Victim’s Family Says Bryan Kohberger Followed 2 Victims on Instagram

The family of one of the Idaho college murder victims is disputing defense contentions that “there is no connection between” suspect Bryan Kohberger and the four students he is accused of killing.

Speaking with CBS News’ “48 Hours,” Steve and Kristi Goncalves said they “immediately started Googling” when they learned the suspect’s name. And, they said, they found “digital evidence” linking Kohberger with their daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, and another victim, Madison Mogen.

The Goncalveses said that an Instagram account they believe belonged to Kohberger followed the accounts belonging to the two women.

“You would go to Maddie’s Instagram account and look at her pictures, and he liked them,” Kristi Goncalves said. “He had liked them. Bryan’s name was under a lot of Maddie’s pictures. Liked her pictures, liked that picture and that picture, and that picture, and that picture. So, he was actively looking at the Instagram account.”

“48 Hours” said it was unable to verify the account in question, which has since been removed, belonged to Kohberger, a former Washington State University Ph.D. student in criminology who is charged with killing Goncalves, Mogen, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle on November 13, 2022. He was arrested at his parents home in Pennsylvania on December 30 and extradited to Idaho.

Back in January, when Kohberger was brought back to Idaho, a source told PEOPLE that Kohberger had photographs of one of the victims on his phone, while another source — or possibly the same one — said that he had repeatedly messaged one of the victims and gotten no response.

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Investigators and prosecutors have not included any such information in their court filings or said publicly they have any such information. The defense, however, said in one of its court filings that “there is no connection between Mr. Kohberger and the victims.”

Earlier this year, a former employee of a restaurant where Kernodle and Mogen worked said that Kohberger had eaten there twice before the murders, but the restaurant owner disputed that, saying the story was “completely fabricated” by the ex-employee and “is not true.”

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[Featured image: Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for a hearing, Friday, Aug. 18, 2023, at the Latah County Courthouse in Moscow., Idaho. Kohberger is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022. (August Frank/The Lewiston Tribune via AP, Pool)]