In the weeks after four University of Idaho students were found slaughtered in a house near campus, a growing roster of investigators desperately searching for answers had yet to identify a suspect or even find the murder weapon. Here's more.
Police investigators on Nov. 15, 2022, at the rented house where four students were found dead near the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, Idaho.
The story of how dozens of officers from local, state and federal agencies took the quadruple murder investigation into extraordinary territory is only now becoming more apparent, through recently obtained records and interviews with people familiar with the investigation who discussed key details that emerged before the issuance of a gag order in the case.
“We cannot say that there is no threat to the community,” police Chief James Fry said at a news conference Nov. 16, three days after the killings. Just across the state border, at Washington State University, campus police officers began looking through their records for Elantras registered there. Among those they found was one registered to Kohberger, who had moved to the area earlier in 2022 to pursue a doctorate in criminology.
The hunt broadened as investigators vacuumed up more records and data. They had already sought cellphone data for all phones that pinged cell towers within a half-mile of the victims’ house from 3 to 5 a.m., according to search warrant filings. They collected victims’ bank records, email correspondence and social media account data.
A request to Amazon sought the order histories of account holders who had purchased such knives. A follow-up request to eBay focused on a series of specific users, seeking their purchase histories. Some had connections to the area — including one in Idaho and two in Washington state — while others were from far away, including an account in Japan. Because of redactions, it is unclear if Kohberger’s name came up in those records.
At that point, investigators decided to try genetic genealogy, a method that until now has been used primarily to solve cold cases, not active murder investigations. Among the growing number of genealogy websites that help people trace their ancestors and relatives via their own DNA, some allow users to select an option that permits law enforcement to compare crime scene DNA samples against the websites’ data.
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