Records show that blood was found on confiscated items in the Moscow murder suspect Pullman’s apartment
Tests of 50 items found in student Kohberger’s apartment in Pullman came back with at least trace amounts of blood on bedding stained brown or reddish, according to an inventory the Idaho Statesman obtained through a public records request.
Both the mattress cover and the uncovered pillow were positive for blood in the ‘virtual chemical tests’. A dark red stain on the kitchen counter near the sink could not be tested but collectedRecords showed.
Kohberger, 28, a former graduate student at Washington State University, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in the November stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students. The victims were seniors Madison Maugin and Kylie Goncalves, both 21, juniors Zana Kernodel, 20, and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20.
Newly released WSU records do not indicate whose blood may have been found on the bedding. Among a list of other items requested by the police, the search warrant ordered the seizure of evidence of “blood, bodily fluids or human tissue or skin cells”, or any items they contained as part of the investigation. In the Moscow murders.
The other 48 items tested, including stains on towels, smears from bathroom sinks and shower drains, and a microwave and pizza cutter in Kohberger’s kitchen, all came back with no blood. The police did not confiscate all of the tested items.
Police took two pieces of the bedding, as well as the red stain that had been ripped off from the kitchen table, as part of more than a dozen items. Busted in the search, as the Statesman previously reported.
Campus police executed the search warrant at Kohberger’s residence and office on December 30 — the same day he was arrested in Penn State.
Upon discovery of a storage locker intended for Kohberger’s apartment, documents showed that police requested and received an altered search warrant for the wardrobe, which was located in the same building as the apartment complex’s laundry area, with a judge.
Police suspected Kohberger of using the storage locker between the November 13 murders and his trip to Pennsylvania in mid-December to visit his parents during winter break at Washington State University, they wrote.
Documents showed that Kohburger’s storage locker had cobwebs leading to its door, which was found ajar and dust on the floor. “The locker does not appear to have been used recently,” WSU Assistant Chief of Police Don Daniels wrote in a post-search account included in the records.
Like Kohberger’s office on campus, nothing has been confiscated or collected From storage, I wrote.
Kohberger has been banned from the WSU campus
WSU records also include a December 30 letter to Kohberger threatening him with criminal trespass if he ever again sets foot on the WSU campus, signed by WSU Chief of Police Gary Jenkins. Kohberger was presented with the document the next day while he was being held in jail in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, and it includes his signature.
While still enrolled in WSU Criminal Justice and Criminology Ph.D. program, Kohberger interviewed Jenkins, then-chief of the Pullman Police Department, for doctoral-level graduate research assistantship for public safety, as the statesman’s previous public records have shown.
In an email correspondence from April 2022, Kohberger thanked Jenkins for interviewing him for the position.
Jenkins replied the same day: “Brian, it’s great to meet you and talk to you too.”
It remains unclear if Kohberger, one of the four finalists from the Ph.D. Program According to the records, he got the role. Pullman police and a WSU spokesperson declined to answer questions or provide documents regarding whether Kohberger was given the research position.
Also, last week Kohberger’s lawyers formally requested in court all genetic and forensic laboratory information that investigators used to determine and justify their client’s arrest on suspicion of the Moscow murders.
The discovery motion, filed Wednesday by Kohburger’s public defender Ann Taylor in the Latah County 2nd Judicial District Court, seeks a chain of DNA evidence. Information about all involved laboratories, profile databases, laboratory technicians, and chain-of-custody details are included in the filing.
On Thursday, Taylor also requested all Pennsylvania police video and audio recordings from Kohberger’s arrest, notes and recordings from her client’s interrogation by Moscow police and training records for certain officers. It wrote that the defense had not received evidence – some of which might contain information excluding Kohberger’s guilt – in previous discovery requests.
