Suspect in 2022 US university killings to take plea deal
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminology student, was facing trial in August for the murder of four students in November 2022.
PHOTO: AFP
LOS ANGELES – A man charged with the murder of four students in the north-western US state of Idaho is set to plead guilty this week to avoid the death penalty, a victim’s family told AFP.
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminology student, was facing trial in August for the November 2022 stabbing deaths that rocked the small town of Moscow and made national headlines.
He is accused of slipping into the victims’ home undetected at around 4am local time (6pm Singapore time) and stabbing four University of Idaho students to death while they slept.
The bodies of 21-year-olds Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen and 20-year-olds Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found hours later.
Kohberger’s guilty plea is expected to be formalised during a hearing on July 2, and is intended to spare him from facing the death penalty, the Goncalves family said in a statement shared by their lawyer Shanon Gray.
“After more than two years, this is how it concludes with a secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families on the plea’s details,” the family wrote.
The Goncalves family had demanded the death penalty and successfully advocated for the passage of a new law in Idaho, which allows death row inmates to be executed by firing squad.
On a Facebook page, the Goncalves family expressed bitter heartbreak, calling the prosecution’s pending plea deal “shocking and cruel” after years of waiting for the trial to begin.
“Bryan Kohberger facing life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships and engage with the world. Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever. That reality stings more deeply when it feels like the system is protecting his future more than honouring the victims’ pasts,” the family said on social media.
Prosecutors have still yet to present any motive for the killings, 2½ years since the murders, while Kohberger has consistently remained silent throughout proceedings.
He was arrested and charged after investigators found his DNA on a knife sheath recovered at the crime scene.
A video shows a car similar to Kohberger’s driving in the victims’ neighbourhood around the time of the murders.
He was studying for his PhD in criminology at Washington State University, about 15km away from Moscow, across the state border. AFP
