Court Summaries: September 18 – 29, 2023 (I am losing my mind)

Five search warrants were released last week, and one of them contains an error that seems to indicate the existence of an additional Amazon search warrant.

Hearings

On September 21, the hearing set for September 22 was rescheduled for October 26 due to someone’s illness. This substantial gap in time makes it seem as though someone is severely ill, but it is more likely that someone was merely somewhat ill, but the necessary persons for the hearing could not fit time in their calendars until October 26.

Jeff Nye, one of the prosecutors on the case, must be present for the hearing. Perhaps they are working around his schedule.

Search Warrants

More documents dated September 8 were released on September 27. The subjects on these documents are redacted, but it is likely that the warrants requested Bryan Kohberger’s information or the information of accounts under someone else’s name but that Kohberger had access to.

09/08/2023 Order to Seal (Apple)

1. Company/entity: Apple, Inc.

2. Subjects: Unknown

3. Date warrant served: August 1, 2023 by the lead investigator, Cpl Brett Payne. Unsure if this is significant.

4. Search range: Unlimited

5. Date returns received: August 9, 2023

09/08/2023 Order to Seal (Paypal/Venmo)

1. Company/entity: PayPal/Venmo

2. Subjects: Unknown

3. Date warrant served: July 25, 2023

4. Search range: June 22, 2022 – December 31, 2022

5. Date returns received: August 1, 2023

09/08/2023 Order to Seal (Spotify)

1. Company/entity: Spotify USA, Inc.

2. Subjects: Unknown

3. Date warrant served: July 25, 2023

4. Search range: June 1, 2022 – Present

5. Date returns received: July 26, 2023. No returns received because “the information could not be located.” (Did the subject have an account with no information? Did the search warrant include incorrect account information?

09/08/2023 Order to Seal (Youtube)

1. Company/entity: YouTube Studio, C/O Google

2. Subjects: Unknown

3. Date warrant served: July 25, 2023

4. Search range: June 1, 2022 – December 29, 2022

5. Date returns received: August 8, 2023

The Amazon Search Warrant

This warrant gets its own section because it is more complicated due to an apparent error.

09/08/2023 Order to Seal (Amazon)

1. Company/entity: Amazon

2. Subjects: Unknown

3. Date warrant served: May 10, 2023

4. Search range: March 20, 2022 – March 30, 2022 and November 1, 2022 – December 6, 2022

5. Date returns received: June 27, 2023 after two extensions

Recall that the search warrant PDFs uploaded to the case website typically begin with the most recent document, which is the Order to Seal and Redact signed by the magistrate judge, and the subsequent documents follow both a reverse-chronological and then chronological order. Below is a list of documents in the PDF arranged in the order in which they appear in the PDF, and the numbers assigned to each document correspond with the chronological order of the documents:

• (13) Order to Seal and Redact

• (12) Order Temporarily Sealing Search Warrant and Related Documents

• (11) Order (Documents that orders items seized to be delivered to law enforcement)

• (10) Order Temporarily Sealing Search Warrant and Related Documents

• (9) Motion to Temporarily Seal Search Warrant and Related Documents Pending Hearing

• (8) Return of Search Warrant

• (7) Affidavit of Lawrence Mowery

• (6) Receipt and Inventory of Warrant

• (1) Search Warrant

• (5) Order for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

• (4) Motion for Second Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

• (2) Motion for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

• (3) Order for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

But there is a document whose signature is incongruent with the timeline of the warrant. All the documents in the PDF before the most recent Order to Seal and Redact were signed between May and July, except for one: the search warrant itself, which was signed by the magistrate judge on March 26. See the signatures below, which are organized in the order in which they appear in the PDF.

Signature dated September 8 on the Order to Seal and Redact:

Signature dated July 6 on the Order Temporarily Sealing Search Warrant and Related Documents:

Signature dated July 5 on the Motion to Temporarily Seal Search Warrant and Related Documents Pending Hearing:

Signature dated July 6 on the Order:

Signature dated July 5 on the Affidavit of Lawrence Mowery:

Signature dated July 5 on Receipt and Inventory of Warrant:

Signature dated March 26 on the Search Warrant:

Signature dated July 12 on the Order for Extension to Return Amended Warrant:

Signature dated July 12 on the Motion for Second Extension to Return Amended Warrant:

Signature dated May 22 on the Motion for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant:

Signature dated May 24 on the Order for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant:

The March 26 signature does not appear to be incorrectly dated because it is both dated and timestamped. If the document includes the precise time that it was signed, then it’s reasonable to assume that the signature was dated and timestamped after the magistrate judge signed it rather than before.

