The man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in their off-campus house last fall was arrested for theft almost a decade before the grisly stabbing spree, records show.
Bryan Kohberger, then 19, was charged with misdemeanor theft in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, for allegedly stealing his sister’s iPhone in 2014, ABC News reported.
Kohberger’s father, Michael, alerted police to the alleged theft, court records indicate.
Michael Kohberger told police that his son, who was struggling with a drug addiction at the time, warned him “not to do anything stupid” after making the discovery that he stole the phone.
Kohberger did not serve jail time for the theft, and there is no remaining public record of the case, ABC News said.
Kohberger’s previous criminal record is coming to light as he prepares for a hearing in Latah County court this afternoon.
The Pennsylvania native, now 28, has been in custody without bail since Dec. 30, when he was arrested on suspicion of murdering Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, at their rented home in Moscow on Nov. 13.
He was indicted on four counts of first-degree murder last month, and will go to trial in October.
On Monday, prosecutors announced that they intend to seek the death penalty in the case.
Kohberger’s 2014 arrest could be a point of inquiry for the state as it prepares for the high-profile proceedings, retired senior FBI official and former prosecutor Richard Frankel told ABC.
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“You want to get all the puzzle pieces figured out, even as you keep finding new pieces. You’re working to figure out how they all fit together,” he said of the prosecutors’ process.
“One, that’s a big jump to go from [an alleged] non-violent theft — and from a family member — to being charged with multiple homicides. And two, eight years is a long time for nothing to happen. So, I would want to know, both as a prosecutor and as the investigator, what he did in those years in between?”
Robert Boyce, the retired chief of detectives for the New York City Police Department, added that “What you look for now is, was this a foundational moment, and was this a precursor for things to come.”
Kohberger is expected in court at 4 p.m. ET Tuesday for another pretrial hearing.
In a filing last week, the suspect’s defense team argued that prosecutors must disclose more information about how they identified Kohberger as a person of interest, including the forensic profile that was later allegedly matched to the DNA from the Kohberger family’s trash.
The proceedings on Tuesday are also expected to address the defense’s request for more time to decide whether to offer an alibi at trial, ABC said.
Kohberger had recently left rehab on Feb. 8, 2014, when court records say he took his sister Melissa’s $400 iPhone, the outlet reported.
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He then allegedly paid a friend $20 to drive him to the mall, where he sold the device at a kiosk for $200.
Though it is unclear what consequences —if any —Kohberger may have faced, Monroe County does have a program for first-time offenders that allows charges to be dropped and records effectively expunged, ABC said.
“With any case, [the prosecution would] always do a timeline. And on this case, I would want to do the timeline not just of the actual [alleged homicide] incident, minute by minute — but also I would want to do a behavioral timeline from his teens into his adulthood, because I want to know who this guy is,” Frankel explained of the ongoing case against Kohberger.
“It all goes to the assessment of his character — it may also help me when I interview other people about him, because I may know what the right questions are to ask going in.”
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After Kohberger’s bombshell arrest late last year, former classmates described him as a loner who was bullied in high school and later spun out on heroin.
At the time of the Moscow killings, he was a doctoral student in criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, just 15 minutes from the murder scene.
Prosecutors say that touch DNA from a knife sheath found underneath Mogen’s body was later tied to Kohberger through genealogy, and later presented a statistical match to a cheek swab taken after his arrest.
The defense team, however, has pointed out that there is no DNA evidence tied to any of the four victims in the suspect’s home, office or vehicle.
