MURDER SUSPECT DECLINES TO ENTER PLEA

The man accused of murdering four college students during a predawn intrusion at their house near the University of Idaho declined to enter a plea to the charges Monday, electing to “stand silent” during the first step in what promises to be a lengthy legal process.

Judge John C. Judge said he would enter a not-guilty plea for the defendant, Bryan Kohberger, after Kohberger’s lawyer, Anne Taylor, said her client had elected not to enter any plea at this stage.

A trial was set to begin in October in Moscow, the quiet Idaho college town that had not recorded a murder in the seven years before the four students were killed Nov. 13.

Investigators have said that they linked Kohberger to the killings with the help of DNA found on a knife sheath at the crime scene, as well as through surveillance video that showed a car similar to his near the house around the time of the killings.

At that time, Kohberger was studying for a doctorate in criminology at Washington State University, a few miles across the state border from the University of Idaho campus. Prosecutors have not disclosed any prior connections between him and any of the four victims — Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.

In the hours before the killings, Mogen and Goncalves were at a bar, and they stopped at a food truck before going home. Kernodle and Chapin were at a party.

Investigators said that the victims and two other people who lived in the house were home by 2 a.m. Nov. 13. After that, investigators have said, surveillance video showed a white car appearing next to the house. Kohberger drove a white Hyundai Elantra.

Authorities said Kohberger’s cellphone was moving through the region in the early morning hours, but was disconnected from cell networks — perhaps it had been turned off, they said — during a two-hour period around the time of the killings.

Investigators spent weeks looking for a suspect in the case. Eventually, they learned that DNA they had found on the knife sheath was related to DNA they found at Kohberger’s family home in Pennsylvania, where Kohberger had gone in early December at the end of the fall semester.

Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30.

ZACH WILKINSON THE MOSCOW-PULLMAN DAILY NEWS VIA AP Prosecutor Bill Thompson speaks with public defender Anne Taylor during Monday’s arraignment hearing in Moscow, Idaho, for Bryan Kohberger, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students.