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U.S.|Bryan Kohberger to Be Sentenced in Killing of 4 Idaho Students
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/us/bryan-kohberger-sentencing-idaho-murders.html
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The students’ families will have an opportunity to address the court, and many hope for answers to one major question about the brutal case: What was the motive?
July 23, 2025, 5:01 a.m. ET
Bryan Kohberger, a former Ph.D. student in criminology who pleaded guilty in the fatal stabbing of four University of Idaho students, will hear from the victims’ families in court for the first time on Wednesday as a judge considers his sentence for the crimes.
Mr. Kohberger, 30, has already agreed to accept four consecutive life sentences as part of a plea deal that allows him to avoid the death penalty. But many questions remain unanswered, including one that has vexed investigators and families for years: What was the motive?
Prosecutors have said Mr. Kohberger had no known relationship to the victims, and even President Trump urged the judge in the case to press for answers before sentencing. “I hope the Judge makes Kohberger, at a minimum, explain why he did these horrible murders,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social on Monday. “There are no explanations, there is no NOTHING.”
Family members of the students will have a chance to address the court, an emotional conclusion to a case that created fear across the small college town where the murders occurred and elicited sympathy nationwide for the students whose lives were cut short. Some family members have expressed outrage that prosecutors agreed to drop their bid for the death penalty in exchange for the guilty plea.
Mr. Kohberger was a student at nearby Washington State University when the murders occurred sometime around 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022. The victims — Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20 — had spent a typical Saturday night out near their campus before returning to the three-story house that several of the students shared.
Two roommates survived the night. Text messages show that they discussed a masked person one of them had briefly seen inside the home, but neither seemed aware that something so horrific has happened. A 911 call was made more than seven hours later after several additional friends gathered at the home.
