Last week’s photo dump by the Moscow Police Department in the killings of four University of Idaho students nearly three years ago left many of us with more questions than answers.
I’ve maintained all along that I thought Bryan Kohberger was involved in the deaths of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. That said, I’ve also maintained that more than one person was involved. To this day I still feel that way.
Sure, we know the terror Ted Bundy did last century. We also know about Danny Rolling and countless other killers. It is possible for one person to commit such a heinous act or acts on their own. In this case, however, my gut has said multiple people were doing the killing inside the home at 1122 King Road in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
I certainly see where the Kohberger acted alone group gets their thinking from.
He offered a guilty plea to the four murders. He never said he had help carrying them out. He also to this day has never named any other people possibly involved in the murders.
It would be easy to agree with people thinking this and bury the case, moving on to another high-profile true crime story.
Not so fast.
While possible to carry out such a reprehensible act in under 15 minutes, a timeline the Moscow PD has pretty much stuck by from day one, would require several things. Among them:
- Using a gun and not a knife
- Having a very strong idea of the home’s unusual layout
- Navigating in relatively dark conditions on two separate floors
- Getting zero resistance from any of the four victims
- Avoiding leaving a massive blood trail out of the home
- Not having your vehicle CLEARLY identified as leaving the scene right after the murders happened
We know after all this time the following:
- The defendant did not use a gun. Using a gun would have certainly made the timeline much more likely
- There is zero evidence to note Kohberger had ever been in the home before. Looking up the home on Zillow and being in it are two entirely different things. Even if you peered through the windows on the parking lot area above the home, you’d not see clearly into most of the rooms.
- There was no evidence put forth by MPD that Kohberger used a helmet or flashlight. There is also no evidence to show all the lights were on in the home in the 4 ish a.m. – 4:15 ish a.m. time period.
- We know at least Kernodle fought back. It may well be that Goncalves did too. Doing so increase the time period the killer must spend in the home.
- While some of the pictures released by MPD do show notable blood in the home, there is no massive trail of it leaving from Kernodle’s room or that of Mogen’s that we have seen. So, did the perp stop and mop everything up on the way out of the home? That of course would add more time to the reported timeframe.
- We have never seen evidence from MPD that Kohberger’s Pennsylvania license plate was caught on film leaving the roads out of the neighborhood. You would think at some point along the trail one would have caught the rear plate (Pennsylvania where Kohberger’s car was registered in does not have front plates).
While I will never convince the guilters that Kohberger had help, they will never convince me he did not.
In the meantime, we continue to look over the photos released to date. While some are rather disturbing, I have a few questions:
- Where are the police body cams from that afternoon when MPD came to the home after the 911 call?
- Why haven’t we seen a photo of the sheath reportedly found on Mogen’s bed?
- For what police themselves described as a really bloody scene, why no trail of blood out of the home?
- How in the world did surviving roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke not see Kernodle on the floor of her bedroom? Dylan we know was awake enough to spot a masked intruder in the home sometime between 4 and 4:20ish a.m. One would think once safe to do so she would have physically checked on her roommates to make sure all were safe. And please spare me the line of she was a drunk kid. She was sober enough to note the masked intruder had bushy eyebrows and was tall while wearing black. She was also living away from home and paying rent, something kids do not typically do.
Safe to say that this case may be over legally, but the questions are not going anywhere anytime soon.
DavidAlanThomas 