Families of the Idaho students Bryan Kohberger stabbed to death are set to see him sentenced
Wednesday's sentencing hearing will give the families of Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Kaylee Goncalves the opportunity to describe the anguish they've felt since their loved ones were killed in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University when he broke into a nearby rental home through a kitchen sliding door and killed the four friends who appeared to have no connection with him.
Police initially had no suspects, and the killings terrified the normally quiet community in the small, western Idaho city of Moscow. Some students at both universities left mid-semester, taking the rest of their classes online because they felt unsafe.
But investigators had a few critical clues. A knife sheath left near Mogen's body had a single source of male DNA on the button snap, and surveillance videos showed a white Hyundai Elantra near the rental home around the time of the murders.
Police used genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect, and accessed cellphone data to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings. Online shopping records showed Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier, along with a sheath like the one at the home.
Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings. He initially stood silent when asked to enter a plea, so a judge entered a 'not guilty' plea on his behalf.
Both the investigation and the court case drew widespread attention. Discussion groups proliferated online, members eagerly sharing their theories and questions about the case. Some self-styled armchair web-sleuths pointed fingers at innocent people simply because they knew the victims or lived in the same town. Misinformation spread, piling additional distress on the already-traumatized community.
As the criminal case unfolded, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson announced that he would seek the death penalty if Kohberger was convicted. The court-defense team, led by attorney Anne Taylor, challenged the validity of the DNA evidence, unsuccessfully pushed to get theories about possible 'alternate perpetrators' admitted in court, and repeatedly asked the judge to take the death penalty off of the table.
But those efforts largely failed, and the evidence against Kohberger was strong. With an August trial looming, Kohberger reached a plea deal. Prosecutors agreed to drop their efforts to get a death sentence in exchange for Kohberger's guilty plea to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. Both sides agreed to a proposed sentence of four consecutive life sentences without parole, plus an additional 10 years for the burglary charge. Kohberger also waived his right to appeal any issues in the case.
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DOJ shuts down dark web child abuse sites that had 120,000 members
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Spearman is one of at least 18 people convicted so far of leading and utilizing the dark web to share hundreds of thousands of unlawful sexually exploitative images of children. The Justice Department calls the investigation and prosecutions Operation Grayskull; it helped secure those arrests and shutter four heavily trafficked dark web sites where violent and horrific images of child sexual abuse were traded and housed. The Operation Grayskull investigation launched in 2020, when law enforcement agents noticed a spike in traffic to a dark web site suspected of hosting child abuse material. The dark web child abuse sites eventually attracted more than 120,000 members, millions of files and at least 100,000 visits in a single day, according to an FBI official who spoke with CBS News. "Even for prosecutors, it is difficult to understand how pervasive this is," said Matthew Galeotti, head of the Justice Department Criminal Division. "Because it happens on the dark web, people aren't aware of it. It's extremely troubling," he told CBS News. Spearman's case has parallels to many of the others unearthed by Operation Grayskull. Spearman was accused of helping lead a dark web site with thousands of users and members. A sentencing memo submitted to the court said it was "no wonder" that he had tried to resist the FBI, rather than surrendering. "The devices at his desk contained massive quantities of evidence proving that he was the lead administrator of Website A," the memo said. "Unsurprisingly, the defendant's devices also contained an enormous collection of images and videos depicting the rape and abuse of children." Selwyn Rosenstein was sentenced to 28 years in prison in 2022, for operating a dark website for unlawful exploitative images. Prosecutors said the platform "was not simply a website; it was a large, active community of pedophiles and (abuse material) enthusiasts. And it existed in part because of the Defendant's criminal acts." Rosenstein possessed such a large quantity of abusive images, he needed to store some on a server he used to run his business, according to the Justice Department. Speaking from a second floor conference room at Justice Department headquarters in Washington last week, Galeotti told CBS News the members of these dark web child abuse sites often "earn" membership by paying a fee, "helping moderate the site" or contributing child abuse images or material. Galeotti said, "We luckily have very sophisticated prosecutors and agents who work specifically on this kind of thing. These are people who have a more of a technical understanding." "The defendants in this case, as sadistic as they may be, are somewhat sophisticated," and make use of encryption, he added. 