Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger’s alibi: He often drove alone at night and was doing so when the college students were killed, his lawyers say
AP Photo/Matt Rourke, Pool
- Lawyers for Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger say he was out driving the night of the killings.
- "Mr. Kohberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone," the lawyers wrote in a court filing.
- Kohberger has been accused of stabbing four University of Idaho students to death last year.
Idaho murders suspect Bryan Kohberger regularly went on drives alone and was doing just that the night the four college students were brutally slain inside an off-campus home last year, the man's attorneys said in a new court filing.
Kohberger's lawyers said in court papers filed on Wednesday objecting to prosecutors' previous motion to compel Kohberger to provide specifics around his alibi defense that he wasn't at the residence where the University of Idaho students were killed in the early morning of November 13.
Instead, Kohberger's attorneys said that he was out driving alone.
"Mr. Kohberger has long had a habit of going for drives alone. Often he would go for drives at night," his lawyers wrote in the court filing. "He did so late on November 12 and into November 13, 2022."
Kohberger, a former Ph.D. student in the criminal justice program at Washington State University, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in connection to the stabbing deaths in Moscow, Idaho.
Investigators believe the slayings of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, unfolded between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m., according to an affidavit.
"Mr. Kohberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time; at this time there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohberger was at each moment of the hours between late night November 12, 2022 and early morning November 13, 2022," Kohberger's attorneys said in the Wednesday filing.
His lawyers added, "He was out, driving during the late night and early morning hours of November 12-13, 2022."
The attorneys said in the court filing that "corroboration" of Kohberger "NOT" being at the home where the students were killed "may be brought out through cross-examination of the state's witnesses" and "expert witness presentation."
Authorities have linked Kohberger to the crime scene through DNA found on a leather knife sheath left in one of the victims' bedrooms.
Additionally, cell phone records obtained by police showed that Kohberger's phone was near the three-story home where the victims lived with roommates at least a dozen times between June 2022 and before the early morning killings, according to an affidavit.