Latest news with #HeatherBarnhart
News.com.au
2 days ago
- News.com.au
Bryan Kohberger's disturbing porn searches ahead of gruesome student murders revealed
Twisted murderer Bryan Kohberger made disturbing internet searches for women being raped and sexually assaulted while asleep, according to digital forensics experts who were due to testify at his trial. Kohberger's search history included terms like 'raped,' 'forced,' 'sleeping,' 'passed out' and 'voyeur,' according to Heather and Jared Barnhart, who were hired in 2023 to help investigate the psychopath who broke into an off-campus university house in the middle of the night and slaughtered four students, the New York Post reports. 'The easiest way to say it is that all of his terms were consistently around nonconsensual sex acts,' Jared Barnhart told The Daily Mail. Although Kohberger did not sexually assault any of the victims, the father of one of those killed, Kayla Goncalves, believes the killings were motivated by Kohberger's 'weird sexual fetishes.' Others have speculated that his sick plans were forced to change when he was unexpectedly confronted. Kohberger cowardly refused to reveal his plans or motives when he unexpectedly admitted the slayings. The Barnharts' forensics company, Cellebrite, was tasked with going through Kohberger's phone and laptop for any evidence connecting him to the murder of the four roommates knifed in their beds at their off-campus home in 2022. Kohberger had tried to wipe the search history from his devices — even running a data-erasing software on his laptop three days after the killings — but he was not thorough enough, the experts said. While there was no record of the search history, the terms were still found his autofill data on his search engines, Heather said. 'He did his best to leave zero digital footprint. He did not want a digital forensic trail available at all,' she told the Mail. The Cellebrite team also discovered a PDF file about another serial killer and rapist, Danny Rolling — also known as the 'Gainesville Ripper' — whose horrific murders targeting University of Florida students decades ago is eerily similar to Kohberger's heinous crimes. Rolling, who was the inspiration for the slasher classic 'Scream,' murdered five UF students — four women and one man — after breaking into their homes during a four-day spree in 1990. He raped all his female victims, and killed two of them with a Ka-Bar knife — the same weapon Kohberger used, prosecutors said. Rolling was executed in 2006. Kohberger's cell phone additionally contained creepy selfies of the killer posing shirtless and flexing his muscles, the experts said. He also snapped the chilling selfie of himself giving the thumbs-up just hours after he murdered the four University of Idaho students. Heather, Senior Director of Forensic Research at Cellebrite, and Jared Barnhart, Head of CX Strategy and Advocacy at the company, were prepared to testify as expert witnesses at Kohberger's trial before he pleaded guilty last month. Kohberger was sentenced to four life sentences for killing roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Bryan Kohberger Grew Increasingly Paranoid in the Hours Before His Arrest, Started Searching for Used Cars (Exclusive)
On the day before his arrest, Kohberger began to shop for used cars and searched online for 'psychopaths paranoid" and 'wiretapping' NEED TO KNOW Bryan Kohberger spent the morning before his arrest searching for used cars after reading about the ongoing efforts to locate the suspect in the University of Idaho killings The former criminology student also searched "psychopaths paranoid," "wiretapping" and "serial killers," Heather Barnhart, the digital forensics expert hired by prosecutors, tells People Kohberger downloaded information on the serial killer Wayne Nance in the hours before his arrest On Dec. 29, 2022, at 9:08 a.m. Bryan Kohberger read an article in The New York Times about the ongoing search for the driver of a white 2011-13 Hyundai Elantra. Two minutes later, he searched online for "auto detailing shop," and at 9:19 a.m. he started searching for used cars, including the Ford Fusion, Volkswagen Jetta, and Honda Civic, according to digital forensics expert Heather Barnhart, who was hired by prosecutors to examine Kohberger's cell phone and hard drive. By the same time the next day, Kohberger was in the custody of Pennsylvania State Troopers while awaiting extradition to Idaho to answer for the murder of four students at the University of Idaho. Other searches and downloads conducted by Kohberger around this time show a man growing increasingly paranoid as authorities closed in on him at his childhood home. On Dec. 29 he also searched "psychopaths paranoid," "wiretapping" and "serial killers," Barnhart tells PEOPLE. That same day, Kohberger downloaded information about the serial killer Wayne Nance, who was shot and killed at the age of 30 while attempting to