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A group of Pennsylvania residents is due in court for a series of hearings on whether they should be compelled to travel to Idaho for Bryan Kohberer’s upcoming quadruple murder trial.
The 30-year-old former criminology Ph.D. student is a Pocono Mountains native who drove home from Washington State University between the slayings of four University of Idaho undergrads on Nov. 13, 2022, and his arrest on Dec. 30 of that year.
Seven Pennsylvanians have been asked to testify, according to court records. Of those, at least five have been requested to testify for the defense. Each will have a chance to argue before a Pennsylvania judge why they should not have to travel before they can be forced to testify.
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Many of them have ties to Kohberger, 30, going back a decade or more.
“It could be a strategy to engender sympathy for him in the eyes of the jurors,” said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago-based attorney and law professor at Northwestern University. “It could be also done as a way to lay the foundation to prevent him from receiving the death penalty if convicted.”
The prosecution has a pile of evidence against him, Stoltmann noted, and Judge Steven Hippler recently threw out Kohberger’s “alternate perpetrator” theories, finding that the defense had no evidence to suggest any of its four proposed other suspects had any connection to the scene or motive to kill the victims.
“A defense ‘win’ would be a life sentence without parole rather than the death penalty,” he said. “The entire mental health disclosure about him being autistic is for the same purpose.”
To that end, testimony from people who knew him growing up could humanize him before the jury.
Here’s what we know about the witnesses:
Jesse Harris
Harris runs the boxing gym where Kohberger told his former employers that he trained daily, according to public records obtained by Fox News Digital. Defense attorney Anne Taylor has requested his presence for two days of trial, according to a subpoena.
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Ann Parham
Parham is an advisor at the high school Kohberger attended. She has already reached an agreement to testify and is no longer required to attend Monday’s hearing, according to court documents. She was subpoenaed by the defense, and her presence has been requested for two days of trial.
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Ralph Vecchio
Vecchio’s connection to Kohberger was not immediately clear, but he has been requested by the defense for two days. He is the president of Colonial Auto in Stroudsburg.
Maggie Sanders
Sanders’ connection to the defendant is also unclear. Her hearing has been rescheduled for July 7 due to international travel, according to court documents. Defense attorney Elisa Massoth is asking for her presence for two days of the trial.
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Brandon Andreola
Andreola’s connection to Kohberger is also unspecified in court documents. Massoth has subpoenaed him for two days of the trial.
William Searfoss
Searfoss is a jail guard in Monroe County. Kohberger was briefly housed in his facility between his arrest at his parents’ home in Albrightsville and his extradition to Idaho. Searfoss’ subpoena had not yet been published by the court as of the time of writing.
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Anthony Somma
Somma is believed to be a former classmate of Kohberger’s. According to a Facebook account under his name, he graduated from the same technical school that Kohberger once attended. The suspect did not graduate – he was kicked out of a youth law enforcement program before he switched over to study HVAC. He left that program a year later. Somma’s subpoena was also not immediately available.
Trial is set to begin on Aug. 11. The exact timing of each potential witness’ testimony remains unclear.
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Initially, DeSales University professor Marie Bolger had also been summoned to court, but her name was removed from a later filing. In a 2023 interview with the Daily Mail, Bolger said Kohberger was one of her brightest students and one of only two she had recommended for Ph.D. programs in a decade as a criminology professor.
Bolger told the outlet she had never met Kohberger in person and had only taught him over email and Zoom during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She helped him work on his graduate thesis, which centered on “how and why criminals commit their crime,” she said.
Kohberger obtained a master’s degree from DeSales before moving on to Washington State University, about 10 miles from the off-campus home where he is accused of killing Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
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