Bryan Kohberger admitted in court Wednesday that he killed four University of Idaho students in 2022, finally bringing some closure to the 2 ½-year case that brought national attention to the grieving college town.
“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” 4th Judicial District Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger during a 50-minute change-of-plea hearing.
“Yes,” Kohberger replied.
Hippler, seated from the bench, asked Kohberger four separate times — once for each victim — if he “willfully, unlawfully, deliberately with premeditation and with malice aforethought” stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin to death in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
“Yes,” Kohberger, seated between his attorneys, responded.
The hastily scheduled hearing came a month before Kohberger’s attorneys were expected to begin their fight for their client’s innocence at his high-profile capital trial, with jury selection slated for the end of July. Hippler apologized to both the families of the victims and Kohberger for the “short notice” of Wednesday’s hearing, adding that he also learned of the plea deal Monday and was under the impression they’d be going to trial next month.
Instead, Kohberger, dressed in a white button-down shirt, dark textured tie and khaki pants without a belt, pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of the U of I students at an off-campus home in Moscow.From left, University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed in a November 2022 attack at an off-campus house on King Road in Moscow. Idaho Statesman graphic/Provided photos
Kohberger, a former Washington State University Ph.D. student of criminology, lived just 10 miles west of the students on the other side of the Idaho-Washington state line in Pullman.
Wednesday’s decision to enter a guilty plea spared him from facing the possibility of death row, and eventual execution. The judge set Wednesday, July 23, for his sentencing hearing, to begin at 9 a.m. It will carry over to July 24 if needed.
Originally from Pennsylvania, Kohberger had faced the prospect of capital punishment if found guilty by a jury. His public defense team spent nearly a year trying to remove the death penalty as a possible sentencing option, but to no avail, ahead of the plea agreement in exchange for a life sentence with no ability to appeal.
The plea agreement came over the protest of half of the four victims’ families. Most outspoken were the parents of Kaylee Goncalves, who worked this week to inspire supporters to call the judge, the U.S. Department of Justice and Gov. Brad Little’s office to force Kohberger’s capital murder trial to proceed, in pursuit of a possible death sentence.
