BOISE, Idaho — Just seconds after Bryan Kohberger told a 4th District judge Wednesday that, yes, he had “willfully” and “deliberately” murdered four University of Idaho students on Nov. 13, 2022, the judge asked prosecutors to lay out the “factual basis” for the case if it had gone to trial.

Speaking deliberately, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson presented damning information — some of which was touched on in previous court records, some of which was not — while also indicating the state didn’t have evidence that Kohberger ever knew the victims.

Thompson also pointed out that the state would “not represent that he intended to commit all of the murders that he did that night, but we know that that is what resulted.”

The victims were seniors Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21; junior Xana Kernodle, 20; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20. The three women were roommates in the Moscow home where the homicides occurred, and Chapin, Kernodle’s boyfriend, had stayed over for the night. Two other roommates were unharmed in the attack.

During his roughly 15-minute presentation in Judge Steven Hippler’s court, Thompson noted that investigators never did recover the knife that was used in the killings, and also emphasized that there was no “sexual component” to the crime. There was no evidence that the victims were sexually assaulted in any way, he told the court.

“I want to make that clear so there’s no speculation,” he said.

Much of Thompson’s laying out of the evidence touched on a pair of topics: cellphone tower records and surveillance of Kohberger’s car, both on the morning of the killings and for months beforehand.

Cell tower records showed that Kohberger began visiting the area of 1122 King Road in Moscow beginning on July 9, 2022, and from that date until Nov. 7 that year — a week before the murders — records indicated that the defendant visited that area of Moscow 23 times, from the hours of 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Thompson noted the dense population of that area, where many college students live, and also acknowledged that the state did not know whether Kohberger had any contact with the victims in that time frame.

A traffic stop on Aug. 22, 2022, identified Kohberger as the driver of a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra, a piece of evidence an affidavit supporting his arrest mentioned and Thompson reiterated. That was important, he said, because a white sedan matching that description was captured on video surveillance in the area of 1122 King Road beginning at around 3:30 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022.

It was captured many times, Thompson said, circling the area and even doing a U-turn, and later was seen leaving King Road at a high rate of speed, to the point of almost losing control, at 4:20 a.m.

The prosecution in court records alleged the killings happened in a 13-minute window, from 4:07 to 4:20.

Cell records that morning show Kohberger turned off his phone from 2:54 a.m. until 4:48 a.m. His phone is picked up on a tower in south Moscow at 4:48 a.m., and Thompson said evidence suggests Kohberger took isolated backroads toward Pullman, Washington, where he was attending Washington State University, because cameras on other routes did not pick up his vehicle.

A car fitting his description was seen on surveillance video in Pullman beginning at 5:26 a.m., with him arriving at his residence at approximately 5:30 a.m.

Kohberger then returned to the King Road scene, according to cell tower records, at 9 a.m., staying for about 10 minutes. Upon his return to Pullman, he took a selfie on his phone, giving a thumbs-up sign, at 9:30 a.m., Thompson said in court.

Phone records showed Kohberger drove about 30 miles south of Moscow to the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake rivers, the prosecutor said, shortly after mentioning that thorough searches and investigation did not yield the murder weapon.

The prosecution said “its evidence would show” that Kohberger entered the three-story King Road house through the kitchen’s sliding glass door at the back of the structure. This was the second floor. He went upstairs and killed Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves first, on the third floor, leaving behind a knife sheath next to Mogen’s body, Thompson said.

The longtime Latah County prosecutor noted that this sheath, for a Ka-Bar fixed-blade knife, produced DNA evidence that eventually linked Kohberger to the scene. A trash pull at the family’s home in eastern Pennsylvania led to DNA from a Q-tip found to be from Kohberger’s father. This allowed investigators to do testing that showed the killer had a familial DNA match to the Q-tip user, according to the prosecution.

Kohberger purchased a Ka-Bar knife and sheath on Amazon in March 2022 while in Pennsylvania at his parents’ home, records showed. On the same day as the killings, Kohberger’s search history showed that he was on Amazon looking for the same knife and sheath, and he later tried to delete his purchase history, Thompson said.

The state’s evidence showed that Kohberger went back to the second floor of the house to leave after killing Mogen and Goncalves, where he “encountered” Kernodle, who was still awake and had ordered DoorDash. Kohberger killed her, and then killed Chapin, who was asleep, Thompson told the court.

He said that every victim “suffered multiple wounds.”

Finally, Thompson pointed out that Kohberger did a pre-doctorate study on crime scene processing. A police search of his home in Pullman and the Hyundai Elantra found them to be “spartan” and “spotless,” respectively. The car appeared to have been disassembled and thoroughly cleaned, the prosecutor said.

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