Bicka Barlow Has Joined Bryan Kohberger's Legal Defense Team — Here's What We Know About Her

The man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students won't stand trial until nearly three years after the crimes occurred. Bryan Kohberger has been behind bars since his arrest in December 2022, a month after the students were murdered. In September 2024, he was relocated to a jail in Boise after his trial date was pushed back a second time, per CBS News.

Kohberger's trial was initially scheduled for sometime in October 2023, but his legal team told a judge they wouldn't be ready. An Idaho judge ordered a change in venue due to the highly publicized case, which is how Kohberger landed in Boise, a full 300 miles away from where the murders occurred. Then in February 2025, a new attorney joined his defense. Here's what we know.

District Judge Steven Hippler allowed Bicka Barlow to join Kohberger's legal team on a pro hac vice basis, reported Newsweek. This is when an attorney outside of their jurisdiction is permitted to practice law in a different jurisdiction for a specific case. Barlow is an attorney who specializes in cases involving forensic DNA evidence and is based out of California. She will be joining Anne Taylor, Elisa Massoth, and Jay Logsdon on Kohberg's legal team.

Barlow was undoubtedly admitted to the team after it was revealed that defense attorney Taylor "claimed investigators acted inappropriately when using investigative genetic genealogy to try to isolate a suspect," per hearing transcripts obtained by CNN. Rylene Nowlin, an Idaho State Police forensic laboratory manager, said one person's DNA was found on the knife used to kill the University of Idaho students. They were able to find "touch DNA" and brought it to Houston-based Othram laboratory.

Police Laboratory System Director Matthew Gamette stayed in touch with Othram and said the lab needed permission to conduct certain kinds of searching. "We had to authorize things through memos and whatnot of them doing certain searching, specifically I believe it was FamilyTreeDNA that they needed an authorization for," said Gamette. The issue here is that an expert believes Othram used an unauthorized genealogy database to link Kohberger to the murders.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation took over for Othram in December 2022 and nine days later, they identified a suspect. Genetic genealogist Leah Larkin testified during the pre-trial hearing and said, "Othram’s matches were, as in their own words in their report, those matches were low." The lab recommended testing "four brothers" to get more information, though they were not Kohberger's actual siblings.

That testing never occurred but if it had, Larkin said it would have taken longer than nine days which is how he knew the FBI had "gone into a database they were not supposed to be in." The Bureau eventually admitted to using MyHeritage which law enforcement is not allowed to use. Despite this, the judge chose not to suppress the genetic genealogy evidence.