Bryan Kohberger, the suspect accused of killing 4 University of Idaho college students, made his first court appearance.
Kohberger waived his extradition to Idaho. Where he faces 4 counts of murder along with felony burglary.
Cole Higgins has the latest.
A criminology graduate student charged in the November slayings of four University of Idaho students waived his right to an extradition hearing in a Pennsylvania court on Tuesday, speeding up his transfer to Idaho to stand trial.
Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old doctoral student and teaching assistant at Washington State University, was arrested early Friday by state police at his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania, authorities said.
Wearing a red jumpsuit with his hands shackled in front of him, Kohberger showed little emotion throughout the brief hearing. He faces four counts of first-degree murder and a felony burglary charge.
Idaho officials are now expected to arrange for Kohberger’s transport back to Idaho — a process that is generally kept secret because of security concerns.
The chief public defender in Monroe County, Pennsylvania said his client is eager to be exonerated and plans to tell a judge in Pennsylvania that he will waive his extradition hearing so he can be quickly taken to Idaho.
Kohberger should be presumed innocent and “not tried in the court of public opinion,” said the public defender, Jason LaBar.
Capt. Anthony Dahlinger, of the Moscow Police Department in Idaho, told The Associated Press on Saturday that authorities believe Kohberger was responsible for all four slayings. The students were stabbed to death at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13.
“We believe we’ve got our man,”
A criminology graduate student charged in the November slayings of four University of Idaho students waived his right to an extradition hearing in a Pennsylvania court on Tuesday, speeding up his transfer to Idaho to stand trial.
Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old doctoral student and teaching assistant at Washington State University, was arrested early Friday by state police at his parents’ home in eastern Pennsylvania, authorities said.
Wearing a red jumpsuit with his hands shackled in front of him, Kohberger showed little emotion throughout the brief hearing. He faces four counts of first-degree murder and a felony burglary charge.
Idaho officials are now expected to arrange for Kohberger’s transport back to Idaho — a process that is generally kept secret because of security concerns.
The chief public defender in Monroe County, Pennsylvania said his client is eager to be exonerated and plans to tell a judge in Pennsylvania that he will waive his extradition hearing so he can be quickly taken to Idaho.
Kohberger should be presumed innocent and “not tried in the court of public opinion,” said the public defender, Jason LaBar.
Capt. Anthony Dahlinger, of the Moscow Police Department in Idaho, told The Associated Press on Saturday that authorities believe Kohberger was responsible for all four slayings. The students were stabbed to death at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13.
“We believe we’ve got our man,” said Dahlinger, adding that investigators obtained samples of Kohberger’s DNA directly from him after he was arrested.
DNA evidence played a key role in identifying Kohberger as a suspect, and officials were able to match his DNA to genetic material recovered during the investigation, a law enforcement official said last week. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss details of the ongoing investigation.
Investigators have said they are still looking for a murder weapon and a motive for the killings.
Federal and state investigators are combing through Kohberger’s background, financial records and electronic communications as they work to build the case against him, the official who spoke anonymously said. The investigators are also interviewing people who knew Kohberger, including those at Washington State University
“There’s a lot of layers to figuring out how to make that happen and a lot of players involved in that, and so I just I can’t speculate to how quickly that could occur,”