Bryan Kohberger panicked after realizing police were looking for his white Hyundai Elantra in the weeks following the brutal murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20 and Madison Mogen, 21, on November 13, 2022, according to the forensic team that reviewed his phone records.
“He was scrambling,” Jared Barnhart, who analyzed the records as part of his work at Cellebrite, a digital forensics firm, told Fox News Digital.
After reading an article that police were looking for his vehicle in connection with the slayings on December, 29 2022, Kohberger searched for the phrases “psychopaths paranoid” and “wiretap” on his phone.
He also read a press release about the case on the Moscow, Idaho, police department website and “immediately” looked up an auto detailing shop.
Within 10 minutes, Barnhart told the outlet, the 30-year-old killer was shopping for a new car online.
That August, Kohberger had been pulled over for speeding on the highway between Pullman, Washington, where he was a criminology graduate student at the Washington State University, and Moscow, Idaho, where the killings took place. A Latah County Sheriff’s Office deputy let him go with a warning but cited for not wearing his seatbelt.
Police made the connection because security cameras had caught the Elantra passing by the scene of the crime three times, and speeding away at 4:20 that morning, shortly after they believe the last victim, Kernodle, was stabbed to death.
“He thought the police were onto him” Barnhart told Fox News Digital. “And they were at that point.”
Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ house in eastern Pennsylvania on December 30. He is now serving four consecutive life sentences at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.
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