Bryan Kohberger has accepted a plea deal that will spare him the death penalty in the slayings of four University of Idaho students in November 2022, according to a letter sent to the victims’ families by prosecutors.
Kohberger is charged with four counts of murder in the stabbings of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, who were killed at a home in Moscow, Idaho, during the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.
In the letter, portions of which were shown to CBS News by Mogen’s father, Ben Mogen, the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office says attorneys for Kohberger requested a plea deal and Kohberger accepted it.
The letter says Kohberger agreed to plead guilty to all the counts against him and that he would be sentenced to “four consecutive (back to back) life sentences on the four Murder counts” and would waive all rights to appeal.
The letter also says that if Kohberger “enters guilty pleas as expected” at an upcoming hearing, “we anticipate that this case will be set for sentencing in late July. If Defendant does not enter guilty pleas as expected, we are prepared to proceed to trial as planned.”
The family of one of the other victims, Kaylee Goncalves, also said they received the letter about the plea deal.
A hearing in the case has been scheduled for Wednesday.
Kohberger had been fighting the charges. His trial was expected to begin in August, following several delays.
The murders terrorized the community, and for weeks, the hunt for a suspect was shrouded in mystery. Kohberger was arrested six weeks later at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania. According to a police affidavit, DNA evidence linked him to a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
At the time of his arrest, Kohberger was a Ph.D. criminology student and teaching assistant at Washington State University’s Pullman campus, which is about a 15-minute drive from Moscow, Idaho.
Ben Mogan said he was relieved to get the letter about the plea deal.
“If you get a quick death sentence, then, you know, you don’t have to spend decades thinking about how terrible you made the world,” he said.
“We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don’t want to have to be at, that we shouldn’t have to be at, that have to do with this terrible person,” he said. “We get to just think about the rest of our lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and without the rest of the kids.”
The Goncalves family, however, said they “are beyond furious at the State of Idaho” in a Facebook post shortly after the news broke. “They have failed us. … This was very unexpected,” they wrote.
The family said the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office “vaguely mentioned a possible plea on Friday, without seeking our input, and presented the plea on Sunday.” The family has pushed for Kohberger to face the death penalty.
“The introduction of this plea deal, just weeks before the scheduled trial, is both shocking and cruel,” Aubrie Goncalves, the youngest member of the family, wrote in a letter shared on Facebook. “Bryan Kohberger facing a 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.”
In another statement released Tuesday, the Goncalves family said they “will not stop fighting for the life that was stolen unjustly.”
“We stand strong that it is not over until a plea is accepted,” they wrote. “At a bare minimum, please – require a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, & the true facts of what happened that night.”
The trial was originally going to be held in Latah County, where the murders occurred, but Latah County District Judge John Judge later ordered the trial be moved over concerns the media coverage and statements from local officials would make it impossible for Kohberger to receive a fair trial. The Idaho Supreme Court moved the proceedings to Boise.
Kohberger’s defense team had previously tried to remove the death penalty as a possible sentence if he was convicted, but Ada County Judge Steven Hippler denied their motions back in November 2024.
Among the evidence prosecutors were planning to present was Kohberger’s Amazon purchase history showing he bought a Ka-Bar knife with sheath and sharpener, which they claimed matched the sheath found at the crime scene. Prosecutors also claimed “touch DNA” matching DNA taken from Kohberger was found on the sheath. The defense tried to exclude the touch DNA evidence, but Hippler denied that request.
Prosecutors were also planning to present surveillance video of Kohberger’s car and cellphone data that they said tied him to the vicinity of the killings.
Last week, the judge denied a motion by Kohberger’s lawyers, who were seeking to argue that four “alternate perpetrators” could have committed the murders. The judge called it “rank speculation” and said “nothing links these individuals to the homicides.”
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