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Since I couldn't comprehend — leave alone manage — business affairs, an attorney completed my last career financial transaction which was refunding a five-figure advance to a client known from Burundi to Beverly Hills. To pay mounting bills, he was forced to sell our home. This was all far above my new head. Movers I can't recall packed boxes I can't recall for a trip I could not wrap my head around. I landed in a sleepy southern town east of somewhere and west of somewhere else in a rambling wooden farmhouse peering out from tangled brush. It was nine hours south of my old life and my child. No trace of the move remains in my mind — it's like it didn't happen or I wasn't there. I rarely recalled I'd been moved to Virginia. This means I wondered if I should move to a place I already lived in, or leave a place I already left. My child stayed in college in New York while I spent one year in outpatient therapy. I relearned how to walk, how to talk, how to place my hands on a keyboard, how to read, how to write, how to make a cup of tea. Three years post-truck, the Social Security Disability Administration ruled my injuries were 'permanent and incurable.' Still, my daughter's 'diagnosis' was by far the worst. She said her mom disappeared. In my first life, I made sense of thousands of stories on global warming and lip gloss and sports bras and organized closets and candidates. Normal people do things like that, plus wake up, brush teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, get kids to school, keep clients happy and clean dryer lint. It felt like I had been thrown from a plane. Then it felt like trying to piece together any remnants of the person I was before I was thrown out of the plane. And then? It kept feeling that way. Most of us lose people we love. I lost the person I was. Related: The author several years after the accident. Related: The new 'me' had never read books I loved, never shared favorite times with my child. They tested my brain hundreds of times and found lots of things bit the dust, like the file that encodes new memories, and the file that integrates physical movements so you don't fly down the steps or fall out of your chair. I lost what happened a minute ago, a page ago, a lifetime ago. This is called amnesia. Amnesia can take anything and make it disappear. Your child's first words. Your mom's last words. Mine came with a side of aphasia. That means I couldn't find the words I needed or put them together so they made sense. I said stuff like 'white stuff sky,' which meant snow, or 'cow thing pants' which meant belt or 'green thing dirt,' which meant plant. Words often seemed to start mid-sentence — and end there, too. There are three stages of making a memory: encoding (which means you learn something), consolidation (which means you store it), and recall (which means you can find it again). Learning was hard. Storing was hard. Recall was almost impossible. I was impaired and could not be repaired. A doctor told me so. There's an irony: The drunk woman who hit me was impaired, too. You may wonder if 'insurers' covered health care bills or compensated me for pain and suffering. The answer is no. The drunk driver had three prior DUIs and no longer had a license or insurance. Because she had stolen the truck she was driving, the owner's insurance didn't pay either. The car I was in was parked and I was waiting for the woman who owned it to return, so she was not at fault and her insurer didn't pay. As a result, most of the massive medical bills were paid by me, or rather the power of attorney on my behalf. Health insurance did not/does not cover motor vehicle accidents. I encountered a Catch-22 that removed me from outpatient rehab at the end of year one, which may or may not have been linked to insurance, too. Or, rather, lack of it. The head guy (pun intended) in neuro rehab decided I was both too screwed-up and not screwed-up enough to keep receiving help. If I were more screwed up, they could do something. If I were less screwed-up, they could do something. But I wasn't, so they couldn't. And, so, I relearned to read under the patient care of no one at all. I achieved mixed results. In year two post-accident, I began trying to read a book. I read the same pages for two years. At first, they meant nothing. Then they meant something, for a few seconds. If I began where I'd left off, say on page 5, and found a character was on a train, I had no idea why he was on it or where he was going. At the same time, I started scratching anything I could recall on any surface I could find — paper plates, paper cups, placemats, napkins, coffee stirrers and Popsicle sticks. I called them scraps. They were not in alphabetical order, not in numerical order, not in chronological order, but out of order, like me. I stuffed