Bryan Kohberger's calls to his mom at the time of the Idaho murders revealed in disturbing unreleased evidence

Daily Mail​

5 days ago

called his mom multiple times in the hours after he slaughtered four University of Idaho students - including on his return to the crime scene, according to cell phone data.
Heather Barnhart, Senior Director of Forensic Research at Cellebrite, and Jared Barnhart, Head of CX Strategy and Advocacy at Cellebrite, told the Daily Mail what they learned about Kohberger from his digital footprint in a new interview weeks after he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders.
The digital forensics experts were hired by state prosecutors to dig into Kohberger's Android cell phone and laptop back in March 2023 and were set to testify as expert witnesses in Kohberger's capital murder trial.
Through their analysis, the experts discovered an intense relationship between Kohberger and his parents Michael and MaryAnn Kohberger - in particular with his mom, where he would call her multiple times and speak for hours on the phone every single day.
His parents, who were saved in his phone as 'Mother' and 'Father', appeared to be Kohberger's sole source of communication.
'There wasn't any calls or texts to friends. There was one group chat with a couple of classmates that he was very inactive on,' Heather told the Daily Mail.
But, the 30-year-old killer spoke to his mom 'all the time… every day and night'.
'His primary source of communication was to his mother,' she said.
'He talked to her constantly. And if she wouldn't answer immediately, he would call his father or text him and say 'why is she not answering?' He would go back and forth if they didn't answer. And sometimes even after the calls ended, he would then text.'
'Dad won't answer,' one text to his mother read, with a sad face emoji.
The calls from Kohberger to his parents would often begin as early as 4am his time and would end very late at night.
'It was almost like his mother would calm him before bed, and then he would wake up and call her again,' Heather said.
This contact remained a constant for Kohberger even on the day that he stabbed four students to death.
The data shows that he called his mom around two hours after carrying out his murderous rampage.
It was around 4am on November 13, 2022, when the criminology PhD student broke into an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, and murdered Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Kohberger had turned his phone off between 2.54am and 4.48am in a move to avoid detection.
The home at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, where Kohberger carried out his murderous rampage
He arrived back at his apartment in Pullman, Washington, at around 5.30am, after driving a long-winded route through rural backroads.
He then called his mother at 6.13am - just two hours after the murders.
When she didn't answer, he called his dad at 6.14am.
At 6.17am, he called MaryAnn again and this time she answered, speaking to him for 36 minutes.
Around an hour after they ended the call, Kohberger called his mom again at 8.03am.
That call lasted 54 minutes, hanging up just before 9am - the same time that the mass killer returned to the scene of his crime.
Kohberger left his apartment around 9am and made the 10-minute drive to 1122 King Road, previously released court records show.
He stayed there for around 10 minutes from 9.12am to 9.21am, before arriving home again about 9.30am.
Why he returned - and what exactly he did during that short window - only he knows.
But, at that point, the murders had not yet been discovered. It was just before midday when the victims' friends discovered their bodies and the 911 call was placed.
Pictured: Michael Kohberger cleans up the property after the raid on the family home
Later that day, Kohberger spoke to his mother again - first for two minutes at 4.05pm and then for 96 minutes at 5.53pm.
In total, they had spent more than three hours on the phone on the day that he slaughtered four students.
'That was normal for him,' Heather said.
It's a pattern that Kohberger appears to have continued behind bars where he would spend hours on video calls with his mom MaryAnn while awaiting trial.
Moscow Police records released after his sentencing reveal an inmate reported one incident when, during one of those calls, he had said 'you suck' at a sports player he was watching on TV.
The remark rattled Kohberger, causing him to respond aggressively, thinking the inmate was speaking about him or his mother, the records show.
He 'immediately got up and put his face to the bars' and asked if he was talking about him or his mom, the inmate told investigators.
Kohberger's parents have kept a low profile since his arrest at their home in a gated community in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania on December 30, 2022.
Michael and MaryAnn attended his change of plea hearing in Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, on July 2 - watching as their only son confessed to the shocking crime.
While they appeared stricken, Kohberger showed no emotion or remorse.
Weeks later at his sentencing on July 23, MaryAnn returned to the courtroom with daughter Amanda where she wept listening to the victims' families speak of their gut-wrenching grief.
Michael was absent, as was Kohberger's other sister Melissa.
Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole and is now being held in solitary confinement inside Idaho's only maximum-security prison.
Because of Kohberger's guilty plea, the team at Cellebrite never presented their digital evidence to a jury.
As well as his call records, Kohberger's cell phone and laptop contained disturbing porn searches for terms including 'Mouth raped', 'Forced face f**k' and 'sleeping blowjob'.
The Cellebrite team also found a clear obsession with serial killers and home invasions, with searches for 'serial killers, co-ed killers, home invasions, burglaries and psychopaths before the murders and then up through Christmas Day'.
There was one serial killer Kohberger showed a keen interest in that stood out to the team: Gainesville Ripper Danny Rolling who broke into the homes of University of Florida students at night and murdered five victims with a Ka-Bar knife.
Kohberger had also watched a YouTube video about a Ka-Bar knife.
His cell phone also contained many selfies where he was posing shirtless or flexing his muscles, Jared and Heather revealed.
The digital evidence was uncovered despite Kohberger's best efforts to scrub his cell phone and laptop of anything incriminating.
In fact, the Cellebrite team found a pattern where Kohberger went to extreme lengths to try to delete and hide his digital footprint using VPNs, incognito modes, and clearing his browsing history.
Had they testified at trial, the digital experts would have presented both a wealth of data - as well as evidence of Kohberger's cleanup operation.
'He did his best to leave zero digital footprint. He did not want a digital forensic trail available at all,' Heather said.
And, while he succeeded in part, she said that this abnormal behavior and the very efforts to hide his digital activities revealed more than he realized about his guilt.
'The absence of things is almost telling more of a story,' she said.