Convicted murderer Bryan Kohberger spoke to his mother, Maryann Kohberger, for a total of more than three hours over several phone calls the same day he stabbed four University of Idaho students to death at an off-campus house.
The first phone call came shortly after he arrived back at his residence in Pullman, Washington, that morning, about two hours after the murders. The second came on his way to revisiting the crime scene at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, hours later, digital forensics expert Heather Barnhart told People in a story published on Wednesday, August 13.
Bryan, 30, was sentenced in July to four consecutive life sentences — one for each homicide — and an additional 10 years for burglary stemming from the murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, which took place shortly after 4 a.m. on November 13, 2022.
His first call came at 6:13 a.m. back in the confines of Washington State University, where Bryan was pursuing a doctorate in criminology. When Maryann did not pick up, he then called his father, Michael Kohberger Jr., one minute later.
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Barnhart said Bryan would frequently call Maryann first, then if she did not answer, try Michael, whom he had saved as “Mother” and “Father” in his phone, respectively.
“And he would go back and forth texting: ‘Father, why did mother not respond? Why is she not answering the phone?” Barnhart said.
The two eventually connected and spoke on the phone for 36 minutes.
Bryan called again, this time at 8:03 a.m., in a call that lasted 54 minutes. That means the two were speaking while Bryan was traveling back to the crime scene that morning, which cell phone data suggests he did.
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He spoke to Maryann a third time for nine minutes beginning at 9 a.m., then two more times that afternoon. His last call, which came in at 5:53 p.m., lasted for 96 minutes.
Barnhart also confirmed that, as has been reported, Bryan turned his phone off between 2:54 a.m. and 4:48 a.m. that morning, possibly as a way to keep his phone data from placing him at the scene of the murders that morning. She confirmed that his phone was fully charged at the time, so it was not simply a matter of his battery dying.
“When he powered it off, it was from a human pressing a button, and the battery was at 100 percent charged,” Barnhart said.
Bryan was eventually arrested on December 30 and charged with the murders after police found, among other evidence, a knife sheath left at the King Road house that contained touch DNA that led back to him.
He initially pleaded not guilty, but later submitted a guilty plea in a deal to take the death penalty off the table.
