Person of Interest in Idaho Student Deaths in Custody in Pennsylvania

Police in the Pocono Mountains region of Eastern Pennsylvania arrested a 28-year-old man Friday in connection with the Nov. 13 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.

Arrest paperwork filed by Pennsylvania State Police in Monroe County Court identifies him as Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, of Albrightsville, Pennsylvania.

Law enforcement sources said authorities knew who they were seeking and had tracked Kohberger down to where he was staying.

He was taken into custody by a SWAT team in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, reports ABC News.

Kohberger is a graduate student in criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, according to the school's website. WSU is about 9 miles west of the victims' off-campus home.

Charges against Kohberger were not listed on an entry posted by the court, which indicated only that he was being held for extradition.

NBC 10 in Philadelphia reported that he appeared in court about 8:30 a.m. ET Friday. He was held in a local correctional facility after the court denied a motion to set bail.

Arrest paperwork filed by Pennsylvania State Police in the Monroe County Court said Kohberger was being held for extradition in a criminal homicide investigation based on an arrest warrant for first-degree murder, issued by the Moscow Police Department and the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office, The Associated Press reported.

On Nov. 13, college students Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho, were murdered in their off-campus home.

Police in Moscow said Thursday they'd gotten about 20,000 tips through email, telephone calls and digital media submissions, and conducted more than 300 interviews in the case, reports CNN.

The students were stabbed multiple times, likely as they slept, according to authorities. Some of the victims had defensive wounds, a coroner's report said.

Police had been searching for a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra believed to have been seen near the home early on Nov. 13.

Latah County, Idaho, prosecutor Bill Thompson said Kohberger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and felony burglary in a crime that unnerved the small college town in Idaho's northwest panhandle where the four victims were slain.

The four were all found fatally stabbed on the morning of Nov. 13 inside the off-campus house where the three women lived, two of them staying in one room, and one sharing her room with the fourth victim, her boyfriend.

Two other female roommates in the house at the time were unharmed, apparently sleeping through the killings. Police said the cellphone of one of the survivors was used to call emergency-911 when the bodies were first discovered.

"This is not the end of this investigation. In fact it is a new beginning," Thompson told a news conference.

The victims - identified as Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho - all suffered multiple stab wounds, Fry said. Some of the bodies also showed defensive wounds, Fry said, suggesting they had tried to fend off their attacker.

NIGHT OUT BEFORE KILLINGS

Chapin and his girlfriend, Kernodle, had attended a fraternity party the night before, while Mogen and Goncalves, who were best friends, had visited a local bar and food truck. Both pairs returned to the house shortly before 2 a.m. The two other roommates had gotten home about an hour earlier.

Authorities say they believe the slayings occurred between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. on Nov. 13.

The victims appeared to have been killed with a knife or some other "edged" weapon, police have said. Moscow Police Chief James Fry said the murder weapon has not been recovered, though police had found a car they were searching for in connection with the killings.

Authorities said Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University (WSU) in Pullman, Washington, about 10 miles from the University of Idaho campus.

WSU issued a statement on Friday saying its police department and Idaho law enforcement officers searched both Kohberger's apartment residence and his office on campus.

It said Kohberger "had completed his first semester as a PhD student in WSU's criminal justice program earlier this month," suggesting he had remained on campus, just miles away from the crime scene across the Idaho state line, for a number of weeks before returning to Pennsylvania.

Asked at the press conference in Moscow whether authorities there were seeking additional suspects, Fry said, "We have an individual in custody who committed these horrible crimes, and I do believe our community is safe."

Fry said his department had received more than 19,000 tips from the public and had conducted more than 300 interviews as part of its investigation, assisted by state police and the FBI. He and Thompson urged anyone who knew anything about the accused killer to come forward.

He declined to offer a possible motive for the crime or to give any details about the investigation, such as how authorities traced Kohberger to Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, a small community in the Pocono Mountains resort region about 90 miles north of Philadelphia, where he was arrested.

Thompson said more details would emerge publicly from a probable-cause affidavit that summarizes the factual basis for the charges but remains under court seal until the suspect is physically back in Idaho to be served his arrest warrant.

Reuters contributed to this report.