Idaho quadruple murder case in jeopardy as judge launches probe after leak to the media

trial has been thrown into disarray as the judge has revealed that sensitive details about the case have been leaked to the press, which could make it harder to find impartial jurors for the August trial.
Judge Steven Hippler has ordered a new investigation as he seeks to discover the source behind the leak.
The case has been plagued by setbacks as his defense team scrambled to have evidence thrown out, the death penalty ruled out and, most recently, point the finger at another potential suspect.
But now, Judge Hippler issued an extraordinary rebuke by revealing 'sensitive information not previously publicly circulated' had been leaked to Dateline.
'It appears likely that someone currently or formally associated with law enforcement, or the prosecution team, violated this Court's non-dissemination order,' he wrote in a new filing released Thursday.
Certain facts of the case have been withheld from the public to preserve the integrity of the investigation.
Kohberger is facing the death penalty if convicted of the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Two other housemates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, survived.
'Such violations not only undermine the rule of law, potentially by persons charged with upholding it, but also significantly impede the ability to seat an impartial jury,' the judge added, warning that the offenders' actions have likely 'substantially increased the cost to be borne by the taxpayers' because it will now likely take longer to find jurors.
Jury selection will take place behind closed doors on July 30 and Judge Hippler put every single official with a connection to the case on high alert over the new investigation.
He wrote in his memo: 'All persons who at any time, past or present, worked directly or indirectly [on this case]... are hereby prohibited from deleting, discarding, overwriting, destroying, altering or otherwise making unavailable any... records, files, documents, metadata, messages, emails, text messages, direct or private messages, phone logs or logs of communications.'
He went on to specify that this order must be adhered to regardless of whether the information was stored on a work owned or personal device: 'All such Documents or materials or records that could potentially constitute a Document - even if it is uncertain whether such meet that criteria shall be preserved and must be protected from deletion, alteration or loss until further order of the Court.
'Any feature on any device or account that is set to automatically delete or overwrite information that could be covered by this Order must immediately be disabled.'
Judge Hippler ordered authorities to hand over to the court a list of 'all individuals within law enforcement and prosecuting agencies, past or present, who are known to have had access to any facts related to the investigation'.
He is particularly interested in learning who had access to surveillance videos of Kohberger, AT&T records of his phone, the content of his phone and social media accounts.
The judge is also seeking the names of any person who was aware of Kohberger's internet search history, photographs, or details of his Amazon account. These specifications are in direct response to the exclusive details aired on a recent Dateline episode studying the case.
The program revealed the criminology PhD student called his dad Michael Kohberger three times on the morning of November 13, 2022, just two hours after the slayings.
According to Dateline, Kohberger made several searches around serial killer Ted Bundy - who was put to death for a string of murders including the killings of female students in a sorority house in Florida.
In the days after the murders, Kohberger also allegedly watched shows about the serial killer. He also searched and listened to the Britney Spears's song Criminal.
Other online searches after the murders show the suspect was researching the killings - as well as his own name, the show reported. Dateline also claimed that the intended target of the attack was believed to be Madison, and that it took the killer by surprise to find her best friend, Kernodle, sharing her bed.
Judge Hippler warned that if he does not receive the information he has requested, he could find the person responsible to be in contempt of court, and they could face criminal consequences.
'Within seven days the State must also provide to the Court a written plan designed to address and prevent the future unauthorized disclosure of information related to this case,' he wrote.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Sun

36 minutes ago

• The Sun

‘Gone Girl' kidnap hoaxer Sherri Papini now claims she really WAS abducted by ex & didn't tell cops truth for key reason

