My Theory of the Case

I'm getting this over with.

Some theories are more reasonable and credible than others. For this reason, I am presenting my theory of the case that I have developed after poring over the probable cause affidavit, sourced stories in the media, and my own understanding of Bryan Kohberger’s personality through peer statements. The more specific a theory becomes, the more likely it is to be wrong, and my theory does get narrow in parts. Regardless, I have arrived at my conclusions after what I hope is careful and thoughtful analysis.

Typically, I am careful to only Kohberger’s name when absolutely necessary to prove my point. Otherwise, I refer to the person responsible for these homicides as the assailant, the Suspect Vehicle 1 driver, or the owner of the 8458 phone. But for the purposes of this post, I will unabashedly admit that I believe Kohberger to be guilty of these crimes, and for this reason I will use his name throughout.

I have carefully indicated the difference between fact and conjecture by prefacing my statements with I think or I believe. I will cite sources where appropriate and assume that reasonable people can navigate the line between fact and conjecture.

What I Believe Happened

My theory about this case is as follows:

I believe that on November 13, 2022, at around 2:42am, Bryan Kohberger left his apartment in Pullman, Washington, to kill Madison Mogen. He chose this night in particular because, in his mind, it was his final opportunity. He drove a circuitous path from Pullman to Moscow to obfuscate his route and avoid detection.¹ At around 4:04am, Kohberger drove his car into the King Road neighborhood after initially passing the residence three times.² I believe that he saw a DoorDash driver delivering a meal to the front doorstep of the 1122 King Road residence, so he drove behind the Queen Road Apartments at 4:05am³ to wait for the driver to leave, and at around 4:08am, he parked his car in the parking lot behind 1122 King Road before entering the home. (This parking lot, it is worth mentioning, has a view into Mogen’s bedroom when the shades are not drawn. I will discuss this more later.)

Upon entering Mogen’s bedroom, Kohberger saw that she was not alone: Mogen’s best friend, Kaylee Goncalves, was staying the evening in Mogen’s bedroom with her dog, Murphy. Kohberger proceeded to kill Mogen, Goncalves woke up and fought back, and Kohberger killed Goncalves before deliberately placing the leather Ka-Bar knife sheath under Mogen’s body. Kohberger then led the dog, without touching it, to Goncalves’s former bedroom that was presently unoccupied. He locked both Mogen’s bedroom door and the spare bedroom door behind him. (The bedroom doors can be locked while they are still open. When the locked door is closed, the lock remains activated.)

At some point around 4:12am, Xana Kernodle—who was still awake after receiving a DoorDash order—became aware that an intruder was in the home. She either simply heard the noise on the third floor, went into the kitchen and saw the sliding glass door open, or she walked quietly to the third floor and saw Kohberger. Regardless, she then said “there’s someone here”⁴ before retreating into her bedroom. Ethan Chapin, Kernodle’s boyfriend and guest for the evening, began to leave the room. In the doorway Kohberger killed Chapin, whose 6’4” body made a loud thud when it hit the ground, the audio of which was caught by a nearby surveillance camera. Kohberger then began to attack Kernodle, who out of all the victims was the most aware of her circumstances and fought back. That is when he told her, “it’s okay, I’m going to help you,” in an attempt to get her to remain still.⁵ He finally killed her.

According to a source for NewsNation, Chapin was killed in the doorway; however, the source does not say that he was found in the doorway.⁶ I believe that Kohberger pushed or dragged Chapin’s body through the threshold of the door so that it was inside the room. Since the bedroom door swings inward, he had to move the body a certain distance for the door to have full range of motion. After moving Chapin’s body, Kohberger then locked the door and closed it behind him.

Upon walking from the bedroom to the back door, he saw a woman standing in the bedroom doorway adjacent to the kitchen. At this point, he had two options: (1) Either kill the woman in the doorway—who likely has called the police by now—and risk being intercepted by the police; or (2) leave the scene without killing her and accept that she can give investigators a vague description. He opted for the latter option and left.

After fleeing the scene at 4:21am, Kohberger fled the neighborhood “at a high rate of speed” and left Moscow on Highway 95.⁷ At 4:48am, Kohberger turned his phone back on near Blaine, ID. According to Google Maps, the route from 1122 King Road to Blaine, ID should only take 12 minutes, but according to the 8458 phone’s cellular pings outlined in the affidavit, the route took 27 minutes. Assuming that the Google Maps estimation is correct, then Kohberger took 15 minutes longer on this route than necessary.

