Bryan Kohberger had no connection to his four Idaho victims: investigators

Bryan Kohberger had no apparent real-world or online connection to any of his four University of Idaho victims, investigators revealed after his sentencing Wednesday.

“We have never, to this day, found a single connection between him and any of the four victims or the two surviving roommates,” Idaho State Police Lt. Darren Gilbertson said during a news conference after the hearing.

“We had every resource possible and we worked that tirelessly,” he said.

Since Kohberger’s arrest a month after the November 2022 murders, theories have abounded about why he might have targeted his victims, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20.

One theory suggested he dined at a local restaurant where Mogen and Kernodle worked and developed a crush on one of them – though the restaurant owner later refuted those claims, and said Kohberger never set foot inside.

Other accounts claimed Kohberger repeatedly messaged one of his victims on social media before the murders, but that she never responded – and that Kohberger might have become enraged over it.

But investigators clarified Wednesday that zero social media connections between Kohberger and his victims had ever been found.

They also dispelled rumors that Kohberger discussed the case in Facebook groups prior to his arrest under the name “Pappa Rodger,” telling reporters they determined that was not in fact him.

That user appeared to be intimately familiar with the case, and was arguing with commenters in what were described by group administrators as “creepy” posts.

“Of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife. This leads me to believe they found the sheath,” read one post, accurately predicting that a fixed-blade knife sheath had been found at the scene of the crime.

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It also remains unclear who — if anyone in particular at all — Kohberger was targeting in the attack, authorities added.

Mogen has been particularly highlighted as a possible target by sleuths, including writers Vicky Ward and James Patterson, who posited in their recent book “The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy” that Kohberger may have wanted to kill her to emulate the infamous incel Elliot Rodger.

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Rodger – who identified as an “involuntary celibate” – despised women and murdered six people because he was rejected by a blonde sorority girl named Maddy, and “The Idaho Four” suggested Kohberger may have idolized the killer and found his own Maddie to hate.

“It was her room he went straight to. And it’s her room you could see from the road if you parked your car at the cul-de-sac behind the King Road house, which the police believe he did multiple times,” Ward wrote.

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Kohberger provided no explanation for the killing when given the opportunity to speak during his sentencing.

“I respectfully decline,” was all he said throughout the four-hour hearing.

He was then sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, according to the arrangements of a guilty plea deal he struck earlier in July.