Bryan Kohberger accepts plea deal in Idaho murders case after prosecution drops death penalty

Daily Mail​

15 hours ago

Quadruple homicide suspect Bryan Kohberger has accepted a plea deal over the horrific slaying of four University of Idaho students.
Kohberger, 30, is expected to plead guilty to the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20 in their off-campus home in November 2022.
He will also admit a burglary charge stemming from the same incident if the deal is signed off by a judge during a court appearance scheduled on Wednesday.
Idaho prosecutors have agreed to drop the death penalty in exchange for his plea.
Kohberger must instead agree to spend life in prison without the possibility of parole for the grisly stabbings.
The former criminology grad student had previously pleaded not guilty to the slayings, but is now scheduled to issue a change of plea in court on Wednesday. He would then be sentenced in late July to four consecutive life sentences on the murder charges and 10 years behind bars for burglary.
News of the plea deal infuriated the family of victim Kaylee Goncalves.
'We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho,' they wrote on Facebook. 'They have failed us. This was very unexpected.'
Prosecutors had told the family on Friday about the possibility of a plea deal, but the Goncalves family said they were stunned when they were alerted that the deal went through in a letter by Sunday.
It explained that state prosecutors were approached last week by Kohberger's defense team asking to be presented with an offer.
Prosecutors then said they met with available family members and 'weighed the right path forward, and made a formal offer' to the murder suspect, according to ABC News.
'This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family,' prosecutors wrote in the letter to the victims' families.
'This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction, appeals.
'Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interest of justice.'
Just one day before families received the letter, a judge slapped down Kohberger's efforts to point the finger at four alternate suspects - blasting his legal team's evidence as 'entirely irrelevant' and 'wild speculation
'Nothing links these individuals to the homicides or otherwise gives rise to reasonable inference that they committed the crime; indeed, it would take nothing short of rank speculation by the jury to make such a finding,' Judge Steven Hippler wrote in his decision.
It was a huge blow to Kohberger's legal team as they scrambled to find a defense which could compete with the state's mounting evidence against him.
The court had earlier heard he purchased a balaclava from Dick's Sporting Goods store months before the savage murders inside the victims' off-campus home.
Surviving housemate Dylan Mortensen told police she saw a man wearing 'the same kind of mask' during the crime spree.
Kohberger desperately wanted his purchase to be inadmissible in his upcoming trial, but prosecutors argued it was crucial to their case.
He was ultimately linked to the murder of the four students by DNA found on the sheath of a knife found at the scene of their off-campus home, investigators said.
The criminology grad student was arrested nearly six weeks after the students were found dead, at his parents' home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania where he had returned for the holidays.
A motive for the murders was never disclosed, but a damning Dateline report claimed that Kohberger - who was then a graduate criminology student at the nearby Washington State University - saved dozens of photos of female students at both Washington State and the University of Idaho on his phone.
The photos apparently came from a pool party Kohberger was invited to in Moscow, Idaho on July 9.
A review of the accounts that had posted the photos found that a number of them were close friends with Kernodle, Goncalves and Mogen.
Kohberger had even allegedly returned to Moscow after dark following the pool party, and data from his cellphone showed it connected to a cellphone tower near the victims' off-campus house a total of 23 times over the course of four months.
From cellphone data produced by prosecutors, the route allegedly driven by Bryan Kohberger on the night of the brutal Idaho murders may be a crucial piece of evidence in the state's case against the 28-year-old. In his new alibi filing, his lawyers say they plan to dispute this data
At the same time, Kohberger allegedly searched for pornography containing the keywords 'drugged' and 'sleeping,' and Googled the phrase 'Sociopathic Traits in College Students' as he was struggling to work as a teaching assistant, Dateline reported.
After he was pulled over by police in October 2022 and was seen politely conversing with an officer about traffic laws, Kohberger allegedly searched 'Can psychopaths behave pro-socially', the Dateline report claimed.
Prosecutors have alleged that Kohberger broke into the University of Idaho students' home on King Road shortly after they had gone to bed from a night partying on November 13, 2022 and stabbed them all to death.
His white Hyundai Elantra was allegedly caught on a neighbor's home security footage at around 3.30am, and was seen circling around the block multiple times over the next half hour.
By 4.07am, the vehicle came back drove by once again - then didn't come back into view until 4.20am, when it was seen speeding off.
During that 13-minute window, sources close to the investigation said Kohberger went directly upstairs to Mogen's bedroom, where he allegedly killed her and Goncalves.
He is accused of the turning his attention to Kernodle on his way back out the house, killing her as she was up ordering food, and then targeting her boyfriend, Chapin, whom Kohberger allegedly 'carved'.
Two other roommates survived, with one of them coming face-to-face with a masked man inside the home around the time of the murders.
Meanwhile, data from Kohberger's phone indicate he turned it off before 3am that morning, and when he apparently turned it back on at around 4.48am, it connected with a cellphone tower south of Moscow.
But the phone also appeared to be briefly back in the city shortly after 9am, when Kohberger reportedly returned to his apartment in Pullman, Washington, where he took a chilling selfie. giving the thumbs up pose in a bathroom mirror.
In the days that followed, Dateline reports Kohberger searched for a program about serial killer Ted Bundy and a YouTube video about the King Road victims.
Then, as police continued their multi-state search for the suspect, Kohberger reportedly searched for even more videos of Ted Bundy, and played the song Criminal by Britney Spears as he took additional selfies.
Prosecutors have also claimed his shopping history reveals that he bought a Ka-Bar knife, sheath and sharpener from Amazon back in March 2022.
News of the plea deal came just hours after a key hearing in Kohberger's case descended into chaos, with his defense apparently calling the 'wrong witness' as others expressed their bewilderment at being called at all.
Five men connected to Kohberger's past in Pennsylvania appeared in Monroe County Court on Monday to determine whether they would be ordered to travel to Idaho for his high-profile trial, which was scheduled for August.
The group of Pennsylvanians included the accused killer's former boxing coach, a man who he went to high school with, and a guard who worked at the local jail where he was briefly held while awaiting extradition.
But when the defense called on Ralph Vecchio III, 65, who owns the business where the Kohbergers bought his now infamous white Hyundai Elantra, he claimed he thought the attorneys may have subpoenaed the wrong guy.
He noted that his father with the same name had run the business when the Kohbergers bought the car, which matched one seen circling the students' home around the time of the murders.
Vecchio even said he has never met or laid eyes on the murder suspect.
'I feel the subpoena has no merit for me. I have never seen in my lifetime or talked to in my lifetime the accused,' he told the court.
'I've never had any personal contact with him ever.'
Vecchio then went on to say he had 'no idea' why he had been called as a witness in the case, adding: 'It doesn't make sense.'
'I've never seen or met, seen from a distance or had any contact with the accused in my life,' he said.
He also said that Kohberger had never stepped foot inside his auto business, that it was Kohberger's mother or father who had purchased the vehicle back in 2019 - and that he himself wasn't the one who had made the sale.
When Judge Arthur Zulick then questioned if the Ralph Vecchio present was the right one, attorney Abigail Parnell - who was speaking on behalf of Kohberger's legal team - admitted she didn't know.
'Your honor, I cannot say for certain,' she said.
Of the other four men, one agreed to travel to Idaho to testify ahead of the hearing, two were ordered by the judge to appear after voicing their opposition, and the fourth had yet to decide.