Tag: Kaylee Goncalves

When authorities named a criminology student at Washington State University as a suspect in the murders of four University of Idaho students, the internet went wild with speculation.

Could Bryan C. Kohberger’s academic background have played a role in the crimes he is accused of committing? Some speculated he could have been trying to collect data and firsthand experience for his Ph.D. dissertation. Others pointed to prior examples of serial killers with criminal-justice degrees.

But several experts in criminal justice, forensics, and sociology told The Chronicle that it’s unlikely Kohberger might have learned how to commit a high-profile crime while studying criminology. Nor is it likely that the field is attracting would-be criminals, they said.

Kohberger is facing four first-degree murder charges for the deaths of Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21. The four University of Idaho undergraduates were stabbed to death in an off-campus house on November 13. The University of Idaho’s campus in Moscow, Idaho, is less than 10 miles away from Washington State’s campus in Pullman, Wash.

“In my career, I never had an undergraduate or graduate student who was studying criminology to commit crimes,” said Steven E. Barkan, a retired professor of sociology at the University of Maine. “Actually, students took my courses because they wanted to prevent and reduce crime.”

Barkan said that criminology graduate students tend to pursue careers as professors or researchers. Meanwhile, those at the master’s level tend to become practitioners, such as probation officers.

“There is no evidence that criminology students want to learn to commit crimes themselves. In fact, most people who commit conventional crimes don’t go to college,” Barkan said. States that have higher levels of college-educated people tend to have lower crime rates than the national average, according to the Justice Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington, D.C., that focuses on criminal justice.

In a 2021 study published in the British Society of Criminology, the researchers Julie Trebilcock and Clare Griffiths found that helping others by preventing crimes is one of the three main motivations for students pursuing a criminology degree. None of the motivations found by the researchers were about committing crimes.

Chris D. Bertram, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Salt Lake Community College who has over 25 years of law-enforcement experience, said that Kohberger’s case is unique, and that the vast majority of criminal-justice majors aren’t looking to become criminals. He also said that learning criminology in an academic setting doesn’t necessarily mean one would know how to commit homicide without leaving evidence behind.

“[Kohberger] had a good academic background in criminal justice, but he didn’t have the operational background,” Bertram said. “If you’re simply taking classes, reading Wikipedia, Googling things, you’re going to learn something, but you’re not going to know everything that is out there, including technology and higher-end law-enforcement investigative services.”

“He may have considered the fact that the Moscow police department was small and didn’t have the capacities that some of the larger departments have, not realizing that the chief of police would call the FBI immediately to help with this investigation,” Bertram said. The Moscow police department has about 30 officers and has never had to investigate a crime of this magnitude before.

Joseph L. Giacalone, an adjunct professor of law, police science, and criminal-justice administration at the City University of New York John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said that it’s rare that criminology students commit crimes. “I don’t see this as a problem for the course of study,” he said.

He said that those who carry out horrific crimes could have studied any academic discipline. “The potential of a student committing a financial crime doesn’t stop our economics classes from teaching pyramid schemes. We’ve also seen nurses who became serial killers themselves,” Giacalone said, referring to four Austrian nurses known as “angels of death” who killed at least 49 people in the 1980s.

According to a 2009 survey, only one in five American colleges reported that they run criminal background checks on applicants, regardless of program of study. The Chronicle asked over a dozen criminology programs at colleges across the country whether they collected data on students’ criminal backgrounds. The two that responded do not collect information on criminal backgrounds outside of self-disclosure.

Giacalone said that some of Kohberger’s actions could be attributed to him having some knowledge about how evidence is left behind. “He did try to shut his cell phone off. He was wearing a mask — I doubt he was worried about Covid. He was probably worried about spitting and DNA,” he said. “But he didn’t wear gloves, for example. For somebody who has been studying this, he makes a lot of mistakes.”

Joseph Scott Morgan, an associate professor of applied forensics at Jacksonville State University, in Alabama, said that many in the media and on social media aren’t aware of the differences between criminology and forensic science as separate fields of study. While criminology focuses on sociological and psychological aspects of crime, forensic science is the application of traditional sciences in order to examine crime scenes.

“Many are assuming he’s some kind of criminal mastermind that would be able to ‘cover his tracks.’ I doubt he had any kind of substantial forensic training,” Morgan said. “There’s no such a thing as a perfect crime. Any time a human is introduced, there’s potential for them to miss something. It’s unpredictable.”

