Defense expert claims mystery hairs at Idaho murder scene weren't Kohberger's

Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty last July to murdering four University of Idaho students—Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves—in their off-campus home in Moscow in November 2022. He accepted four consecutive life sentences without parole, plus a decade for burglary. But now, months after that plea, he is fighting to take it back. In a petition for post-conviction relief filed recently, Kohberger claims his attorneys coerced him into the agreement and withheld evidence that could have cleared him. At the center of his argument is a strand of hair—or rather, more than two dozen of them.

The hairs were discovered under where Chapin's right hand lay in Kernodle's bed, stuck to the bed frame by dried blood. They were light and dark brown, each between three and four inches long. Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist with more than 70 trial testimonies to his name, examined the evidence in person when he traveled to Moscow to review the case file. What he found, he says, contradicts the guilty plea Kohberger accepted. The FBI lab excluded Kohberger as the source of those hairs. "This is not his hair," Turvey told Fox News Digital. The question of whose hair it actually was—and whether all the strands were ever tested—remains unanswered.

Turvey's assertion has ignited a fresh controversy in a case already marked by tension between the defense team and their own experts. Kohberger's attorneys, led by Anne Taylor, have publicly accused Turvey of violating confidentiality agreements and said they were appalled by his public statements. Turvey denies breaching any confidentiality. Now, with Kohberger's petition raising the hair evidence again—he referenced it in a recent New York Times interview and cited it in his court filing—Turvey is calling for the court to put everyone involved under oath. He wants Taylor and her co-counsel to answer difficult questions about why they attacked their own experts for surfacing potentially exculpatory material, and why they failed to respond to claims from another expert that Kohberger was guilty from the start.

But the families of the victims are not convinced the hair evidence matters. Shanon Gray, representing the family of Kaylee Goncalves, dismissed its significance. Even if the hairs do not belong to Kohberger, she argued, that proves only that another person may have been present—not that Kohberger was absent. The defense team had known about the evidence all along, Gray noted, and someone was prepared to testify about it. The presence of unknown DNA does not erase the defendant's presence at the scene.

Kohberger's petition hinges on more than just the hair. He alleges he was coerced into pleading guilty and that his legal representation was ineffective. He claims his attorneys failed to communicate potentially exculpatory evidence to him. The court will now have to decide whether those allegations warrant a hearing, and if so, whether they have merit. The FBI declined to comment. Taylor did not respond to requests for comment. Kohberger himself has not answered any communication from Fox News Digital. What happens next depends on whether a judge believes the questions Turvey and Kohberger are raising deserve answers under oath.