The creepy selfie Bryan Kohberger took giving a thumbs up hours after allegedly slaughtering four University of Idaho students was taken as a sick “trophy” for the accused killer, a father of one of the victims claims.
Steve Goncalves, whose daughter Kaylee Goncalves was one of the four victims stabbed to death at the off-campus home, believes Kohberger felt in the moment he snapped the photo that he had gotten away with their murders.
“I see somebody that was there making himself a trophy,” he told “Fox and Friends” Friday morning about the photo, which was released in a hoard of court documents filed this week.
“I know the timeline, I know that he … had just returned to the crime scene and came back,” he continued.
“He had realized that nobody had called 911, I think he knew they were still asleep. And to him, that’s his little trophy to let him know that, hey, I got away with it.”
Kohberger, 30, snapped a photo of himself standing in front of a shower giving a chilling half-smile while giving a thumbs-up at 10:30 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022 — roughly six hours after the students were killed.
Investigators believe the students were killed between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. — and then allege Kohberger left his apartment in Pullman, Washington, and drove back to the scene in Moscow, Idaho, around 9 a.m., according to cellphone data.
The victims’ roommates called 911 around noon that day after discovering their friends dead in their beds.
Kohberger’s distinguishable thick eyebrows feature prominently in the photo — which prosecutors hope will help convict him in the murders of Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Prosecutors are relying on interviews with the two surviving roommates, identified in court records as DM and BF, to build their case against Kohberger.
DM claims to have seen an unidentified “figure” walking the halls of the house in the early hours of Nov. 13.
While she was unable to get a good description — and admitted she may still have been drunk — said she saw a 6-foot-tall white masked man in all black, with only his eye area exposed, leaving the house.
The roommate has repeatedly described the suspect as having “bushy eyebrows.”
Latah County prosecutors argued for their right to use the photo as it reveals Kohberger’s entire face around the time of the slayings.Attorneys for Kohberger have asked the court to refrain from using the term “bushy eyebrows” along with other phrases including “murderer” and “murder weapon.”
