A man has pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022.
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminal justice student, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings following a nationwide search.
He was accused of sneaking into the rented home in Moscow, Idaho, which is not far from the university campus, and attacking Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
Autopsies showed the four were stabbed multiple times and likely asleep when they were attacked, though some had defensive wounds.
No motive has emerged for the killings and it is not clear why the attacker spared two roommates who were in the home.
There also was no indication he had a relationship with any of the victims, who all were friends.
Kohberger previously pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and burglary.
He has now agreed to a plea deal, just weeks before his trial was set to begin in August, in a bid to avoid the death penalty.
However, Idaho Fourth Judicial District Judge Steven Hippler must approve the plea deal.
The judge said as the hearing began Wednesday that he would not take into account public opinion when deciding whether to accept it.
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Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen and Xana Kernodle, and Xana’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin
The small farming community of Moscow, in the northern Idaho panhandle, had not had a homicide in about five years when the murders took place.
The killings grabbed headlines around the world and set off a nationwide hunt, including an elaborate effort to track down a white sedan spotted on surveillance cameras repeatedly driving by the rental home.
Police said they used genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect and accessed mobile phone data to pinpoint his movements on the night of the killings.
At the time, Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at nearby Washington State University who had just completed his first semester and was a teaching assistant in the criminology program.
Following his arrest, investigators said they had matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
Online shopping records showed that Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier – as well as a sheath like the one found at the scene.
Kohberger’s lawyers said he was simply on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.
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