Key figures from Bryan Kohberger’s Pennsylvania youth summoned to Idaho for student murders trial
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FIRST ON FOX: Key figures from Idaho student murders suspect Bryan Kohberger’s Pennsylvania past have been summoned as witnesses in his upcoming trial, according to court documents.
They include Jesse Harris, whose name is on the boxing gym where Kohberger used to train, Ann Parham, an advisor at the school Kohberger attended, and Marie Bolger, a former professor who taught Kohberger at DeSales University.
Parham reached an agreement to testify in the case without a hearing on whether she could be compelled to attend, according to court documents. The exact date of her testimony remains to be determined.
Other witnesses are due in Monroe County court next week.
Kohberger wrote that he boxed daily at Harris’ gym in a 2015 job application previously obtained by Fox News Digital.
In a 2023 interview with the Daily Mail, Bolger said Kohberger was one of her brightest students and one of only two she had recommended for Ph.D. programs in a decade. She was named in early documents but later replaced by a man named Brandon Andreola.
She told the Mail she never met Kohberger in person and only taught him over email and Zoom during the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She helped him work on his graduate thesis, which centered on “how and why criminals commit their crime,” she said.
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Earlier this week, William Searfoss and Anthony Somma were also summoned to testify.
Searfoss’ wife told Fox News Digital that she did not know why he would be asked to testify, but she said he is a correction officer at the jail where Kohberger was taken after his arrest at his parents’ house in Albrightsville on Dec. 30, 2022.
Attempts to reach Somma were unsuccessful. A Facebook profile under the same name belongs to a graduate of the Monroe Career & Technical Institute.
Kohberger had attended that school for a youth law enforcement program. Administrators reportedly kicked him out after complaints from female classmates.
“Ultimately what had him removed from the program, when I look back on it now, makes sense… the fact that he wanted law enforcement more than anything else in the world, if you look at it from just that perspective alone not knowing what I know… you’d be like, I’m so shocked,” Tanya Carmella-Beers, a former school official told “The Idaho Massacre” podcast in 2023. “In that respect I am, but I know another little piece, which is the piece that occurred at the school… so that makes sense.”
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Two other witnesses are Ralph Vecchio and Maggie Sanders. Their connections to the case were not immediately clear.
The documents were made public in a Pennsylvania court days after Kohberger’s defense filed an amended witness list in Boise.
Kohberger is accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in a 4 a.m. home invasion attack – Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, also 20.
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Prosecutors allege he left his DNA on a knife sheath detectives found with Mogen’s body. They also plan to introduce some of his DeSales homework as evidence he was well-versed in concepts related to crime scene handling and the transfer of evidence.
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He was pursuing a Ph.D. in criminology at Washington State University at the time of the murders and previously obtained a master’s degree from DeSales.
The trial begins in August. Kohberger could face death by firing squad if convicted.