Bryan Kohberger, the man suspected of killing four University of Idaho college students, was also investigated for an earlier home invasion, according to a new report.
Body camera footage shows police responding to a burglary near the University of Idaho a year before the four students were stabbed to death in 2022, ABC News reports. The woman who was home said a masked intruder, who was silent the whole time, entered her bedroom with a knife.
She fought him off and her roommate quickly called 911, but the suspect was never caught, according to ABC News.
“I heard my door open, and I looked over and someone was wearing a ski mask and had a knife, and so I like kicked…their stomach and scream super loud, and they like flew back into my closet and then ran out my door and up the stairs,” the woman told ABC News.
Less than two weeks after becoming a suspect in the murder of the students, Kohberger was named as a person of interest in the previous, eerily similar, home invasion, according to ABC News. “When you look at the Idaho murders, one of the things detectives and agents did almost immediately is, are there other cases in the area that might have some similarities,” Brad Garrett, an ABC News crime & terrorism analyst, told the outlet. “For example, fingerprints, DNA, hair samples, anything that you could either biologically or genetically or fingerprint wise, link this suspect to that particular burglary.”
The victim described the home invader as 5’3” to 5’5”, while Kohberger is 6 feet tall.
Kohberger is no longer a person of interest in the break-in, police told ABC News, though the suspect remains at large.
Kohberger, a former Washington State University criminology student, is accused of killing University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at their off-campus home in Moscow in November 2022.
He was arrested and charged with the murders around six weeks later. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
His trial is set to begin in August. An Ada County judge recently ruled he can face the death penalty if convicted of the murders, despite his attorneys arguing such a sentence would be unconstitutional.
