Bryan Kohberger has agreed to plead guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, an attorney for one victim’s family said Monday.
Shanon Gray, an attorney representing the family of Kaylee Goncalves, confirmed that prosecutors informed the families of the deal by email and letter earlier in the day, and that his clients were upset about it.
“We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho,” Goncalves’s family wrote in a Facebook post. “They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected.”
A change of plea hearing was set for Wednesday, but the families have asked prosecutors to delay it to give them more time to travel to Boise, Gray said. Kohberger’s trial was set for August.
Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times.
Kohberger, then a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
In a court filing, his lawyers said Kohberger was on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.
The killings shook the small farming community of about 25,000 people, which hadn’t had a homicide in about five years. The trial was moved from rural northern Idaho to Boise after the defence expressed concerns that Kohberger couldn’t get a fair trial in the county where the killings occurred.
In the letter to families, obtained by ABC News, prosecutors said Kohberger’s lawyers approached them seeking to reach a plea deal. The prosecutors said they met with available family members last week before deciding to make Kohberger an offer.
“This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family,” the letter said. “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 the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction, appeals. 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 interest of justice.”
In Idaho, judges may reject plea agreements, though such moves are rare. If a judge rejects a plea agreement, the defendant is allowed to withdraw the guilty plea.
Earlier Monday, a Pennsylvania judge had ordered that three people whose testimony was requested by defence attorneys would have to travel to Idaho to appear at Kohberger’s trial.
The defence subpoenas were granted regarding a boxing trainer who knew Kohberger as a teenager, a childhood acquaintance of Kohberger’s and a third man whose significance was not explained.
A gag order has largely kept attorneys, investigators and others from speaking publicly about the investigation or trial.
