When I listened to The Murder Sheet's (podcast) interview with two different defense attorneys, both of those attorneys stressed that a defense can't just throw out theories about what could have happened without evidence to back it up. A judge would shut that down pretty quickly. I am hoping The Murder Sheet will do more episodes on this case and include more of those types of interviews.
4 Univ of Idaho Students Murdered, Bryan Kohberger Arrested, Moscow, Nov 2022 #90
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Yes, if BF had anything exculpatory, she would have spoken up when asked despite PTSD. She went on record from NV.
HER four friends were killed. Unless it's one of those ridiculous conspiracy theories (NOT), she would want the correct person to be held accountable so she too could feel safe and finish her studies. JMOO
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I agree that both roommates deserve public support and even SG stated in one of his interviews that they were victims too.
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I think the defense is using the word "exculpatory" in its own way (mean "COULD raise reasonable doubt in SOMEONE." Not in its legal sense (a good alibi is exculpatory).
Finding a person's DNA on a knife sheath that matches the knife used for the murders is HIGHLY incriminating. Exculpatory means getting rid of the incriminating evidence. After the DNA, the car video evidence is VERY incriminating (but he admits he was out "driving around'). Next would be the phone data, of which we know only a little but is so far VERY incriminating esp. insofar as it shows he was driving round and round the neighborhood, finally making a 3 point turn to pull into the parking area of 1122. Next would the TIME at which he's observed doing this (correspondings with the time DM gives for seeing a masked man and hearing the noises). VERY incriminating. And of course, the sounds from the neighbor's camera support DM's statements - so VERY incriminating.
Those are the things the Defense must find counter to. IMO. Merely finding some blurry aspects in DM's testimony is NOT, IMO, exculpatory. DM would have to recant her entire prior testimony on the stand, IMO. Most reasonable people know how memory works, what it's like to be scared, etc. At best, getting DM to admit she was (at 4 am) inebriated (which I believe she was NOT), could maybe make one or two jurors disregard her whole testimony. But during deliberation, that one issue is not going to lead the entire panel to "exculpatory." If it hangs the jury, it's only because that person doesn't understand the inevitable jury instructions:
By the PREPONDERANCE of the evidence...
The behavior of BK pre- and post- 4-4:30 am is at issue as well and there will be many more witnesses. And GPS data. The GPS data could be the "bombshell." While there is no video of his car right next to 1122, the GPS data may well place him there, unmoving, for 20 minutes. And there could be more (receipts; statements made; post-crime behavior, etc. etc). IOW, the DNA itself loads up the scales of Justice in one direction - and obviously, DM"s testimony will not touch on that at all - and will add a bit more to that side of the scale. Even if she says she had been drinking 3-4 hours earlier, that doesn't change the fact that a footprint with his characteristics was left outside her door, in blood. That too is incriminating - puts another slight weight on the Guilty side of the scale.
IMO
Finding a person's DNA on a knife sheath that matches the knife used for the murders is HIGHLY incriminating. Exculpatory means getting rid of the incriminating evidence. After the DNA, the car video evidence is VERY incriminating (but he admits he was out "driving around'). Next would be the phone data, of which we know only a little but is so far VERY incriminating esp. insofar as it shows he was driving round and round the neighborhood, finally making a 3 point turn to pull into the parking area of 1122. Next would the TIME at which he's observed doing this (correspondings with the time DM gives for seeing a masked man and hearing the noises). VERY incriminating. And of course, the sounds from the neighbor's camera support DM's statements - so VERY incriminating.
Those are the things the Defense must find counter to. IMO. Merely finding some blurry aspects in DM's testimony is NOT, IMO, exculpatory. DM would have to recant her entire prior testimony on the stand, IMO. Most reasonable people know how memory works, what it's like to be scared, etc. At best, getting DM to admit she was (at 4 am) inebriated (which I believe she was NOT), could maybe make one or two jurors disregard her whole testimony. But during deliberation, that one issue is not going to lead the entire panel to "exculpatory." If it hangs the jury, it's only because that person doesn't understand the inevitable jury instructions:
By the PREPONDERANCE of the evidence...
