A woman told police she matched with murderer Bryan Kohberger on a dating app in the weeks before he stabbed four University of Idaho students to death, but that she ultimately stopped all contact after their conversations about murder made her uncomfortable, newly released documents reveal.
The woman’s alleged conversations with Kohberger were detailed in a police report released by Idaho’s Moscow Police Department this week after the former criminology student was sentenced to life in prison for the November 2022 killings.
According to the report, the woman, whose name was redacted, called a police tip line in March last year to say that she recognized Kohberger after matching with him on Tinder in September or October 2022.
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The woman told a police detective that Kohberger identified himself to her as a criminology student at Washington State University, which is located roughly eight miles from the murder scene, and that they made plans to meet over Christmas break when he came home.
Though the woman’s location was not identified in the report, authorities said Kohberger traveled to his parents’ home in Pennsylvania that Christmas, where he was ultimately arrested for the murders. The woman said she paid extra to expand her Tinder search results’ radius after not matching with anyone in her area.
The pair’s conversations included a discussion of her friend’s murder in her town a few years earlier, as well as her favorite horror movies, which she said included the Rob Zombie “Halloween” movies, according to the report.
“To this, [the woman] said Kohberger asked what she thought would be the worst way to die,” lead detective Brett Payne wrote in his report. When the woman answered with a knife, she said Kohberger asked, “like a Ka Bar?”
A Ka-Bar is a large combat knife, which authorities said was used by Kohberger to fatally stab the four students. Prosecutors said Kohberger purchased the knife, sheath and sharpener on Amazon in March 2022. A Ka-Bar sheath, containing his DNA, was ultimately found next to one of his victims.
The woman told the detective that she didn’t know what a Ka-Bar is and so looked it up online. She eventually stopped talking to Kohberger, however, “because his questions made her uncomfortable,” according to the report.
It wasn’t until after Kohberger was arrested that the woman said “she recognized his photo and remembered the comment about the Ka Bar knife,” prompting her to call police.
Payne said he was unable to corroborate the woman’s story, as she said she no longer had access to her Tinder account and could not get her user ID.
In a separate report filed a month later, Payne said he reached out to Tinder for any records related to the woman, but the dating app said there were no records associated with the information the woman provided.
“At this time, there is no indication [that] records to support [the woman’s] tip exist in Tinder’s records. If further information or new identifiers are found, I will request a search warrant for the Tinder accounts,” reported Payne.
Kohberger was sentenced Wednesday to four consecutive life sentences for the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Madison Mogen, 21.
