The grisly crimes sent shockwaves rippling through the tight-knit college town of Moscow, and ignited a continuous firestorm across social and news media.
His phone pinged off cell towers in the King Road home’s area the night the killings occurred, they said.
If he had been convicted at trial, Kohberger could have faced execution by firing squad.
Kohberger’s lawyers, while arguing his innocence, had said the whole Kohberger family had access to that Amazon account.
And at least for now, the case comes to a close much like it started: with still-unanswered questions.
Nearly 1,000 days have passed since Bryan Kohberger was imprisoned. His attorneys had maintained his innocence throughout.
In a stunning turn of events, the criminology student involved in the murders of four college students in Idaho has now entered a guilty plea, meaning that he will most likely serve the remainder of his life in prison.
Only weeks before his trial was scheduled to begin, he shocked many by entering a guilty plea and confessing to the stabbing deaths. The case had been in the news constantly.
With each admission Kohberger made to the judge on Wednesday, the case that had been viewed as primarily circumstantial began to take shape.
However, a lot of questions were still unsolved. Even though Kohberger acknowledged killing Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin—students at a school just a few miles from his own and seemingly unrelated to him—many details about the murders are still unknown, chief among them being why he committed them.
A murder that shocked people.
Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle, and Chapin were brutally stabbed to death almost three years ago. The horrific crimes sparked a never-ending firestorm on social media and news outlets, sending shockwaves through Moscow, a close-knit college town.
In November, their bodies were discovered in the girls’ King Road off-campus residence. 13. 2022. There was a KA-BAR knife sheath found close to Mogen’s body. The knife is nowhere to be found.
Following a manhunt that lasted more than six weeks, many people in the small college town started locking their doors at night for the first time. It was unclear if the murderer had left town or was still hiding among them. False accusations abound among conspiracy theorists and true crime enthusiasts in the absence of accurate information being shared.
Then, on the eve of New Year’s Eve, a Ph.D. D. A Washington State University student was taken into custody over 2,000 miles away from the scene of the murders.
Following a cross-country drive to spend the holidays with family, Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ residence in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania. Other than the fact that their schools were close by, he seemed to have no relationship to the victims. Nevertheless, his DNA was discovered on the knife sheath’s button snap, according to the prosecution.
They said his phone ping-ed cell towers in the vicinity of the King Road house the night the murders took place. They claimed that surveillance footage showed his car driving past the area that would soon be the scene of a crime on several occasions. Even though Kohberger’s attorneys would later contest it, one of the two surviving roommates told police she had seen a masked intruder with “bushy eyebrows” that evening. This description has come to define the case.
The attorney for Kohberger in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, stated that his client was “eager to be exonerated of these charges” following his arrest. Most of the evidence in the case was circumstantial. Very little eyewitness testimony was available. The weapon used for murder was absent.
In May 2023, Kohberger was indicted and extradited to Idaho. He was accused of one count of burglary and four counts of first-degree murder. According to his plea deal, he now faces ten years in prison for the burglary count in addition to four consecutive life sentences for the crimes. The date of his sentencing hearing is July 23.
veil of secrecy.
The murder case garnered international attention even before Kohberger was named as a suspect, possibly due in part to the thick veil of secrecy surrounding its specifics. The judge initially in charge of the case enforced a stringent gag order early on, which has resulted in the case being conducted primarily behind closed doors.
The shape of the evidence, however, started to take shape gradually. Information has slowly but surely leaked from hundreds of thousands of pages of briefs, thousands of court filings, and occasionally contentious hearings.
Prosecutors had been harshly criticized by Kohberger’s attorneys for years for being overly client-focused and for not conducting adequate research on other potential leads. They claim that investigators targeted Kohberger using a “false information trail” and even implied that police purposefully misled a judge in order to obtain the search warrants they desired for Kohberger. This is a grave accusation that the judge rejected.
