Bryan Kohberger ‘prepared’ for quadruple Idaho murders, expert was set to testify: ‘He didn’t just Google these cases’
At 2:54 a.m. on November 13, 2022, Bryan Kohberger’s phone went dark.
The battery hadn’t died, and it wasn’t randomly powered off — it was silenced with precision. WiFi and cellular data were disabled. No location tracking on. And no background activity. A deliberate blackout during the exact window prosecutors say four University of Idaho students were brutally murdered at their off-campus home.
Two hours later, at 4:48 a.m., the phone turned back on. It would be months before investigators fully understood what that gap in activity meant.
But to the digital forensic experts tasked by prosecutors with retracing Kohberger’s steps for evidence to be used against him in his trial, the silence spoke volumes.
“What we learned is, he prepared,” Heather Barnhart, Senior Director of Forensic Research at Cellebrite, told The Independent.
Barnhart and her colleague Jared Barnhart were slated to testify at Kohberger’s trial before he unexpectedly accepted a plea deal, admitting to the November 2022 quadruple murders and receiving life without parole in July.
Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, who were found stabbed to death on November 13, 2022, in the small town of Moscow, Idaho.
Now, as more details began to trickle out through previously sealed police reports and court documents, the team is revealing to The Independent what they learned about the killer through his digital footprint.
The Cellebrite team had uncovered files scrubbed from devices, searches routed through VPNs, and deep downloads about serial killers — all of which, they say, painted a chilling picture of obsession and planning.
While DNA from the knife sheath ultimately tied Kohberger to the crime scene, it was the voids in his otherwise trackable life that revealed how the killings were premeditated, the experts say.
Forensic analysis revealed that Kohberger’s phone had only four periods of total inactivity, dating back to June 2022. One of those silent moments occurred on the night of the murders.
“He didn’t just lose signal or run out of battery,” Jared explained. “This was an actual button press, power off, on purpose, and then a power back two hours later. And in the middle of that, four people were killed.”
As a criminology PhD student at Washington State University, Kohberger had long been immersed in the study of crime. But according to the digital forensics team, his interest crossed a line, from academic to obsessive.
“He didn’t just Google these cases,” Heather said. “He downloaded full PDFs of case files. Not once, but repeatedly. He was downloading detailed reports on serial killers,” including Danny Rolling, who also murdered college students using a similar knife.
