Bryan Kohberger prosecutor admits two key questions from the case will probably never be answered

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

The Idaho prosecutor who led the case against Bryan Kohberger has admitted that two key questions about the stabbing murders of four students will probably never be answered.
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson spoke to Idaho News 6 as the 30-year-old criminology student turned mass killer begins his new life behind bars inside Idaho's maximum-security prison.
Despite Kohberger finally confessing to his crimes, Thompson said he believes the killer's motive will never truly come to light.
He also believes the murder weapon used to slaughter the victims - believed to be a KaBar knife bought from Amazon months before the attack - will never be found.
'I don't think we'll ever know,' he said of the location of the knife.
'I know there's questions. That's human nature for all of us to think, "okay, explain why that happened". I understand that.'
But FBI profilers have long said that, due to the nature of the crime, these things will likely remain a mystery, Thompson said.
'I can tell you from the very beginning the FBI brought out members of the behavioral analysis unit, their profilers, to try to help us develop some insights,' he said.
'And they told us early on that, just looking at the nature of the crimes and the fact that there is no direct connection anybody could find between the murderer and the victims, they said in our experience you likely will never know why this happened.
'And even if the murderer would try to say something, it wouldn't make sense to anybody but the murderer and that's the reality.'
In the early hours of November 13, 2022, Kohberger broke into an off-campus home in the college town of Moscow, Idaho, and stabbed the four victims - 21-year-old best friends Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, and couple Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20 - to death.
He was arrested around six weeks later at his parents' home in the Poconos Mountains of Pennsylvania, after his DNA was found on a knife sheath left behind at the scene.
Surveillance footage on nearby homes and businesses also captured his white Hyundai Elantra circling the home multiple times in the hour before the murders before speeding away from the scene.
After spending more than two years fighting the charges, Kohberger finally confessed to his crimes and pleaded guilty in Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on July 2 in exchange for the death penalty being taken off the table.
During an emotional sentencing hearing on July 23, Judge Steven Hippler handed Kohberger four life sentences with no possibility of parole for each count of first-degree murder and an additional 10 years for burglary.
Under the terms of the deal, Kohberger waived his right to ever appeal and will never have the opportunity to walk free from prison.
At the sentencing, Kohberger turned down the opportunity to address the court, leaving the victims' families in the dark about the murders.
Kohberger has not revealed his motive for the murders or why he chose his victims.
To this day, prosecutors have found no connection between him and any of the victims or the two surviving roommates who lived through the attack.
The murder weapon has also never been found despite extensive searches.
In the hours after the murders, Kohberger took a drive by the Clearwater and Snake Rivers - vast bodies of water where it is possible he disposed of evidence.
While some of the victims' families support the plea deal, Thompson has faced criticism from some for both striking the deal and for not making it a requirement that Kohberger reveals details about his crimes.
The prosecutor told Idaho News 6 he stands by his decisions.
'In a case like this, we aren't going to get answers from the defendant. Even if he said something, there would be no way to corroborate it or believe him,' he said.
However, he said he respects that the victims' families all have different views on his actions.
'We cannot imagine what it must be like to lose a child the way these families have lost a child, a sister, a brother, a friend. It's just unimaginable,' he said.
'So we support completely everyone has their own way of dealing with it.'
Daily Mail forensically re-traced Kohberger's steps in the hours after the murders. He drove by the Clearwater and Snake Rivers - vast bodies of water where it is possible he disposed of evidence
Thompson said he engaged very little with the mass killer inside the courtroom.
He described how Kohberger maintained a chilling, vacant demeanor even when confronted with the brutality of his crimes and the devastating grief of the families he tore apart.
'Anybody who sees me in court knows I tend to engage with defendants in sentencing,' Thompson said.
'But there was a vacancy, a distance that I saw in this defendant or that I sensed.
'So I think I looked at him once at the sentencing itself and that's when I pointed to him and talked about he's going to go through that door to the department of corrections and that door is going to close forever and he's not coming out until he's dead.'
Thompson added: 'That's all that I had to direct at him.'
After his sentencing, Kohberger was sent to the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna to begin his new life behind bars.
According to a law enforcement source, he hasn't settled in smoothly.
The Daily Mail has learned he is being relentlessly tormented by his new jail-mates, who are shouting through the vents into his cell at all hours of the day.
It is rattling the criminology student turned quadruple killer so much that he has made complaints to prison guards about the inmates keeping him awake at night.
'It's driving him crazy. The inmates are tormenting him at night and almost all hours of the day - taunting him through the vents in his cell,' Chris McDonough, a retired homicide detective who now works for the Cold Case Foundation, told the Daily Mail.
'They are literally getting up into the grate and yelling at him. The inmates are taking it in turns doing it. It's relentless.'
He added of Kohberger: 'He's extremely annoyed and frustrated. He's complaining to the authorities that he can't sleep because of them.'
For now, Kohberger is being held in solitary confinement on J block's restrictive housing unit. The Department of Corrections could move him to general population in future if they deem it safe to do so.