There are a few possibilities for this delay. (1) Kohberger was driving slowly to avoid traffic stops. For this to be true, he would have been driving over 20 miles per hour below the speed limit; (2) he got lost, which is why he turned on his phone; or (3) he stopped along his route for 15 minutes. I believe that he stopped along the route to temporarily stash evidence before he returned to the area later for a more permanent solution. He returned home from his route at approximately 5:30am.⁸

The question then remains why Kohberger turned on his phone. It is possible that he monitored the police scanners online to listen for activity in the King Road neighborhood. This is likely why he returned to the scene at 9:00am: He had been listening to the police scanner for hours and heard nothing. He brought his phone with him back to the King Road area in case there was activity over the scanner while he was en route; then, if the 911 call was made on his way there, he could simply turn around and return home. (The online feed for the Moscow Police Department dispatch is now offline.)

Later that morning, the surviving residents tried to awake one of the residents on the second floor. According to Moscow police, “On November 13th, at 11:58 a.m., officers responded to the residence after a 911 call reported an unconscious individual.”⁹

I believe that the surviving residents discovered that the bedroom door was locked, saw that the victims’ cars were in the parking lot out front, and knew that the victims were not answering their phones. One of the surviving residents called a friend of Chapin and asked him to come over to the house.¹⁰

Chapin’s friend arrived, and I believe that a sequence of events like the following happened: Upon discovering that the residents in the second-floor bedroom were unresponsive, he asked for one of the residents’ phones and called 911. Over the course of the 911 call and while the phone was passed between persons, Chapin’s friend was able to unlock the door, and he struggled to fully push it open because Chapin’s body was blocking the door. At this point, one of the surviving roommates ran out of the house and hyperventilated. The other fainted. Responding officers arrived to the scene shortly thereafter.

Moscow Police was keeping the 911 call close to the vest because, under Idaho Code §§ 9-335, investigators are permittted to not disclose records that “interfere with enforcement proceedings” or “deprive a person of a right to a fair trial or an impartial adjudication.”¹¹ The fact that the doors were locked is at least one fact that investigators would have wanted to keep hidden from the public in the interest of preserving the integrity of the investigation, thus the 911 call was sealed. Moreover, public safety was possibly at risk for six weeks, so investigators kept undisclosed the identities of the persons on the call. After Kohberger’s arrest, a gag order was imposed and investigators were no longer permitted to discuss the case with the media.

Later that afternoon at around 5:36pm, Kohberger returned to the area south of Moscow near Johnson, ID, before his phone ceased reporting to the network for three hours. I believe that this is when he returned to his temporary stash of evidence to bury or otherwise dispose of it. Investigators found a shovel in his car during the execution of a search warrant on December 30.¹²

Mogen Was the Target

I will now explain why I believe that Kohberger targeted Mogen. To be clear, I make no assumptions about the emotional content of Kohberger’s motives; I do not explain why he targeted Mogen but rather how I came to believe that he did.

As Steve Goncalves, the father of victim Kaylee Goncalves, said early in the investigation, the assailant did not need to ascend to the third floor if his target were elsewhere.¹³ If his target were on a lower floor, then he would have killed the that person and left. It is reasonable to believe, then, that the target was on the third floor. This leaves two possibilities: Mogen or Goncalves.

Some time before the murders, Goncalves had moved out of the 1122 King Road residence and back in with her parents in Coeur D’Alene¹⁴ where she worked a remote internship with Extreme Networks.¹⁵ It is not publicly known exactly when Goncalves moved out, but she was present at 1122 King Road on August 16 to greet the police after a noise complaint,¹⁶ and she was not present or mentioned during the two noise complaints on the evening of September 1. Regardless, she was likely out of the house by the beginning of November, and she returned on the weekend of November 11 to show Mogen her new Range Rover.

Kohberger moved to the Pullman, Washington area at the end of June, 2022. The affidavit calls attention to a traffic stop on August 21, when Kohberger was pulled over in Moscow. If Kohberger began stalking the house on or before August 21 and after moving to Pullman, and then continued stalking the house until the murders, then he may have deduced that Goncalves had moved out. More importantly, there were consequential reasons why Kohberger chose November 13 to execute his plan, and Goncalves, unfortunately, happened to be there. I will explain this momentarily.

