Episode Details

In the lead-up to Bryan Kohberger’s trial, some of the most consequential legal fighting centered on the DNA recovered from the knife sheath found beneath Madison Mogen’s body and the investigative genetic genealogy, or IGG, process that investigators used to identify Kohberger as a suspect. Authorities had extracted a single-source male DNA profile from the sheath and later sent the sample to Othram, which developed a SNP profile that could be compared against genealogy databases that permitted law-enforcement searches. Investigators used that information to build family trees that eventually pointed toward Kohberger, after which authorities collected trash from his family’s Pennsylvania home and obtained DNA that helped connect his family to the sheath sample. Kohberger’s defense spent years seeking the underlying IGG records, laboratory materials, family-tree information and details about how Othram and the FBI conducted the genealogy work. That discovery fight produced multiple motions to compel, closed hearings and court-ordered disclosures under seal as the defense argued that it needed the material to examine whether the investigative process had been scientifically reliable and constitutionally permissible.

The fight eventually moved from obtaining the evidence to trying to keep it out of court altogether. Kohberger’s attorneys argued that law enforcement had violated his constitutional rights by conducting the IGG investigation without a warrant and by later obtaining DNA through a trash pull at his parents’ home, contending that evidence developed from those steps and subsequent warrants should be suppressed as fruit of an unlawful search. Judge Steven Hippler rejected that argument in February 2025, ruling that Kohberger had not established a constitutionally protected privacy interest that made the IGG process or abandoned trash unlawful searches and declining to suppress the resulting evidence. The defense then continued attacking the genealogy evidence through motions in limine, arguing that the State should not be permitted to present the IGG process to the jury and raising separate challenges involving terminology such as “touch” or “contact” DNA and the disclosure of expert testimony. The State maintained that IGG had primarily been an investigative lead rather than the evidentiary foundation of its case, while prosecutors intended to rely on the direct comparison between Kohberger’s DNA and the profile recovered from the sheath. By the time trial approached, the DNA battle had therefore become two interconnected fights: whether the genetic genealogy that led investigators to Kohberger had been lawfully conducted, and exactly how much of that complicated investigative history the jury would ultimately be allowed to hear.


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