Bryan Kohberger was formally sentenced to four life terms in prison without parole this week for the brutal 2022 murders of University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
“He’s going to stand up with the belly chains and leg irons he’s wearing, he’s going to be escorted into the custody of Idaho Department of Correction, and the door will close behind him forever,” Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said of Kohberger at the sentencing.
Kohberger, a former criminal justice graduate student, is expected to serve out his sentence at Idaho Maximum Security Institution, known as IMSI, CBS affiliate KBOI reports. It is the state’s only maximum security prison.
IMSI houses several notorious inmates and has been plagued by reports of violence, hunger strikes and allegations of inhumane conditions in recent years.
Here’s what to know about the prison.
One of the “15 worst prisons in America,” report says
Located in Kuna, Idaho, about 20 miles from Boise, the Idaho Maximum Security Institution was opened in 1989. According to its website, IMSI houses the state’s “most disruptive male residents” and has a double perimeter fence reinforced with razor wire and an electronic detection system.
The facility was named one of the “15 Worst Prisons in America” by Security Journal Americas in 2024 — joining other notorious lockups like Attica Correctional Facility in New York, San Quentin in California and ADX Florence, aka the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” in Colorado.
Solitary confinement and lockdowns are common at IMSI, which has “faced criticism for its harsh treatment of inmates and inadequate mental health care,” according to Security Journal Americas.
CBS affiliate KBOI reported in 2016 that many of the prison’s inmates were locked in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, eating alone in their cells with almost no human interaction. The state’s top corrections official told the station at the time that they were working to reduce the use of solitary.
“IMSI manages the long-term housing of our most dangerous and volatile population, the Idaho Department of Correction told CBS News in an email Friday. Asked about the use of solitary confinement and lockdowns, he department said, “Restrictive housing is not a disciplinary sanction, it is a housing assignment designed to manage specific behaviors.”
In its description of ISMI, Security Journal of Americas notes “numerous reports of inmate-on-inmate violence, as well as allegations of excessive force by correctional officers.” In 2023, a fight involving more than 30 inmates broke out at IMSI, the Idaho Statesman reported, sending one prisoner to the hospital.
Last summer, dozens of inmates at IMSI refused to eat for six days over numerous grievances, the Idaho Statesman reported, and earlier this month, nearly 90 inmates planned to stage hunger strikes to protest “inhumane conditions” at the prison, according to the paper, The corrections department described it as “a planned, peaceful demonstration” over access to visitation and programming.
Chad Daybell and 2 serial killers are there
Kohberger took a plea deal earlier this month that spared him a possible death penalty. He’ll be living alongside all of Idaho’s eight male death row inmates at IMSI, according to the Idaho Department of Corrections.
Among those prisoners is Thomas Creech, a serial killer who’s been locked up for half a century. Creech, who was convicted of five murders in three states and suspected of several more, had his scheduled execution halted by a judge last November after his first lethal injection attempt was botched earlier in 2024.
Another serial killer incarcerated at ISMI, Gerald Pizzuto, is awaiting execution for two murders in Idaho in 1985. That same year, Pizzuto killed two other people in Washington state after being released from prison in Michigan for rape.
Kohberger will also be at the same facility that houses condemned killer Chad Daybell. The husband of “Doomsday mom” Lori Vallow Daybell was convicted of first-degree murder of his first wife and two of his then-girlfriend Lori Vallow’s children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow and Tylee Ryan, in a case that made national headlines. Chad Daybell was sentenced to death last June, nearly a year after Lori Vallow Daybell was sentenced to life in prison.
Kohberger behind bars
Police files on the quadruple murder case that were released by the Moscow, Idaho, police department Wednesday night shed some light on Kohberger’s life behind bars since the killings.
One man who was housed next to Kohberger’s cell at the Latah County Jail told a detective that Kohberger washed his hands dozens of times each day and spent up to an hour in the shower. He said Kohberger would “be awake almost all night and would only take a nap during the day.”
Another prisoner at the jail said he often overheard Kohberger on video calls with his mother, according to the police files. One time when Kohberger was talking to his mother, the inmate, who was watching sports, said “‘you suck’ to one of the players on the team, at which point Kohberger immediately got up and put his face to the bars and aggressively asked if [the inmate] was talking about him or his mother. [The inmate] said this was the only time Kohberger lost his temper,” the police report says.
Another inmate who encountered Kohberger voiced negative feelings toward him, according to the files. The man called Kohberger a “weirdo” and said “if he wasn’t worried about further legal percussions he would have physically assaulted Kohberger,” the police document says.
When asked by another inmate if he thought Kohberger was guilty of the crimes, he said yes, adding: “His eyes tell a story.”
Stephen Smith is a managing editor for CBSNews.com based in New York. A Washington, D.C. native, Steve was previously an editorial producer for the Washington Post, and has also worked in Los Angeles, Boston and Tokyo.
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