Disturbing new details about Bryan Kohberger posing Idaho murder victims’ bodies: Unsealed files shed new light on killer’s depravity

It was 4am on November 13, 2022, when Bryan Kohberger skulked through the sliding door into the kitchen of 1122 King Road.

Less than 20 minutes later he was back behind the wheel of his white Hyundai Elantra speeding away from Moscow, Idaho – leaving behind the bodies of four victims he had stabbed more than 150 times.

Now, newly unsealed court filings are shedding light on exactly what unfolded during that minutes-long rampage, including what Kohberger potentially did with the victims’ bodies.

The 155-page court exhibit reviewed by the Daily Mail disturbingly suggests Kohberger posed at least two of his victims after murdering them – something that independent experts say could point to a sexual motivation. 

The court documents also suggest Kohberger tried to clean up – and possibly wash his bloody murder weapon – before fleeing the scene. 

The defense and prosecution expert witnesses interpreted the crime scene somewhat differently to one another, with Kohberger, now 31, the only person still alive who truly knows what exactly unfolded in his minutes-long rampage. 

They are details he has so far refused to reveal. 

Despite pleading guilty to the murders of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20, last July, Kohberger has never spoken out about his crime spree.

Now, two independent experts have weighed in on the shocking details revealed in the bombshell court filings for the first time.

As well as offering a forensic analysis of what really took place inside the off-campus house that fateful night, the experts have explained what the chilling evidence indicates about the level of planning that went into Kohberger’s crimes – and his potential warped motives.

‘Bryan Kohberger posed the victims’ bodies’

Investigators believe Kohberger went straight up to the third story of the home after entering through the kitchen door on the second floor. 

Best friends Mogen and Goncalves, both 21, were sleeping in the same bed in Mogen’s room after a night out. They were both stabbed multiple times.

Dr Brent Turvey, the crime scene expert for the defense, claimed in the court filings that the bodies of Goncalves and Mogen were then ‘posed’ by their killer.

‘Kaylee was moved from a position with her head on her pillow to partially atop of Madison,’ the defense claims in the new filing.

‘Then the comforter was placed over them both.’ 

The prosecution’s expert witness, Dr Paulette Sutton, disputed the theory, saying that ‘posing is a possibility but not a determination that can be made to the exclusion of other explanations for their positioning.’

Instead, the position of their bodies and the comforter being found partially covering them could have been caused by Goncalves’s own movement before she died.

Other theories include that their bodies moved due to blows from the killer; movement during the struggle or Kohberger intentionally or inadvertently moving the victims during his violent attack. 

It should also be noted the defense claim was made prior to Kohberger’s guilty plea, when his attorneys were seeking to sow doubts in his guilt. They argued that the potential posing of the bodies and crime scene clean-up indicated there were multiple killers as it would have taken one person more than 15 minutes to do all of this. Kohberger pleaded guilty in July, as the sole perpetrator of the crime.

Dr Gary Brucato, a leading clinical and forensic psychologist who co-led the largest study ever on mass murders, told the Daily Mail that posing a victim is something that killers can do for a sexual thrill.

‘Staging of this type is only necessary for the sexual gratification of the offender. They want to take control of the scene and move people around because it means something to them. It is part of the thrill,’ Brucato said.

Based on the information available in the case, he said it is not possible to determine if Kohberger did or didn’t pose the victims’ bodies.

That said, he admitted it wouldn’t be unusual given what is known about Kohberger.

‘This was so clearly a fantasy-driven offense. It has all of the typical things that we generally see, fantasizing about it while getting sexually aroused, looking at violent pornography, or getting triggered by an event that makes you go in and do it,’ he said, referring to the violent porn searches found on Kohberger’s devices. 

‘And it can also be typical to do something at the scene, either taking something for a trophy or posing the body the way you need for arousal, or so that you can remember it later in a certain way.

‘I don’t know that that happened here but it would not be inconsistent with this type of offender.’

Ohio-based crime scene expert Dr Richard English told the Daily Mail he has analyzed crime scenes where a killer covers their victim with something.

‘There are times when offenders will cover victims to either hide their crime or because they feel guilty and don’t want to look at the victims,’ he said.

But, like Brucato, he said it is not clear in this case if the bodies were posed or if the positions of the victims and comforter was due to the struggle.

‘There could be many reasons why [Mogen and Goncalves were positioned in that way] so it is hard to say somebody posed a body when it is not obvious,’ he said.

Kohberger clean up the scene?

While the posing of the victims’ bodies is up for debate, one startling revelation in the documents is not disputed by either the defense or prosecution: that there was diluted blood belonging to the victims on the scene.

In several communal areas of the home, outside of the victims’ bedrooms, crime scene investigators found drops of diluted blood. 

Traces of the victims’ blood were found on the beer pong table in the living room and stairways between the first, second and third floors, among other locations.

The stains were caused by cast-off – where blood is released as the result of a bloodied object in motion.

Based on the court documents, none of the victims suffered blood loss outside of the two bedrooms where the four bodies were found – meaning that this blood was transferred to the communal areas by someone else. 

Both the defense and prosecution suggest this shows that attempts were made by the killer to wash or clean-up the scene.

According to English, the spatters of diluted blood indicate Kohberger may have washed his murder weapon – a KaBar knife purchased from Amazon months earlier – before fleeing from the home.

‘The first thing that came to mind was that the suspect tried to rinse the knife off,’ he said of the findings.

English pointed out that there were bathrooms on both the third and second floors. Kohberger would have had to pass the bathroom on the second floor after leaving Kernodle’s room on his way toward the back door.

There were also red solo cups on the beer pong table in the second floor living room that may have contained liquid to rinse the weapon in.

The notion of a clean-up is supported by the fact that, despite how bloody and violent the crime scene was, no trace of the victims’ blood or DNA was found inside Kohberger’s car or apartment following his arrest six weeks after the crime. 

To English, the evidence indicating he tried to wash the knife – and the lack of blood found on his car or apartment – all points to the extent of Kohberger’s pre-meditation and the steps he went to in order to get away with his crimes.

‘When CSI teams go into a crime scene we wear a Tyvek suit, booties, mask, goggles and gloves to protect the scene and evidence,’ he said.

‘I would say [Kohberger] was likely wearing something like a Tyvek suit, booties or gloves or that he had a change of clothes and shoes and tried to clean himself up.’

Given the short timeframe Kohberger was on the scene that night, English believes the latter is more likely.

In the documents, the prosecution also alluded to that possibility, writing that the removal of protective clothing and shoe coverings would take only ‘seconds.’

As a criminology PhD student at Washington State University at the time of the murders, this preparation was something Kohberger – like a CSI team – was familiar with.

However, English said there could be other explanations for the presence of diluted blood, with the possibility that it was contaminated by other liquids from the victims’ bodies such as saliva or urine or even the clean-up agent used by the CSI team.

The crime scene would have been a highly complex one to process and questions still abound about what exactly happened, the investigator admitted. 

‘Kohberger is the one person who knows all answers and he’s probably never going to reveal them all.’