Bryan Kohberger to be sentenced for Idaho college students murder : NPR

An Idaho court will sentence Bryan Kohberger to prison for the stabbing murders of four University of Idaho students, weeks after Kohberger agreed to a plea deal that rules out the death penalty.

His victims’ relatives are expected to speak at the sentencing hearing on Wednesday in an Ada County courtroom in Boise. They are expected to dwell on a central question that has not been answered: Why would a graduate student brutally kill four students who attended a nearby college, and leave two of their roommates alive?

The hearing is slated to begin at 11 a.m. ET, and it’s expected to last throughout the day. It will be livestreamed by the court. You can watch it here:

The plea deal calls for Kohberger, 30, to serve a prison term that includes a life sentence for each murder, and up to 10 years for a related burglary charge. The terms would run consecutively under the deal, and Kohberger forfeits the right to appeal or request leniency. He formally pleaded guilty on July 2, but he offered no explanation for his crimes.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” District Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger at the change-of-plea hearing.

“Yes,” Kohberger replied, an answer he repeated as he was asked whether he was guilty of each murder.

Some relatives of the four students — Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — have criticized prosecutors’ approach to the plea deal, saying it omits an explanation or motive for the murders.

“Today was the day, the day for answers, the day to find out what happened, to find out really anything about what the Defendant did that night and why he took the lives of 4 beautiful people,” the Goncalves family said in a statement on the day Kohberger pleaded guilty. The family said they and other victims’ relatives have been living “in this torture chamber for over 2 years.”

Here’s a review of the crime that stunned a college community:

Four young people were stabbed to death in fall of 2022

In the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, four college students — Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle, and Chapin — were killed in the off-campus house on King Road shared by Goncalves, Kernodle and Mogen. Kernodle was dating Chapin, who had come to spend the night. Two other students who lived there were also home, but they were not attacked.

The four students had been out on a Saturday night. Goncalves and Mogen visited a local bar, the Corner Club, and a food truck in downtown Moscow, Idaho, before getting a ride home, according to a police affidavit filed in court. Their roommates said all four were home by 2 a.m. and in their rooms by 4 a.m. — around the same time Kernodle received a DoorDash order.

A surviving roommate identified in court documents as “D.M.” who lived on the second floor told police she was awakened sometime after 4 a.m. by strange noises and crying. She then heard voices — and after looking outside her bedroom door, she saw what looked to be a man walking toward her wearing a mask.

“The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase,'” the police affidavit stated, adding that the man walked toward the home’s rear sliding glass door. D.M. locked her door and immediately texted and called her roommates, according to court documents. Hours later, D.M., who was scared, asked friends to come over. Upon seeing bodies in the house, they called 911.

Kohberger implicated by physical and digital evidence, police say

At the time of the murders, Kohberger was a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University (WSU). That school’s campus in Pullman, Wash., is roughly 10 miles west of the University of Idaho in Moscow.

Kohberger drove a white Hyundai Elantra sedan — and surveillance cameras recorded that type of car passing by the King Road house several times around 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. on the night of the murders, including an attempt to park or turn around in front of the students’ home, according to the police affidavit.

Surveillance footage showed the car departing the area “at approximately 4:20 a.m. at a high rate of speed,” the affidavit stated, adding that investigators believe the car took a route leading to Pullman, Wash. When Moscow police asked area agencies to be on the lookout for a white Hyundai Elantra, two WSU officers flagged Kohberger’s car — and a Moscow officer noted that Kohberger’s driver’s license information matched D.M.’s description of the unknown person she saw.

Police also had Kohberger’s cellphone number on file, from an earlier traffic stop. They determined that the phone disconnected from the local network for roughly two hours on the morning of the murders, from 2:47 a.m. to 4:48 a.m. When it reconnected with the cellular network, investigators said, the phone was determined to be on a highway south of Moscow and then heading back into Pullman — movements consistent with camera footage of the Elantra, according to the affidavit.

Law enforcement agents in Pennsylvania, where Kohberger is from, then delivered another piece of evidence: a piece of trash from his family’s home in Albrightsville, Pa., that was determined to have DNA on it suggesting a strong relation to a sample from a knife sheath found in the house in Moscow, the affidavit stated.

The tan leather sheath was found on the bed next to Mogen, bearing an insignia reading “Ka-Bar” and “USMC” along with Marine Corps symbols. Lab technicians retrieved “a single source of male DNA” from the sheath’s button snap, according to the affidavit.

Days after that finding, Pennsylvania police arrested Kohberger. He was then extradited to Idaho.