Accused murderer Bryan Kohberger can have deliberately left a knife sheath found at the house where 4 University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in an try and mislead investigators, in response to a criminal profiler.
“For those who took a pistol out of your holster, wouldn’t you set it back in?” John Kelly, a psychotherapist who has interviewed serial killers, said on Fox News Tuesday. “I don’t know anybody who wouldn’t, and if I went fishing and needed to take my knife out, I might put it back within the sheath.”
Kohberger, who was known to be obsessive over his strict vegan food plan, likely hid the bloody knife somewhere it couldn’t contaminate his clothes or his automotive, Kelly said. The murder weapon has still not been found months after the Nov. 13 killings.
“You’re such a clean vegan who’s obsessive-compulsive about what you eat and the whole lot else, just the hygiene of carrying a bloody knife around, wearing it somewhere in your person as you get out of the home,” Kelly said.
Kelly noted that certainly one of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, didn’t mention a knife or other weapons when she said she encountered a masked “figure clad in black clothing,” with “bushy eyebrows” leaving the house through a sliding glass within the moments after the slayings, in response to the affidavit.
“The girl didn’t say anything about seeing a knife,” Kelly said. “Did he put it in his clothes somewhere and have blood throughout?”
The sheath — which was present in bed with two of the 4 victims — might have been left behind purposefully after it was thoroughly wiped down, Kelly said.
Nonetheless, police did discover Kohberger’s DNA on the button strap of the sheath with DNA taken from trash at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested in December, police said within the affidavit.
Kelly believes Kohberger left the brown leather sheath, which has “Ka-Bar,” “USMC” and the US Marine Corps eagle globe and anchor insignia, to point blame toward someone within the military.
“That is staging 101,” he told Fox News. “They’re gonna have a look at this, they usually’re gonna think it’s a military guy that did this. Some guy with some type of training who lives up the road.”
“He can have thought this was the proper ruse, again he’s no genius, his ruse and staging set him as much as get caught,” Kelly added.
His belief that he could misguide investigators could explain why Kohberger is rumored to have asked police, “Who else did you arrest,” when he was being taken into custody, in response to Kelly.
“I feel he needed to consider that that was gonna cause them to someone, some direction, with the sheath there,” he said.
Kohberger is accused of sneaking into the scholars’ off-campus rental home in Moscow around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13 and killing Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves,21, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20 while a few of them were sleeping, in response to police.
Kohberger, who was a criminal justice Ph.D. student at Washington State University just 7 miles away from the murder scene, is charged with 4 counts of first-degree murder and a felony burglary charge.
If convicted, he could face life in prison.
