Documents released by the Moscow Police Department on Wednesday shed new light on the brutality of the murders of four University of Idaho college students in 2022 and the extensive investigation that ultimately concluded with the sentencing of a former Ph.D. student from a nearby university, Bryan Kohberger, to life in prison on Wednesday.
The department released hundreds of files after the sentence was handed down.
Here are some key revelations from the documents.
A Moscow police detective wrote that Xana Kernodle, one of the four victims, had suffered more than 50 stab wounds and that many of them were defensive wounds, meaning that she had tried to protect herself or fend off the attack. Prosecutors said earlier that Mr. Kohberger had encountered Ms. Kernodle, who was awake, as he walked downstairs after killing Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves in a bedroom on the third floor of the house they shared. After killing Ms. Kernodle, he also fatally stabbed her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, who had been sleeping in her bedroom.
Dylan Mortensen, one of two surviving roommates at the house, told a police officer that she had heard a scream that she believed to be from Ms. Goncalves, according to a police report from November 2022, when the murders took place. She also told the police she had heard the sound of someone running from the third floor down to the second floor. Ms. Mortensen told officers that when she looked outside her room, she saw a man clad in black leaving the house. The other surviving roommate, Bethany Funke, told the police she did not know what to make of what Ms. Mortensen had told her about what she saw, thinking it was possible that a fraternity member was playing a joke on them.
A man being held alongside Mr. Kohberger at the Latah County Jail in Moscow told the police in September 2024 that Mr. Kohberger was the smartest person he had encountered in jail but that he also had annoying habits, including washing his hands dozens of times a day, spending a long time in the shower and staying awake most nights. The fellow inmate also said that Mr. Kohberger had frequently asked him about his past crimes. The man, who was not identified, said he had seen Mr. Kohberger behave aggressively only once, when the inmate made a disparaging remark directed at the television and Mr. Kohberger misunderstood, thinking the man was talking about him or his mother, with whom he was on a video call. He said Mr. Kohberger had approached the jail cell bars and “aggressively” asked him if he had been talking about him or his mother.
A Moscow police officer arrived to work in January 2025 and realized that an evidence refrigerator was broken, with dozens of blood, hair and other swabs from the case — including an apparent buccal swab from Mr. Kohberger — stored inside, according to a police report. No DNA samples were being stored in the refrigerator, and a separate evidence freezer was unaffected, the report says. It was unclear from that report whether the samples had been affected.
A man who, like Mr. Kohberger, had also been a teaching assistant at Washington State University said that Mr. Kohberger “began to talk much more than usual” in the period after the murders, according to an October 2023 police report. He also said that Mr. Kohberger had acted inappropriately with female students — the report does not explain this further — and that Mr. Kohberger had talked about wanting a girlfriend “on many occasions.” Mr. Kohberger also had injuries sometime around October and November of 2022, including a scratch on his face and wounds on his knuckles, the man recalled. The man said he had asked Mr. Kohberger about them, and Mr. Kohberger told him he had been in a car accident.