Latest news with #BrianKohberger
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
Bryan Kohberger is expected to enter a plea deal Wednesday in the Idaho student killings. Still, key elements of the crime remain a mystery
A month before the scheduled start of his murder trial in the 2022 killings of four Idaho college students in their off-campus home, defendant Brian Kohberger is expected to enter a plea deal that would remove the possibility of the death penalty, victims' families have been told. A hearing is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday in Boise, Idaho, before state district Judge Steven Hippler, and it will concern a plea agreement, a letter from the prosecutor to a victim's family says, the Idaho Statesman reported. One victim's family has asked for a delay to give them more time to get to Boise, its lawyer told the Associated Press. Kohberger, a 30-year-old former PhD student of criminology, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in Latah County, Idaho, where the gruesome discovery in a Moscow home first captured national attention. A plea deal – which at least one victim's family has condemned – would end a tumultuous case that has included a cross-country hunt for the suspect and a lengthy legal battle, including several attempts by the defense to have the charges dismissed or the death penalty taken off the table. Wednesday's hearing is expected to be fairly straightforward, with Hippler likely to read Kohberger the plea offer before asking him whether he has voluntarily accepted it and 'was informed of the consequences of the plea, including minimum and maximum punishments, and other direct consequences that may apply,' according to Idaho's law on pleas. Key questions, however, are likely to linger: How and why were these victims chosen? Why were other roommates at the home spared? And how exactly did the killer get into the home, carry out the crimes, then avoid capture for weeks? The answers surely would have been probed at trial. Now, if they ever emerge, they would likely come at a later sentencing hearing – possibly to be set Wednesday – when family and friends of the victims may also be invited to share victim impact statements, often gut-wrenching attestations to loved ones' agony and grief. Victims Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were 20, while Goncalves and Mogen were 21, when they were killed. These three questions, central to how they died, are still unanswered as the plea deal hearing gets underway: Why Goncalves, Mogen, Chapin and Kernodle were killed remains a mystery. All four were students at the University of Idaho, and three lived together – along with two other roommates – at a residence near campus in Moscow, a college town of about 25,000 people. On Saturday, November 12, 2022, Goncalves posted a series of photos on her Instagram at with the caption, 'one lucky girl to be surrounded by these ppl everyday.' One photo shows Mogen sitting on Goncalves' shoulders, with Chapin and Kernodle standing next to them. That night, the group of friends had gone out in Moscow and returned late to their shared home. The next day, police found the four students slaughtered inside the home, with no signs of forced entry or damage. There was 'no connection between Mr. Kohberger and the victims,' an attorney for the defendant argued in a mid-2023 court filing, pointing to a 'total lack of DNA evidence from the victims in Mr. Kohberger's apartment, office, home, or vehicle.' But while authorities had 'not said if the victims knew Kohberger … the suspect's now-deleted Instagram account — which was reviewed by PEOPLE before it was removed — followed the accounts of Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle,' the outlet reported in early 2023. The suspect allegedly contacted one of the female victims 'repeatedly' late that October, roughly two weeks before the killings, People reported, adding the unidentified victim did not respond to the messages. It's unclear whether that victim had seen the alleged messages from Kohberger. Kohberger also visited the restaurant where two of the victims worked in the weeks before their killings, according to People. It's unclear whether either of the victims were at the restaurant when Kohberger visited, whether he ever interacted with them there or whether he ever sat in the restaurant to eat his food. Xana, Goncalves and Mogen shared their three-floor, six-bedroom home with Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke. Both were home during the time of the murders – but spared – police have said. Mortensen, identified in court paperwork as 'D.M.,' told investigators she 'heard crying' in the house the morning of the killings and heard a voice say, 'it's ok, I'm going to help you.' She then saw a 'figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her,' according to a probable cause affidavit released in early 2023 in prosecutors' case against Kohberger. 'D.M. described the figure as 5'10' or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a 'frozen shock phase,'' court documents reveal. 'The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,' the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male. 