The behavior of BK pre- and post- 4-4:30 am is at issue as well and there will be many more witnesses. And GPS data. The GPS data could be the "bombshell." While there is no video of his car right next to 1122, the GPS data may well place him there, unmoving, for 20 minutes. And there could be more (receipts; statements made; post-crime behavior, etc. etc). IOW, the DNA itself loads up the scales of Justice in one direction - and obviously, DM"s testimony will not touch on that at all - and will add a bit more to that side of the scale. Even if she says she had been drinking 3-4 hours earlier, that doesn't change the fact that a footprint with his characteristics was left outside her door, in blood. That too is incriminating - puts another slight weight on the Guilty side of the scale.
IMO
@10ofRods
While I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I have to question the statement that a footprint "with his characteristics" was found.
AFAIK we know absolutely nothing about the latent footprint other than that it was a Vans type diamond pattern sole. Also AFAIK many students, including occupants of the house, were photographed wearing Vans, whereas Vans were not among the shoes found at BK's house.
Also, the Vans type latent print could have come from the friends initially called over, or a first responder, we don't know. It is my personal opinion that the print probably came from one of those last two possibilities.
Of course we are free to hypothesize that BK could have bought Vans especially for the purpose of that night, but this is 100% speculation and IMO should not be stated as fact.
Or am I missing something?
While I agree with a lot of what you're saying, I have to question the statement that a footprint "with his characteristics" was found.
AFAIK we know absolutely nothing about the latent footprint other than that it was a Vans type diamond pattern sole. Also AFAIK many students, including occupants of the house, were photographed wearing Vans, whereas Vans were not among the shoes found at BK's house.
Also, the Vans type latent print could have come from the friends initially called over, or a first responder, we don't know. It is my personal opinion that the print probably came from one of those last two possibilities.
Of course we are free to hypothesize that BK could have bought Vans especially for the purpose of that night, but this is 100% speculation and IMO should not be stated as fact.
Or am I missing something?
Love your posts 10: but had to trim this one quite a bit. Lotta ground.
A "good" alibi would be "exonerating"; and this forum's involvements with BK would be about 2-pages long. What has been presented by the D as alibi is a placeholder, a diatribe that took weeks to deliver physically and then had no shoulders. A tactical lob at best. Check swing fouling off a 2-2 pitch.
And to make a foundation for presentation and implications of the bloody footprints (and common sense says there needs to be more than one...) DM will need to be called by the prosecution. The single footprint indicated by the PCA does not just support her testimony; her testimony lays the groundwork for the direction, pace and timing of the killer's path through the house and out the exit, and the sequencing of that with some of the noises and voices that preceded that movement.
DM's recall is one of the few evidentiary pieces that cannot be fit tightly into a timeline, according the the PCA. Like most, she was not watching the clock as she made her visits to the doorway. It will take dovetailing with the known timeline events, the hard data, to bring the puzzle picture to comprehension. MOO and with respect.
I hold some vague hope that DM texted KG when the "playing with the dog" noises started, or otherwise nailed down timing of her testimonial when some other event annoyed her.
Trimmed by me.
Obviously the latent footprint has a little more significance because it was patterned in blood. It also is the only such mentioned in the PCA but it did not get to where it was found by levitation: there had to be footfalls before and after so the PCA leaves unanswered: What can be established by the path, gait, size and so on of the sequence of footprints?
I believe what the PCA says is enough to lend credibility to the information it contains that resulted from interviews with DM. There will be definitive latent trace of a whole path presented at trial IMO. If it is not pursued at trial then one would conclude that LE did establish that the single print had an alternate source; but there was 7 weeks between first investigations and the preparation of the PCA. If LE established that FP had a different source, there would be no mention of it in the PCA.
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I believe the reason that no other characteristics were given to the latent footprint, and the reason why no other footprints were mentioned, is that it is a legal tradition - almost an edict - for the State not to tip its hand until it does so within the framework of proper discovery. The footprints themselves (images of them) were turned over right away. If I were the State, I would have done that, and THEN looked for a footprint expert when it was clear BK was bound over for trial.
There are different kinds of footprint experts - it's the anatomical footprint expert (forensic anatomist - as shown in Episode 1 of Dr Donald Johanson's "In Search of Human Origins") that I'd want to have a look. I do not know the rules of discovery well enough to know whether every bit of work product by that anatomist has to be turned over to the Defense - I trust the Defense to make us all aware if they don't think they have ALL of what that expert says. I'd get Owen Lovejoy to do it (if he's still alive and working!) Otherwise, he trained many a Ph.D. in anatomy to use the bone library that he built in New York - much of it only feet.
