Suspect in killings of 4 Idaho college students arrested in Pennsylvania

HARRISBURG, Pa. — A suspect in the killings of four University of Idaho students has been arrested in Pennsylvania.

Arrest paperwork filed in Monroe County Court said Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was being held for extradition to Idaho on a warrant for first degree murder.

Pennsylvania state police confirmed the arrest. Kohberger was taken into custody by members of Troop N and the Special Emergency Response Team, according to state police.

Kohberger was arraigned before on-call Magisterial District Judge Michael Muth and remanded to Monroe County Correctional Facility, pending extradition to Idaho.

Lawrence Rosenberg said on social media that he knew Kohberger, who said they attended Monroe County Technical Institute together for a few years before Kohberger left in 2014.

Rosenberg said Kohberger knows a lot of people in the Poconos area and would get together with friends at Indian Mountain Lakes.

“He was always a strange person,” Rosenberg said.

Calls to Monroe County Technical Institute and Pleasant Valley High School, which Kohberger reportedly attended, were not returned.

According to DeSales University Associate Vice President Carolyn Steigleman, Kohberger holds a master’s and bachelor’s degree from the school. He completed graduate studies in June 2022 and undergraduate in 2020.

His master’s degree was in criminal justice.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims’ families during this difficult time,” Steigleman said in a statement.

Boyce Jubilan, associate professor and chair of DeSales University’s psychology program, told the Philadelphia Inquirer that news of Kohberger’s arrest was a “shock.” He was a research supervisor to Kohberger in the late 2010s, and said he was “a little awkward with his peers” and “liked to work alone.”

A Ph.D. student by the same name is listed in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, which is a short drive across the state line from the University of Idaho. Messages seeking more information were left for officials at WSU.

A profile with Kohberger’s name on website meritpages.com is listed as a 2018 graduate of Northampton Community College. According to the profile, he was a member of Psi Beta, a psychology studies honor society.

The Moscow, Idaho, Police Department is holding a news conference on the arrest at 4 p.m. EST Friday.

The Idaho students — Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — were stabbed to death at a rental home near campus sometime in the early morning hours of Nov. 13. The slayings initially mystified law enforcement, with investigators unable to name a suspect or locate a murder weapon for weeks.

But the case broke open after law enforcement asked the public for help finding a white sedan seen near the home around the time of the killings. The Moscow Police Department made the request Dec. 7, and by the next day had to direct tips to a special FBI call center because so many were coming in.

Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho; Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls, Idaho; and Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington, were members of the university’s Greek system and close friends. Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle lived in the three-story rental home with two other roommates. Kernodle and Chapin were dating and he was visiting the house that night.

Autopsies showed all four were likely asleep when they were attacked. Some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times. There was no sign of sexual assault, police said.

Police said Thursday the rental home would be cleared of “potential biohazards and other harmful substances” to collect evidence starting Friday morning. It was unclear how long the work would take, but a news release said the house would be returned to the property manager upon completion.

The stabbing deaths shook the small town of Moscow, Idaho, a farming community of about 25,000 people — including roughly 11,000 students — tucked in the rolling hills of the northern Idaho’s Palouse region.

The case also enticed online sleuths who speculated about potential suspects and motives. In the early days of the investigation, police released relatively few details publicly.

Fears of a repeat attack prompted nearly half of the University of Idaho students to switch to online classes for the remainder of the semester, abandoning dorms and apartments in the normally bucolic town for the perceived safety of their hometowns. Safety concerns also had the university hiring an additional security firm to escort students across campus and the Idaho State Police sending troopers to help patrol the city’s streets.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.