'I'm freaking out,' Mortensen texted Funke about the masked man dressed in black in their house nearly eight hours before calling 911 to report Kernodle unconscious at the home. Funke later texted Mortensen: 'Come to my room' and 'run.' After Kohberger's arrest, Mortensen couldn't definitively say whether he was the man she saw in her home around the time of the killings, court filings showed. Both surviving roommates had been expected to testify at Kohberger's trial. Under the proposed plea deal, 'there's no guarantee' Kohberger would share details of the crime, Goncalves' father, Steve Gonclaves, told CNN on Tuesday. 'We want something like his knife – where he threw it – his kill kit, his suit, anything like that,' he said. 'If he gave those type of details, people would just be like, 'We were wrong. He did it, and let's leave everybody alone and move on to another case.'' An 'edged weapon such as a knife' was used in the killings, Moscow Police said, but only a knife sheath was found at the crime scene, on the bed next to Mogen's body. Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife, a sheath and a knife sharpener on Amazon in the months before the killings, prosecution filings show. A selfie Kohberger is believed to have taken on the morning of November 13, 2022 – only hours after the murders – is also among case documents. In it, he stands in front of a shower, dressed in a white shirt, smiling and giving a thumbs-up. Five days after the students' deaths, Kohberger got a new license plate for his white Hyundai Elantra, court documents reveal. An officer at Washington State University, where Kohberger was a PhD student at the time of the killings, found a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra registered to Kohberger in an apartment complex parking lot, and investigators in the case of the slain students zeroed in on Kohberger because his driver's license information and photo were consistent with a surviving roommate's description. Trash, recovered from the Kohberger family residence by Pennsylvania law enforcement and sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing, was used to help investigators narrow down Kohberger as the suspect in the Idaho student killings in December 2022, court documents show. Soon after that, 'the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash' matched a tan leather knife sheath found 'laying on the bed' of one of the victims, according to the documents. Kohberger was arrested for the killings on December 30, 2022, in his home state of Pennsylvania, authorities said. CNN's Jim Sciutto and Betul Tuncer contributed to this story.
CNN
4 days ago
- CNN
Bryan Kohberger is expected to enter a plea deal Wednesday in the Idaho student killings. Still, key elements of the crime remain a mystery
A month before the scheduled start of his murder trial in the 2022 killings of four Idaho college students in their off-campus home, defendant Brian Kohberger is expected to enter a plea deal that would remove the possibility of the death penalty, victims' families have been told. A hearing is set for 11 a.m. Wednesday in Boise, Idaho, before state district Judge Steven Hippler, and it will concern a plea agreement, a letter from the prosecutor to a victim's family says, the Idaho Statesman reported. One victim's family has asked for a delay to give them more time to get to Boise, its lawyer told the Associated Press. Kohberger, a 30-year-old former PhD student of criminology, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary in Latah County, Idaho, where the gruesome discovery in a Moscow home first captured national attention. A plea deal – which at least one victim's family has condemned – would end a tumultuous case that has included a cross-country hunt for the suspect and a lengthy legal battle, including several attempts by the defense to have the charges dismissed or the death penalty taken off the table. Wednesday's hearing is expected to be fairly straightforward, with Hippler likely to read Kohberger the plea offer before asking him whether he has voluntarily accepted it and 'was informed of the consequences of the plea, including minimum and maximum punishments, and other direct consequences that may apply,' according to Idaho's law on pleas. Key questions, however, are likely to linger: How and why were these victims chosen? Why were other roommates at the home spared? And how exactly did the killer get into the home, carry out the crimes, then avoid capture for weeks? The answers surely would have been probed at trial. Now, if they ever emerge, they would likely come at a later sentencing hearing – possibly to be set Wednesday – when family and friends of the victims may also be invited to share victim impact statements, often gut-wrenching attestations to loved ones' agony and grief. Victims Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were 20, while Goncalves and Mogen were 21, when they were killed. These three questions, central to how they died, are still unanswered as the plea deal hearing gets underway: Why Goncalves, Mogen, Chapin and Kernodle were killed remains a mystery. All four were students at the