Latest news with #IdahoFour
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Bryan Kohberger Grilled Tinder Match About the ‘Worst Way to Die' Weeks Before Idaho Murders
Bryan Kohberger waved red flags to a former match on Tinder by questioning her about murder weapons and death in the weeks that led up to the gruesome slayings of four college students. A woman only referred to as 'KC' and 'C' in newly-released documents obtained by E! News told an investigator that she matched with Kohberger one or two months before the Idaho four – Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21 – were killed. Kohberger, 30, mentioned that he was a criminology student at Washington State University during their conversation, and at one point, the woman said she discussed her friend who had been murdered in her town 'a couple years prior,' Detective Brett Payne wrote in a March 2024 filing. 'The conversation turned to horror movies and which ones C liked the most. C told Kohberger she liked the Rob Zombie Halloween movies,' the report continued. 'To this, C said Kohberger asked what she thought would be the worst way to die.' C told Kohberger that she 'thought it would be a knife,' and he allegedly responded 'something to the effect of 'like a Ka-Bar?'' The woman wasn't sure what that was and had to Google it. Prosecutors confirmed they had evidence that Kohberger had bought a Ka-Bar knife, sheath and a sharpener on Amazon some time between November 1 and December 6 in 2022, per CBS. This would mean that the purchase happened either roughly two weeks before the Idaho Four murders on November 13, or about three weeks after the crime. 'C said she eventually stopped talking to Kohberger because his questions made her uncomfortable,' the report stated. The detective also noted at the time that there was 'nothing to corroborate C's tip' as she no longer had access to her Tinder account and they would need to 'compare the Tinder records located on Kohberger's phone.' More than two years after the murders, Kohberger accepted a plea agreement and pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. On Wednesday, July 23, he was ordered to serve four life sentences without the possibility of parole, as well as an additional 10 years for the burglary charge. He declined the judge's offer to speak in court at his sentencing hearing. While the Goncalves family was left frustrated that the death penalty was no longer on the table, according to a statement shared to Facebook, Chapin's parents, Jim and Stacy, said they were satisfied with the agreement during a July 14 appearance on the Today show. 'I think our initial response was like, an eye for an eye,' Stacy explained. 'But we've spent a ton of time talking about it with prosecutors, and for us, we always felt like this was a better deal. I mean, [Kohberger] gets put away, and there's no appeal system to it.'
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Bryan Kohberger Torn to Shred by Murder Victim Kaylee Goncalves' Sister in Scathing Court Statement
Alivea Goncalves dubbed Bryan Kohberger a 'sociopath, psychopath, murderer' in a fiery victim impact statement as he awaited his sentencing for the brutal slayings of the Idaho Four. Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were discovered dead in their shared Idaho home on November 13, 2022. More than two years later, Kohberger pleaded guilty to their murders as a part of a plea deal. 'The truth is, you're basic,' Alivea told Kohberger, 30, directly in court on Wednesday, July 23. 'Let me be very clear: Don't ever try to convince yourself you matter just because someone finally said your name out loud. I see through you.' 'You want the truth? Here's the one you'll hate the most. If you hadn't attacked them in their sleep, in the middle of the night, like a pedophile, Kaylee would've kicked your f**king ass,' she said, sparking applause in the courtroom, per CNN. In his own impact statement, Kaylee's father, Steve Goncalves, took shots at Kohberger's intelligence. 'Police officers tell us within minutes they had your DNA. Like a calling card,' he shared. 'You were that careless. That foolish. That stupid. Master degree? You're a joke. Complete joke.' Madison's father, Ben Mogen, heartbreakingly confessed that he'd struggled with addiction in his past and his daughter was what kept him from 'just not caring' anymore when he 'wasn't wanting to live.' 'Maddie was my only child that I ever had. She was the only great thing I ever really did,' he said. 'And only thing I was ever really proud of.' Xana's mother, Cara Northington, refused to share recollections of her late daughter in court, telling Kohberger: 'You don't deserve our good memories that we have.' Her stepfather, Randy Davis, called Kohberger 'evil' and said he was going to 'suffer' for what he did. 'I'm shaking because I want to reach out to you,' he continued. 'I hope you feel my energy. Okay? Go to hell.' Elsewhere in the sentencing hearing, Bethany Funke — one of the roommates who survived the attack — said she still thinks about the murders 'every day' in a statement read in court by a friend. 'I hated and still hate that they're gone, but for some reason, I am still here and I got to live,' her statement said. 'Why me? Why did I get to live, and not them?' Kohberger was sentenced to serve four consecutive life sentences in prison for the murders.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
