BOISE, Idaho — Surveillance camera video that investigators used to build their case in the University of Idaho student homicides is expected to be played at defendant Bryan Kohberger’s upcoming murder trial, with prosecutors planning to show jurors how footage and the resulting timeline point to him as the lone suspect.

Police canvased the Moscow neighborhood near the off-campus house on King Road where the four U of I undergraduates were found dead in November 2022, and obtained recorded video from homes and area businesses to help narrow the possible time of the crime. The victims were seniors Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan Chapin, both 20.

Kohberger, 30, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder, and prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if a jury finds him guilty at his capital murder trial this summer in Boise. At the time, he was a graduate student at Washington State University on the other side of the Idaho state line in Pullman, Washington.

The four students’ stabbing deaths were initially thought to have happened in a 25-minute window between 4-4:25 a.m., the probable cause affidavit read. But after further law enforcement review of surveillance cameras from more than 20 locations, prosecutors alleged the four victims were killed in a 13-minute span, between 4:07-4:20 a.m., according to recent court filings.

That canvas for video footage to help the investigation included local businesses in downtown Moscow, where Goncalves and Mogen, college roommates and best friends since childhood, were out together late on Nov. 12 into early Nov. 13. Surveillance video from 14 cameras at a local bar showed they left at about 1:37 a.m. and arrived at 1:43 a.m. to a food truck parked near Friendship Square. Footage showed the two women spent about 10 minutes there before they headed home to 1122 King Road, the court filings read.

Video retrieved from nearby Main Street businesses Café Artista and Moscow Bagel & Deli helped fill in the gap, prosecutors said. Other security camera footage that leaked in December 2022, about two weeks before Kohberger’s arrest, appeared to show Goncalves and Mogen walking with a male companion from the local bar, Corner Club, to the Grub Truck food truck.

Still, more surveillance video from a Farmers Insurance branch assisted police in understanding Goncalves and Mogen’s movements before they received a ride home from a private party at about 1:56 a.m., police said.

Matt Manderville, who operates one of the two Farmers Insurance offices in Moscow, told the Idaho Statesman police called him in the weeks after the student homicides to ask whether he had any security footage from his building, which sits just off the main road connecting Moscow and Pullman, but he did not. Kelly Kimberling Gilder, the city’s other Farmers agent, whose office is on Main Street where Goncalves and Mogen were walking early on Nov. 13, declined to answer questions and directed the Statesman to Moscow police for anything further.

Prosecutors said they no longer plan to rely on the Farmers Insurance surveillance video during trial.

Meanwhile, Kernodle and Chapin, who were dating, were at his fraternity, Sigma Chi, from about 9 p.m. on Nov. 12 to about 1:45 a.m. on Nov. 13, the affidavit said. They arrived back about that time to the King Road property, located about 400 feet away from the fraternity house as the crow flies, where Kernodle lived with Goncalves, Mogen and two other female roommates who went unharmed in the early morning attack.

Kernodle and Chapin actually returned to the King Road house after 2 a.m., according to recent court filings.

‘Suspect Vehicle 1’ circled King Road area at least five times

Investigators obtained hours of footage from at least five cameras around Pullman, including the WSU campus, to track a white sedan believed to be the same vehicle recorded near the King Road house the morning of the homicides, the affidavit said. An FBI vehicle identification expert determined the car to be a white Hyundai Elantra from 2011-2016, police said, and labeled it “Suspect Vehicle 1.”

Kohberger owned a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra. The FBI expert initially believed the vehicle to be a 2011-2013 model, but later revised it to extend to 2016, police said.

Kohberger’s defense pushed to bar the FBI expert from using the phrase “Suspect Vehicle 1” about the car seen in different surveillance videos while testifying at trial. His attorneys argued that doing so was “unfairly prejudicial” to their client because “labeling the cars from various bits of footage as the same vehicle is speculative,” but Judge Steven Hippler denied the request, ruling there was no legal basis for its exclusion.

The white sedan was first recorded in Pullman at 2:44 a.m. on Nov. 13 as it headed east on State Route 270 in the direction of Moscow, police said. It was recorded again at 3:02 a.m. by a surveillance camera at Floyd’s Cannabis Co. located just off State Route 270, prosecutors said.

At 3:26 a.m., cameras at three residences in the 700 block of Indian Hills Drive in Moscow picked up the same vehicle, prosecutors alleged. Two minutes later, at 3:28 a.m., surveillance footage at Sunset Mart gas station in Moscow recorded the car turn west about a half-mile away and headed in the direction of the King Road house.

Footage from a security camera on the neighboring house at 1112 King Road first recorded the vehicle in the area at 3:30 a.m., prosecutors said in court filings. Over the next 34 minutes, it circled the neighborhood at least five times before it appeared to park at 4:07 a.m., they said.

“The vehicle matching the description of Vehicle 1 exits the frame traveling west in the direction of the victims’ residence,” prosecutors wrote. “There is no subsequent vehicle activity captured for approximately 13 minutes after these headlights are seen.”

At 4:20 a.m., the white sedan leaves the King Road area at a “high rate of speed” and appeared to turn west onto Taylor Avenue to exit the area on the road behind the neighborhood, prosecutors said in court filings.

At 5:26 a.m., a vehicle matching the same description is next recorded on surveillance footage at E & S Services at 1300 Johnson Road in Pullman, prosecutors said. Footage from a security camera at Sunset Mart gas station in Pullman showed the car headed north on State Route 270. Cameras on the WSU campus recorded the vehicle making its way north near Beasley Coliseum, which was also about a mile from Kohberger’s student apartment.

Kohberger’s closely watched case is scheduled for trial to begin with jury selection in late July. It is expected to extend into November.

_____

©2025 Idaho Statesman. Visit at idahostatesman.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.