Idaho (BN24) – Bryan Kohberger has agreed to plead guilty to all charges in the brutal slayings of four University of Idaho students, avoiding the possibility of a death sentence, according to a letter prosecutors sent to the victims’ families.
Under the plea agreement, Kohberger will receive four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole for the murders, plus the maximum penalty of 10 years in prison for burglary. He has also agreed to waive all rights to appeal.
Sentencing is expected to take place in late July, provided Kohberger formally enters his plea at a change of plea hearing schedule
The agreement arrives just weeks before the high-profile trial was set to begin. Jury selection had been scheduled for August 4, with opening statements planned for August 18.
Prosecutors said Kohberger’s defense team reached out last week seeking a plea offer. After meeting with victims’ family members and weighing their input, the state extended a formal proposal.
“This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family,” prosecutors wrote in the letter to relatives. “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.”
The state also intends to seek restitution on behalf of the victims’ families.
Kohberger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary for the November 13, 2022, stabbings that claimed the lives of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.
The four students were attacked in the girls’ off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho, during the early morning hours. Two other roommates survived, including one who told investigators she encountered a man dressed in black and wearing a mask inside the house. She described him as “not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” according to court documents.
The killings devastated the small college town and triggered a nearly seven-week nationwide search.
Kohberger, then a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University, was arrested in December 2022 at his family’s home in Pennsylvania. Prosecutors later disclosed that DNA matching Kohberger’s was recovered from a KA-BAR knife sheath found next to one of the victims.
Defense attorneys previously argued that Kohberger was driving alone the night of the murders.
abcnews