murder his boss and rape his wife. One day prior, Kohberger downloaded a Fox News article which revealed 90 Hyundai Elantras had been given parking registrations by the University of Idaho between 2018 and 2022, but made no mention about out-of-state searches for that car, which Kohberger had registered in the state of also downloaded four of the daily updates on the Idaho murders from the Moscow Police Department on Dec. 28. Three days earlier, he had spent Christmas day downloading stories on more than 20 serial killers. Barnhart has previously worked on cases from the Delphi murders to Osama Bin Laden — but despite all her experience in the field, she says that even she was caught off-guard when she and her team began pulling data from Kohberger's cell and hard drive. "I feel like we were just in shock thinking where the heck is the data and what are we going to do?" Barnhart says. "Because when people call me, I always say, 'oh, yeah, we can find it. No problem. We'll come in there.' And I'm like, 'We're not, we don't see it.'" Barnhart says that Kohberger was incredibly skilled when it came to scrubbing his phone of information and similarly "really good at the anti-forensics aspect on his hard drive, too." What she and her team did find, however, would have been crucial had the case gone to trial, given the lack of a motive and murder weapon. The information Barnhart and her team managed to assemble from Dec. 28 and 29 proved to be particularly helpful, likely because Kohberger had not yet scrubbed his phone. That is because as he was searching for "wiretapping" and "psychopaths paranoid," authorities were outside surveilling his home. And they had been for days. Then, just after midnight on Dec. 30, 2022, state troopers and agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation executed a search warrant on Kohberger's parents' home and took him into custody. A week laterm he returned to Idaho for his first court appearance, where a judge charged him with the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Read the original article on People
New York Post
2 days ago
- New York Post
Bryan Kohberger's phone records show his creepy loner lifestyle: ‘It's Bates Motel … just super eerie'
Quadruple killer Bryan Kohberger's phone records reveal creepy details about his loner lifestyle — with him obsessively texting and calling 'Mother' and 'Father' in a 'super eerie' way being likened to Norman Bates in 'Psycho.' The 30-year-old former criminology student used his devices to look up sick porn — searching 'raped,' 'forced,' 'passed out,' 'voyeur' and 'sleeping' — and take creepy selfies that he had no one to send to, according to digital forensic experts Jared and Heather Barnhart, who had been slated to testify at his trial before his surprise plea deal admitting the Idaho slayings. He would then call his parents all the time, even to fall asleep — while hardly having any friends, the experts revealed Thursday on NewsNation's 'Banfield.' Advertisement 'He had 18 personal contacts. Eighteen,' Heather Barnhart said. 4 Bryan Kohberger's phone records revealed creepy details about him, including who he called. KYLE GREEN/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock 'So think about all the people you meet and the hundreds of random numbers,' she said — while noting that even the 18 he had were impersonal entries, like ''girl I ran with,' 'second girl I ran with,' a contact, and in parentheses 'hair.'' Advertisement 'But then there was 'Mother' and 'Father' and his sister and just a few others. Eighteen,' the expert said. The killer would even stiltedly call his parents 'Mother' and 'Father' in text messages — which reminded the forensics experts of a big-screen 'Psycho.' 'It's Bates Motel,' Jared Barnhart said, referring to the setting of Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film that then became the title of an A&E prequel in 2013. 'It is this feeling of that movie and 'Mother,' and it's just super eerie,' he said. Advertisement 4 Forensic experts Heather and Jared Barnhart told NewsNation that Kohberger only had 18 contacts in his phone. NewsNation The killer — who is serving four life sentences behind bars — was so attached to his parents that it seemed like he needed to speak with them just to fall asleep at night, Heather Barnhart explained. 'If one [parent] didn't respond, he would reach out to the other,' she said. 'He would constantly text them and call them, starting as early as five or six in the morning … And then also at night, to almost talk him into going to sleep and being able to rest.' 4 Kohberger also mostly only communicated with his parents who he eerily referred to as mother and father. Indiana State Police/Mega Advertisement The forensic pair also said that Kohberger would take selfies, sometimes shirtless and flexing his muscles, but wouldn't send them to anyone, including the infamous selfie he took of giving a thumbs up just hours after he carried out the gruesome murders. 