A Tinder match had a creepy encounter with convicted killer Bryan Kohberger around the time he slaughtered four Idaho students. According to explosive police reports, he asked her chilling questions about murder and the worst day to die.
Moscow Police Department released hundreds of previously sealed records from the investigation into the November 13, 2022, murders of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin on Wednesday afternoon – just hours after the mass killer was sentenced to a lifetime behind bars.
During the sentencing hearing, the 30-year-old criminology PhD student refused the opportunity to finally reveal his motive and who his intended target was even after being confronted by the heartbroken families of his victims.
But, within the huge document dump, new details were revealed about the criminal investigation and the tips that came in about the killer.
An unidentified woman claims to have matched with Kohberger on Tinder in September or October 2022 – just weeks before the murders, a police report shows.
Kohberger told her he was a criminology student at Washington State University (WSU) and the two made a plan to meet up when he came home for the Christmas holidays, she claimed.
The woman said she confided in Kohberger that one of her friends had been murdered in her town a few years earlier.
They went on to talk about their favorite horror movies, she said.
Kohberger then allegedly asked the woman a chilling question: what did she think would be the worst way to die?
She told police that when she told him by knife, he responded with an eerie comment to the effect of, ‘like a Ka-Bar?’
The woman said she didn’t know what a Ka-Bar knife was at the time and looked it up.
Around one month later, Kohberger is believed to have used a Ka-Bar knife to slaughter his four victims.
He was caught after his DNA was found on a Ka-Bar leather knife sheath found next to Mogen’s body.
According to the police report, the woman said she eventually stopped talking to Kohberger because his questions made her uncomfortable.
When he was arrested for the murders, the woman said she recognized his photo and recalled the creepy conversations.
According to the police report, the woman called in the tip to Moscow Police Department in the spring of 2024.
She told investigators she tried to call the tip line following his arrest, but police were unable to confirm this.
Police were also unable to corroborate her story because she said she no longer had access to her Tinder records or user ID.
A search warrant, contained among the newly-released filings, shows that Kohberger did have the Tinder app on his devices at the time of his arrest.
Records from January 2023 show Tinder confirmed there was an account tied to Kohberger’s email address but it had been deleted.
Investigators also obtained data from Mogen and Goncalves’ Tinder accounts to see who they had been in contact with. No connection was found between Kohberger and any of the victims, authorities confirmed Wednesday.
Another woman has previously spoken out about a creepy Tinder date she said she went on with the mass murderer around seven years before the slayings.
In a TikTok video posted in early 2023, Hayley Willette said she had matched with Kohberger on Tinder when they were both studying psychology in his home state of Pennsylvania.
He asked her on a date, and they went to the movies, she said.
But, when they returned to her dorm, she said things took a turn.
Instead of dropping her off, she said he was ‘pushy’ and invited himself inside.
Then, she said he ‘kept trying to touch’ her, tickling her and rubbing her shoulders.
Willette claimed that when she went to the shared dorm bathroom, Kohberger stood outside the door.
She said she pretended to throw up to try to get him to leave.
The plan worked and Kohberger left her apartment, but then allegedly sent a creepy text message around an hour later telling her she had ‘good birthing hips.’
Kohberger’s disturbing behavior toward women has been well-documented.
A source told the Daily Mail that, during his brief six-month stint at WSU, he had a ‘gender-related’ conflict with at least one female student in the criminology department that was investigated by staff.
Following that incident, complaints from female students about him making them ‘extremely uncomfortable’ began to pile up.
In one alarming incident, he allegedly followed a female student to her car, our source said.
Another said that someone broke into her home and moved items around. Kohberger, allegedly feigning concern for her safety, subsequently gained permission to install a surveillance system inside – he had access to the feed, Dateline reported.
In the early hours of November 13, 2022, Kohberger then broke into the student home at 1122 King Road and stabbed the four victims to death.
The Moscow police records reveal harrowing new details about the victims’ final moments.
Goncalves had been stabbed more than 20 times, with her face so badly damaged she was ‘unrecognizable.’ Mogen had knife wounds to her forearm, hands and a gash from her right eye to her nose.
