Bryan Kohberger’s distinctive eyebrows were one of the initial clues that linked him to the grisly Moscow murders, a new report claims.
Investigators assigned to the Nov. 13 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students zeroed in on the Ph.D student as a potential culprit because of his “bushy eyebrows,” Airmail reported.
“[The suspect] wore a mask that covered his mouth and nose. But not his eyes. Or his eyebrows,” author Howard Blum writes, referring to surviving housemate Dylan Mortensen’s description of the man she saw leaving the 1122 King Road home on the night of the murders.
Later, when police identified Kohberger as the potential driver of the 2015 Hyundai Elantra seen speeding away from the crime scene, they were immediately struck by the bushy eyebrows in his license photo.
“He swiftly zeroed in on the eyebrows: they were bushy,” Blum says of the moment Corporal Brett Payne, the lead investigator on the Moscow case, first saw Kohberger’s face.
Kohberger, 28, was subsequently arrested at his parents’ Pennsylvania home on Dec. 30 after a nearly seven-week manhunt.
Now in custody in Idaho, the former criminology doctoral student faces four counts of homicide and one count of felony burglary over the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
The four student pals were murdered in cold blood around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13 last year in their beds as they slept, in a shocking knife attack.
Although Kohberger has been arrested over the murders, few links between himself and the victims have been established. Although he has yet to enter a plea in the slayings, he told a lawyer representing him he is “eager to be exonerated.”
Here’s the latest coverage on the brutal killings of four college friends:
After a brief appearances in Latah County court in January, Kohberger waived his right to a speedy trial and his next hearing is set for June 26.
Blum has also claimed the FBI lost track of Kohberger and his father during their cross-country drive from Pullman, Wash. to Pennsylvania in mid-December as they returned for the holidays.
The FBI, however, has swiftly denounced Blum’s claims, saying: “Publishing of false information attributable to anonymous sources is not helpful to the case against Kohberger or to the American public.”
Although the motive for Kohberger’s alleged crime remains undetermined, Blum appears to agree with some experts’ opinion the murders were driven by toxic obsession and jealousy of the party-loving college students.
“Can you imagine looking at that wild night, all the happy frivolity, from some hideout in the shadows and at the same time knowing deep in your dark heart that you would never be a part of anything that exuberant, that beautiful?” he asks the reader.
“It would be hell.”
