HOWARD BLUM’s new idea on Idaho homicide suspect Bryan Kohberger

I am standing at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, staring at the vacant lot where the murder house once stood.

The drab, gray three-story home was demolished in December on orders from the University of Idaho on the belief that its destruction would exorcise the demons still swirling in this tiny college town after November 13, 2022. 

It hasn’t. 

Nineteen months after four college students – Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin – were butchered to death with a hunting knife, there still is no convincing official explanation of what really happened.

Six weeks after the slaughter, Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old graduate criminology student at Washington State University, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

I began reporting on this case in the days immediately after the killings. I have spent weeks in Idaho and even crossed America to the small Pennsylvania town where Kohberger was born and raised.

Despite a judicial gag order prohibiting the two King Road house survivors, victims’ family members and key law enforcement authorities from speaking, I have been able to interview many individuals with direct knowledge of the murders.

Now, standing here on King Road, I finally believe I know what happened… and why.

It was 3:30am on the cold, starlit November morning. The quiet was all enveloping.

Suddenly, a white car appeared. It was in no hurry.

Police reports describe how it crept along the street past 1122 King Road, before driving up an incline into a dead end and carefully executing a three-point turn. 

The driver’s face wasn’t visible in the footage but his apparent calm belied reality.

I believe he was battling with himself… with his demons.

Thirty minutes later, surveillance video showed the white car driving back toward 1122, as if dragged by an invisible force.

Was this the killer stalking the house where six university students lived?

No, I suspect he was trying to find the will to do what he knew must be done to silence the howling banshees in his head.

Just before 4:00am – the time of the murders, approximated by police – it’s my theory that the car once again drove past 1122, before stopping at the dead end, engine still idling.

Bryan Kohberger, I believe, then made his way down the dirt incline, mindful of the thin coating of frost on the ground.

In his gloved hand, I imagine him gripping a leather sheath that holds a Ka-Bar knife with its seven-inch steel blade.

The students in 1122 rarely locked the sliding glass door to their kitchen.

November 13, 2022, was reportedly no exception.

The panel would have effortlessly glided open. Kohberger could have easily, almost silently stepped inside.

Once in the kitchen, it is my understanding that he proceeded up a narrow staircase to the third floor where the first killings occurred.

And it is this fact that suggests to me that these murders weren’t aimless. That there was intent.

If Kohberger were driven only by a blind, animalistic urge to kill, he would have first burst into either of the adjacent second-floor bedrooms – where survivor Dylan Mortensen and victims Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin slept.

But he didn’t. Kohberger had a plan. And I believe it was to target Maddie Mogen and her alone.

Kohberger most likely first crossed paths with Mogen at the Mad Greek restaurant on Main Street in Moscow.

The restaurant was the only one in town to serve the sort of vegan dishes that Kohberger’s relatives told me he preferred. It was also where Mogen worked as a waitress.

Did they talk? Did he ask her out? The prosecution and the defense have agreed that there is no evidence of any interaction – either in person or on social media.

But I believe that wouldn’t have been necessary for Kohberger to become infatuated with 21-year-old Mogen’s pretty face, long blonde hair and sparkling personality.

Obsessions came easily to him. He was, after all, a recovering heroin addict.

After getting clean after a stint in rehab in 2013, he turned his body into a temple with a strict schedule of physical exercise and vegan eating.

He also exhibited compulsion when it came to his studies. Once he made up his mind to pursue forensic psychology, he was determined to get his doctorate and prove to teachers and classmates alike that he was the smartest person in the room.

Smart enough, perhaps, to get away with murder.

After this initial encounter at the Mad Greek, I suspect that Kohberger continued to follow Mogen and, at some point, obsession turned into murderous intent.

Then, whenever 1122 King Road hosted a party – as they often did – he may have been watching from the shadows.

Back on the third floor on November 13, the killer opened Mogen’s bedroom door and he found two girls asleep in the bed, according to a source familiar with the case that prosecutors presented to a grand jury.

Kohberger would have had no way of knowing that Kaylee Goncalves – who had a separate room on the third floor – would be sleeping in Mogen’s room. The girls were especially close and Goncalves had just returned home after an extended trip away. 

I suspect that Kohberger first slashed swiftly, savagely, at Mogen, before turning his blade on Goncalves. 

The wounds are long and deep. It is quick and vicious work.

Despite her grave injuries, Goncalves managed to lift her body up and out of bed, as if trying to escape, before wedging herself into the far corner of the small room.

There are signs that she fought back. But it was all over quickly.

Kohberger would, I believe, have stopped the killing here. But more unfortunate encounters led to more unplanned victims.

The bloody chaos in Mogen’s room likely awakened Xana Kernodle on the floor below.

Dylan Mortensen – who also slept on the second floor – told police he heard her cry out: ‘There’s someone here!’ 

Ethan Chapin, Kernodle’s boyfriend, likely then left their room to investigate when he encountered Kohberger making his way back to the kitchen to escape.

Chapin was 6’4′, powerful, an athlete. Yet the killer did not appear to hesitate.

At six feet and 185 pounds, Kohberger would have been a comparable match for Chapin.

A medical examiner revealed to me that a single arcing blow sliced through Chapin’s neck, catching the jugular. He fell in the second-floor stairwell doorway.

Kohberger now likely realised he also had to deal with Kernodle, who may have watched her boyfriend’s slaying.

‘It’s okay, I’m going to help you,’ Mortensen also reportedly heard the killer say.

Kernodle was found dead inside her room.

Mortensen and Bethany Funke – the only other two students in the house – stayed in their rooms and didn’t attempt to confront the killer.

And that, I think, is why they survived.

Bethany Funke slept on the first floor and there is no evidence that she even woke up that night.

But Dylan Mortensen told investigators that she woke up around 4am and peeked outside her second-floor bedroom three times.

The last time she opened the door she spied a ‘figure clad in black clothing and a mask’ walking toward the kitchen door.

Mortensen – traumatized and too afraid to do anything for hours – said she then went back to sleep and stayed in her room until 11am the next day before calling a friend who arrived to find the bloody scene and finally called police.

The only reasonable explanation to me for why Mortensen is alive today is one that she and Kohberger were in parallel states of shock.

Both were both locked so tight into their own private worlds – a young girl’s terror, a killer’s mania – that they couldn’t think clearly.

Kohberger was arrested on December 30, 2023, after police linked him to DNA found at the murder scene.

His trial has been continually postponed, and a firm date for the proceedings remains to be set.

On August 29, there will be a hearing to argue the defense’s request to move the trial from the small college town to elsewhere in the state. Kohberger’s lawyers argue that an impartial jury cannot be found in a small town rocked by such a gruesome crime.

If that request is granted, the trial may not take place for another year.

This is adapted from bestselling author Howard Blum’s new book, ‘When the Night Comes Falling: A Requiem for the Idaho Student Murders,’ which will be published by HarperCollins on June 25.