial that it might have been planted.

Furthermore, Kohberger’s defense will attempt to establish that the DNA match to the only suspect in the case doesn’t itself confirm that he ever visited the Moscow house where the four students were found stabbed to death, prosecutors wrote in a public court filing this week.

The lack in sealed defense filings of any expert witness who will assert the state is wrong that Kohberger’s DNA was on a knife sheath located next to one of the four victims indicates that they accept the scientific finding, prosecutors said. Kohberger’s defense team also hasn’t provided any evidence to challenge the direct DNA match between a swab of his cheek and that from the knife sheath, the prosecution wrote.

“Instead of challenging the conclusion that the DNA on the knife sheath belonged to (the) defendant, the defense’s expert disclosures reveal that the defense plans to argue the DNA on the knife sheath does not prove (Kohberger) was ever at the crime scene and the knife sheath itself could have been planted by the real perpetrator,” read the filing signed by Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson and Special Assistant Attorney General Jeff Nye, also assigned to the case.

Kohberger, 30, is a former graduate student of criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, just on the other side of the Idaho state line from Moscow. After a seven-week investigation, he was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania and brought to Idaho to face four counts of first-degree murder and a count of felony burglary.

The victims were U of I students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington. The three women lived in the Moscow home with two other young women who went physically unharmed in the early morning attack; Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night.

Prosecutors seek to limit defense’s alternative suspects theory

Prosecutors also have moved in a so-called motion in limine to have Ada County Judge Steven Hipper restrict the defense’s ability to point to alternate perpetrators without meeting certain evidence requirements.

“Any attempt by the defendant to offer or argue an alternative perpetrator theory without evidence specifically connecting person(s) other than the defendant to the homicides would do nothing more than mislead and confuse the jury,” Thompson wrote in a filing last month.

Edwina Elcox, a Boise-based criminal defense attorney who has argued capital cases, told the Idaho Statesman that it would take considerable evidence from Kohberger’s defense team to explain away the knife sheath DNA to a jury.

“If it’s just, ‘It wasn’t him, his DNA is there, but he’s not the one who put it there,’ then that’s pretty flimsy,” she said in a phone interview. “Then how did it get there? How did his DNA get on a knife sheath where these kids are dead?

“But if they have real, tangible evidence to support an alternate perpetrator theory, other than just saying it’s someone else, then that could be significant. Or, it could be really insignificant and not believable. It just depends on the content of what that is.”

Investigators found two sources of unknown male blood DNA at the crime scene, which the defense has already questioned in court. A “blood spot” was discovered on a handrail inside between the first and second floors of the three-story Moscow home, while the other was found on a glove located outside of it, according to testimony from the lead police detective at a closed hearing in January.

Those DNA samples were not uploaded to try to identify them through the national DNA database, known as CODIS, because they were not eligible based on FBI criteria, Thompson said at an August 2023 court hearing. The knife sheath DNA was, however, but did not come back with a match. The FBI used an advanced DNA technique known as investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG, to initially land on Kohberger as the suspect.

In addition, prosecutors requested in yet another motion that Kohberger be required to testify to his alibi if he wishes to state at trial he was elsewhere at the time of the homicides. Through his attorneys, Kohberger previously said in legal briefs that he was out driving alone, as he often did late at night, but in and around an area 30 miles southwest of Moscow in southeastern Washington.

“From what we know right now, there’s some massive dots that need to be connected,” Elcox said of Kohberger’s alleged alibi. “They’re like boulder-sized holes if that’s the way that they’re going.”

The defense has to yet file responses to the prosecution’s most recent filings. Those are due by March 24.

Kohberger’s capital murder trial is set for this summer in Boise. He is next scheduled to appear in court for a hearing for oral arguments over the motions in limine on April 9.

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