With Bryan Kohberger pleading guilty to killing four University of Idaho college students and agreeing to a life sentence, there’s only one mystery left in the 2022 Idaho murder case: why did he do it?
Unfortunately for onlookers and the victims’ families, Kohberger’s signed confession leaves his motives a complete mystery.
The confession document, labeled as a “Written Factual Basis” by the Ada County Court, was posted online on Tuesday but didn’t reveal any new information beyond what Kohberger admitted to at his change of plea hearing last Wednesday.
Kohberger certified that he was guilty of murder that was “willful, unlawful, deliberate, with premeditation and malice aforethought” in the deaths of Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin. He also pleaded guilty to a count of burglary, which will add 10 years to the four consecutive life sentences which he bargained for with prosecutors.
The only intrigue within the written confession was of the typographical kind: Kohberger crossed out a date on the bottom of the document that read “June 2025,” an apparent typo. He corrected the date to July 1 and signed his name in slightly misshapen cursive writing.
After prosecutors announced the plea deal on June 30 through a letter to the victims’ family members, reactions among the family members and the public were sharply polarized. While Mogen’s father told CBS News that the deal would allow his family to “actually put this behind us,” Goncalves’ family released multiple statements blasting prosecutors.
“At a bare minimum, please—require a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, & the true facts of what happened that night,” the family wrote on July 1 on Facebook.
On July 2, Kohberger appeared in court and entered his guilty plea to Judge Steven Hippler. The only words that Kohberger said were “yes” and “guilty”; the judge read out questions to him and then a prosecutor for the state described the evidence showing how he stabbed the four students.
Kohberger’s formal sentencing is scheduled for July 23, during which he will have the opportunity to address the court, if he so chooses. That chance represents potentially the only way that the world will find out why the then-PhD student in criminology drove 80 miles from Spokane, Washington to Moscow, Idaho and used a military-grade knife to kill the four college students.
There is no evidence, at least in the public record, that Kohberger ever met any of his four victims (though prosecutors did gather cell phone evidence showing that Kohberger had driven past the victims’ house several times).
Speculation has swirled as to the killer’s motives since his arrest in late 2022, with some observers latching on to prosecutor Bill Thompson’s statement last Wednesday that the state “[would] not represent that he intended to commit all of the murders that he did that night” to argue that Kohberger only intended to kill some of his four eventual victims. An obsession with Mogen, lingering trauma from childhood, and an affinity for the “incel” movement have all been floated by commentators.
But only Kohberger knows the truth—and it could stay that way.
The post Kohberger Leaves Motive for Killings a Mystery in Signed Confession appeared first on The Daily Beast.