But Mogen certainly still lived there. As I mentioned previously, someone in the parking lot behind the residence would have had a direct line of sight into Mogen’s bedroom; moreover, she likely would not have noticed a car parked in the parking lot at night. He could see her, but she could not see him.

I am not committed to a theory about how Kohberger first discovered Mogen. I will say, however, that the property itself has advantages for an assailant like this. It is possible that Kohberger drove around the area knowing that he wanted to kill someone in Moscow rather than Pullman. He wanted to target a student because they are historically less diligent with their safety. Perhaps he drove up King Road one evening and noticed the house with the back room that can be seen from the parking lot.

Investigators seemed to vascillate between saying that the assailant’s target was the property or a resident of the home. Following an interview that prosecutor Bill Thompson gave KTVB, Moscow police released a statement saying:

The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office stated the suspect(s) specifically looked at this residence, and one or more of the occupants were undoubtedly targeted. We have spoken with the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office and identified this was a miscommunication. Detectives do not currently know if the residence or any occupants were specifically targeted but continue to investigate.

Kohberger targeting the property itself would explain why the Moscow police seemingly hedged when asked whether the target was the property itself or a resident:¹⁷ While Kohberger initially became attracted to the property, he ultimately homed in on a specific target within the house. Investigators likely pieced this together over time.

November 13 Was His Final Opportunity

According to the affidavit, Kohberger’s Pennsylvania plate was set to expire on November 30.¹⁸ Committing these murders with a Pennsylvania plate is advantageous for him because the more states that are included in the investigation, the more complicated it becomes. Additionally, keeping his Pennsylvania registration that doesn't require a front-facing plate can make him less identifiable on camera.

Thanksgiving Break began on Saturday, November 18, at universities in the United States. The last day of the break was Sunday, November 27. If he were to follow through with his plan on a weekend, then the weekend of Friday, November 11 was the final weekend before his plate expired. Committing the murders on a weekend is useful because (1) the residents would be inebriated, and (2) Kohberger would have Friday evening and Saturday to prepare, and Sunday to clean up.

The list of possibilities for the attack is as follows:

• Pick a time when the victim will be inebriated and less able to fight back. Possibilities: Basically any weekend.

• Pick a weekend when the victim will be at the residence. This would exclude Thanksgiving Break. Possibilities: Any weekend from August 21 – November 18, or November 28 – December 9. All other weekends are eliminated.

• Pick a weekend when he still has Pennsylvania plates. Possibilities: Any weekend before November 30. All other weekends are eliminated.

• Pick a weekend late enough that he can leave for Winter Break as soon as possible. Possibilities: The last possible weekend, which is the weekend of November 11. All other weekends are eliminated.

• Pick a day on the weekend when he has enough time prior to the murder(s) to prepare and enough time to clean up. Possibilities: Sunday, November 13. All other days are eliminated.

• Pick a time on November 13 when most partygoers have gone home and before people start leaving for their early work shift or to go jogging. Possibilities: 3am – 4am. All other times are eliminated.

The highest chance that he had to execute his plan and get away with it was on Sunday, November 13, between 3am and 4am.

The Knife Sheath

I will admit that much of my theory about the knife sheath hinges upon my interpretation of a quote from Keith Morrison on Dateline. If I interpreted this statement incorrectly, then this part of my theory almost entirely collapses.

According to Dateline, Kohberger purchased the knife and leather sheath in April 2022. Keith Morrison states, "Police have found that Bryan Kohberger went online and visited amazon-dot-com to buy a couple of items: A knife ... and a knife sheath." The structure of this sentence and the mention of a couple of items suggests that the knife and sheath were purchased separately—for example, he did not say "a knife with a sheath"—although the host Keith Morrison never uses the word separately himself.

If this is true, then why would Kohberger purchase the knife and sheath separately when they are more frequently purchased together? I believe that he purchased the knife and sheath separately because I believe that the murder weapon itself is not a Ka-Bar knife. He left the Ka-Bar sheath behind deliberately to mislead the investigators. And it worked to some extent: According to the manager at a local store, within a few days after November 13 investigators were searching for Ka-Bar knife purchases.¹⁹ (Edit on September 18: The knife could also be another model of Ka-Bar knife. Regardless, I am theorizing that the knife and sheath do not correspond.)