University of Idaho, and three lived together – along with two other roommates – at a residence near campus in Moscow, a college town of about 25,000 people. On Saturday, November 12, 2022, Goncalves posted a series of photos on her Instagram at with the caption, 'one lucky girl to be surrounded by these ppl everyday.' One photo shows Mogen sitting on Goncalves' shoulders, with Chapin and Kernodle standing next to them. That night, the group of friends had gone out in Moscow and returned late to their shared home. The next day, police found the four students slaughtered inside the home, with no signs of forced entry or damage. There was 'no connection between Mr. Kohberger and the victims,' an attorney for the defendant argued in a mid-2023 court filing, pointing to a 'total lack of DNA evidence from the victims in Mr. Kohberger's apartment, office, home, or vehicle.' But while authorities had 'not said if the victims knew Kohberger … the suspect's now-deleted Instagram account — which was reviewed by PEOPLE before it was removed — followed the accounts of Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle,' the outlet reported in early 2023. The suspect allegedly contacted one of the female victims 'repeatedly' late that October, roughly two weeks before the killings, People reported, adding the unidentified victim did not respond to the messages. It's unclear whether that victim had seen the alleged messages from Kohberger. Kohberger also visited the restaurant where two of the victims worked in the weeks before their killings, according to People. It's unclear whether either of the victims were at the restaurant when Kohberger visited, whether he ever interacted with them there or whether he ever sat in the restaurant to eat his food. Xana, Goncalves and Mogen shared their three-floor, six-bedroom home with Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke. Both were home during the time of the murders – but spared – police have said. Mortensen, identified in court paperwork as 'D.M.,' told investigators she 'heard crying' in the house the morning of the killings and heard a voice say, 'it's ok, I'm going to help you.' She then saw a 'figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her,' according to a probable cause affidavit released in early 2023 in prosecutors' case against Kohberger. 'D.M. described the figure as 5'10' or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a 'frozen shock phase,'' court documents reveal. 'The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,' the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male. 'I'm freaking out,' Mortensen texted Funke about the masked man dressed in black in their house nearly eight hours before calling 911 to report Kernodle unconscious at the home. Funke later texted Mortensen: 'Come to my room' and 'run.' After Kohberger's arrest, Mortensen couldn't definitively say whether he was the man she saw in her home around the time of the killings, court filings showed. Both surviving roommates had been expected to testify at Kohberger's trial. Under the proposed plea deal, 'there's no guarantee' Kohberger would share details of the crime, Goncalves' father, Steve Gonclaves, told CNN on Tuesday. 'We want something like his knife – where he threw it – his kill kit, his suit, anything like that,' he said. 'If he gave those type of details, people would just be like, 'We were wrong. He did it, and let's leave everybody alone and move on to another case.'' An 'edged weapon such as a knife' was used in the killings, Moscow Police said, but only a knife sheath was found at the crime scene, on the bed next to Mogen's body. Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife, a sheath and a knife sharpener on Amazon in the months before the killings, prosecution filings show. A selfie Kohberger is believed to have taken on the morning of November 13, 2022 – only hours after the murders – is also among case documents. In it, he stands in front of a shower, dressed in a white shirt, smiling and giving a thumbs-up. Five days after the students' deaths, Kohberger got a new license plate for his white Hyundai Elantra, court documents reveal. An officer at Washington State University, where Kohberger was a PhD student at the time of the killings, found a 2015 white Hyundai Elantra registered to Kohberger in an apartment complex parking lot, and investigators in the case of the slain students zeroed in on Kohberger because his driver's license information and photo were consistent with a surviving roommate's description. Trash, recovered from the Kohberger family residence by Pennsylvania law enforcement and sent to the Idaho State Lab for DNA testing, was used to help investigators narrow down Kohberger as the suspect in the Idaho student killings in December 2022, court documents show. Soon after that, 'the Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash' matched a tan leather knife sheath found 'laying on the bed' of one of the victims, according to the documents. Kohberger was arrested for the killings on December 30, 2022, in his home state of Pennsylvania, authorities said. CNN's Jim Sciutto and Betul Tuncer contributed to this story.
