Investigators collected an enormous amount of biological evidence from 1122 King Road because the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin left behind an exceptionally complicated crime scene. The most consequential DNA evidence was recovered from the tan leather knife sheath found on the bed beside Mogen and Goncalves. A swab from the sheath’s button snap produced a single-source male DNA profile that investigators ultimately matched directly to Bryan Kohberger after his arrest. Before that direct comparison, the FBI used investigative genetic genealogy to develop Kohberger as a lead, and investigators later compared the sheath profile with DNA recovered from trash outside his parents’ Pennsylvania home. Additional testing of the sheath produced mixtures involving multiple people, including DNA from Goncalves and Mogen in blood found on the sheath, while several other areas contained DNA in quantities too small for meaningful comparison.
The house also contained DNA that did not belong to Kohberger or the four victims, and that evidence became an important subject for the defense. Investigators found an unidentified male blood profile on a handrail inside the house and another unidentified male blood sample on a glove discovered outside the residence. Earlier defense filings referred more broadly to unidentified male DNA recovered from the crime scene and argued that investigators had not subjected those profiles to the same type of genetic-genealogy investigation used on the sheath DNA. Prosecutors responded that the unidentified samples did not meet the FBI’s criteria for entry into CODIS and maintained that none of them undermined the evidence linking Kohberger to the sheath. The DNA picture at King Road was therefore much more complicated than the shorthand description of “Kohberger’s DNA at the scene”: investigators processed a house saturated with victim blood, mixed profiles, trace material and unidentified DNA, but the prosecution’s central forensic claim remained that Kohberger’s DNA was found on the snap of a knife sheath lying beside two of the murdered women.
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