The earlier, bloodier footprints would provide more data (taken together, as valuable as if the murderer had stepped in ink and left a diminishing trail - with the gait and foot plant clearly revealed, as if in an animation). Shoes taken from BK's home in PA will have wear patterns inside that either match the footplant revealed at the scene, or they do not. Such patterns are not 100% identifying, like DNA or most fingerprints, but they certainly provide an almost-fingerprint like match if there are enough of them.
IMO. I am not a footprint OR shoe expert, but I do know footprint and shoe experts. I go to conferences where they present their ever-increasing range of techniques for knowing exactly how to read a footprint which is again, just like a fingerprint - sure, we can see the whorls on our fingertips, but an expert with a microscope and the means of microscopic analysis can see way more. I can post more links if anyone wants - but I've probably belabored this point to most people's satisfaction over the many threads where I've mentioned shoe print experts, gait, foot structure, human foot anatomy and how it can definitely provide more specificity in IDing someone than, say, height or ethnicity or hair color or eyebrows. Way more.
There are different kinds of footprint experts - it's the anatomical footprint expert (forensic anatomist - as shown in Episode 1 of Dr Donald Johanson's "In Search of Human Origins") that I'd want to have a look. I do not know the rules of discovery well enough to know whether every bit of work product by that anatomist has to be turned over to the Defense - I trust the Defense to make us all aware if they don't think they have ALL of what that expert says. I'd get Owen Lovejoy to do it (if he's still alive and working!) Otherwise, he trained many a Ph.D. in anatomy to use the bone library that he built in New York - much of it only feet.
The earlier, bloodier footprints would provide more data (taken together, as valuable as if the murderer had stepped in ink and left a diminishing trail - with the gait and foot plant clearly revealed, as if in an animation). Shoes taken from BK's home in PA will have wear patterns inside that either match the footplant revealed at the scene, or they do not. Such patterns are not 100% identifying, like DNA or most fingerprints, but they certainly provide an almost-fingerprint like match if there are enough of them.
IMO. I am not a footprint OR shoe expert, but I do know footprint and shoe experts. I go to conferences where they present their ever-increasing range of techniques for knowing exactly how to read a footprint which is again, just like a fingerprint - sure, we can see the whorls on our fingertips, but an expert with a microscope and the means of microscopic analysis can see way more. I can post more links if anyone wants - but I've probably belabored this point to most people's satisfaction over the many threads where I've mentioned shoe print experts, gait, foot structure, human foot anatomy and how it can definitely provide more specificity in IDing someone than, say, height or ethnicity or hair color or eyebrows. Way more.
I was a social behavioral sciences major and took a block of cleverly named courses like “Murder 101” (it was a 300 level class taught by a superior court judge) and another one that escapes my name that was taught by a State Police Homicide investigator. This obviously doesn’t make me qualified to speak on anything in any official or non official capacity and I have no plans to. Just wanted to mention how telling it was that in the latter class we spent 1/5th of our time on footprints. It was mind blowing. Gait. Stride. Even Approximating Height and weight. They All tell a story before you even get to the actual print. We got to cast some in snow and mud. Amazing.
IMO LE probably can tell which footprints were fresher than others. And I couldn’t imagine that they wouldn’t have asked everyone in the house to provide the shoes they wore on that day. Then it a matter of process of elimantion.
All my opinion. I am not an expert of any kind whatsoever.
Bbm me too. Hopefully on their own time and their own devices. Jmo
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I understand your thoughts, I think.
However, I am of the relatively firm opinion that data was included in the PCA for a reason. I’m relatively confident LE had already ruled out the shoes of first responders & anyone known to have been in the house after the murders by the time the PCA was written, MOO.
If it’s meaningless, why do you think they’d include it?
All MOO, as always.
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I agree with your points but what sequence of footprints? We have been told of no such footprints. Assume there were many foot marks before and after the clear print but we haven't had this verified, have we?
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Well, by now, the Defense has the footprint data. If it is clearly not a match and contains none of the macro characteristics of BK, I think the Defense will bring it up soon enough. If BK couldn't possible fit his foot in the shoe shown in the bloody footprint, that's highly exonerating and I'd think they'd have brought it up already. We've been able to accurately characterize the foot inside shoes for a long time - some shoes being more yielding of information that others. Vans or any other flexible soled shoes are absolutely the best to read (and worn out leather is good too; frequently used sandals are great). But Vans easily reveal the size, length, width of the foot, toes and individualizing characteristics involving foot ratios as well.