The Independent
5 days ago
- The Independent
In Idaho college town where 4 students were killed, relief and anger over Bryan Kohberger plea deal
Residents expressed a mix of relief and anger Tuesday in the small Idaho college town where four students were stabbed to death in 2022 after news that the man charged in the killings had agreed to plead guilty to avoid a trial and a possible death penalty. Brian Kohberger, 30, is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to charges that he murdered University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near the Moscow campus in November 2022. No motive has emerged for the killings, which stunned a community that's still healing — and news of the plea deal elicited mixed reactions from Moscow residents. Telisa Swan had thanked authorities with a message on her tattoo shop's marquee after Kohberger was arrested in early 2023. On Tuesday, Swan said she's disappointed the victims' families may not get full answers if Kohberger 's quadruple-murder trial doesn't happen next month. 'But at the same time, I'm glad that he's admitting his guilt right now, finally,' Swan said, adding that the 'death penalty would have been an easy way out for him. He should suffer in prison for a very long time.' With word of a plea deal, news crews descended Tuesday on Moscow's main street, where every other storefront boasts the University of Idaho's colors, flags and insignia. The nearby campus was quiet, with summer break in full swing. Bouquets of flowers and candles adorned the names of the victims etched on metal plaques at a campus healing garden and memorial opened in 2024 that honors the four students and others who lost their lives while enrolled at the university. The off-campus home where the killings took place was demolished in 2023, leaving behind an empty lot with dry grass and weathered mementos from a makeshift memorial there. Moscow resident Luke Brunaugh, who said he lives less than a mile from where the killings happened, didn't like that a deal would mean the death penalty option would go away, saying that should be the punishment for murder. 'I think it's just unfair to the families," said Brunaugh. 'It allows him to hide. He never had to really go to trial. He is answering to his crimes, but not to the fullest extent in my opinion.' In Idaho, judges have the option to reject plea agreements, but that is rare. If Kohberger pleads guilty on Wednesday, he is expected to be sentenced in late July. Kohberger, who was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University at the time of the killings, was arrested after investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene. Heidi Barnett said she felt trepidation when her son chose the University of Idaho as his college three years ago. Visiting him in Moscow Tuesday, Barnett said a long trial would have been very emotional for the families. 'I would think life in prison sometimes would be harder, so I kind of looked at it that way,' she said. 'I'm not the parent, but I would be happy with that.' ___
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Associated Press
In Idaho college town where 4 students were killed, relief and anger over Bryan Kohberger plea deal
MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Residents expressed a mix of relief and anger Tuesday in the small Idaho college town where four students were stabbed to death in 2022 after news that the man charged in the killings had agreed to plead guilty to avoid a trial and a possible death penalty. Brian Kohberger, 30, is expected to plead guilty on Wednesday to charges that he murdered University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near the Moscow campus in November 2022. No motive has emerged for the killings, which stunned a community that's still healing — and news of the plea deal elicited mixed reactions from Moscow residents. Telisa Swan had thanked authorities with a message on her tattoo shop's marquee after Kohberger was arrested in early 2023. On Tuesday, Swan said she's disappointed the victims' families may not get full answers if Kohberger 's quadruple-murder trial doesn't happen next month. 'But at the same time, I'm glad that he's admitting his guilt right now, finally,' Swan said, adding that the 'death penalty would have been an easy way out for him. He should suffer in prison for a very long time.' With word of a plea deal, news crews descended Tuesday on Moscow's main street, where every other storefront boasts the University of Idaho's colors, flags and insignia. The nearby campus was quiet, with summer break in full swing. Bouquets of flowers and candles adorned the names of the victims etched on metal plaques at a campus healing garden and memorial opened in 2024 that honors the four students and others who lost their lives while enrolled at the university. The off-campus home where the killings took place was demolished in 2023, leaving behind an empty lot with dry grass and weathered mementos from a makeshift memorial there. Moscow resident Luke Brunaugh, who said he lives less than a mile from where the killings happened, didn't like that a deal would mean the death penalty option would go away, saying that should be the punishment for murder. 'I think it's just unfair to the families,' said Brunaugh. 'It allows him to hide. He never had to really go to trial. He is answering to his crimes, but not to the fullest extent in my opinion.' In Idaho, judges have the option to reject plea agreements, but that is rare. If Kohberger pleads guilty on Wednesday, he is expected to be sentenced in late July. Kohberger, who was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University at the time of the killings, was arrested after investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene. Heidi Barnett said she felt trepidation when her son chose the University of Idaho as his college three years ago. Visiting him in Moscow Tuesday, Barnett said a long trial would have been very emotional for the families. 'I would think life in prison sometimes would be harder, so I kind of looked at it that way,' she said. 'I'm not the parent, but I would be happy with that.' ___ Golden reported from Seattle.
CNN
5 days ago
- CNN
‘We'll never see this as justice': Father of Idaho murder victim speaks out on Kohberger plea deal
CNN's Jim Sciutto speaks with Steve Goncalves, the father of Kaylee Goncalves who was murdered at the University of Idaho in 2022. He shares how he feels about Brian Kohberger accepting a plea deal.
