The killed Idaho college students had no prior connection to the stabbing suspect, an attorney for one victim's family said: 'No one knew of this guy at all'

• The slain Idaho students had no connection to the man accused of killing them, an attorney said.
• "No one knew of this guy," Shanon Gray, a lawyer for one victim's family, told Insider.

The four slain University of Idaho students had no prior connection to the man accused of stabbing them to death, a lawyer for one victim's family said on Monday.

"No one knew of this guy at all," Shanon Gray, an attorney for the family of 21-year-old victim Kaylee Goncalves, told Insider, referring to suspect Bryan Kohberger.

Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student in the criminal justice program at Washington State University, has been charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in connection to the November 13 slayings in Moscow, Idaho.

A police affidavit unsealed last week revealed new details about the night of the killings and what led to authorities' arrest of Kohberger in his home state of Pennsylvania in late December.

Authorities have not yet provided a motive for the killings of Goncalves, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, but the affidavit suggested that Kohberger had been near the home where the victims were stabbed to death before.

"It appears from the affidavit that he was in the area of the house on several occasions," Gray said. "That's all we know."

Cell phone records obtained by police showed that Kohberger's phone was near the three-story off-campus rental home where the women victims lived with two other roommates at least a dozen times between June and before the early morning killings, the affidavit says.

"All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days," the affidavit states.

Gray said that the victims never indicated to anyone that they were possibly being watched.

The Goncalves family lawyer said that the affidavit — which also explained how police linked Kohberger to DNA on a tan leather knife sheath found on a bed near two of the victims — outlined "a lot of hard evidence."

"The police have always said they want not only arrests. They want a conviction. So we're hopeful that that's where we're headed," Gray said.

The attorney said that he believes the case against Kohberger will only "get stronger and stronger" as investigators move to gather additional evidence.

"Who knows what they will find" inside Kohberger's car and his apartment, Gray said.

Meanwhile, Gray said that the Goncalves family is "thankful" that one of the surviving roommates was able to give police a description of a masked man in black clothing that she saw in the home on the night of the killings.

The roommate told investigators that she heard crying and saw the roughly 5-foot-10 "athletically built" man with "bushy eyebrows" walking towards her inside the home, leaving her in a "frozen shock phase," the affidavit says.

The affidavit said that the roommate reported seeing the man walk toward the back sliding glass door of the house and that she then locked herself inside her bedroom.

Police believe the killings happened between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m., according to the affidavit, but 911 was not called until about eight hours later.

"She's a victim in the case," Gray said of the roommate who had a run-in with the man. "So I think everyone needs to treat her as a victim."

Gray added, "I don't think anybody knows what they might do in that situation."