File photo: Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for his arraignment hearing in Latah County District Court, May 22, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (Zach Wilkinson/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP, Pool, File)
Bryan Kohberger has agreed to plead guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, multiple media outlets reported Monday.
The news was delivered to families of the victims in a letter from prosecutors, according to ABC News. A change of plea hearing was set for Wednesday. Kohberger’s trial had been set to begin in August.
Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022. Autopsies showed the four were all likely asleep when they were attacked, some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times.
Goncalves’ family expressed outrage in a Facebook post: “We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho. They have failed us. Please give us some time. This was very unexpected.”
Kohberger, then a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
In a court filing, his lawyers said Kohberger was on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.
The killings shook the small farming community of about 25,000 people, which hadn’t had a homicide in about five years. The trial was moved from rural northern Idaho to Boise after the defense expressed concerns that Kohberger couldn’t get a fair trial in the county where the killings occurred.
In Idaho, judges may reject plea agreements, though such moves are rare. If a judge rejects a plea agreement, the defendant is allowed to withdraw the guilty plea.
Earlier Monday, a Pennsylvania judge had ordered that three people whose testimony was requested by defense attorneys would have to travel to Idaho to appear at Kohberger’s trial.
The defense subpoenas were granted regarding a boxing trainer who knew Kohberger as a teenager, a childhood acquaintance of Kohberger’s and a third man whose significance was not explained.
A gag order has largely kept attorneys, investigators and others from speaking publicly about the investigation or trial.