Admitted Idaho murderer Bryan Kohberger should get a new trial and face the death penalty, according to a digital forensics expert hired by the defense who says investigators missed damning evidence against the 30-year-old former criminology PhD student — evidence he told Fox News Digital investigators never properly analyzed or incorporated into the prosecution's case.

Sy Ray is a former Arizona homicide investigator who is now an expert on digital forensics, geolocation and similar data. Kohberger's lawyers hired him as an expert witness for the defense before Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty for the home invasion murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, also 20.

Kohberger, now serving four consecutive sentences of life in prison without parole, petitioned the court last week to withdraw his guilty plea and seek post-conviction relief, which could send the case to trial — and put the potential death penalty back in play.

"Bring back the death penalty," Ray told journalist Brian Entin in Kohberger’s primary target due to the number of times he could trace their phones to similar locations — but he noted later that Mogen was often with Goncalves, and their phones moved together a lot.

"I believe Maddie was the target," he said, adding that repeated "collisions" between their phones placed them in roughly the same area at the same time, including at a Pullman party the first week of school and at the A&W store near the King Road crime scene.

He also flagged what he described as Kohberger’s broader "pattern of life," pointing to evidence of stalking before the murders.

Because the state's "work product" didn't use this data, he said, his report only pushed back on what the state's witnesses used, which he said is lacking and missed the phone "collisions" entirely. 

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"I am unable to locate any period of time between June 23, 2022 and November 13, 2022 where Mr. Kohberger’s mobile device is in the same specific area as any of the deceased’s mobile devices," he wrote.

That pattern of life was also broken on the night of the murders, when Ray said he believes the plan to target Mogen went awry and resulted in him fleeing south, where he’d never driven before.

While prosecutors alleged that Kohberger had visited the crime scene a dozen times before the murders and at least once the morning after, they have not pointed to "collisions" with any of the victims the way Ray described in the podcast. In a news briefing after Kohberger's guilty plea, the case's lead investigators said they didn't know who the target was.

"The evidence suggested that there was a reason that this particular house was chosen," said then-Moscow Police Cpl. Brett Payne. "What that reason is, we don't know. We don't know who the target was, and we're not going to speculate on that up here today. But we can tell you that, for whatever reason, Mr. Kohberger chose that residence. Perhaps it's the location, layout, we do not know."

And when they were asked by Fox News Digital if they had a motive, lead investigators replied, "We don't."

Ray has maintained that investigators missed the evidence and should go back and take another look in case Kohberger's attempt to withdraw his plea and appeal his conviction succeeds.

"They need to get experts who actually know what the hell they’re looking at, and they need to rebuild the case now," he said.

Morgan Wright, another expert on digital forensics who is not connected to the case, said he is skeptical without seeing the LOCDBOR data firsthand.

"Show me the report. Show me the map," said Wright, the host of "Crime: Reconstructed" and the CEO and founder of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases. "Don't tell me, show me."

Wright, who has been following the case, said he hasn't seen LOCDBOR references in connection with the investigation prior to the podcast interview. 

Ray argues the records speak for themselves if investigators are willing to revisit them.

After Kohberger’s guilty plea, Ray said he offered to do a debrief with the FBI to show the evidence he said he found and they missed. He said he got no response, but added that he has presented before hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the country going back to November, he said.

Last week, Kohberger filed a petition for post-conviction relief, claiming he had ineffective counsel from his defense team.

Ray also speculated that Kohberger’s post-conviction petition was part of a broader legal strategy by his lead defense attorney Anne Taylor despite the plea agreement’s waiver of most appeal rights.

Kohberger pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.

"This can never be the standard investigation that we see in cases," Ray said. "This can never be acceptable."

However, he said he’s confident Kohberger would be convicted anyway at trial — if investigators introduced the evidence he found while working with Taylor.

"The time is now to start this investigation over," Ray said.

Kohberger had followed other people in the Moscow-Pullman area, he said — a pair of college towns on the border of Washington and Idaho.

"I think he had multiple targets throughout the entire Moscow-Pullman area," Ray said. "Location information and pattern of life is by far the most telling."

Ray said he has no doubt that Kohberger committed the murders.

"If he ever does walk, he will kill again," he said.