Kernodle – who was awake when Kohberger attacked – was stabbed more than 50 times, many of them defensive wounds as she tried to fight off her killer.
Her boyfriend Chapin was found partially covered with a blanket in her bed, his jugular severed, according to the police files.
Roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke survived, with Mortensen opening her bedroom door to see a masked man, dressed in all black and with ‘bushy eyebrows’, leaving the house.
The victims’ bodies were discovered hours later.
During Kohberger’s sentencing in Ada County Courthouse Wednesday, the two survivors broke their silence about the night of the murders in heartbreaking victim impact statements to the court.
Sobbing uncontrollably, Mortensen said ‘what happened that night changed everything.’
‘Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason,’ she said before branding the killer a ‘hollow vessel’ and ‘less than human.’
Funke, whose statement was read out by friend Emily Alandt, revealed how she and Mortensen believed they would all laugh at the pair of them for being ‘scaredy cats’ and hunkering down in her room that night.
She believed they would all laugh and make jokes about it, Funke said.
‘Never in a million years would I think something like this would happen to my closest friends.’
In one gut-wrenching statement after the next, the victims’ family members and surviving roommates took turns to hammer Kohberger with their fury, break down over their unfathomable loss and reveal the toll his callous actions has taken on their lives.
Goncalves’ dad, Steve Goncalves, moved the podium to force his daughter’s killer to look him in the eye as he told him he was ‘foolish’, ‘stupid’ and a ‘joke’ who had been easy for police to catch from the get-go.
‘A Master’s degree? You’re a joke. A complete joke,’ Goncalves said.
‘The world’s watching because of the kids, not because of you. In time, you will be nothing more than initials on an otherwise unmarked tombstone.’
Goncalves’ sister Alivea tore into Kohberger as a ‘delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser’ and hit him with the very same questions he once posed in a Reddit survey as part of his criminology degree at DeSales University.
‘Sit up straight when I talk to you,’ she demanded.
Kernodle’s dad, Jeff Kernodle, choked back tears revealing his regret that he planned to be with his daughter on the night she was murdered.
Meanwhile, Mogen’s dad, Ben Mogen, spoke of his daughter being the ‘only great thing I ever really did, and only thing I was really proud of.’
The families and friends of the victims sobbed and hugged inside the courtroom while more than a dozen people delivered emotional statements to the court.
Kohberger – dressed in orange prison garb with his wrists and ankles shackled – stared at them watching, not showing an ounce of emotion or remorse.
When it was the 30-year-old killer’s chance to speak, he maintained his silence.
‘I respectfully decline,’ he said boldly, his only three words to the court all day.
He refused to reveal his motive for his heinous crime, who the target was and why he chose his victims, leaving the families in the dark about the murders.
Speaking at a press conference after the sentencing, Moscow Police Corporal Brett Payne told reporters that Kohberger ‘targeted’ 1122 King Road, but authorities still don’t know why.
‘The evidence suggested that there was a reason that this particular house was chosen. What that reason is, we don’t know,’ he said.
Evidence indicates Kohberger was watching the home in the lead-up to the murders.
From July 2022 through to November 13, 2022, Kohberger’s phone placed him in the vicinity of the King Road home at least 23 times, mostly at night.
The newly-unsealed records reveal that the victims had seen a man lurking in the trees outside their home and noticed a string of bizarre incidents at the house before the murders.
Around one month earlier, Goncalves had told at least two friends that she had seen a man watching her in the trees around the home when she took her pet dog Murphy outside.
Mortensen also told police about one time when she came home to find the door to their three-story house open.
The survivor told police Goncalves had also mentioned someone following her around two or three weeks before her murder.
Around that same time, a female student living on Queen Road – close to the King Road home – said a man tried to break into her home.
At around 1am on October 14, 2022, the woman heard what she thought was a man walk up to her door and try to open it, the police records reveal.
But the door was locked with the deadbolt on.
It is not clear if the incidents are related.
Judge Steven Hippler sentenced Kohberger to a life behind bars – four life sentences with no possibility of parole for each of the four victims – and an additional 10 years for burglary.