On Nov. 13, 2022, the world reacted in horror to learn that four students at the University of Idaho were murdered in the middle of the night inside of a home near campus. The four victims were identified as Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Shockingly, there were two other roommates living in the house who were present when the murders occurred. They were left unscathed.
The victims died from stab wounds, the Moscow, Idaho, police department confirmed days later.
A month and a half later, police arrested Bryan Kohberger, then age 28, as the suspect in the case. He was charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary. Cell phone activity and DNA found on a knife sheath at the victims’ home tied him to the murder.
On Monday, Kohberger reached a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
This was outlined in a letter that prosecutors sent to the relatives of the four victims (via The New York Times):
In a letter to the victims’ families on Monday, prosecutors said that Mr. Kohberger’s defense team asked for a plea offer last week. Under the proposed agreement, which must be approved by the judge in the case, Mr. Kohberger would plead guilty to all charges, face four consecutive life sentences and waive all rights to appeal.
The Goncalves families slammed this unexpected update.
“After more than two years, this is how it concludes, with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the Goncalves family said in a statement. Reportedly, the family was working on changing Idaho state law to allow the firing squad as a form of capital punishment.
In the letter to the families, the prosecutors reportedly said that the plea deal is “our sincere attempt to seek justice.”
“This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals,” they wrote. “Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice.”
Reportedly, before the news of the plea deal on Monday, one of Kohberger’s lawyers was in court in Pennsylvania, his home state, where she argued that two witnesses who knew Kohberger in high school should be forced to testify though they did not want to.
When Kohberger was arrested in 2023, the affidavit showed that one of the surviving roommates in the house saw someone who strongly resembled Kohberger in the home. According to the affidavit, he walked straight past her with the knife and left the house.
Neither she nor anyone else called the police until hours later.