THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING! Could a key clue recovered directly from victim Ethan Chapin’s hand hold the secret that will PROVE BRYAN KOHBERGER’S INNOCENCE?

On July 23, 2025, a judge sentenced Bryan Kohberger to four lifetimes in prison without the possibility of parole after he pleaded guilty to the murders of Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.

Just over a year later, on July 27, 2026, Kohberger requested a withdrawal of that guilty plea in a petition for post-conviction relief filed in Idaho’s Fourth Judicial District Court and obtained by PEOPLE.

Kohberger writes in the affidavit attached to his petition that his counsel failed to inform him of “exculpatory discovery” that was turned over by prosecutors during plea discussions and suggests that this evidence would have changed his decision to enter a guilty plea to the murders.

“Namely, clumps of hair found in Ethan Chapin’s hands,” Kohberger writes in the filing.

Bryan Kohberger.

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On Jan. 27, 2023, the Trace Evidence Unit at the Federal Bureau of Investigation finalized a report detailing the results of laboratory testing that had been done on evidence found at the crime scene, a copy of which was obtained by PEOPLE.

That report revealed that debris had been found in both the right hand of Chapin and the left hand of Kernodle, whose bodies were discovered just a few feet apart from one another.

This debris was “examined for hairs microscopically consistent with hairs in the head hair sample” from Kohberger, but “none were found,” according to the report, which was included in a filing made by his attorney, Anne Taylor, on June 6, 2025 — approximately one month before Kohberger agreed to a deal with prosecutors.

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The debris in Chapin’s hand is not described as “clumps of hair” in any court filing or police record, but rather in retired FBI agent Chris Whitcomb’s book about the murders, Broken Plea.

Kohberger’s petition and accompanying affidavit echo many of the questions posed by Whitcomb in his book, which was released in May and seeks to understand the reason for the “unexplained plea” made in the case.

In press appearances and interviews following the book’s release, Whitcomb claimed that the “clumps of hair” in Chapin’s hand had not been tested, to his knowledge; in Kohberger’s affidavit, he writes that there was a “failure of further inquiry” into that evidence.

According to a court document unsealed earlier this year, the DNA expert hired by Kohberger’s defense team had in fact tested the hair found in Chapin’s hand. That expert, Ruth Ballard, examined “one hair from the right hand” of Chapin, and found it to be “morphologically consistent with Decedent Chapin’s own reference hair.”

It is unclear if Kohberger knew of Ballard’s findings prior to filing his petition, or if he plans to claim there is some other unexamined “clumps of hair” that the FBI or DNA experts had not tested.

Dylan Mortensen, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle,Bethany Funke(l to r).

This is not Kohberger’s only grievance, however, as he makes additional arguments in the petition for a trial.

Kohberger claims that he had “ineffective assistance of counsel,” that his guilty plea was not entered “knowingly or voluntarily because [it] was induced by unkept promises” and “because of threats asserted by [his] legal counsel.”

Those arguments about Taylor may be hard to prove because she is one of the few carefully vetted and accomplished litigators in Idaho approved to represent defendants in death penalty cases, which Kohberger’s was before he entered his plea to avoid this outcome.

The former criminology student, 31, also had signed a written factual basis document which stated he is willing to “hereby admit responsibility” for the deaths of his four victims, who were all brutally stabbed to death on Nov. 13, 2022.

Kohberger further admitted that the “killing and murder” of his victims was “willful, unlawful, deliberate, with premeditation and with malice afterthought” in the factual basis, a copy of which PEOPLE previously obtained.

He again admitted to the crime on the day of his sentencing last year.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger on July 24, 2025.

“Yes,” he replied.