Prosecutors say University of Idaho suspect bought a knife on Amazon months before stabbings

Prosecutors said they have evidence that the man charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students bought a knife and knife sheath online in the months before the killings, newly released court documents show.

Prosecutors in Bryan Kohberger’s trial filed a motion asking a judge to allow them to present his Amazon shopping activity as evidence during trial.

They also sought permission to show that a housemate of the victims saw a man with bushy eyebrows wearing a ski mask in the house in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, when killings took place. In a court filing, prosecutors said they would present a photograph of Kohberger taken from his phone hours after the killings and let the jury decide whether he has bushy eyebrows.

Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves. The students were killed in the early morning at a rental home near their school’s campus in Moscow, Idaho.

A judge previously entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf. Kohberger’s trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 11 and expected to last more than three months. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

Prosecutors have said they matched “touch DNA” found on a knife sheath near one of the victims to DNA taken from Kohberger. A defense attorney pushed to have the DNA evidence thrown out, but Judge Steven Hippler denied that request last month.

Court documents filed Monday said the state obtained a search warrant for Kohberger’s Amazon activity pertaining to knives and accessories, his payment methods and details of items he added and removed from his cart.

Prosecutors said that search warrant was narrowly tailored to March 20 to March 30, 2022, the time they said Kohberger was known to have bought a Ka-Bar knife with sheath and sharpener from Amazon, and between Nov. 1 and Dec. 6 that year, dates falling weeks before and after the killings.

In arguing the judge should admit the evidence, prosecutors said Kohberger’s Amazon activity showing the purchase of a Ka-Bar knife and sheath before the homicides made it more probable that the Ka-Bar sheath found at the crime scene was his.

Thousands of pages of court documents have been filed in the complicated case as attorneys on both sides attempt to set the ground rules for what will and won’t be presented to jurors.