A woman has detailed the Tinder date she went on with Bryan Kohberger, the 28 year old charged in the killings of four University of Idaho students.
The woman went to the movies with Kohberger after matching with him on the dating app, she said in a TikTok video posted on Monday, which has since been viewed more than a million times.
“We matched on Tinder. We talked for a couple hours and then he was like, ‘Hey, you want to go to the movies with me tonight?’ I was like, sure. So we went to the movies.”
The date took place about seven years ago, the woman said. However, her contact with Kohberger was “very brief,” lasting no more than 24 hours.
The woman said she did not recall the movie they saw, but remembered that she and Kohberger ended up at her college dorm afterwards.
Kohberger “invited himself inside,” she said, and wanted to watch another movie on Netflix.
“He kept trying to touch me, not like inappropriately, just like trying to tickle and like, rub my shoulders and stuff,” she said.
“And I was like, ‘Why are you touching me or what are you doing?’”
That prompted Kohberger to get “super serious,” she said.
“He’s like, I’m not and I’m like, you are though, and he’s like, I’m not touching you. Kind of like trying to gaslight me into thinking that he didn’t touch me, which is weird.”
The woman said she then told Kohberger she was going to the shared bathroom in her dorm, and that he followed her there.
“He didn’t go in with me, but like he stood outside the door and like, I don’t know, I just thought that was weird,” she said.
In an effort to get him to leave she pretended to throw up—but not because she was afraid of him.
“It wasn’t because I was scared of him or like thought he would hurt me if I asked him to leave. It was just mostly because I’m socially awkward. I didn’t know how to ask him to leave,” the woman said.
She said he then sent her a message on Tinder saying he was leaving.
“Awesome, my plan worked… and then about an hour later, he texted me and said I had good birthing hips, so I never talked to him” again, she said.
Kohberger, a doctoral student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary.
He is accused of breaking into a rental house near the University of Idaho campus in Moscow in the early hours of November 13 and fatally stabbing Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
The four were found dead in the house after a 911 call later that day to report an unconscious person. The women lived in the house with two other roommates, who were unharmed, while Chapin was visiting Kernodle, his girlfriend.
A probable cause affidavit unsealed on Thursday said DNA evidence, surveillance footage and cell phone records led law enforcement to Kohberger as the suspect in the killings. He made his first appearance in an Idaho court on January 5 after being extradited from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested at his parents’ home on December 30.
Kohberger’s public defender in Pennsylvania, Jason LaBar, said his client was “eager to be exonerated of these charges” and “should be presumed innocent until proven otherwise.”
Attorneys, investigators and others in the case are now barred from talking after a judge placed them under a sweeping gag order.
In a follow-up video on TikTok, the woman explained that she posted the video about her date with Kohberger to dispel rumors that began circulating after she wrote a comment on Facebook about it.
She added that she also wanted women to be cautious when meeting up with strangers.
“Just be aware of who you’re meeting up with and maybe save another 19-year-old girl from being stupid,” she said.
“I was lucky that he didn’t hurt me and I was lucky that no one else I went on Tinder date with hurt me but things could have ended very differently.”
Newsweek has contacted the woman for further comment.
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