This is the most controversial element of my broader theory. It frustrates people in multiple camps: On one side, the people who believe in Kohberger’s guilt are hesitant to give him the credit of forethought. They say that he’s not as smart as he thinks he is—something which I don’t dispute, given that he was caught—and him planning these homicides in great detail would involve genius, something which I challenge. On the other side, the people who do not believe in Kohberger’s guilt believe that he never committed the homicides at all.

But to suggest that Kohberger was diligent in his planning of these homicides does not make him remarkably intelligent or clever. It simply means that he took the time to plan everything out, for whatever reason that someone would want to meticulously plan a homicide. He was likely planning to kill someone for months, and his plans increasingly crystallized as time went on, first with the purchase of the murder weapon and next with the choosing of a target. If true, this indicates something heinous about his character.

And Finally, A Note

This may or may not be important, but investigators found a folded sheet of paper in the dirt outside the home and placed it into an evidence envelope. The paper has a large ‘M’ written on the outside along with other unidentifiable letters. Make of that what you will.

Photo credit: James Kaivom/NY Post

Conclusion

A question still remains: Why did he do this? I cannot give an explanation, and I believe that Kohberger cannot explain it, either. For whatever reason, he was willing to take on a certain amount of risk to kill someone. The smart thing, and the moral thing, is to not kill anyone at all; unfortunately, the human mind works in mysterious ways, and people sometimes do the unfathomable.

I have now laid out my theory of this case. I am more than willing to be wrong; I am not striving for a perfect record, but I want to present my theory in part to improve my own reasoning abilities in the long run. We will find out what happened at trial.

Update at 1:05pm: I added the bullet-point list under section November 13 Was His Final Opportunity.

1. Payne, Brett. “Statement of Brett Payne.” State of Idaho Judicial Branch. December 29, 2022. https://coi.isc.idaho.gov/docs/case/CR29-22-2805/122922%20Affidavit%20-%20Exhibit%20A%20-%20Statement%20of%20Brett-Payne.pdf, 13.

2. Payne, 6.

3. “Linda Lane, Suspect Vehicle 1, 04:05:23–04:06:13.” theDoorsWereLocked. Uploaded July 14, 2023.

4. Payne, 4.

5. Ibid.

6. “Sources: Ethan killed in doorway of Xana's room | Banfield.” NewsNation. February 2, 2023.

7. Payne, 6.

8. Payne, 14.

9. “11-18-22 Moscow Homicide Update.” Moscow Police Department. November 18, 2022. https://www.ci.moscow.id.us/DocumentCenter/View/24854/11-18-22-Moscow-Homicide-Update.

10. “Sources: Idaho victims Ethan and Xana found dead by best friend | Banfield.” NewsNation. February 14, 2023.

11. “2011 Idaho Code Title 9 Evidence Chapter 3 3 Public Writings 9-335 Exemptions from Disclosure — Confidentiality.” https://law.justia.com/codes/idaho/2011/title9/chapter3/9-335/

12. “Dec. 29, 2022 - Search warrant (Hyundai Elantra), inventory, exhibits.” The Unified Judicial System of Pennsylvania. December 29, 2022. https://www.pacourts.us/Storage/media/pdfs/20230302/150347-dec.29,2022-searchwarrant(b.kohberger),inventory,exhibits.pdf

13. “Kaylee Goncalves' parents demand answers 3 weeks after Idaho murders.” Fox News. December 4, 2022. Video, 5:58.

14. Payne, 10.

15. Radzevich, Jake. LinkedIn. November 2022. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cherylpearl_kaylee-goncalves-family-support-organized-activity-6999016954472636416-6e6V.

16. “Cops Visit Idaho Murders House 3 Months Before Stabbings for Noise Complaint.” Law&Crime. January 11, 2023.

17. Krutzig, Sally. “Was one of the University of Idaho victims targeted? Officials give confusing accounts.” December 1, 2022. Last modified January 6, 2023. https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article269424392.html.

18. Payne, 10.

19. Angela Palermo and Kevin Fixler. The Idaho Statesman."Police investigation includes search for combat-style knife in killing of U of I students." Last modified January 6, 2023. Accessed June 23, 2023. https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/local/crime/article268833397.html.