Judge approves new lawyer for Bryan Kohberger in Idaho murder trial
A judge approved Bryan Kohberger’s request for a new lawyer in his attempt to secure a new trial, despite his previous guilty plea for murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022. Legal analyst Mehek Cooke discusses the high bar for overturning a guilty plea, while the victim’s family expresses the pain of reliving the tragedy.
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Admitted Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger should get a new trial and face the death penalty, according to a digital forensics expert hired by the defense who says investigators missed damning evidence against the 30-year-old former criminology PhD student — although his own expert report for the case appears to contradict some of the claims.
Sy Ray is a former Arizona homicide investigator who is now an expert on digital forensics, geolocation and similar data. Kohberger’s lawyers hired him as an expert witness for the defense before Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty for the home invasion murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, also 20.
Kohberger, now serving four consecutive sentences of life in prison without parole, petitioned the court last week to withdraw his guilty plea and seek post-conviction relief, which could send the case to trial — and put the potential death penalty back in play.
Families of Idaho murder victims file wrongful death lawsuit against Washington State University, alleging the school ignored 13 reports about Bryan Kohberger. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool; Instagram)
“Bring back the death penalty,” Ray told journalist Brian Entin in a new podcast. “I am all for this.”
He said he is confident that Kohberger would be convicted and claimed that Kohberger’s smartphone data is much more incriminating than was revealed previously when police and the courts unsealed thousands of pages of evidence in the case.
“I 100% believe that the offender, who is Bryan Kohberger — there’s no alternative theory in my head at this point,” Ray said in the 82-minute episode, which also included Goncalves’ parents, Kristi and Steve, and her older sister, Alivea. “I 100% believe he’s been in the house before.”
A watchman parked outside 1122 King Road on Dec. 11, 2022, four weeks after four students were stabbed to death inside. (Michael Ruiz/Fox News Digital)
Ray has not responded to attempts to reach him or shared details of his recent claims with Fox News Digital.
Ray claimed that the evidence he reviewed shows Kohberger potentially inside the victims’ home, and at other places when they were present prior to the murders — something that both contradicts his own expert report from January 2025 and that even prosecutors haven’t publicly alleged.
“If you look at those precise measurements, there’s probably five that land directly on what would be the living room of the house,” Ray told Entin. “Like the latitude-longitude is the physical house itself, and if you put the house back on the map, and you map those, the hits are inside the house.”
Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty for the home invasion murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. (Instagram @xanakernodle / @maddiemogen / @kayleegoncalves)
“I just want to make sure I understand correctly… because I haven’t heard this before — so you’re saying, based on the data you saw, the latitude-longitude for Bryan Kohberger’s Samsung was in the living room?” Entin asked.
“The AT&T-derived latitude-longitude from the AT&T’s network that it estimates a location, it lands in the house — and it’s a 25-meter range, so we’re talking 75 feet, so it could be anywhere in the house on any floor,” Ray said. “It could technically be outside the house, it could [be] on the property, but it’s showing in the immediate area. My personal opinion is when I look at those, and I map what’s happening before and after and I’m looking at all the other evidence. I think these are accurate locations.”
That runs contrary to the expert report under his name included in a defense filing from Jan. 23, 2025.
“It is my opinion that the geolocation data I have been provided as of the writing this report does not provide any evidence of association between Mr. Kohberger and any of the decedents and/or Mr. Kohberger’s or decedent’s residence,” he wrote.
Still, Ray told the podcast his theory is that Mogen was Kohberger’s primary target due to the number of times he could trace their phones to similar locations.
Madison Mogen, 21, was one of four University of Idaho students killed in a home invasion attack at their off-campus rental in November 2022. (Jessie Frost Photography)
“I believe Maddie was the target,” he said, adding that repeated “collisions” between their phones placed them in roughly the same area at the same time, including at a Pullman party the first week of school and at the A&W store near the King Road crime scene.
He also flagged what he described as Kohberger’s broader “pattern of life,” pointing to evidence of stalking before the murders.
That also contradicts his report.
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“I am unable to locate any period of time between June 23, 2022 and November 13, 2022 where Mr. Kohberger’s mobile device is in the same specific area as any of the deceased’s mobile devices,” he wrote.
The discrepancy raised red flags for some experts who have been following the case, including Morgan Wright, the CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases and the host of “Crime: Reconstructed.”
Bryan Christopher Kohberger is seen in a booking photo after his arrest on Dec. 30, 2022, in Pennsylvania. (Monroe County Correctional Facility via Getty Images)
That pattern of life was also broken on the night of the murders, when Ray said he believes the plan to target Mogen went awry and resulted in him fleeing south, where he’d never driven before.
While prosecutors alleged that Kohberger had visited the crime scene a dozen times before the murders and at least once the morning after, they have not pointed to “collisions” with any of the victims the way Ray described in the podcast. In a news briefing after Kohberger’s guilty plea, the case’s lead investigators said they didn’t know who the target was.
“The evidence suggested that there was a reason that this particular house was chosen,” said then-Moscow Police Cpl. Brett Payne. “What that reason is, we don’t know. We don’t know who the target was, and we’re not going to speculate on that up here today. But we can tell you that, for whatever reason, Mr. Kohberger chose that residence. Perhaps it’s the location, layout, we do not know.”
And when they were asked by Fox News Digital if they had a motive, lead investigators replied, “We don’t.”
Cpl. Brett Payne of the Moscow Police Department, left, and Lt. Darren Gilbertson of the Idaho State Police speak to the media during a press conference at the Ada County Courthouse after the sentencing of Bryan Kohberger, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Kyle Green, Pool)
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On Entin’s podcast, Ray alleged that they missed the evidence.
“They didn’t even look at it,” Ray said of the stalking evidence. “It’s incredible to me.”
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However, in Ray’s report, he wrote that he “can find no evidence of stalking behavior or surveillance at the King Road Residence,” Wright noted.
“This is the sharpest contradiction,” Wright told Fox News Digital. “The state’s search warrant sought records specifically to determine whether Kohberger ‘stalked’ any victim or ‘conducted surveillance on the King Road Residence.'”
After Kohberger’s guilty plea, Ray said he offered to do a debrief with the FBI to show the evidence he said he found and they missed. He said he got no response, but added that he has presented before hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country going back to November, he said.
Idaho State Correctional Complex in Kuna, Idaho, where Bryan Kohberber is being housed, on July 22, 2025. (Derek Shook for Fox News Digital)
Last week, Kohberger filed a petition for post-conviction relief, claiming he had ineffective counsel from his defense team.
Ray also speculated that Kohberger’s post-conviction petition was part of a broader legal strategy by his lead defense attorney Anne Taylor despite the plea agreement’s waiver of most appeal rights.
Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.
“This can never be the standard investigation that we see in cases,” Ray said. “This can never be acceptable.”
Bryan Kohberger sits with Anne Taylor, one of his attorneys, during a hearing in Latah County District Court, Sept. 13, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool)
However, he said he’s confident Kohberger would be convicted anyway at trial — if investigators introduced the evidence he found while working with Taylor.
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“The time is now to start this investigation over,” Ray said.
Kohberger had followed other people in the Moscow-Pullman area, he said — a pair of college towns on the border of Washington and Idaho.
“I think he had multiple targets throughout the entire Moscow-Pullman area,” Ray said. “Location information and pattern of life is by far the most telling.”
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Ray said he has no doubt that Kohberger committed the murders.
“If he ever does walk, he will kill again,” he said.
