FBI agent lost Idaho massacre suspect while tracking him on cross-country road trip: report

"For several alarming hours — or more," he wrote, the "chief suspect in a quadruple homicide that had shocked the nation had seemingly vanished."

Just over a month after allegedly murdering four students at the University of Idaho, Kohberger set off with his father on a road trip from his apartment in Pullman, Washington to visit their family home in Pennsylvania for the holidays.

Sources told Blum that a team of FBI agents had been given orders to follow Kohberger's white Hyundai Elantra for the duration of the journey, but "not long after the car had pulled out of its space in the graduate housing parking lot ... they lost it."

Blum recalled that law enforcement admitted their mistake "with a bristle of embarrassment," adding that they did not disclose exactly how long cat was separated from mouse. The team eventually caught up with him around 900 miles and 15 hours later in Loma, Colorado thanks to an automated license plate reader, and the chase continued.

Blum pointed out, however, that Kohberger insisted on taking a winding route across the country made little practical sense to his father, rather than the I-90 route that the father suggested.

The operation was nearly derailed again along the way, as Kohberger was pulled over twice by authorities in Indiana. The FBI was worried he could become violent if confronted, but luckily he remained calm and the state officers let him go.

Kohberger was arrested at his family's home shortly after he and his dad arrived, and flown back to a Moscow, Idaho jail, where he currently remains.