Kaylee Goncalves Left ‘Disfigured' by Bryan Kohberger After She ‘Ruined His Plans,' Ex FBI Agent Suggests
Bryan Kohberger declined to share his reason behind the horrific killings of the Idaho Four at his Wednesday, July 23, sentencing hearing – but former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer has a theory. Kohberger, 30, killed Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, in the early hours of November 13, 2022, but his attacks against Goncalves were particularly gruesome. According to released reports on the case, she was stabbed more than 30 times and the structure of her face itself was left so 'extremely damaged' in the attack that one of her surviving roommates misidentified her body to police. Aside from the knife wounds, there was also evidence of blunt force trauma and strangling in the autopsy report. Coffindaffer suggested in an interview with TMZ that Kohberger's violence against Goncalves was because he'd broken into their home to rape Mogen, but he became enraged when he found Goncalves in bed with her. 'Kaylee ruined his plans on how the night would go, that's why her face was completely disfigured,' she surmised. Kohberger was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the slayings of the four students. At the hearing, Kaylee's mother, Kristi, issued a scathing statement to her daughter's killer. 'A dead killer doesn't kill again. So while I'm disappointed that the firing squad won't take their shots at you, I'm confident the men in prison will have their way with you in more ways than one,' she said in a video that has since been shared to X. 'You will finally get what you wanted, physical touch, just probably not how you were expecting it.' 'See you haven't beat the system, you've simply entered a new one where the rules are cruel and the consequences will never end,' she continued. 'You are entering a place where no one will care about who you are and no one will ever respect you. You will be forgotten, discarded, used and erased. You will always be remembered as a loser and an absolute failure.' Kaylee's sister Alivea also took aim at Kohberger in court in her own victim impact statement, per CNN. 'You want the truth? Here's the one you'll hate the most,' she told him. 'If you hadn't attacked them in their sleep, in the middle of the night, like a pedophile, Kaylee would've kicked your f**king ass.' Steve Goncalves, Kaylee's father, also insulted Kohberger's intelligence for getting caught so easily. 'Police officers tell us within minutes they had your DNA. Like a calling card,' he said at the time. 'You were that careless. That foolish. That stupid. Master degree? You're a joke. Complete joke.' Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Yahoo
Bryan Kohberger Sentenced to Life in Prison Without the Possibility of Parole for Idaho 4 Murders
Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole on Wednesday, July 23, in connection with the murders of the Idaho Four. He was also given an additional 10 years for his burglary charge. Prior to his sentencing, Kohberger, 30, declined to make a statement to the court. The judge addressed his decision, pointing out that even if Kohberger did speak, 'How could anyone ever be assured that what he speaks is the truth?'' 'Do we really believe after all this,' he continued, 'he's capable of speaking the truth or giving up something of himself to help the very people whose lives he destroyed?' 'The time has now come to end Mr. Kohberger's 15 minutes of fame,' he added. As National Enquirer previously reported, Kohberger pleaded guilty to one count of felony burglary and four counts of first-degree murder for the 2022 slayings of Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, in early July. The four students were found dead in their off-campus home they shared on November 13, 2022. Kohberger was arrested on suspicion of their murders that December. Following the court's decision to accept his plea deal, the Goncalves family posted to Facebook that they were 'beyond furious' that the state of Idaho 'failed' them with the case. On July 18, Kaylee's mother, Kristi Goncalves, told the Today show that she wished Kohberger 'would've had to say' his victims' names in court to show 'a little more accountability and owning up to what he did.' Steve Goncalves, Kaylee's father, added that he'd wanted to 'see some sternness' over the four young lives that had been lost, but Bryan 'wasn't even asked to stand' for his guilty plea. He also shared that he believed that more details of his daughter's murder would trickle out over time from Kohberger himself. 'I think we're gonna find out secrets through his sick, twisted mind,' he suggested at the time. 'He's gonna write about it.' However, on July 14, Ethan's parents shared a different perspective on the controversial plea deal. Jim and Stacy Chapin admitted they were satisfied with the court's decision, despite the fact that it meant the death penalty was no longer on the table. 'I think our initial response was like, an eye for an eye,' Stacy said during their own appearance on Today. 'But we've spent a ton of time talking about it with prosecutors, and for us, we always felt like this was a better deal. I mean, [Kohberger] gets put away, and there's no appeal system to it.'
