BOISE, Idaho — 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, multiple media outlets reported Monday.
The news was delivered to families of the victims in a letter, according to ABC News.
Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves 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.
Goncalves' family expressed outrage in a Facebook post: "We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho. They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected."
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.