I personally believe that the roommates were outside waiting when LE arrived. I don't think anyone else was there except the roommates and 1-2 people they had called. As people arrived, they stayed outside. I do not believe that someone managed to go into Xana's room or the 3rd floor bedroom and leave the latent print outside DM's door - I'll explain in detail below.
Indeed, I believe it will be super easy to rule out H. as a possible source of those footprints, as well as every other person LE saw at the scene when they arrived at around 12:02-5. One of my biases: LE knew what they were doing when they came and began working that crime scene. They only had to know the basics, that even my freshmen students know, I trust that they knew how to secure a crime scene and what to do with onlookers. I also do not think LE milled about on top of the coagulated and drying blood evidence or touched it at all - they waited for forensics to arrive.
I think the footprints tell a story favorable to the State and they knew it when they put it in the PCA. If in fact, the expert analysis does not show BK toe length, ball to heel ratio, etc., then the State will not introduce them into evidence - but the Defense will be shouting it from the rooftops. That makes me think it matches. I don't see how to view it otherwise.
It doesn't matter what the brand of shoes is, for this kind of analysis - I'm not talking about shoe analysis. I'm talking about FOOTPRINT forensics. BK has a known stride. The stride of the footprint trail will tell such things as length of stride - but also apparent speed and whether the person was walking, jogging, standing still or running. It tells a whole story. Since they appear to have faded out just yards away from Xana's room (where we know there was quite a bit of blood), well, it seems impossible for someone to have walked into Xana's room later and step in the pool of her blood and NOT leave evidence of having disturbed the clotting layer of the blood. If forensic pictures show that someone stepped in the blood 7-8 hours after the crime, it will be as obvious as sunrise in the tropics.
And frankly, I think those young people who finally got the door open (whoever they were) did not go in and walk around on top of Xana's blood. Both Ethan and Xana were very obviously dead. There was a lot of blood - which would not have been liquid and fresh and would not leave the same kind of traces on the bottom of a shoe. Indeed, the blood itself will tell whether the enzymes of decomp were present or whether the blood was oxygenated and still fresh when stepped in.
TMI? Well, yes, but that's what forensics people do. Thick, coagulated, aging blood does not coat a surface in the same way as fresh blood.
Here's an academic publication aimed at beginning footprint analysis:
Here are the easy parts, used for decades (sex, weight, height estimation):
And here's an article about the uniqueness/inimitability of the footprint:
In the above article, they use bare feet, but the general principles are broadly in use (every line you see on the footprints - like the ones I just posted is subject to edge analysis, which gives a measure of the force spent by the foot and the muscles in the entire body in making that print - and there are unique similarities from step to step). Well, I don't think they are as completely unique as the other says, but it's darned close. If someone pronates, they do it in degrees and we're talking micro levels of force analysis.
The thing that interests me the most is the *ease* of determine whether a footprint was made while standing or moving:
I find it hard to believe that someone other than BK went into Xana's room before LE arrived at just after 12 and then walked directly out the slider door with no conversation with anyone, no pausing, no standing around, no hesitation - all of that will be seen from the both the visible and latent footprints. Combine that with estimates of the blood age when the print was made and I think it will be easy to rule out friends and roommates making those prints (they are either clearly men's prints or they are not).
At any rate, bloody footprints tell a story. I will bet that the visible prints, the luminol prints AND the Amido black prints are not smeared in the least - because they were quite dry before anyone woke up that day.
And I also believe that LE recorded details of every single piece of footgear on H. DM and BF and anyone else observed going into the house. I do not believe that some random person got into the house after 12:02. Nor do I believe there was a crowd of people outside when LE arrived.
The above facts about shoeprints are IME and in the professional opinion of experts whose articles I can keep linking - or I can assist anyone who wants to read the 60 or so articles on the first three pages of scholarly results. The literature on this topic is quite large, and the recent developments (which I wouldn't have known about if I weren't participating in this thread) are even more capable of giving forensic results.
The parts where I marked bias or belief are IMO. But it's a scientifically informed opinion.
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Vans has a black canvas, black rubber, slip-on which might be the choice for someone planning a completely black hands-free quick change shoe.