The Guardian
20-07-2025
- The Guardian
The Idaho Four review – a disturbing, necessary portrait of a killer and his victims
In the early hours of 13 November 2022 in an off-campus apartment in Moscow, Idaho, a masked assailant murdered four students. The dead, who would come to be known as the Idaho Four, were Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. Each was stabbed multiple times. The killer left a gruesome scene and the motive was not readily apparent. Videos, cellphone records and solid detective work led law enforcement to Bryan Kohberger, a doctoral candidate at Washington State University. Arrested at his parents' home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, in late December, he was extradited back west. Scheduled to be tried this August, Kohberger, 30, instead pleaded guilty to murder. Escaping the death penalty, he will in all likelihood serve four consecutive life sentences, an additional 10 years for burglary, and die in jail. Sentencing is set for 23 July. An apparent embittered 'incel' – 'involuntary celibate' – and former heroin user, Kohberger signed a one-page confession, scant on details. He said he broke into the apartment but offered no reason for his crimes. An antisocial loner and video game fiend, he did not know his victims but may have met one of them, Mogen, at a restaurant. With their book The Idaho Four, James Patterson and Vicky Ward have written perhaps the definitive account of the murders – a disturbing, necessary portrait of a killer and his victims. Well-paced and well-written, their joint effort is a mesmerizing read and a great detective story, yet sadly all true. The prose is conversational and mellifluous. An array of facts, quotes and comments keep the reader's attention. Patterson is an award-winning, best-selling author of thrillers and non-fiction who has co-authored three novels with Bill Clinton. Jared Kushner, a son-in-law of Donald Trump, claims to have taken an online MasterClass from Patterson and then 'batted out' 40,000 words of his memoir, Breaking History. Ward is a former senior reporter at CNN and one-time HuffPost editor-at-large. Her previous books include The Liar's Ball, The Devil's Casino and Kushner, Inc. She has interviewed Trumpworld cast-outs, Michael Cohen and Anthony Scaramucci. She has turned an unflinching gaze at Jeffrey Epstein, the 47th president's one-time friend. For The Idaho Four, she interviewed more than 320 people, 'some many times'. Kohberger left bread crumbs. His path to destruction appears to have been blazed by Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer from a 'wealthy family', the son of a 'well-known movie director' who killed six people and wounded 14 near the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 2014. Rodger, 22, was a virgin and 'furious about it', Patterson and Ward write. He plotted his 'day of retribution' for two years. He circulated a 137-page manifesto, airing his demons and frustrations. At the end of his spree, he killed himself. A martyr for a movement – and a role model for Kohberger – was born. Kohberger learned of Rodger in grad school. 'No one knows that, like Rodger, Bryan is a virgin who hates women,' Ward and Patterson write. 'No one knows that Bryan copes with loneliness by immersing himself in video games. Like Rodger, he goes for night drives. Like Rodger, he visits the gun range. And, like Rodger, he goes to a local bar and tries to pick up women.' In fall 2022, Kohberger took a brief ride from WSU in eastern Washington to Moscow, home to the University of Idaho. Walking into a restaurant, he spotted a blonde, blue-eyed waitress: Madison Mogen, Maddie for short. 'She's the epitome of the women who turned down Elliot Rodger,' Patterson and Ward write. 'Her name is Maddie, like Elliot's childhood friend Maddy, who grew into someone who ignored Rodger.' 'She comes over to ask what he'd like. 'He knows what he'd like. 'Her.' Mogen's friends hypothesize that she spurned Kohberger's advances, so he began to stalk her. Phone records add credence to the theory. Moscow police alleged that Kohberger was near Mogen's apartment at least a dozen times between late August 2022 and the murder, 'almost always late at night, cloaked in darkness'. Until Kohberger was arrested, the ghost of Rodger continued to haunt. Two administrators of the University of Idaho – Case Discussion Facebook group began noticing strange posts from a member under an alias: Pappa Rodger. 'Of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large, fixed-blade knife,' the poster wrote. 'This leads me to believe they found the sheath. This evidence was released prior to autopsies.' This was the first time anyone had publicly mentioned a sheath. Early in the investigation, Moscow's police chief shared the existence of the sheath with a senior member of the force. After Kohberger's arrest, 'Pappa Rodger' disappeared. Earlier, Kohberger's classmates in a psychology program labeled him the 'Ghost,' Patterson and Ward report, because: 'There's something spooky about him.' A professor, Dr Katherine Ramsland, told the class that psychopaths' brains are different from those of other people. By extension, 'the only way to cure a psychopath is to get him therapy at a very early stage, by around age four, and try to train his brain to change.' Kohberger listened carefully – and took copious notes. The Idaho Four is published in the US by Hachette
