The man awaiting trial on charges of murdering four University of Idaho students secured access to investigators working on his behalf to seal DNA data central to how police first found him as a suspect.
At the request of defendant Bryan Kohberger’s attorneys, the judge overseeing the highly watched murder trial expanded surveillance powers over the protected information as he continues his legal defense. The court’s ruling came after a closed-door hearing on the matter held last month.
Prosecutors initially fought the release of documents to the defense regarding the use of investigative genealogy (IGG), ultimately losing in court. The advanced police technique involves submitting DNA found at a crime scene to public genealogy websites to build a family tree and narrow down the list of possible suspects in violent crimes.
Judge John Judge of Idaho’s Second Judicial District in Latah County ruled last year that the defense had met the “low threshold” needed to show that at least some of the IGG documents are “material to the preparation” of their client’s case.
But the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office, which is leading Kohberger’s prosecution, appeared to have no formal objection to allowing defense investigators to inspect the DNA data. At the defense’s insistence, the judge granted the prosecutor’s request to close the hearing to the public.
Kohberger, 29, is accused of stabbing the four U of I students at an off-campus rental house in Moscow in mid-November 2022. The victims were seniors Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan. Chapin, both 20.
Kohberger, a graduate student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, was arrested in eastern Pennsylvania at the time of the quadruple murder about seven weeks later in late December 2022. He was home on the East Coast visiting his family over winter break. from school, and brought back west to answer the charges.
Kohberger faces four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty if he is convicted at an eventual trial, which still has no scheduled date.
Unlocking of IGG records that have not been addressed
Kohberger’s lawyers also asked that most of the IGG files, which prosecutors were ordered to obtain from the FBI after its investigators helped in the high-profile murder case, be declassified and made public. They agreed that the identities of Kohberger relatives included in the family tree process should be hidden from the public.
The judge did not grant the defense’s request to unseat additional IGG data in his ruling that expanded Kohberger’s public defense team’s access to the documents.
In a separate hearing open to the public last month, the two sides in the case argued over the release of other evidence the defense had requested through the legal process known as discovery. During that hearing, it was revealed that a federal grand jury was used to issue dozens of subpoenas for information in the case against Kohberger.
The parents of victim Kaylee Goncalves have consistently expressed their frustrations over the time it has taken to bring the case to trial – more than 17 months since Kohberger’s arrest. A twice-adjourned hearing is scheduled for Aug. 29, where arguments will be heard on whether the anticipated trial should be moved to another location in Idaho from where the crime occurred in the county.
“The court should take over the case and the attorneys involved,” the Goncalves family said in a statement obtained by the Idaho Statesman after last month’s two hearings. “As long as the court continues to entertain anything and everything at every hearing, the adjournment will never end. … The families of the victims want justice, but just as importantly, we want the case to move forward.”
A new hearing in the case, during which additional dates and deadlines are to be set, is scheduled for June 27.
