Idaho killer left behind ‘catastrophic’ evidence that fast-tracked his capture, investigators reveal

FIRST ON FOX: DENVER — Genetic genealogists working on the University of Idaho student murders case found “hundreds of times” more DNA than a typical case as they raced to solve the quadruple stabbing, which rocked the college town of Moscow, Idaho, as well as the nation as a whole.

“It was a catastrophic deal,” said David Mittelman, the Othram founder and CEO whose work generated leads that helped authorities track Kohberger from a DNA sample he left on a Ka-Bar knife sheath discarded at the crime scene. “That’s why the defense didn’t want to talk about it.”

Not only did police recover plenty of DNA to work with, it allowed Othram’s investigators to hone in on Kohberger’s family tree almost immediately. 

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Speaking with Fox News Digital at CrimeCon’s 2025 conference in Denver, Mittelman said that while their early leads didn’t include his identity, the DNA showed that the sample came from a “multigenerational” American family mixed with Italian ancestry. 

The genetic genealogy pointed to a multigenerational Pennsylvania family that intersected with Italian heritage only twice.

It was more than “trace” DNA, too.

“The DNA evidence was amazing,” David Mittleman said. “There was tons of DNA by the way…I don’t know why it’s been reported It was traced DNA. It was not. It was tons of DNA.”

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Not only that, but it was also of high caliber, he added.

“There was certainty in the quality of the DNA, there was certainty in the analysis, and there was certainty that there was more than enough information in that [family] tree to get to a person,” he said. 

Separately, police had identified a suspect vehicle — a white Hyundai Elantra just like the one Kohberger drove. He was from Pennsylvania but was attending Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, at the time of the murders. That’s just 10 miles from the crime scene.

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While police did not find a murder weapon, they did find a Ka-Bar knife sheath next to Madison Mogen, 21, one of the four victims. After they identified Kohberger as a suspect, they got a search warrant for his Amazon activity and discovered that he purchased a Ka-Bar knife, with sheath and sharpening, on the shopping app.

The other victims were Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.

They were killed on Nov. 13, 2022. Othram received the DNA sample on Thanksgiving and worked through the holiday, generating a DNA profile within 48 hours. On Dec. 19, the FBI sent Moscow police Kohberger’s name. On Dec. 30, police shocked the world when they announced an arrest in the case after a raid on Kohberger’s parents’ house in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.

Detectives on the case told reporters after Kohberger’s guilty plea that without the DNA evidence, they believe they would have eventually found him by examining thousands of leads regarding Hyundai Elantras.

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It’s unclear how long that would have taken.

Although police recovered an ample sample from the snap on the sheath, Kohberger’s DNA wasn’t in the government’s Combined DNA Index System, known as CODIS, because he hadn’t been implicated in any prior crimes.

The investigative genetic genealogy helped investigators find him with the sample anyway. And it turned out to be a key part of their case. Jeff Nye, chief of the criminal division at the Idaho Attorney General’s Office who was tasked with arguing in court against Kohberger’s attempt to have the evidence tossed, told Fox News Digital last month that “everything hinged” on his performance in court that day.

He won. After Kohberger’s defense failed to have the DNA evidence tossed, he entered a surprise guilty plea in early July in order to avoid the potential death penalty.

Kristen Mittelman, Othram’s chief development officer, believes that the genealogy techniques should be applied to more cases. 

“We are advocating with the families to change that, to make sure that people have access to this real time so that people like Kohberger are caught before they commit that next crime,” she told Fox News Digital. “I’m certain that there’s someone at Thanksgiving with their family this year, last year, they wouldn’t be if Bryan Kohberger wasn’t caught in real time.”

Kohberger is serving four consecutive life sentences, plus another 10 years. He waived his right to appeal and to seek a future sentence reduction under Idaho law.