Episode Details

The State’s amended supplemental expert disclosures laid out, in far greater detail, how prosecutors planned to present the forensic case against Bryan Kohberger. The disclosures covered crime-scene processing, latent prints, DNA testing, touch-DNA transfer, toxicology, historical cell-site analysis and bloodstain-pattern reconstruction. Prosecutors said an FBI cellular expert would testify that Kohberger’s phone stopped communicating with the AT&T network shortly before 3 a.m. on November 13, 2022, reappeared around 4:48 a.m. south of Moscow, and then showed movement consistent with traveling back toward Pullman. The same analysis identified 23 earlier occasions between July and November when Kohberger’s phone used cell sites capable of serving the area around 1122 King Road during late-night or early-morning hours. The DNA evidence was even more significant: forensic scientist Jade Miller concluded that the DNA profile recovered from the knife sheath matched Kohberger’s known reference sample and was at least 5.37 octillion times more likely if Kohberger was the source than if an unrelated person was. Another analyst had previously tested DNA recovered from trash at the Kohberger family residence and concluded that the male profile obtained there could not be excluded as the biological father of the unidentified male whose DNA was recovered from the sheath, with at least 99.9998 percent of males expected to be excluded from that relationship.

The disclosures also showed how prosecutors intended to answer several anticipated defense challenges. They explained why unidentified male DNA found elsewhere in the King Road residence was treated differently from the sheath DNA, noting that one profile came from the underside of a heavily used stairway handrail in a house routinely visited by other students, while another came from a gardening glove found outside in a publicly accessible area. By contrast, the sheath had been recovered beside one of the victims, making the DNA on it considerably more probative in the State’s view. Bloodstain expert Paulette Sutton’s revised reconstruction incorporated defense reports, corrected several laboratory-result references after discovering that crime-scene placard numbers did not directly correspond with laboratory intake numbers, and offered rebuttal testimony concerning the distribution and absence of blood evidence. The forensic disclosures further confirmed that no usable latent fingerprints were developed from the Ka-Bar sheath, while detailing how separate portions of that sheath were independently swabbed and submitted for DNA testing. Taken together, the material showed prosecutors preparing a layered forensic presentation rather than relying on any single piece of evidence: Kohberger’s DNA on the sheath, his family connection established through the Pennsylvania trash pull, cellular movements surrounding the murders, crime-scene blood patterns, and the State’s explanations for why other unidentified DNA and the absence of fingerprints did not undermine its theory of the case.


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