SHERRI Papini went for her usual morning jog after dropping the kids at school, but when her husband came home from work to find that she still wasn't home, panic set in. Keith Papini quickly took measures to find the 34-year-old mum of two, tracing her phone to her last location and driving straight there, but his panic soon turned to horror when he found her phone lying on the side of the road. 7 7 It was November 2nd, 2016, in California, and Keith, who was the prime suspect in her disappearance at the time for police, was doing the media rounds begging for his wife's return to him and their two children. 'If she is listening, I want to say, 'We are trying. We are trying the best we can, and I am sorry I'm not there,' he said in a tearful interview. 'I'm doing everything I can, and I love you.' News of the disappearance dominated the news across the world, as hundreds of local residents took time out of their lives to find the mum and bring her home. Three weeks later, on Thanksgiving, Sherri was miraculously discovered 150 miles away from her home running across a church car park with a chain around her waist. Her hands were zip-tied together, her body was bruised and burned, her nose was broken, and she had been branded with a hot iron. Sherri spent weeks with police going over the details of her kidnapping, claiming two Hispanic women had taken her and put her in a small dark room, beating her and starving her until the abductors had an argument and one decided to release Sherri. Her memory was foggy, and the trauma she endured seemed severe, as she recounted the incident to police, her husband stood by her every step of the way. Sherri claimed to have overheard a conversation about a 'buyer', implying the two women intended to sell her into sex trafficking. It seemed like a miracle that Sherri was let go, considering the extent of the abuse she endured, and law enforcement was quick to hunt for the perpetrators as they feared it was part of a larger pattern of human trafficking. 7 Sherri Papini admits she's 'embarrassed' she staged kidnapping during tearful police interrogation 7 Web of lies But after years of dead ends, the two women were never caught, in fact, they never even existed. Now, 42, Sherri has been dubbed the real life 'Gone Girl' after faking her own kidnapping to run away with her ex-partner. In 2020 police found DNA on her clothes that matched with her ex James Reyes. She knew what she was doing in that moment. And to this day, I remember that time, and it hurts. I'll forever remember that. Keith PapiniSherri's Husband When they tracked him down, he was quick to reveal that Sherri had asked him to pick her up at a staged abduction site, then to take her back to his home in Costa Mesa, hundreds of miles down the coast. She'd even asked him to help her injure herself to bolster her kidnapping claims by branding her and holding a hockey stick up so she could run into it and break her nose. Sherri's 'Gone Girl' Timeline 2 November 2016: Sherri Papini was reported missing after failing to return from a jog near her home in Mountain Gate, California. She also missed picking up her children from daycare. 24 November 2016 (Thanksgiving Day): Papini was found around 146 miles away in Yolo County, near Woodland, California. She was discovered with injuries and restraints, claiming she had been abducted by two Hispanic women. August 2020: Papini was interviewed by a federal agent and a Shasta County Sheriff's detective, where she continued to maintain her story of being kidnapped by two Hispanic women. 3 March 2022: Sherri Papini was arrested on charges of making false statements to federal law enforcement and mail fraud. Authorities revealed she had been staying with a former boyfriend in Costa Mesa, California, and had inflicted injuries on herself. April 2022: Papini signed a plea agreement. 19 September 2022: Sherri Papini was sentenced to 18 months in prison, followed by 36 months of supervised release. She was also ordered to pay $309,902 in restitution. 8 November 2022: Papini reported to federal prison at the Victorville Federal Correctional Complex in Adelanto, California, to begin serving her 18-month sentence. James was never tried for a connection to the crime and three weeks after he 'kidnapped' Sherri, she wanted to return home as she missed her kids. Before dropping her off, Sherri asked him to brand her with the word 'EXODUS' using a wood burning tool. Looking back, Keith reveals the heartbreak he felt when his wife Sherri came home, telling him, 'I have to live with the fact that you never found me.' 