A Ph.D. student who went from studying crime scenes and serial killers to being charged in the mysterious murders of four Idaho college students was set to plead guilty on Wednesday in a deal that would spare him from the death penalty.
The agreement reached between prosecutors and the suspect, Bryan Kohberger, was a surprise twist in a case that has spawned books, documentaries and years of social media speculation since November 2022, when four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in the middle of the night in a home near campus.
But while the deal was set to resolve the question of whether Mr. Kohberger, 30, would be convicted, it also raised significant new ones. Among them were whether a motive would ever be revealed, since Mr. Kohberger had no known connection to the victims, and whether Mr. Kohberger would discuss how he had carried out the crime and evaded arrest for more than six weeks.
The plea hearing, scheduled for 11 a.m. local time in Boise, will be a turning point in a grisly drama that was only increasing in intensity as the trial, which had been set to begin in August, drew nearer.
At the time of the crimes, Mr. Kohberger was a few months into a criminology program at Washington State University, about a 15-minute drive from the crime scene in Moscow, Idaho. He had moved there from Pennsylvania, where he was raised and where he had recently completed a master’s program in criminal justice, during which he had surveyed criminals about their emotions and thoughts while they carried out their past crimes.
Investigators have said he drove around the victims’ home on King Road before entering the house and going into two bedrooms around 4 a.m., where he fatally stabbed four college students: Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.
The police were not called to the house for more than seven hours after the crime despite the fact that a surviving roommate had seen a man clad in black walking out of the house during the night. The roommate had sought refuge downstairs with another roommate, according to court records, but no one called 911 until late that morning, when a friend came to the house and discovered the gruesome scene upstairs.
Although he was not on the radar of lead investigators for weeks, the police were nonetheless able to track Mr. Kohberger down, in part because they said his DNA had been found on a knife sheath left at the crime scene. Investigators used genetic genealogy to build a family tree and arrested him shortly after Christmas at his parents’ home in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania.
As Mr. Kohberger sat in jail for more than two and a half years, prosecutors disclosed additional evidence piece by piece in court filings. They said Mr. Kohberger had purchased a Ka-Bar knife — the type used in the slayings — and a sheath in the months before the attack, and video surveillance showed a car similar to his circling the victims’ home on the morning of the crimes. Investigators said it appeared he had turned his cellphone off for about two hours around the time of the killings.
In response, Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers said he had merely been “out driving” at the time, and they filed a raft of motions seeking to undermine various other pieces of evidence. They had tried to prevent the prosecution from seeking the death penalty, saying Mr. Kohberger had been diagnosed with autism, and sought to delay the trial, saying that the amount of evidence in the case was so vast that they had not had enough time to review it all. The judge, Steven Hippler, rejected both of those arguments.
Under the plea deal outlined by prosecutors, Mr. Kohberger would serve four consecutive life sentences and waive his rights to appeal. “We hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice,” prosecutors wrote in a letter this week to victims’ families
The relatives of some victims indicated support for the deal, which would avert what had been expected to be a monthslong trial and years of appeals, while others derided it.
Relatives of Ms. Goncalves, who have long said they were hoping Mr. Kohberger would be executed, encouraged people to contact Judge Hippler and urge him to reject the deal.
“The death penalty is merely an illusion in the criminal justice system,” they wrote in a statement. “When available, it serves as a bargaining tool for the State, and when rarely applied, it’s never enforced due to a highly inefficient appellate process.”
Other family members, including Mr. Chapin’s parents and Ms. Mogen’s father, expressed support for the plea deal.
Idaho has not executed anyone since 2012, and only three people since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Last year, the state tried to execute Thomas Creech, who had been imprisoned for nearly 50 years, but executioners were unable to successfully insert an intravenous line for the lethal injection
Lawmakers authorized the use of the firing squad in executions in 2023 and, earlier this year, passed a law that will make it the primary method of execution beginning in July 2026.
Mike Baker is a national reporter for The Times, based in Seattle.
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs reports on national stories across the United States with a focus on criminal justice. He is from upstate New York.
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