Bryan Kohberger searched for a number of serial killers after the 2022 murders, but appeared to have had a particular fascination with college killer Danny Rolling
Bryan Kohberger spent Christmas Day with his family in 2022, enjoying what he did not know at the time would be his final days of freedom.
As many went to sleep after a day of food and family and presents, Kohberger pulled out his phone and began downloading information on serial killers.
Not one serial killer, or two, or even a general search of the term “serial killer.”
Instead, Bryan Kohberger downloaded information on more than 20 specific serial killers, a task that carried him well past midnight and into the early hours of the following day, digital forensics expert Heather Barnhart tells PEOPLE.
Barnhart, a SANS Institute Fellow and the Senior Director of Forensic Research for Cellebrite, was brought on by the Latah County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office to assist in the case by searching Kohberger’s cell phone and hard drive for any clues.
There was little left on those devices by the time Barnhart got them, but she and her team did manage to find a trove of downloads from that day thanks to Kohberger making one mistake.
“People think if they download things while their browser is in incognito mode it stays private, but it does not,” Barnhart explains.
Kohberger did seem to know that and cleared his desktop and hard drive of downloads, Barnhart says, but he forgot to clear his Android.
That is how she discovered he downloaded information on: Betty Lou Beets, Randy Kraft, William Lee, Cody Neal, Danny Rolling, Joel Rifkin, Ted Bundy, Altemio Sanchez, Glen Rogers, Cary Stayner, John Wayne Gacy, Harvey Glatman, Paul Bernardo, Rodney Alcala, Robert Hansen, Gary Ridgeway, David Parker Ray, Cleophus Prince, Ed Kemper and Dennis Rader.
Barnhart notes that Kohberger had previously downloaded information about Danny Rolling on Nov. 19, a week after the murders.
The Idaho murders are almost copycat killings of the ones carried out by Rolling — also known as “The Gainesville Ripper” — back in 1990.
Rolling killed five college students — four women and one man — by breaking into their homes through sliding glass doors and stabbing them to death with a KA-BAR knife.
Kohberger killed four college students — three women and one man — by breaking into their home through a sliding glass door and stabbing them to death with a KA-BAR knife.
The one difference is that Rolling would sexually assault his victims before or after stabbing them to death. There is no evidence Kohberger sexually assaulted his victims, per prosecutors.
And Rolling, unlike Kohberger, was executed for his crimes.
Barnhart says that Kohberger kept abreast of the case in the weeks after the murders, downloading the Moscow Police Department updates nine times between Nov. 26 and Dec. 28 of 2022.
On Dec. 28, he downloaded four different versions of the update.
Three days later, Pennsylvania State Troopers arrested Kohberger, and soon after that Barnhart was brought on to start examining his cell phone and hard drive.
She has previously leant her expertise on a number of high-profile legal proceedings such as the Crystal Rogers case and Delphi murders, as well as the Osama bin Laden raid.
She says that her team — which on this case included Jared Barnhart, Josh Hickman, Ian Whiffin and Mattia Epifani — was forced to dig deep due to the expertise of Kohberger, a former criminology student who left a very small trail of clues.
Luckily, that included a large number of downloads about a lengthy list of serial killers.
“In the end, everyone makes mistakes,” Barnhart says.