'He didn't have friends to send this to,' Healther Barnhart said of the selfie, featuring Kohberger's distinctively bushy eyebrows, a trait one surviving victim used to describe him. 'Yeah, it was normal for him to take selfies and do nothing with them. They weren't sent to a person,' Jared Barnhart said. 4 Kohberger admitted to killing four University of Idaho students in their off-campus house in November 2022. Moscow Police Department Kohberger also searched disturbing terms on the internet, including 'raped,' 'forced,' 'passed out,' 'voyeur' and 'sleeping,' the Barnharts said. 'The easiest way to say it is that all of his terms were consistently around nonconsensual sex acts,' Jared Barnhart said. Kohberger tried to wipe his search history, but he didn't do a thorough enough job to conceal his sick curiosities, the pair said. The Barnharts — who run a forensics company called Cellebrite — had been prepared to testify at Kohberger's highly anticipated trial, which was originally scheduled to begin this month. Advertisement Kohberger, however, copped a plea deal weeks before the trial, which allowed him to avoid facing the death penalty and which his victims' families say deprived them of answers. Kohberger admitted to slaying Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle on Nov. 13, 2022 in their off-campus house in Moscow. After his sentencing, Kohberger was transferred from jail to a prison where his fellow inmates have been psychologically tormenting him by yelling into the vents that lead to his cell at all hours of the day.
Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Daily Mail
Bryan Kohberger's calls to his mom at the time of the Idaho murders revealed in disturbing unreleased evidence
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.
Fox News
3 days ago
- Fox News
Bryan Kohberger called his mom while returning to Idaho murder scene the next day, expert reveals
Bryan Kohberger called his mom multiple times after killing four University of Idaho students with a knife in November 2022 – first when he got back to his apartment across the state line in Pullman, Washington, and later when he drove back to the scene after sunrise, according to a new report. The 30-year-old's own lawyers described him in court filings as socially awkward, and he was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as part of a failed bid to have the death penalty taken off the table if the case had gone to trial. According to the forensic analysis, he reportedly had no text with friends or anyone outside his family, other than a single, "benign" group chat. Heather Barnhart, the senior director of forensic research at Cellebrite, a digital forensics firm that assists law enforcement around the country cracking cases, also revealed that Kohberger referred to his parents as "Mother" and "Father" in awkward text messages in a new interview with People. The former criminology Ph.D. student apparently preferred to reach out to his mom rather than his dad. "He would go back and forth texting: 'Father, why did mother not respond? Why is she not answering the phone?" Barnhart told the outlet. According to her forensic analysis of Kohberger's phone, the killer would've been on the line with his mom, Maryann Kohberger, when he returned to the crime scene at King Road in Moscow, Idaho. The murders took place minutes after 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. Kohberger returned around 9 a.m. hung around for a few minutes, and left. He had two conversations with his mom around this time. Police weren't called until almost noon. If Kohberger hadn't pleaded guilty at trial, Barnhart's team would have been called to testify about how he attempted to hide his movements by powering off his phone with 100% battery while driving to and from the crime scene, she told the outlet – which he likely did in an attempt to cover his tracks but which comes across as a glaring red flag. Her phone analysis could also have taken down his alibi – which was that he was driving around in the dark looking at stars, on what meteorologists say was a cold, cloudy night. "If you're stargazing and taking pictures of the sky, your phone needs to be on," she said. After a series of attempts to throw out evidence and have the death penalty taken away as a potential punishment before trial all failed, Kohberger agreed to plead guilty to the murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, in a surprise hearing in early July. Judge Steven Hippler handed down the maximum sentence possible under the terms of the plea deal – four consecutive sentences of life with no parole, plus another 10 years. He waived his right to appeal and to seek a reduced sentence. Now he's being housed in an individual cell at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, where his fellow inmates are reportedly harassing him night and day.
