Inside the Surprise Idaho Murders Plea Deal That Left Some Families Fuming

After two and a half years of legal wrangling, prosecutors and lawyers for the defendant, Bryan Kohberger, reached a deal just weeks before his trial was set to begin.

A criminal trial was approaching for the man accused of killing Ben Mogen’s daughter, Maddie, and three of her friends at the University of Idaho. Then, last week, Mr. Mogen logged on to a Zoom call to find a group of prosecutors waiting to talk to him.

The conversation covered logistics of the trial and how families of the victims would be able to leave the courtroom when potentially painful evidence was presented. There would be many such moments, the prosecutors warned, with horrific details and images of the crime scene to be shown as evidence.

As the call wrapped up, the prosecutors asked Mr. Mogen a final question: How would he feel if they were able to reach an agreement with the defendant, Bryan Kohberger, to enter a guilty plea?

Mr. Mogen, recalling the conversation, said he talked about how the case had been tormenting him and his family. They wanted to heal. They were dreading a trial. “It’s been this nightmare that’s approaching in our heads,” he told them.

Just a few days later, a plea deal emerged, with prosecutors agreeing to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for an admission of guilt and a lifelong prison sentence for the defendant. In it, Mr. Kohberger, 30, a criminology student at a nearby university at the time of the murders, agreed to plead guilty to fatally stabbing the four students at a home near their campus in Moscow, Idaho.

It was a stunning turn in the case, and it followed more than two and a half years of legal battles between prosecutors and defense lawyers as they prepared for a trial in August. It also came over the objection of family members of at least two victims, with one family urging the judge to take the rare move of rejecting the deal.

Prosecutors said in a letter to the families that they had been approached last week by Mr. Kohberger’s lawyers, who had spent months trying to undermine the case against their client, with little success. Now, they wanted to hear what the prosecution might offer to settle the case without going to trial.

The response: Mr. Kohberger would have to plead guilty and serve four life sentences — one for each murder — as well as waive his right to any appeals. The letter did not specify whether Mr. Kohberger would ever be eligible for parole.

On Monday, Bill Thompson, the top prosecutor in Latah County, where the crimes took place, and Ashley Jennings, a senior deputy in the office, sent a letter to the families of the victims — Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Ms. Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. In it, they said that Mr. Kohberger’s team had accepted their offer. The judge accepted Mr. Kohberger’s guilty plea at a hearing on Wednesday in Boise.

The sudden decision reflects the high-stakes negotiations that can take place as prosecutors and defense lawyers gear up for a trial and consider the strengths and weaknesses of their cases.

Prosecutors had a wealth of evidence against Mr. Kohberger including, they said, his DNA on a knife sheath left at the scene, Amazon purchase history that showed he bought a knife and sharpener a few months before the murders, and video footage of a car that looked like his circling the home of the victims. The evidence was strong enough that some families were eager to see the weight of it stacked against him at a full public trial.

The Goncalves family said that they felt they had not been appropriately consulted and that prosecutors only “vaguely mentioned a possible plea” during a meeting last Friday with the family. On Wednesday, the family wrote on Facebook that Mr. Thompson had “cut his deal with the devil” and that Judge Hippler was their “only hope.”

Ms. Kernodle’s father, Jeff Kernodle, said in a statement to The New York Times that he did not support the plea deal and wished that it would require Mr. Kohberger to detail his crimes and provide answers to some of the mysteries that have continued to hang over the case.

“I do not agree with this outcome and expressed my concerns before the deal was negotiated,” Mr. Kernodle said, adding: “After nearly three years of waiting and being told there would be a trial, with evidence presented to convict him, I’m disappointed in the prosecutors’ decision.”

Some legal experts said that they, too, were surprised.

“The whole point of a plea is to save government resources and not put the victims’ families through hell,” said Neama Rahmani, a former federal prosecutor who has been following the case. But the deal they ultimately reached, he said, appeared to be an “11th-hour offer that you could’ve offered on day one.”

Mr. Rahmani said he was impressed with Mr. Kohberger’s public defender, Anne C. Taylor, who he said had filed a flurry of motions raising questions about evidence and seeking to rule out the death penalty. Ultimately, he said, she succeeded in saving her client’s life.

He and other lawyers said it was hard to analyze the totality of the strength and weaknesses of each sides’ cases because a large number of court filings in the case were kept under seal. But they said that no matter how strong a case appears — or how heinous the underlying crime is — trial lawyers know that no case is a sure thing, and that could have been a factor in the two sides’ decision to negotiate.

“There’s never a guarantee that a prosecutor is going to get a death sentence,” said Eve Brensike Primus, a law professor at the University of Michigan. She noted that death penalty cases come with an enormous cost and time commitment, and that they include a lengthy sentencing phase after a guilty verdict during which defense lawyers can present a host of mitigating evidence.

One of Idaho’s current death row inmates has been awaiting execution for more than 40 years. The state attempted to kill him last year but botched the proceeding, leaving his fate uncertain once again.

The agreement not to seek the death penalty was a source of particular consternation for some victims’ families; they said it felt as if prosecutors had given up the fight.

In their letter to relatives of the victims, the prosecutors wrote that the plea deal ensured that Mr. Kohberger would be convicted and that the families would not have to deal with decades of his appeals.

“Your viewpoints weighed heavily in our decision-making process, and we hope that you may come to appreciate why we believe this resolution is in the best interests of justice,” they wrote.

Ms. Mogen’s father and Mr. Chapin’s parents expressed their approval, but Ms. Kernodle’s father opposed the deal, as did the family of Ms. Goncalves, who have made no secret of their desire to see Mr. Kohberger sentenced to die.

In posts on Facebook, the Goncalves family asked people to contact the U.S. Justice Department, court officials and Judge Steven Hippler, who is overseeing the case, to urge that the plea deal be rejected.

“At a bare minimum, please — require a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, and the true facts of what happened that night,” the family wrote on Facebook. “We deserve to know when the beginning of the end was.”

Prosecutors often confer with relatives of crime victims, or victims themselves, but each prosecutor must ultimately come to their own decision, Professor Primus said.

“The prosecutor is supposed to think about what is the just or appropriate outcome,” she said. “That doesn’t mean that they don’t listen to or care about the victims’ families’ perspectives. That is one piece of input in their decision.”