US man pleads guilty to murdering four university students, prosecutor shares chilling evidence

News.com.au

12 hours ago

A US man has pleaded guilty to murdering four university students as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty, with prosecutors in court laying out chilling evidence of the gruesome attack nearly three years after it made headlines around the world.
Bryan Kohberger, a former criminology student, pleaded guilty on Wednesday (US time) to four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 stabbings of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20.
The plea was part of a deal that spared the 30-year-old from the death penalty – a decision which divided the victims' families. Kohberger also waived his right to appeal or seek leniency as part of the agreement.
The four university students were attacked and stabbed to death around 4am on November 13, 2022, while they were sleeping in their group house near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho.
Two other housemates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were left unharmed.
'Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?' Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger at the hearing on Wednesday.
'Yes,' he replied.
Kohberger was arrested for the murders in December 2022. His trial was set to begin next month with jury selection slated for August 4 and opening arguments for August 18.
He now faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, with his sentencing set for later this month.
'Cruel': Families split over deal
Ms Goncalves' family, who had demanded the death penalty, expressed outrage over the plea agreement.
'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 family wrote in a statement shared by their lawyer.
The family further called the plea deal 'shocking and cruel' in a statement on Facebook.
'Bryan Kohberger facing life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships, and engage with the world. Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever,' they wrote.
However, Ms Mogen's father expressed relief over the agreement.
'We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don't want to have to be at, that we shouldn't have to be at, that have to do with this terrible person,' he told CBS News.
'We get to just think about the rest of our lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and without the rest of the kids.'
Prosecutor reveals chilling evidence
During the hearing, Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson laid out the evidence he would have revealed if the case had gone to trial.
'He killed — intentionally, wilfully, deliberately, with premeditation, and with malice and forethought — Maddy Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle,' prosecutor Thompson told the courtroom before Kohberger formally submitted his guilty plea.
It all started in March 2022, when Kohberger was living at his parents' Pennsylvania home and logged onto Amazon.com to buy a military-grade Ka Bar knife and sheath — the same blade he would go on to hack his victims to death with eight months later, according to the New York Post.
He then moved to Pullman, Washington – located minutes from the Moscow, Idaho, murder site – in June to pursue a PhD in criminology at Washington State University.
By early July, six months before the murders, Kohberger's phone began pinging off the cell tower that served the house — but only during odd hours of the night.
Between July and the night of the November murders, Kohberger's phone pinged off that tower 23 times between the hours of 10pm and 4am, prosecutors said, adding that there was no evidence he ever had any direct contact with his victims during that time.
But on the day of the killing Kohberger's phone was powered off in Pullman around 2am before being turned back in the Moscow area just before 5am — disappearing from the cellular grid at the exact time of the attack.
During that blackout window he drove his White Hyundai from his Pullman apartment and parked it behind the victims' Moscow house, prosecutors said. Evidence like security footage clearly showed the vehicle.
Wearing a dark face mask he slipped into the home using the kitchen's sliding door around 4am.
He then climbed to the home's third floor where he used his seven-inch Ka Bar blade to butcher Mogen and Goncalves, both 21-year-old college seniors, as they slept alongside each other. There he left the knife's sheath.
Kohberger then stole out of the room when he encountered 20-year-old Kernodle on the stairs. She had been awake after picking up a food delivery, and he cut her down and left her dying where she stood.
'Her room was not on the third floor, it was on the second floor,' Mr Thompson said, his voice shaking.
'He encountered Xana, and he ended up killing her, also with a large knife.'
Kohberger then moved into her bedroom where her boyfriend – 20-year-old Mr Chapin – was sleeping, and attacked him.
'We will not represent that he intended to commit all of the murders that he did that night, but we know that that is what resulted,' Mr Thompson said.
As Kohberger was leaving the house one of the two housemates who were left alive and untouched peered into a hallway and saw a man with 'bushy eyebrows' exiting the home. From there a neighbour's security footage showed Kohberger's car peeling out of the neighbourhood, and cell records indicate he was back home in Pullman around 5.30am.
He then drove back to his victims' home around 9am, phone records show, but by 9.30am he was back home and taking a bizarre photo of himself flashing a thumbs up in his apartment bathroom.
From there, he began desperately trying to cover his tracks.
Over the next days, he took a trip to Lewiston, Idaho — a town prosecutors noted was filled with rivers and fast-moving water. They believe that's where he dumped the murder weapon, which was never found.
He also began searching online for another knife and sheath, and tried in vain to delete his purchase history on Amazon.
He also changed his car's registration from Pennsylvania to Idaho in an apparent attempt to throw investigators off his trail, Thompson said.
Then he carried on with his life.
'Mr Kohberger proceeded to finish his semester of studies at Washington State University and return to Pennsylvanian for the holidays,' Mr Thompson said.
But in the weeks following, investigators began to identify him as a suspect.
After searching his parents' trash, were able to pull DNA off a Q-Tip that tests proved was related to the DNA was found on the sheath left by Mogen's bloodied body.
Kohberger was arrested soon after, and the full scope of his attempts to hide his crimes became apparent as they began to search his home and belongings.
'I think we can all look to our own cars. Those compartments in the doors where you try to keep them clean where you put stuff? There's always some degree of crud in there – they were spotless,' Mr Thompson said. 'Defendant's car had been meticulously cleaned inside.'
Prosecutors said evidence indicated Kohberger had even called on his criminology studies to cover up the crime, explaining he had recently written a paper on crime scene analysis.
'That was part of the defendant's plan in covering up this. The defendant has studied crime. In fact, he did a detailed paper on crime scene processing when he was working on his pre-doctorate degree,' Mr Thompson said.
'He had that knowledge and skill,' he added.
The motives behind the murders has never been established.
Kohberger's sentencing is set for July 23.