Bryan Kohberger Pleads Guilty to Killing 4 Idaho Students

Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the 2022 murders that shook the University of Idaho campus. Under a plea agreement, he avoids the death penalty.

A Ph.D. student who went from studying crime scenes and serial killers to being charged in the mysterious murders of four Idaho college students pleaded guilty on Wednesday as part of a deal that spared him from the death penalty.

At the plea hearing for Bryan C. Kohberger, his parents sat on one side of the courtroom, his mother’s body shuddering as her 30-year-old son admitted to each count against him. On the other side of the courtroom, relatives of the victims were packed into rows, some of them sobbing even as they left the hearing without answers as to why he had killed their loved ones.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” the judge asked. “Yes,” Mr. Kohberger responded, wearing brown pants and a shirt and tie.

The plea agreement was a surprise twist in a case that has spawned books, documentaries and years of social media speculation since November 2022, when four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in the middle of the night in a home near campus in Moscow, Idaho.

And while the deal resolved the question of whether Mr. Kohberger had committed the murders, it also raised significant new ones. Among them were whether a motive would ever be revealed, since Mr. Kohberger had no known connection to the victims, and whether he would ever disclose how he had carried out the crime and evaded arrest for more than six weeks.

The deal was met with mixed reactions by relatives of the victims, with some furious that Mr. Kohberger would avoid the death penalty and not have to offer a full accounting of what happened on that cold night in 2022. Others supported the agreement to avoid the trauma of a monthslong trial and potentially decades of appeals.

Under the plea deal outlined by prosecutors, Mr. Kohberger would be imprisoned for life with no opportunity for parole. The judge, Steven Hippler, will ultimately have the final say at a sentencing hearing on July 23, when victims’ families are expected to address the court, but the law restricts him from imposing a sentence more severe than in the plea agreement.

Mr. Kohberger moved from Pennsylvania to Pullman, Wash., in June 2022 to pursue a Ph.D. in the criminology program at Washington State University, about a 15-minute drive from Moscow. He had already studied under an expert in serial killers and written an academic paper on how police investigators would analyze a crime scene.

Yet even before the murders, he was encountering problems in his academic program at Washington State. He had been called to a meeting with faculty members that November to discuss growing concerns about his behavior, including a verbal altercation with a professor. The following month, the university notified Mr. Kohberger that it was revoking funding for his Ph.D. and dismissing him from his position as a teaching assistant.

At Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors described a meticulous plan to murder and hide evidence, beginning with the purchase of a military-style knife even before he arrived in the Pacific Northwest.

Mr. Kohberger, they said, repeatedly made late-night visits to the neighborhood where the murders later occurred, but they acknowledged at Wednesday’s hearing that they did not have any evidence that Mr. Kohberger had any prior contact with the victims.

The authorities have never found the murder weapon. They found no usable evidence in Mr. Kohberger’s barren apartment or office. When they searched his car, they found it to be so thoroughly cleaned that there was nothing to discover even in the crevices of the vehicle.

But despite Mr. Kohberger’s education and planning, he made a series of mistakes. Prosecutors said he left a knife sheath at the scene of the crime with his DNA on it. They used that to build a family tree that led them to Mr. Kohberger’s name more than a month after the killings.

Video surveillance showed a vehicle that looked like his circling the neighborhood of the victims’ house a number of times shortly before the murders. His cellphone activity was suspicious, showing him visiting the area near the home just a few hours after the murders but before the victims’ bodies had been discovered. During the killings, prosecutors said, his phone was turned off.

Prosecutors also said it was unclear whether Mr. Kohberger had actually intended to kill four people. They said that when he entered the home around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022, he went upstairs and fatally stabbed Maddie Mogen, who lived at the house, and Kaylee Goncalves, a former roommate who was visiting and staying in Ms. Mogen’s third-floor bedroom. The two 21-year-olds had known each other since childhood and were best friends.

As Mr. Kohberger walked downstairs, possibly on his way out of the house, he ran into Xana Kernodle, 20, another roommate who was awake on the second floor, prosecutors said. He killed her and then fatally stabbed her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, also 20, who was asleep in her room.

Another roommate awoke around that time and later described hearing someone crying upstairs. When she opened her door, she saw a shadowy figure leave the house. Fearful but unsure what was happening, she took refuge in the room of another surviving roommate, but neither called 9-1-1 until about noon that day.

Mr. Kohberger, who studied psychology and earned a master’s degree in criminal justice before beginning his program in Washington, was able to evade arrest until late that December, when he was taken into custody at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania. In that time, prosecutors said, he had changed his car registration, tried to delete his Amazon search history and searched online for knife sheaths, possibly to replace the one he had left at the scene.

“The defendant has studied crime,” Bill Thompson, the lead prosecutor, said. “He had that knowledge and skill.”

Mr. Kohberger’s parents, who had traveled from Pennsylvania for the hearing, held hands throughout much of the proceedings. At times, Ms. Kohberger heaved with emotion, and her husband wrapped his arm around her, pulling her close. Bryan Kohberger did not look at them or otherwise acknowledge their presence during the hearing.

Afterward, the couple declined to comment. “We ask that you respect our wishes during a difficult time for all those affected,” they said in a statement.

Much of the hearing focused on the judge asking questions to make sure that Mr. Kohberger knew that he was waiving his rights to a trial by admitting guilt. He responded in the affirmative when the judge asked if he had entered the home that night with the intent to commit murder.

The deal on Wednesday came together just about a month before the trial was set to begin.

Relatives of some victims were angered that Mr. Kohberger would not face the death penalty and was not required to divulge details of the crime. They wrote on Facebook before the hearing that the prosecution had showed “no spine, no shred of honor,” in offering the deal.

Ben Mogen, the father of Maddie Mogen, said he supported the deal. In an interview before the hearing, he said he had been dreading the prospect of seeing horrific photos at the trial, and he appreciated the certainty of a plea deal. He also said that Mr. Kohberger’s remaining life in prison would not be a pleasant one.

“I know that’s going to be a terrible existence for him,” he said.

Idaho has executed only three people since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Last year, the state tried to execute Thomas Creech, who had been imprisoned for nearly 50 years, but executioners were unable to successfully insert an intravenous line for the lethal injection. The governor recently signed a law that would make a firing squad the primary method of execution.