'I remember I was pleading with her,' Keith says now. 'Like, 'I did everything I could, I'm so sorry you had to go through that.'' 'She knew what she was doing in that moment. And to this day, I remember that time, and it hurts. I'll forever remember that.' Sherri was ultimately charged with 34 counts of mail fraud and one count of making false statements in 2022, and spent ten months in jail. Her husband, Keith, divorced her soon after she was sentenced and has custody of the children. 7 Bold new claims Now, Sherri has claimed all is not as it seems in a new Investigation Discovery's docuseries, Sherri Papini: Caught in the Lie. "Haven't you ever lied? And then, has the lie been blown up?" Sherri said in the trailer. "I went missing in 2016, was gone for 22 days. I was tortured; I was branded; I was chained to a wall. All that is true. I did keep some secrets from you, though." Now, the mum-of-two claims she was in fact kidnapped by her lover James Reyes but made up the two Hispanic women as she was terrified about what her husband would do if he found out about the affair. "I was concealing an affair from my husband, who (was) threatening to take everything from me if he found out that I was having any involvement with another man," she said. Now she claims she went to meet James to break things off, but alleges he soon turned violent. "I remember waking up briefly in the back of the vehicle and not being able to even keep my eyes open," she said. She claims the next thing she knew it was dark and she was being carried out of the car into a house. "I just remember thinking, 'This is not where I'm supposed to be. I'm supposed to be picking my kids up from day care. I am not supposed to be here,'" she adds. "The injuries that occurred… the bites on my thigh, the footprint on my back, the brand, the melting of my skin — I am telling you there was no consent." Sherri alleges that James then had her chained up to a pole inside his home so she could not escape. 'I wanted to leave,' Sherri claimed. 'So I tried to pull one of the boards off the window and James came in and hit me in the face. And that's the first bruise that I got ... And after being knocked out and waking up, that's when the chain was around my waist, secured with a padlock attached to a cable that was attached to a pole in the closet.' Every injury, every incident, the description of the room down to every last bit of fragment, was not a lie. Sherri Papini Just before she 'escaped,' Sherri says she had a conversation with James, who agreed to let her go on the condition she lied about what really happened and blamed two Hispanic women for the abduction. Her claims continued: 'James had let me off the chain. "I said, my husband's going to find me. He's never going to stop looking for you ... You need to let me go. He was like, 'Well, there's too much has happened.' "So it all came down to me. It all came down to my cover-up, and that's [when] I agreed to ... make up that someone else did it.' "I lied about James' identity. I lied about the man who abducted me to keep him a secret," she said in the docuseries. James denies these claims. "It wasn't the right choice and I know that... I wish I would've told the truth from the day I was in the hospital — that it was James," she continued. 7 "I wasn't thinking about my neighbor that was searching for me. I wasn't thinking about the churches that were lighting candlelit vigils," she continued. "I was thinking about myself." "Every injury, every incident, the description of the room down to every last bit of fragment, was not a lie," she adds. Mother knows best? Keith, who has full custody of the children they share, was accused by Sherri throughout the show of being abusive; he heavily denies these claims. And it seems even Sherri's own mum doesn't believe her new story. Speaking to the filmmakers, Loretta Graeff said: "No, it wasn't a kidnapping." "My daughter was very, very unhappy in her marriage. She wanted some kind of happiness. "When he showed up and Sherri went with him, it wasn't a kidnapping, it was more 'I want to have a little bit of happiness in my life because it's been very, very hard.'" "She needed to get away from him and she didn't abandon her children," Graeff told People. Where is Sherri now? Sherri was released from prison in August 2023 and transferred to a residential reentry facility in Sacramento County, California. She left the home that October — eight months early — and will remain on supervised release until late 2026.

