Bryan Kohberger admits to Idaho student murders
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By Jean Casarez, Rebekah Riess, CNN
Boise, Idaho (CNN) — For 30 months, Bryan Kohberger and his defense attorneys insisted on his innocence in the fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students in their off-campus home.
But in a matter of minutes Wednesday, in a packed courtroom roughly 300 miles from the horrific scene of the crime, everything changed.
“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” Kohberger said.
“Did you on November 13, 2022, enter the residence at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, with the intent to commit the felony crime of murder?” the judge asked.
“Yes,” Kohberger said, again.
It was the first time the public had heard directly from the lone suspect in a gruesome crime that shocked the nation.
And it was to say what prosecutors had alleged all along: He did it.
The remarkable change-of-plea hearing cements a deal that allows Kohberger to avoid the death penalty and his highly-anticipated murder trial by admitting guilt to charges of burglary and first-degree murder in the gruesome late-night killings of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen.
The deal ends a tumultuous case that included a cross-country hunt for the suspect and a lengthy pre-trial legal battle that included several attempts by the defense to have the charges dismissed or the death penalty taken off the table. The announcement of the deal comes after several judge’s rulings that would have narrowed the defense’s strategy options at trial.
As Kohberger, a 30-year-old former PhD student of criminology, confirmed his guilt to state district Judge Steven Hippler, one of the victims’ family members silently wept as other loved ones listened with keen focus.
After the plea, prosecutor Bill Thompson delivered a lengthy outline of the evidence that would have been presented against Kohberger at trial, including phone records that placed him near the victims’ home and an account of how he moved through the home on the night of the killings. He also revealed that prosecutors still do not know whether Kohberger entered the home with the intent of killing all four students.
“We will not represent that he intended to commit all of the murders that he did that night, but we know that that is what resulted, and that he then killed ‘intentionally, willfully, deliberately, with premeditation and with malice aforethought’ Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle,” prosecutor Bill Thompson said, appearing to choke up as he read their names.
Several key questions were left unaddressed, including what drove Kohberger to carry out the killings, why he targeted the students and why two other roommates were spared.
The families of the four victims – who have desperately awaited answers they believed would be revealed at trial – remain torn over the outcome of the deal. Mogen’s parents have expressed their support. Her father, Ben Mogen, told the Idaho Statesman he viewed the deal as an opportunity to avoid the pain and spectacle of a trial and focus on healing.
At least one parent, Steve Goncalves, told CNN he felt blindsided by the announcement, which came just days after he and other loved ones had urged prosecutors to pursue the death penalty.
On the burglary charge, Kohberger will face a sentence of 10 years. He will face a life sentence for each of the four counts of first-degree homicide. The five counts will run consecutively. Kohberger waived his right to appeal the plea and sentence, and to seek leniency and reconsideration of the sentence later.
Kohberger’s sentencing hearing has been set for July 23 at 9 a.m. and he will remain in jail until that time. Kohberger will no longer be allowed to appear in the civilian shirt and tie he usually wears for hearings, Judge Hippler said. The next time he steps foot in the court room, he will be dressed in prison garb.
Why the victims were targeted
Why Goncalves, Mogen, Chapin and Kernodle were killed remains a mystery. All four were students at the University of Idaho, and three lived together – along with two other roommates – at a residence near campus in Moscow, a college town of about 25,000 people.
On Saturday, November 12, 2022, Goncalves posted a series of photos on her Instagram with the caption, “one lucky girl to be surrounded by these ppl everyday.” One photo shows Mogen sitting on Goncalves’ shoulders, with Chapin and Kernodle standing next to them.
That night, the group of friends had gone out in Moscow and returned late to their shared home. The next day, police found the four students slaughtered inside the home, with no signs of forced entry or damage.
There was “no connection between Mr. Kohberger and the victims,” an attorney for the defendant argued in a mid-2023 court filing, pointing to a “total lack of DNA evidence from the victims in Mr. Kohberger’s apartment, office, home, or vehicle.”
But while authorities had “not said if the victims knew Kohberger … the suspect’s now-deleted Instagram account — which was reviewed by PEOPLE before it was removed — followed the accounts of Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle,” the outlet reported in early 2023.
The suspect allegedly contacted one of the female victims “repeatedly” late that October, roughly two weeks before the killings, People reported, adding the unidentified victim did not respond to the messages. It’s unclear whether that victim had seen the alleged messages from Kohberger.
Kohberger also visited the restaurant where two of the victims worked in the weeks before their killings, according to People. It’s unclear whether either of the victims were at the restaurant when Kohberger visited, whether he ever interacted with them there or whether he ever sat in the restaurant to eat his food.
Why 2 roommates were spared
Xana, Goncalves and Mogen shared their three-floor, six-bedroom home with Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke. Both were home during the time of the murders – but spared – police have said.
Mortensen, identified in court paperwork as “D.M.,” told investigators she “heard crying” in the house the morning of the killings and heard a voice say, “it’s ok, I’m going to help you.”
She then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” according to a probable cause affidavit released in early 2023 in prosecutors’ case against Kohberger.
“D.M. described the figure as 5’10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase,’” court documents reveal.
“The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male.
“I’m freaking out,” Mortensen texted Funke about the masked man dressed in black in their house nearly eight hours before calling 911 to report Kernodle unconscious at the home.
Funke later texted Mortensen: “Come to my room” and “run.”
After Kohberger’s arrest, Mortensen couldn’t definitively say whether he was the man she saw in her home around the time of the killings, court filings showed.
Both surviving roommates had been expected to testify at Kohberger’s trial.
How the murders were carried out
Under the proposed plea deal, “there’s no guarantee” Kohberger would share details of the crime, Goncalves’ father, Steve Gonclaves, told CNN on Tuesday.
“We want something like his knife – where he threw it – his kill kit, his suit, anything like that,” he said. “If he gave those type of details, people would just be like, ‘We were wrong. He did it, and let’s leave everybody alone and move on to another case.’”
An “edged weapon such as a knife” was used in the killings, Moscow Police said, but only a knife sheath was found at the crime scene, on the bed next to Mogen’s body. Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife, a sheath and a knife sharpener on Amazon in the months before the killings, prosecution filings show.
A selfie Kohberger is believed to have taken on the morning of November 13, 2022 – only hours after the murders – is also among case documents. In it, he stands in front of a shower, dressed in a white shirt, smiling and giving a thumbs-up.
Five days after the students’ deaths, Kohberger got a new license plate for his white Hyundai Elantra, court documents reveal. An officer at Washington State University, where Kohberger was a PhD student at the time of the killings, found a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra registered to Kohberger in an apartment complex parking lot, and investigators in the case of the slain students zeroed in on Kohberger because his driver’s license information and photo were consistent with a surviving roommate’s description.
Trash, recovered from the Kohberger family residence by Pennsylvania law enforcement and sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing, was used to help investigators narrow down Kohberger as the suspect in the Idaho student killings in December 2022, court documents show.
Soon after that, “the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash” matched a tan leather knife sheath found “laying on the bed” of one of the victims, according to the documents.
Kohberger was arrested for the killings on December 30, 2022, in his home state of Pennsylvania, authorities said.
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CNN’s Jim Sciutto and Betul Tuncer contributed to this story.
