Idaho student killer heads to prison, but mysteries in the case remain

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - WASHINGTON — Weeks before he was due to stand trial, after years of professing his innocence, Bryan Kohberger made a shocking decision — he was pleading guilty.

The 30-year-old faced the death penalty for the gruesome murders of four students, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in their home in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.

The plea deal spares him his life - but the abrupt ending leaves relatives of the victims with conflicted feelings and many questions unanswered.

The state made a "deal with the devil", Kaylee Goncalves's father Steve told reporters. Like others, he had lingering questions about the mysteries surrounding the case, including a motive.

But for Ben Mogen, Madison's father, the deal marks a moment of closure for a family that had dreaded a gruelling trial after years of being thrust into the national spotlight.

"It's been this nightmare that's approaching in our heads," Mogen told the New York Times.

It was a typical Saturday night out for four young college students near the tree-lined University of Idaho campus, weeks before the Thanksgiving break.

Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, went to a party at his fraternity. Meanwhile, best friends, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, went to a bar and ended the night with a food truck visit, before they all returned to their home just down the road from campus around 02:00 local time.

Hours later, in the early morning of 13 November 2022, a masked attacker would park his car behind their home on King Road and enter through a sliding glass door. He would climb the stairs to the third floor, roaming from bedroom to bedroom, stabbing the four young students, while leaving two others in the house unharmed.

The killer left behind a grisly scene, spattering the walls with blood before he was spotted in a ski mask by one of the two surviving roommates on his way out through the glass doors.

For more than a month, the public had no idea who committed such a horrible and violent crime. The mystery - and the nationwide attention it attracted - left the small Idaho town reeling while obsessive amateur internet sleuths tried to fill in the blanks.

Finally, on 30 December, after weeks of unanswered questions, police announced they had arrested a suspect, Kohberger, at his family home hundreds of miles away in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.

Nearly three years later, there is no public explanation why Kohberger murdered the four students, to whom he had no known connections.

Kohberger himself has not offered any reasons, only entering a guilty plea in court to planning and carrying out the stabbings.

Journalists and members of the public have sought answers, digging into Kohberger's past, and finding old writings online about struggles with depression, his lack of remorse and a former heroin addiction.

He had a fascination with criminals, studying under true crime writer and forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, who expressed shock that a man she viewed as polite and respectful could have committed such crimes.

​​"I thought, 'they have to have this wrong,'" she told the New York Times. "It's not the Bryan Kohberger that I know."

Kohberger would eventually pursue a criminology doctorate at Washington State University, where he was fired from his job as a teaching assistant for evaluating students too harshly.

Newly released documentaries and books - including one by thriller novelist James Patterson - have speculated about his motive, suggesting that he was angry about romantic rejections, or even that he was trying to emulate misogynist killer Elliot Rodger.

A gag order in the case prevented those close to the investigation from speaking out. But last week, an Idaho judge lifted the order, saying the public's right to information was "paramount given the fact that a plea has been entered".

"The media frenzy, as it has been described, will continue regardless," Judge Steven Hippler said.

In the weeks following the murders, University of Idaho students were on edge, waiting for answers and an arrest in the deaths of their four peers.

With a killer still on the loose, many fled the leafy town of 25,000 residents, which had not seen a murder for five years.

As police went weeks without naming a suspect or even a murder weapon, an online community - frustrated for answers - formed and began to investigate.

Thousands of amateur crime sleuths took to TikTok and other social media sites to sift through clues. A private Facebook group about the case gained more than 30,000 members.

Relatives and friends of the victims were bombarded with messages, some accusing - without any evidence - grieving roommates and others who were close to the victims of being involved in the murders.

Some descended on the small college town, trying to access the boarded house, surrounded with caution tape. The frenzy frustrated local law enforcement.

"There is speculation, without factual backing, stoking community fears and spreading false facts," the Moscow Police Department said at the time.

Behind the scenes, investigators were combing through thousands of tips from the public, cell phone records and video surveillance.

Several pieces of evidence helped them eventually piece together the puzzle.

A white Hyundai Elantra car captured in footage near the scene of the crime matched Kohberger's vehicle. Cell phone records put the 30-year-old near the Moscow off-campus home at the time of the murders, and suggested he drove by the house repeatedly leading up to, then hours after, the crime, before roommates learned of the horrible scene.

Perhaps the most important piece of evidence came from a key item left behind: a knife sheath with DNA that matched a sample taken from trash at Kohberger's family home in Pennsylvania, where officials would finally track him down during his holiday break.

At 1122 King Road, just a few streets away from the centre of the University of Idaho's campus, the grey-shuttered three-story home no longer sits on a slope.

A year after the murders, the school decided to tear down the off-campus house where the four students were killed, calling it a "grim reminder".

"[I]t is time for its removal and to allow the collective healing of our community to continue," the university said at the time, eliciting mixed reactions from the victims' relatives.

With a guilty plea for Kohberger now secured, Mogen's family agrees that it is time to turn from "tragedy and mourning" to "the light of the future".

Her father has said the marketing student was "known for her ability to make others smile and laugh".

Goncalves, Mogen's good friend, was a "defender and protector" of her family who "did absolutely everything she set her mind to", relatives said.

Chapin's mother said her son, who was a triplet, was "the life of the party" and "the kindest person".

Kernodle was a strong-willed student who was with her friends "all the time", her father said.

To honour their memories, university students last year built a circular steel structure engraved with the four students' names, where visitors have come to lay flower bouquets, stones, candles and notes remembering their lost friends.

Lying in a grassy memorial garden, the top of the structure lights up at night, one of the sole remaining signs of a tragedy that shook the small Idaho town. — BBC