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@10ofRods , re the idea that the latent print didn't have a more bloody print right before it and a less bloody print after it --
I was trying to envision how this could happen, and pictured something like this: Killer is leaving, holding the bloody knife. Maybe he's trying to use his hand/s to catch any blood dripping from the knife, but for one of many possible reasons a drop or two of blood spills to the carpet without his notice and he steps in it.
Something like this is the only way I could imagine a print with blood when the previous step didn't have any, or not enough to register.
Does that seem possible/probable?
I was trying to envision how this could happen, and pictured something like this: Killer is leaving, holding the bloody knife. Maybe he's trying to use his hand/s to catch any blood dripping from the knife, but for one of many possible reasons a drop or two of blood spills to the carpet without his notice and he steps in it.
Something like this is the only way I could imagine a print with blood when the previous step didn't have any, or not enough to register.
Does that seem possible/probable?
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So let's say I step in blood in bedroom A then I walk 20 feet (not sure of the exact distance) down the hall past bedroom B.
If I were to leave trace amounts of blood there just is no way I would not track some blood down the hall. No way I would only leave trace amounts 20 feet away but not leave any 5 or 10 feet away.
Not possible to walk 20 feet with blood on the soles of my shoes and I leave absolutely no blood trail and then suddenly out of the blue I leave one bloody print 20 feet away.
Make no scientific sense.
I believe they have other shoe prints or very partial prints from between Xana's and DM's rooms but these other prints were not necessary to secure the Arrest Warrant.
The mentioned print did help secure the Warrant. It says in the PCA that the print outside DM's bedroom collaborates her testimony that she saw the masked man going past her bedroom.
2 Cents
This is from Bika Barlow's Declaration from June 22, 2023. What does Ms. Barlow mean by the last sentence?
She was taking about the Hernandez case which went through CODIS. But, IMO, in the last sentence, it appears to me that she is talking about BK's case and is stating that the DNA they got from the sheath "is ambiguous and partial."
From page 13:
She was taking about the Hernandez case which went through CODIS. But, IMO, in the last sentence, it appears to me that she is talking about BK's case and is stating that the DNA they got from the sheath "is ambiguous and partial."
From page 13:
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I agree that we just don't know whatever LE knows about other footprints found in the house, bloody or otherwise.
I was specifically and only addressing the one latent print we know of, and the perception that no similar prints were found just before/after.
My speculation (which I'm not at all attached to, just tossing out ideas) is that the killer never stepped in blood at all during the crime, except for this one step on his way out where he allowed a drop to fall from his hands/knife and then stepped on it. If that print was only id'able with amido black, perhaps the next print had so little blood it didn't register at all. In any case, my idea would explain why there was no bloodiER print just a few feet prior to the latent found.
I really have no idea about prints elsewhere around the crime scene. Maybe he carried a sack and slipped off his bloody shoes and put on these diamond soled shoes as part of making his escape...
MOO
Snipped by me. I think this is the relevance of the print being mentioned. When the PCA was written they didn't have anything of BK's to compare it to and had no idea if it would be a match to him or not. It simply supported her story and her description of the person who walked by her did not rule out BK.
JMO
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I vaguely recall some sort of media reference to an outside print. I agree it would be great to see a link confirming and if so that it was a hiking boot print. On another note, I couldn't find any support for a second assertion that LE took a pair of hiking boots from Kohberger senior's house (when executing search warrant there in late Dec).
I see "new balance shoes" (item 21), "2 pairs of dark coloured boots" (item 62) and "1 pair brown boots" (item 63) but nothing specifically referring to hiking boots in the return of inventory from BK's parents home in Pennsylvania
*(The link says search warrant for elantra but is actually the PA residence search - PA Courts page seem to have inadvertently reversed the digital titles for vehicle and residence warrants and return of inventories).
I vaguely recall some sort of media reference to an outside print. I agree it would be great to see a link confirming and if so that it was a hiking boot print. On another note, I couldn't find any support for a second assertion that LE took a pair of hiking boots from Kohberger senior's house (when executing search warrant there in late Dec).
I see "new balance shoes" (item 21), "2 pairs of dark coloured boots" (item 62) and "1 pair brown boots" (item 63) but nothing specifically referring to hiking boots in the return of inventory from BK's parents home in Pennsylvania
*(The link says search warrant for elantra but is actually the PA residence search - PA Courts page seem to have inadvertently reversed the digital titles for vehicle and residence warrants and return of inventories).
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