Bryan Kohberger pleads guilty in murders of four University of Idaho students

Bryan Kohberger has pleaded guilty to murder in the fatal stabbing of four University of Idaho students in 2022.

He agreed to the plea deal just weeks before his trial was to begin to avoid the death penalty, which prosecutors had said they intended to pursue.

Kohberger, 30, has been charged with killing Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13, 2022. The northern Idaho farming community of about 25,000 people was rocked by the killings and hadn’t seen a homicide in about five years.

“Bryan Kohberger facing a life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships, and engage with the world,” Aubrie Goncalves, the 18-year-old sister of victim Kaylee Goncalves, wrote in a Facebook post. “Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever. That reality stings more deeply when it feels like the system is protecting his future more than honoring the victims’ pasts.”

The small farming community of Moscow, in the northern Idaho panhandle, had not had a homicide in about five years when the four were found dead at a rental home near campus on Nov. 13, 2022. Autopsies showed the four victims were all likely asleep when they were attacked. Some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times.

The killings grabbed headlines around the world and set off a nationwide hunt, including an elaborate effort to track down a white sedan spotted on surveillance cameras repeatedly driving by the rental home. Police said they used genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect and accessed cellphone data to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings.

At the time, Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at nearby Washington State University who had just completed his first semester and was a teaching assistant in the criminology program.

Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania, where his parents lived, weeks later. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.

Online shopping records showed that Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier — as well as a sheath like the one found at the scene.

No motive has emerged for the killings, nor is it clear why the attacker spared two roommates who were in the home. There also was no indication he had a relationship with any of the victims, who all were friends and members of the university’s Greek system.

Authorities have said cellphone data and surveillance video show that Kohberger visited the victims’ neighborhood at least a dozen times before the killings, and that he traveled in the same area that night.

Kohberger’s lawyers said he was simply on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.