Police Investigated Bryan Kohberger After Masked Man With Knife Broke Into Home of 4 Sorority Girls By Chris Spargo

Police in Washington investigated Bryan Kohberger after a college student reported that a man with a knife broke into her home and entered her bedroom.

The incident happened on Oct. 10, 2021 — eight months before Kohberger moved to Washington and enrolled at Washington State University, but on the same weekend that the school’s Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology hosted an event for prospective and incoming students, according to documents released by the Pullman Police Department and obtained by PEOPLE.

Authorities launched an investigation into Kohberger as a potential suspect less than two weeks after his arrest for the murders of four University of Idaho students just 10 miles away in the town of Moscow.

The police report in the Pullman case and probable cause affidavit in the Moscow murders detail two very similar suspects targeting very similar victims in a very similar setting at almost the exact same time with the same weapon.

A 20-year-old student called 911 to report that she woke up in the middle of the night to find a masked man with a knife entering her bedroom.

PEOPLE is choosing to withhold the name of the female student because of the nature of the incident.

That man then positioned himself at the foot of the bed seemingly unaware that the female was now awake, at which point the female forcefully kicked him in the stomach.

The armed intruder then fled the home, according to the young woman.

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At no point did the intruder speak, and the roommate whose room was on the same floor of the home later told police that while she did not see anything, she did hear someone loudly running up the stairs.

That roommate then called police after the female student who encountered the intruder came to her room and told her about the masked man with a knife.

Police developed a few leads at first but they all had alibis at the time of the attack, and within a few weeks the case went cold.

Then a possible break in the case came 14 months later when Sergeant Christopher Engle began to investigate Kohberger as a possible suspect on Jan. 10, 2023.

Much like the Idaho murders which he would later confess to, this was an attack that happened in the middle of the night at an off-campus home where a group of young women were living.

The four residents of the home in Pullman were also all sorority sisters, and just like Kohberger did during his attack, the intruder wore a ski mask and brandished a knife when he broke into the residence.

Dylan Mortensen, one of the two surviving roommates in the Moscow attack, told police Kohberger was “clad in black clothing and a mask” on the night he murdered her four friends.

What’s more, both Kohberger and the suspect in this case entered the residences through an unlocked back door.

The investigation of Kohberger was brief, however, and shut down nine days later when the Graduate Program Coordinator informed Sgt. Engle that there was no record of the future criminology student attending any campus events that weekend.

Police did not appear to look into the possibility of Kohberger going on a non-sanctioned visit that weekend, which would have been while he was enrolled at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.

Kohberger would finish out his graduate studies at that school in May 2022, and by July, was living 2,500 miles away in Pullman preparing to begin his doctoral studies.

He is currently residing in a maximum security prison run by the Idaho Department of Corrections after being sentenced to four life terms for the murders of: Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.