Idaho murders stir echoes in a Midwest all too familiar with diabolical darkness

Four in the morning, four college students, all dead in under 30 minutes. During the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, four students from the University of Idaho were brutally stabbed to death. The students were Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. Biology teacher Sara Dobish kept up with this case.

“The students were found stabbed to death in their off campus house that they shared,” she said. “There were five roommates total, two of the girls were left unharmed and one of the girls’ boyfriend was spending the night there.”

Nearly seven weeks after the murders, on December 30, Bryan Christopher Kohberger was taken into custody and arrested. Under the watchful eyes of the nation, with few leads or motives, the authorities were able to solve a major case like this. Dobish watched as all of this unfolded.

“It took a few weeks for them to have a suspect, and the police didn’t reveal much information to the public,” she said. “They put together a really great case based on his digital footprint and the location of his car. Then the suspect, who was a Phd student in criminology at Washington State, was arrested.”

Their case was only possible due to the advanced methods of DNA testing matching. Lieutenant Andrew Lecker of the Oshkosh Police Department finds DNA helpful with many cases. 

“DNA is extremely useful; it gives us a direction of where to go,” he said. “We get DNA generally from whether the suspect touched something or they got blood on something. We can then submit the DNA to the state crime lab, and they can then compare it to the DNA that they have in the national database.”

DNA is the building block of human life, so everyone has it - making it an essential part of any investigation. Dobish knows how easy using DNA can be. 

“It is simple because everyone in their DNA has something called a band. These bands are unique, leaving a different number and spots of bands for everyone,” she said. “So with this, they just match the bands to the ones they have.”

Kohberger left a tan leather knife sheath at the murder scene. On that sheath the Idaho State Lab found his DNA, which wasn’t in the system. Authorities then had to use genealogy to find a partial match to a family member of Kohberger. Lecker understands how this process works.

“A lot of times, through these ancestry services, you can find a close or a relative whose DNA is on file,” he said. “Then you can try to backtrack to figure out a suspect.” 

This case caught the attention of many people on social media. Lecker has ways to prevent situations like this.

“One of the things that we would do when we have a homicide is try to release information through the media,” he said. “We can give them some information to quell rumors, people obviously think the very worst at times.”

Dobish saw the involvement of social media take place in many ways.

“Nobody has confirmed this, but there have been a lot of leads out there that Kohberger was stalking at least one of the girls and may have been messaging one of them on Instagram,” she said. “He was clearly stalking somebody in that house, his car was seen 12 different times and his phone was pinged at their house before the murders happened.”

Dobish wasn’t the only Sherlock Holmes building cases from afar, not all of them grounded in logic.

“There are the armchair detectives that were putting all kinds of interesting theories out there,” she said. “It was interesting that people were willing to say anything they could think of because no one knew who he was.”

Dobish explained that there were many consequences with social media being a part of this case.

“They were quick to blame one of the girls’ boyfriend and he clearly had nothing to do with it so it was sad in that way,” she said.

For some college and college-bound students like senior Hans Larson, they believe it's just another day.

“It's not really connected to college in my mind,” he said. “It's just the work of an insane person, a devious madman.”

Senior Kiley Gibbs shares the same sentiments.

“I’m not scared for college, this is just the reality of the world we live in,” she said. “I’m not going to let the fear of something happening to me get in the way of me living my life.”

Dobish, on the other hand, thinks that college students need to be more careful in the future.

“The really sad thing is that they probably felt really safe in that house together and they had people around them all the time,” she said. “But unfortunately in today’s day and age you have to watch yourself and people need to be more protective of where they put themselves.”

By Fahad Mian

Oshkosh West Index

January 30 2023