Here are the documents rearranged in chronological order along with relevant dates indicated in the documents:

1. March 26, 4:58pm: Search Warrant was issued by the magistrate judge.

2. April 10: Date by which warrant must be executed and Amazon must disclose the requested property and information according to the text of the warrant. The warrant “shall be executed within 14 days of issuance,” and, “Amazon.com shall disclose the described property and information within 14 days of its issuance.”

3. May 8: Date that the search warrant was issued according to the Motion for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant. The motion references the search warrant “issued on May 8, 2023.” This is inconsistent with the March 26 signature.

4. May 10: Date that the search warrant was served by Detective Lawrence Mowery according to the Motion for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant. According to the motion, “The warrant was served by Detective Lawrence Mowery on May 10, 2023, by email.”

5. May 22: Motion for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

6. May 24, 6:15am: Order for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

7. June 12: Motion for Second Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

8. June 12: Order for Extension to Return Amended Search Warrant

9. June 27: MPD received the requested data according to the Affidavit of Lawrence Mowery.

10. July 5: Receipt and Inventory of Warrant

11. July 5: Affidavit of Lawrence Mowery

12. July 5: Return of Search Warrant

13. July 5: Motion to Temporarily Seal Search Warrant and Related Documents Pending Hearing

14. July 6, 5:07pm: Order Temporarily Sealing Search Warrant and Related Documents

15. July 6, 5:07pm: Order (Documents that orders items seized to be delivered to law enforcement)

16. July 6, 5:07pm: Order Temporarily Sealing Search Warrant and Related Documents

17. August 8: Order to Seal and Redact

What does this mean? Well, the most likely explanation is that there were two separate search warrants issued to Amazon, one of which was issued on March 26, and the second of which was issued on May 8. This would mean that some papers got shuffled around between the two warrants.

If this is the case, then it is likely that page 3 of the search warrant is the only errant page within the entire PDF, rather than all three pages of the search warrant. The first page of the search warrant requests account information between the dates of March 20, 2022 – March 30, 2022 and November 1, 2022 – December 6, 2022. This is a strangely specific set of date ranges. Keep in mind that, historically in this case, the first search warrants served to companies have requested information from around the time of the homicides, and the subsequent warrants served to those companies requested information for dates further away in time from the homicides.

Now I will remind you of a media report that I will tie into this theory in a moment: Remember that Dateline reported in May 2023 that Kohberger purchased a knife and sheath from Amazon in April 2022.

So here’s what I think happened: A search warrant was issued to Amazon on March 26, 2023 and served shortly thereafter. The warrant requested Amazon account information at least from the month April 2022, but the date range was likely broader. The search warrant ran its natural course and investigators discovered that Kohberger purchased a knife and sheath in April.

Then, a second warrant was issued to Amazon on May 8, 2023 and served on May 10. The warrant requested information from ten days preceding the month of April 2022—if they found that he purchased a knife and sheath in April, then that would give investigators probable cause to seize account information from March—and then they requested information from around the time of the homicides.

It is unclear to me why investigators would wait until May 2023 to request Kohberger’s account information from around the time of the homicides, which makes me think that it took time for investigators to find this Amazon account. Perhaps it was an account that Kohberger had access to but that was not registered under his own name.

If there are two search warrants requesting the same account information but for separate date ranges, then the documents would be nearly identical. The text would likely cut off at the same point at the end of each page and begin at the same point on the next page. This is why the first, second, and third pages of the warrant seem to belong together. See the screenshot below:

The highlighted line, along with the judge’s signature and date at the bottom of the warrant, are the only passages of text that would be different between the search warrants. There is enough space at the end of the last line of the paragraph to accommodate more text without starting a new line. It is possible that the papers between the two warrants were somehow shuffled around, and someone thought that page 3 of the first warrant belonged with pages 1 and 2 of the first warrant.

Regardless, the search warrant in the PDF does not correspond with the other documents. I have already looked at the three search warrants that are fully sealed, and none of them have signature dates that would correspond with the March 26 warrant. If there is another Amazon search warrant, then it was either not uploaded to the case website by mistake, or it has yet to be fully sealed by the court.