them in brown paper shopping bags and then stashed the bags in a closet. A few years ago, Google provided 115,000,000 ways to 'clear your mind.' These included clearing your mind of stress, clearing your mind of guilt, clearing your mind of clutter, clearing your mind of negative thoughts, clearing your cookies, clearing your cache, clearing your sinuses, and clearing your mind of all thought. I had. I also found 8,310,000 jokes about brain injury on Google. Plus, of course, in cartoons all over the planet, people like us are hilarious, especially when our skulls get smashed. Think baseball bats, rifle butts, and coconuts on craniums. The intact brain is amazing. The three-pound blob remembers the theme music for The Flintstones, the name of your fifth-grade French teacher, and your childhood phone number. But put it through a windshield at 70 miles an hour,r and then it's a crapshoot. You might remember something that happened a moment ago, or you might not. You might not walk or talk again. You might wake up as an entirely different person. Or you might never wake up. Seven years ago, I began attending a newly formed brain trauma group. One member, Daniel, 'came back' from two weeks in a coma. Daniel's counselor says that the 'old' Daniel is gone. The new Daniel has new frontal lobes and a new personality, as well as the wife of his former self and three kids he can't name. Another member, Mel, kept saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' like he did something wrong. We were told most of us were in the program due to someone driving while drunk. A recent photo of the author. Brain trauma is not about the past: the successes, accomplishments, accolades. It's not even about losses. It's a muddy, rutty, hands and knees crawl up to the first rung of the ladder, and up each rung after that. There is no cure. I'm sharing this story not because I think it is exceptional, but because I know it is not. Many others with similar stories can't write because they're more disabled than I am or because they lost their lives. We all have plaque in our brain — some of us know it. Plaque can advance like armies in the night, taking more and more of us, leaving less and less. You take a detour when you see us coming, and think we don't notice, but we do. In 2021, the latest year for which there are numbers, the National Highway Safety Traffic Administration (NHSTA) reported 401,520 Americans were killed or injured due to someone driving while drunk. Also according to NHSTA, two out of three Americans will be impacted by drunk driving in their lifetime. Every day, lives of adults and kids are taken by impaired drivers who gain a few seconds, then take a few lives. Each statistic is a person. Each death is preventable, as is each injury. According to a recent article in The New York Times Magazine, 'From 2020 to 2021, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has since calculated, the number of crashes in the United States soared 16 percent, to more than six million, or roughly 16,500 wrecks a day.' The article goes on to point out that, 'For public-messaging reasons, vehicular wrecks are almost never referred to by experts as 'accidents,' wording that implies no culpability on the part of the participants.' The fatality figures were somehow even worse. In 2021, the latest year for which there are figures, 42,939 Americans died in car crashes, the highest toll in a decade and a half. 'Of those deaths, a sizable portion involved intoxicated or unrestrained drivers or vehicles traveling well in excess of local speed limits.' This would be a different story if I regained my former life, complete with my former mind. I didn't. Eighteen years post-accident. I still think with a stutter, speak with a limp, and have less usable space in my brain, so I run out of memory fast. Today I had two coins in my hand. One was a dime and one was a nickel, and I didn't know which was which. I can spackle all I want but underneath I'm still broken. I frustrate others by leaning on them and by not leaning on them, and baffle them when I seem normal and when I don't. It takes decades to build a life, and seconds to destroy it. The next time someone warns you to be careful when driving home from a night out, don't roll your eyes. Heed their warning. Disabled people are the single largest minority in the world, and likely the least heard from. We are also the only minority anyone can join at any time. Trust me, you won't want to be disabled — or to take someone's life. Judith Hannah Weiss freelanced for 25 years, writing print and broadcast promotion for New York, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Vogue and other major media. In 2006, she was hit by a drunk driver, which put things on a long pause. Her post-accident work has appeared on NBC News and in The Washington Post, The Oldster, Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Memoir Monday and The Pulse. You can find her on Substack at and at This article originally appeared on HuffPost in April 2024. Also in Goodful: Also in Goodful: Also in Goodful:
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Secret Service thwarts potential threat near Trump's White House grounds with rapid response
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