Bryan Kohberger's Defense Team May Be Cut Off From His Family

An attorney for Bryan Kohberger, who faces quadruple murder charges in the deaths of four Idaho college students, argued that it's vital for the defense's case to maintain contact with his extended family.

The 29-year-old is charged with four counts of murder and one count of burglary in the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. The students were found fatally stabbed in an off-campus rental home in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022.

Kohberger appeared in court Wednesday for a motions hearing before Judge John Judge, which was streamed live and open to the public.

During the hearing, one of Kohberger's lawyers, Anne Taylor, was seeking permission for the defense's criminal investigators to keep talking to the defendant's extended family. The attorney said that the defense team needed access to find out more about how Kohberger's name landed on the suspect list.

Newsweek reached out via email on Wednesday night to Taylor for comment.

Taylor last month had asked to move the trial out of Latah County, Idaho, where the killings occurred.

In the motion filed on January 31 seeking to change the trial venue, Taylor argued that a fair and impartial jury cannot be found in Latah County due to the "extensive, inflammatory pretrial publicity, allegations made about Mr. Kohberger to the public by media that will be inadmissible at his trial, the small size of the community, the salacious nature of the alleged crimes, and the severity of the charges."

During the hearing, she also made the case in person before Judge, who ultimately did not make a decision on Wednesday.

Taylor had also asked for access to investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) materials related to the case, which included defense investigators' ability to reach out to Kohberger's family. Latah County deputy prosecutor Ashley Jennings called the materials "highly sensitive information."

Taylor noted that Kohberger's legal team was not seeking access or permission to contact the family for the mitigation investigator but rather their criminal investigators.

Judge asked for some "justification" for why the defense team needed the IGG materials.

"What I'm asking is that I have some justification for making contact with certain families that may have no bearing whatsoever on the case," Judge said.

Taylor argued that having access to extended family members was a crucial bit of information for the defense team. She said that the defense's criminal investigators help Kohberger's attorneys put a timeline together "to understand different things that were happening in the case before Bryan's name was ever spoken by anybody."

"We're missing that big piece about why was Bryan's name spoken and how, and how does that connect to the other pieces that we have," she said. "That's what our criminal investigators are going to do."

Jennings said that she believed the defense didn't need total access to the materials.

Judge said that he had gone through all of the information relating to the case and was not ready to grant full access to sealed documents.

"I'm not quite ready to be convinced, that without getting this information from the experts, that we can find some pathway that's going to be helpful to Mr. Kohberger," the judge said.

While both the defense and prosecutors shared potential trial dates during the hearing, the official date was not determined on Wednesday. Kohberger previously waived his right to a speedy trial.

At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a graduate student studying criminology at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington. He was arrested at his parents' home in Pennsylvania in December 2022 after an investigation uncovered DNA evidence, cellphone data and surveillance video, which authorities say linked him to the crime.

The judge entered not-guilty pleas on Kohberger's behalf last year. Prosecutors said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.