New campus footage shows suspect car on morning of Idaho student murders

For the first time, a new batch of surveillance videos that tracked a white sedan police said Bryan Kohberger drove around Washington State University’s campus immediately before and after the Moscow college student murders in November 2022 has been publicly released.

The footage from multiple camera angles at four intersections in Pullman, Washington, was disclosed by WSU in response to a public records request from the Idaho Statesman. It shows what investigators said is the 2015 Hyundai Elantra that Kohberger used to travel back and forth over the Washington-Idaho state line to an off-campus home in Moscow on the night he admitted he fatally stabbed four University of Idaho students.

The series of video clips from locations on the WSU campus each within a mile of Kohberger’s student apartment were previously detailed by prosecutors in court records. They planned to show some of the footage at his capital murder trial, but none of it was released beforehand. At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a Ph.D. student in WSU’s criminal justice and criminology program.

The four victims were U of I undergraduates Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21, who were childhood best friends, and Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20, who were in a relationship. The three women lived at the King Road home with two female roommates who went unharmed in the early morning attack, and Chapin slept over for the night.

Kohberger, 31, pleaded guilty in July to the murders in a plea deal that allowed him to avoid the death penalty and the need for a trial. Three weeks later, he was sentenced to four life terms in prison with no chance of parole, and also waived all of his rights to appeal.

Connecting Kohberger, then 27, to the students’ deaths was a single source of male DNA — later matched directly to him — found on a leather sheath for a Ka-Bar brand fixed-blade knife left at the crime scene. Search warrants for Kohberger’s Amazon purchase history also revealed he previously bought a Ka-Bar knife and leather sheath, and browsed the online retailer after the murders to replace the items, prosecutors argued.

Security footage from homes and businesses in Moscow, obtained by the Statesman in earlier records requests, also showed a white sedan that detectives believed was a Hyundai Elantra traveling around the King Road neighborhood in the hour before the stabbings. The murders occurred on Nov. 13, 2022, between 4:07 a.m. and 4:20 a.m., according to police.

In the newly released footage, a white sedan enters the frame and leaves the WSU campus not far from Kohberger’s apartment in Pullman at 2:44 a.m. A car close to the description of the one police labeled “Suspect Vehicle 1” then heads toward Washington 270, the state highway that connects Pullman and Moscow, at about 2:53 a.m., according to a probable cause affidavit.

Kohberger’s cellphone pinged the network in the area where he lived at 2:42 a.m. before it showed movement south through Pullman at 2:47 a.m., the affidavit read. Then it was shut off and did not report to the cellular network again until 4:48 a.m., several miles south of Moscow, police said.

In the previously released security videos, the white sedan first arrives to the neighborhood where the murders took place at 3:30 a.m. and circles the area several times. It has no front license plate, which matched requirements in Pennsylvania where Kohberger is from and his car was registered at the time. Five days after the killings, he registered his white Hyundai Elantra in Washington, police said.

At 4:20 a.m., the white sedan leaves the King Road neighborhood for the last time at a “high rate of speed,” police said. A vehicle similar in appearance is next seen on released security camera footage at 5:26 a.m. in the 1300 block of Johnson Road in Pullman, and then near the Sunset Mart gas station on Bishop Boulevard.

The new footage shows the white vehicle back near the WSU campus at about 5:27 a.m. It heads north on Stadium Way, past Grimes Way, and then past Wilson Road. Finally, at 5:29 a.m., it turns right from the intersection with Cougar Way less than a mile from Kohberger’s student apartment.

At 5:30 a.m., Kohberger’s cellphone pinged the network near the area where he lived in Pullman. His “phone’s movements are consistent with the movements of the white Elantra that is observed traveling north on Stadium Drive,” the affidavit read.

Kohberger is incarcerated at Idaho’s maximum security prison south of Boise serving his consecutive life sentences.