Bryan Kohberger Could Be Linked to Other Unsolved Murders—Ex-FBI Agent

Police will “meticulously” examine whether the man charged in connection with the slayings of four University of Idaho students could be linked to other unsolved crimes, a former FBI agent told Newsweek.

Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, was arrested at his parents’ home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, on Friday, authorities said.

Kohberger was taken into custody almost seven weeks after the students—Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin—were found stabbed to death in a rental house in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13.

Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said investigators believe Kohberger broke into the students’ home in the early hours intending to commit murder.

Many details, including what led investigators to Kohberger as a suspect and a possible motive, haven’t yet been revealed. Citing Idaho law, authorities have said the affidavit for four charges of first-degree murder will remain sealed until Kohberger is returned to Idaho. His attorney has said won’t fight extradition at a hearing in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and that he “is eager to be exonerated.”

Jennifer Coffindaffer, a former FBI agent, told Newsweek that she believes investigators must have “very strong evidence” tying Kohberger to the murders.

“We obviously know they have at least that threshold of probable cause met because a judge has signed off,” she said. “But I think beyond that, they have very strong evidence.”

The case has been “very highly publicized,” she added, and law enforcement would not have made an arrest and charged someone if they were not “completely in belief that this was the person who committed this crime.”

Coffindaffer said it’s “very plausible” that the murder of the four students wasn’t committed by a first-time offender.

“I do think it would be rare that he would try to commit four murders and maybe possibly even was thinking about committing six,” she said, noting that two roommates in the house survived the attack that night.

“If this was his first time to kill four people, that would be very unusual in the trends of… a fledgling serial killer.”

She said law enforcement agencies in places that Kohberger has lived will be “meticulously” looking into whether he could be linked to unsolved crimes and cold cases in those areas.

“I would believe that law enforcement is going to be searching the areas in and around where he lived, so we’re talking Pennsylvania now,” she said.

Prior to arriving in Pullman for his first semester at Washington State University, just across the Idaho-Washington border from Moscow, Kohberger received a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania’s DeSales University in 2020 and finished his graduate studies there in June 2022.

Law enforcement “should be looking at all cold cases with a similar modus operandi” to the slaying of the students, she said—crimes where a knife was used, where the offender entered a house late at night and where the victims were women.

“That would be his MO. That is seldom changed,” she added.

Newsweek has contacted law enforcement agencies in Idaho, Washington and Pennsylvania and the FBI for comment.