A forensic team analyzing his phone revealed that Brian Coberger reacted swiftly in panic after reading a news article identifying a white Hyundai Elantra as a suspect vehicle in the murder of an Idaho student.
“He registered it to park there, so, you know, I think the car was a major source of stress for him,” said Jared Burnhardt, who works alongside his wife Heather at Celebrity, a digital forensics firm. “He even downloaded a PDF listing university Hyundai Elantras. It’s like a long list of cars.”
Coberger was a student at Washington State University, located just 10 miles from the scene of the crime, and he had been driving in the area of both campuses weeks before the incident.
Burnhardt indicated that the car remained on Coberger’s mind right up until hours before his arrest.
“If you’re innocent, I wouldn’t worry, but he was clearly agitated, thinking the police were closing in on him,” he told Fox News Digital. “And, well, they were at that point.”
Data from his phone revealed that late on December 29, 2022, Coberger conducted several searches:
- He searched for terms like “eavesdropping” and “psychopathic fantasy.”
- He read an article discussing police efforts to find suspicious vehicles.
- He visited the Moscow Police Station’s website to check the latest press releases on the situation.
- He quickly searched for an auto detail shop.
- And within ten minutes, he was online shopping for another car.
“You can feel the pressure; within 15 minutes, he’s trying to clean it up and get rid of it,” Burnhardt commented. “It’s just not normal.”
At around 1:30 AM on December 30, police swarmed Coberger’s parents’ home and arrested him.
They discovered a Ka-Bar sheath containing Coberger’s DNA at the crime scene. Utilizing advanced investigative genetics technology alongside the FBI, they managed to trace him back to his parents’ home in the Poconos.
Detectives emphasized that they tracked down Coberger by following leads related to a suspicious vehicle captured on surveillance cameras near the crime scene, even without initially having the sheath.
Last month, Coberger pleaded guilty to the murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Zana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, after his lawyers were unable to convince a judge to dismiss crucial evidence or remove the death penalty from consideration.
It is believed that everyone except Kernodle was asleep when the home invasion occurred around 4 AM.
He was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 10 years.