The defense has launched a barrage of legal attacks in an attempt to weaken the prosecution’s case. These include challenging the DNA evidence, requesting that the indictment be dropped, and persistently attempting to have the death penalty removed from consideration on a variety of grounds, citing everything from the U.S. A. He was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, which affected the jurors’ perceptions of the Constitution and international human rights, changing social norms, and the need for additional time for the extensive preparation and discovery process that must be completed in a capital case. Each of those attempts failed.
Kohberger might have been executed by firing squad if he had been found guilty at trial. Major pharmaceutical suppliers have pulled out of the capital punishment market, resulting in a nationwide shortage of lethal injection drugs, which is why Idaho has legalized the death penalty.
However, the legal back and forth has been successful in repeatedly delaying the trial, which has angered some of the victims’ relatives.
However, time was not frozen by those judicial proceedings delays. In December 2023, the off-campus residence where the murders took place was demolished after the owner gave it to the school. The school called for its demolition as a “healing step,” though the relatives of the victims had conflicting opinions at the time. It took less than two hours to complete the sunrise demolition.
While Ethan Chapin’s parents, whose brother and sister were still enrolled at the university, supported the demolition, the Goncalves and Kernodle families had acknowledged the house’s possible evidentiary value in keeping it intact.
The school claimed the planned demolition would help thwart “efforts to further sensationalize the crime scene,” but neither Kohberger’s defense nor the prosecution had objected. “.
Kohberger’s attorneys have also said that their client has been the target of “inflammatory” and “prejudicial” media coverage. After a protracted court battle, the defense was able to have the trial moved from Latah County, the scene of the killings, to Boise.
After being detained at the Latah County Jail, Kohberger was flown to Ada County by an Idaho State Police aircraft early on a Sunday morning in September 2024. According to officials, Kohberger has been kept alone in both facilities for his own and others’ safety.
A “so-called alibi” breaks down.
According to his attorneys, Kohberger was driving alone the night of the murders, and because he was stargazing in a remote location, his phone stopped reporting from the network during the crucial window when the murders took place.
Two judges who have reviewed the case summarily mocked the alibi: Judge Steven Hippler in Boise said that “[Kohberger] has not provided an alibi, partial or otherwise, at this point,” and Judge John Judge in Moscow referred to it as a “so-called” alibi. “.”.
Prosecutors claimed that some of the search warrants executed on Kohberger’s internet purchases revealed earthly rather than celestial curiosities. The man suspected of the bloody killing spree purchased a knife that matches what prosecutors claimed could be the murder weapon eight months before four college students in Idaho were discovered stabbed to death, as ABC News has previously reported. In their defense of Kohberger’s innocence, Kohberger’s attorneys claimed that the entire Kohberger family had access to that Amazon account.
But according to the prosecution, Kohberger bought it. During Wednesday’s plea hearing, prosecutor Bill Thompson stated, “He used an Amazon gift card to buy a KA-BAR knife and sheath online.”.
Prosecutors also cited Kohberger’s own writings, citing in their court briefs a master’s degree homework assignment that they claimed was essentially a crime scene how-to manual that demonstrated that he had been more than just a crime scholar; he was also skilled at hiding his tracks after killing someone.
Thompson specifically brought up the point during the plea hearing on Wednesday.
“The accused has researched criminal activity. When pursuing his pre-doctoral degrees, he actually wrote a thorough paper on crime scene processing, demonstrating his expertise in the field, according to Thompson.
Meanwhile, the cost of the case increased as it went on. The local community itself has been primarily responsible for the financial burden. A portion of the costs have been covered by emergency funds up to $1 million committed by Idaho Governor Brad Little in 2022 to support the manhunt and investigation. Because the trial was supposed to last three months and prosecutors and others would have had to travel more than five hours to Boise, the venue change to Boise would have also resulted in additional expenses.
Now, that trial will never take place, where the real evidence would eventually surface. The case ends, at least for the time being, with many questions still unanswered, just as it began.
Jim Hill and Josh Margolin of ABC News helped with this story.
