Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger indicted by grand jury
Bryan Kohberger was indicted by a grand jury for the gruesome murders of four college students in November 2022.
Kohberger will appear in Latah County Court for an arraignment on Monday, May 22, at 9.00am local time. He is expected to plead not guilty at the hearing, where the judge will also set a trial date.
Grand jury proceedings are held behind closed doors
The indictment means Kohberger will avoid a preliminary hearing, which was originally scheduled for June 26.
It also means the roommates who were not killed in the attack will not have to testify and be cross-examined at the preliminary hearing. They will now only have to testify if they are called as witnesses at trial.
He is accused of killing four University of Idaho undergraduates: Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
The four students were discovered murdered in an off-campus apartment. It took almost two months for investigators to identify a suspect.
Kohberger, a criminology PhD student at the nearby Washington State University, was eventually identified as the suspect and arrested in late December 2022.
Kohberger has been held at Latah County Jail after pleading not guilty to the original charges on January 12.
Court documents that have since been released have detailed how investigators narrowed their search down to the suspect.
In particular, investigators were able to get a tiny sample of DNA from one of the few pieces of evidence left by the killer at the crime scene: a sheath for a military-style knife.
Investigators were able to match this DNA sample to samples collected at Kohberger’s parents’ home, over 2,000 miles away in northeast Pennsylvania.
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