Kaylee Goncalves' Grieving Mother Received Shocking Murder Threat During Bryan Kohberger Sentencing

Yahoo

30-07-2025

The Goncalves family lawyers are investigating a sinister text message that Kaylee Goncalves' mother, Kristi Goncalves, was sent during Bryan Kohberger's sentencing hearing on July 23.
Kaylee's father, Steve Goncalves, revealed details of the threat on a recent installment of NewsNation's Banfield.
'Sitting near you in court and watching you is a joke. You know that Bryan is innocent,' the text read. 'I am in contact with a lot of serial killers, including BTK, and I've been put in contact with a wannabe serial killer who is in Moscow, Idaho, and I have given him your address.'
The message referred to murderer Dennis Rader, who killed 10 people between 1974 and 1991. He was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in prison in 2005.
Unlike Rader, 80, who shared specifics of his crimes in court, Steve suggested that Kohberger's plea agreement kept the public from knowing all of the shocking evidence that would have come out in trial, and subsequently, that allowed room for doubt that the 30-year-old was guilty.
'By hiding those details of what happened to my daughter and the other victims, it gave fuel to these people,' he said. 'It gave them a wishful thinking that they were, like, defending a PhD grad … people don't want to root for, like, a skinhead or a cop killer.'
As the National Enquirer previously reported, Kohberger pleaded guilty to the 2022 slayings of the Idaho Four – Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee, 21 – and was sentenced to serve four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Following his sentencing hearing, police filings and coroner's reports revealed that the attacks against Kaylee and Kernodle had been so violent that one of their surviving roommates mistakenly misidentified their bodies to investigators.
'I was unable to comprehend exactly what I was looking at while trying to discern the nature of the injuries,' one police officer described the scene, according to the Idaho Statesman.
Kaylee was said to have been left unrecognizable by the brutal attack – suffering knife wounds, strangulation and blunt force trauma in her last moments – and Kernodle was stabbed more than 50 times as she reportedly fought back against her killer, according to newly released reports.
Former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer theorized that Kaylee's death was particularly violent because Kohberger may have broken into their shared Idaho home to rape Mogen. When he got to her room, Kaylee was sleeping in the bed with her.
'Kaylee ruined his plans on how the night would go,' Coffindaffer told TMZ earlier this month, 'that's why her face was completely disfigured.'