Episode Details

Bryan Kohberger’s defense said that during the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, when Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed, Kohberger had been alone in his car driving through the countryside south and west of Moscow rather than inside the King Road house. His attorneys described nighttime driving as something Kohberger regularly did and said he often traveled to remote areas to hike, run or look at the moon and stars. The supplemental alibi filing identified cell-site expert Sy Ray as a witness who could partially corroborate that account by analyzing Kohberger’s phone data and attempting to show that he had been traveling away from Moscow during portions of the night. The defense did not claim that another person had been physically with Kohberger and could verify his whereabouts, instead relying largely on his driving habits and anticipated expert analysis of digital location evidence.

Prosecutors reacted by arguing that the so-called alibi was not really an alibi at all because it failed to establish where Kohberger had been during the critical window when the murders occurred. The state emphasized that Kohberger’s phone had stopped reporting to the cellular network before the homicides and did not reconnect until afterward, meaning the very period in which he most needed location data was the period for which the phone provided none. Prosecutors also argued that saying Kohberger had been somewhere south and west of Moscow looking at the night sky was too vague to satisfy Idaho’s alibi requirements, which called for specific locations and information identifying witnesses who could verify the defendant was somewhere else when the crime occurred. The state therefore asked the court to restrict or exclude the proposed alibi evidence, arguing that Ray’s anticipated testimony might describe Kohberger’s movements before or after the murders but could not establish that he had been somewhere else at the precise time the four students were killed.


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