The Sun

an hour ago

• The Sun

Brit, 22, arrested at Disneyland Paris after ‘trying to marry girl, 9, in bizarre ceremony at Sleeping Beauty castle'

A BRIT has been arrested at Disneyland Paris after allegedly trying to stage a mock wedding with a nine-year-old girl. The suspect, 22, was reportedly the "groom" in the twisted ceremony which played out before 100 horrified guests at the iconic Sleeping Beauty castle. 4 4 4 Disney staff immediately called police upon spotting the child, of Ukrainian nationality, in a bridal dress with four-inch heels taped to her feet. The lifelike ceremony - complete with white chairs, a giant cake, musicians and the castle - was reportedly attended by the girl's family and a large crowd at dawn on Sunday. Police arrested the man, along with the girl's 41-year-old mum, who is believed to be Ukrainian. The "groom" told cops the ceremony was meant to create a video for social media. Organisers had booked the space for $130,000 (£111,000), claiming it was for a genuine wedding ceremony, according to French network BFM TV. Footage obtained by the network showed around 100 seated guests awaiting the ceremony, as a female violin trio played before a flower-strewn stage. A statement was issued by the prosecutor's office in the town of Meaux, saying: "Four people were arrested and questioned: the groom, who was believed to be the organiser of the event and is presumed to be British and aged 22; the mother of the child, a 41-year-old Ukrainian woman; and two Latvian nationals aged 55 and 24." A 55-year-old man claimed he was hired to play the role of the bride's dad for 12,000 euros (£10,266) - and only discovered her age at the event, local news reports. Meanwhile, the "guests" were recruited online through ads looking for 200 adults and 100 children - aged five to 15 - to take part in a wedding "rehearsal" at Disneyland. The extras said they had been driven from central Paris on buses at 5am and had been handed pink bracelets bearing the names of the "bride and groom". They were told the filming was strictly confidential, BFM TV reports. The prosecutor's statement added "police custody of the British suspect and a Latvian national was also extended on charges of fraud and money laundering". Disneyland Paris was reportedly deceived about the nature of the event. The organiser is said to have assumed the "identity of a Latvian national", using "false documents to secure the conclusion of the contract for privatising the park", BFM TV reports. Disneyland Paris told French newspaper Le Parisien that the event was immediately shut down by its team and that guests were stopped from entering the premises. A criminal investigation has opened, according to the prosecutor's office. It added the young girl has not suffered any violence, as per a medical examination. Officials say they are unsure about the nature of the event, including whether this was a prank. The Brit "groom" claimed that he was the director of a production company and they were shooting a video, a police source told Le Parisien. A witness who claimed to have been a wedding guest told the newspaper: "We all thought we were going to attend a wedding... "Everyone was stunned, no one expected it. Disneyland did things very well. "They cancelled everything as soon as they realized the bride was a child. We were shocked to see that." Another witness, named Yeleen, who attended the ceremony as a guest with her daughter, said: "I saw a little girl dressed in white. I saw her hair prepared with curls and a lady picking her up in her arms. "At that moment, I was shocked. I realised when I saw the child. It was atrocious." The prosecutor's office said: "So it wasn't a wedding, but a staged wedding filmed with around a hundred extras. "They privatized Disneyland Paris, pretending it was a real wedding." The two suspects are being questioned over "fraud and breach of trust" against Disneyland Paris, the prosecutor's office said. They are set to appear before a judge at Meaux judicial court on Monday as part of a formal judicial investigation. In 2019, Michael Jackson reportedly exchanged rings with a nine-year-old child "bride" in a creepy mock wedding ceremony at the Neverland Ranch, court documents claim. A lawsuit filed on behalf of accuser James Safechuck claims his father was then paid $1million hush money after the secret union at his Californian mansion.

The Sun

2 hours ago

• The Sun

Real Madrid star Antonio Rudiger accuses Pachuca opponent of racist insult as referee enforces new Fifa protocol

REAL MADRID star Antonio Rudiger accused opponent Gustavo Cabral of making a racist remark during last night's Club World Cup match. The Spanish giants took on Mexican side Pachuca in Charlotte. 2 2 With Real leading 3-1 late on, Rudiger claimed that Cabral had fouled him. The pair were subsequently involved in a heated exchange. Rudiger, 32, alleged to referee Ramon Abatti Abel that he had been racially abused. Abatti subsequently instigated Fifa 's anti-racism protocol. Step one of the protocol sees a match stopped - with steps two and three leading to games being suspended and then abandoned. Cabral, 39, denied making a racist remark - claiming that he had called Rudiger a "coward". The match soon got back underway, with Real Madrid winning 3-1. More arguments between players followed after the final whistle. After the game, Real Madrid boss Xabi Alonso came to Rudiger's defence. The Spaniard, 43, said: "Toni has informed us about something. Real Madrid open their Club World Cup campaign with draw against Saudi minnows "We have to wait and see now. I think the Fifa protocol has been activated to investigate. "But if something did happen measures need to be taken and we support Antonio because this is something unacceptable. "There's no tolerance for this at any level of football and whenever it occurs measures must be taken. "That's what Antonio has told us and we believe him." Cabral came out to deny racially abusing the German. The veteran defender said: "It was a fight. We collided. "He said that I hit him with my hand, and then there was an argument and the referee made the racism sign, but I was telling him the same thing the whole time." Pachuca boss Jaime Lozano was coy on the incident. The Mexican, 46, said: "I haven't spoken to Cabral about this. "I cannot give you an explanation about it because this is the first [I've heard of] this news. "It cannot be justified at all. I've known him for a little while and and I have never heard of something like that with Pachuca players. "I cannot defend my captain at any cost but I will talk about it with him." Real Madrid had gone down to 10 men after just seven minutes, when Raul Asencio was sent off for bringing down ex-West Brom and Everton striker Salomon Rondon. Nevertheless, the LaLiga giants took the lead on 35 minutes through Jude Bellingham, before Arda Guler made it 2-0 before half-time. Fede Valverde added a third 20 minutes from time, with Elias Montiel grabbing a consolation for Pachuca. The Mexican side have been eliminated after losing both of their matches, while Real Madrid sit atop Group H with four points.