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Albrightsville, Pennsylvania

G et in. Get the garbage. Get out. Don’t be seen.

Don’t be seen.

The FBI surveillance team can tell Kohberger is skittish. And that he knows what he’s doing.

It’s pitch-black, freezing.

The agents are cloaked by night and by the dense woods of the Poconos. It’s the time when most people are sound asleep, particularly in the dead of winter.

And yet, astonishingly, at four a.m., Bryan Kohberger walks out of his parents’ house, carrying garbage and wearing nitrile gloves. He dumps the bag in his neighbor’s trash can. Then scurries inside.

But a few hours later he’s back out again, gloved and depositing more garbage in his neighbors’ trash cans.

Back and forth. He carries out bags several times in the hours to come. Always wearing gloves.

The agents are ahead of him, though. They know time is of the essence.

In the early hours of the morning, they fish the garbage out of the Kohbergers’ bins and the neighbors’. According to the law, once trash is placed in a bin or on the curb, it is public property. They fly it to the Idaho state lab.

By December 28, they’ve got what they need.

They alert Pennsylvania’s state police, stationed at Stroudsburg, to be ready.

Bryan’s DNA was not in the trash. He must have worked overtime to ensure that. But his dad’s DNA is.

And his dad’s DNA shows a likelihood of his being the father of the person whose DNA is on the knife sheath—a likelihood that, according to the lab, would not be shared with at least 99.9998 percent of the male population.

That’s enough for Payne to finish his probable-cause affidavit, sign it, and walk it over to the courthouse for the signature of Judge Megan Marshall.

From there it’s emailed to Pennsylvania.

Justin Leri and Brian Noll, two veteran troopers in Pennsylvania’s Criminal Investigation Division, fill out the paperwork they need to get a judge to sign the arrest warrant and the other seizure warrants.

At 4:35 p.m., Judge Margherita Patti-Worthington of the Monroe County Court of Common Pleas signs them.

Now it’s go time.

The Pennsylvania State Police Special Emergency Response Team (SERT) gets ready for a night raid.