Idaho student murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s new defense claim that unidentified male blood found on a handrail at the King Road crime scene and on a glove outside points to potential other suspects could be part of an elaborate plan to stage the crime scene, according to a veteran criminal profiler.
“When he was arrested, he quickly said, ‘Who else did you arrest?’” said John Kelly, who has been closely following the case. “Not the normal response for someone being arrested for [allegedly] brutally killing four kids with a knife.”
Kelly, the founder of the System to Apprehend Lethal Killers, or STALK Inc., speculated that the remark could have come from the suspect’s expectation that police had developed other substantive leads.
“Maybe this is the reason why he made that stupid response: he staged some other DNA, blood, to throw authorities off,” Kelly said. “Remember, from his studies, he would know about staging.”
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Kohberger was studying for a Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice at the time of the murders.
Kelly was referring to an early NewsNation report, quoting an unnamed law enforcement source, about Kohberger’s first question after a Pennsylvania SWAT team arrested him while he was wearing rubber gloves and sorting garbage in his parents’ kitchen in the Pocono Mountains on Dec. 30, 2022.
Wearing a “blank stare,” Kohberger reportedly “asked if anyone else was arrested.”
Authorities have since declined to discuss specifics, citing a gag order on the case issued days later.
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There are other reasons Kohberger may have had that reaction, however.
“I don’t know about that,” said Linda Kenney Baden, a defense attorney whose high-profile clients have included Casey Anthony and Aaron Hernandez. “I think he was thinking about his father being arrested.”
Prior to the SWAT raid, Kohberger and his dad were stopped twice by Indiana law enforcement on a cross-country drive home to Pennsylvania from his apartment in Pullman, Washington, about 10 miles from the crime scene.
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Bodycam video from one of the incidents shows the pair giving an officer a rambling response as to where they were coming from and headed, and Kohberger was in his family’s home at the time of the arrest.
Two unidentified male blood samples, one on a handrail and one on a glove outside, were recovered by investigators after the stabbing deaths of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncavles, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. Neither matched Kohberger, and they came from different subjects.
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With the sources of both in question, defense attorney Anne Taylor told Ada County Judge Steven Hippler at a hearing last month that it could mean Kohberger, 30, is not related to the crime at all.
“That was an interesting piece of information,” Boise-based defense attorney Edwina Elcox told Fox News Digital. “I think the defense tries to raise the issue and muddy the waters with it.”
But in the pretrial stage, the judge seemed unconvinced that the presence of two other DNA samples would be a reason to throw out probable cause for Kohberger’s arrest. Detectives made another key discovery. They found a Ka-Bar knife sheath under Mogen’s body, which prosecutors say had Kohberger’s DNA on it.
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While the judge seemed unconvinced by Taylor’s argument that the unknown blood samples could undermine probable cause to arrest her client, experts say it could create reasonable doubt at trial later this year.
Kohberger is scheduled for trial later this year. Before his defense successfully argued for a change of venue, Latah County Judge John Judge entered not guilty pleas on the suspect’s behalf at his arraignment in May 2023.
Kohberger could face the death penalty if convicted.
Even the knife sheath may have been planted, Kelly told Fox News Digital previously, arguing that the “USMC”-stamped Ka-Bar sheath could have been left behind to try and point investigators toward someone with military ties.
“This is staging 101,” he said. “They’re going to look at this, and they’re going to think it’s a military guy that did this – some guy with some kind of training who lives up the road.”
However, police recovered DNA on the snap that they later said matched a familial sample taken from the trash at Kohberger’s parents’ house 2,500 miles away in Pennsylvania.
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