“There isn’t enough data to create a picture of his rationales,” Morgan said. “Jumping into conclusions doesn’t help anybody involved.”

Kohberger’s first court appearance in Idaho was on January 5. He has been denied bail, and his next court appearance is set for January 12.

Sylvia Goodman contributed to this reporting.

Surveillance-video footage from Washington State University was critical in identifying a Ph.D. student as a suspect in the murders of four University of Idaho students, a court document revealed on Thursday.

Bryan C. Kohberger was studying criminology at WSU, located less than 10 miles from the Moscow, Idaho, home where the Idaho students were killed on November 13. The 28-year-old was arrested on December 30 and is facing four first-degree murder charges for the deaths of Ethan Chapin, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Madison Mogen, 21.

A probable-cause affidavit made public on Thursday details how investigators used security-camera footage from the suspect’s university and elsewhere, along with cellphone data, DNA evidence, and eyewitness accounts, to tie Kohberger to the murders.

The affidavit, written by Cpl. Brett Payne of the Moscow Police Department, reveals that one of the two surviving housemates of the victims saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her” the morning of the murder.

The housemate, identified in the affidavit as D.M., told the police that she was awakened at around 4 a.m. by what sounded like Goncalves playing with her dog, and that a short time later she heard Goncalves saying, “There’s someone here.” D.M. opened her bedroom door, the affidavit said, but didn’t see anyone. After that, she heard crying coming from Kernodle’s room and a male voice saying, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.” D.M. opened her door again, and that’s when she saw the black-clad figure, who then walked toward the back sliding-glass door and left. D.M. said she froze in shock and then locked herself in her room, according to the affidavit.

The police were not called to the house until almost noon that day. The affidavit did not say why D.M. did not contact law enforcement earlier.

The person D.M. saw was a man at least 5-feet-10-inches tall, “not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows” — a description that would later match the suspect investigators tracked down through video footage from businesses and residences around the Moscow neighborhood and from Washington State University.

The footage showed a white Hyundai Elantra driving by the victims’ residence three times in the early morning hours of November 13. The vehicle returned a fourth time at about 4:04 a.m., and was seen leaving the neighborhood at 4:20 a.m. “at a high rate of speed.”

After the Moscow police asked local law-enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for the car, Daniel Tiengo, a Washington State University police officer, searched records for white Elantras registered with the institution and found one in Kohberger’s name. Investigators used WSU security footage to track the suspect’s movements between the residence in Moscow, and WSU’s campus in Pullman, Wash.

Investigators also obtained cellular data that suggest Kohberger had been near the Moscow residence at least a dozen times in the months leading up to the murders, and that his phone was turned off or on airplane mode the morning of the murders. The device’s movements at other times were consistent with the movements of the white Hyundai Elantra, the affidavit said.

In December, as the University of Idaho community mourned the loss of Chapin, Goncalves, Kernodle, and Mogen, Kohberger drove with his father from Washington to Pennsylvania, where his family lives. They were stopped by local police officers in Indiana for tailgating.

Later that month, after having mapped the car’s movements and its match with a cellular device under Kohberger’s name, investigators used trash left outside Kohberger’s family home to collect DNA, and compared it to a tan leather knife sheath left at the murder scene. The DNA profile obtained from the trash matched DNA obtained from the knife sheath.

Kohberger agreed to be extradited to Idaho on Wednesday. He appeared in an Idaho court for the first time on Thursday, minutes after the affidavit was released.

The affidavit reveals that Kohberger has undergraduate degrees in psychology and cloud-based forensics, and that he had applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in the fall of 2022. “Kohberger wrote in his essay he had interest in assisting rural law-enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations,” Corporal Payne wrote.

The affidavit also notes that Kohberger had posted a research survey on Reddit seeking to “understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision making when committing a crime.” He wrote that the study was approved by the internal review board at DeSales University, where he earned bachelor’s and graduate degrees.

In an email to the Washington State University community on Tuesday, the chancellor, Elizabeth S. Chilton, referred to Kohberger as a “former” graduate student and encouraged the community to cooperate with law enforcement in the investigation.

Chilton wrote that a new year and a new semester bring the opportunity for growth, peace, and healing. “I am hopeful that the coming days and weeks will provide all of us with additional answers and information about the nature of this incident,” she wrote. “I want to remind you all to support each other, be kind, and take time for yourself.”

Officials at the University of Idaho did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.