Bryan Kohberger pleads guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022

A man has pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022 after agreeing a deal which means he will likely avoid the death penalty.

Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old former criminal justice student, was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings following a nationwide search.

He was accused of sneaking into the rented home in Moscow, Idaho, which is not far from the university campus, and attacking Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.

Autopsies showed the four were stabbed multiple times and were likely asleep when they were attacked, though some had defensive wounds.

Kohberger has never revealed his motive and it is not clear why he spared two roommates who were in the home.

There is also no indication he knew any of the victims, who were all friends.

Kohberger previously pleaded not guilty to charges of murder and burglary.

However he has now agreed to a plea deal, just weeks before his trial was set to begin in August, in a bid to avoid the death penalty – which prosecutors said they intended to pursue.

Despite that the deal must be approved by Idaho Fourth Judicial District Judge Steven Hippler.

Although judges in Idaho can reject plea agreements such incidents are rare.

The family of one of the victims, Ms Goncalves, opposed the agreement and said they would seek to stop it.

They also argued that any such deal should require Kohberger to make a full confession, detail the facts of what happened and provide the location of the murder weapon.

They wrote in a Facebook post on Monday that they were “beyond furious at the State of Idaho” for offering Kohberger a plea.

Ms Goncalve’s father Steve Goncalves left the courthouse shortly after arriving on Wednesday and before Kohberger entered the courtroom.

He appeared frustrated and told US media that the rest of the Goncalves family would sit through the hearing but that he wasn’t prepared to.

“I’m just getting out of this zoo,” he said.

Asked outside the courthouse prior to Wednesday’s hearing whether he believed four life sentences would provide justice in the case, Mr Goncalves, said, “No, of course not. It’s daycare. Prison is daycare.”

It came as the family of Mr Chapin supported the deal, their spokesperson, Christina Teves, said Tuesday.

Meanwhile Ms Mogen’s father, Ben Mogen, told CBS News he was relieved by the agreement.

“We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don’t want to have to be at, that we shouldn’t have to be at, that have to do with this terrible person,” he said.

“We get to just think about the rest of lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and the rest of the kids.”

Kohberger, who remained expressionless as he entered his guilty pleas, will be sentenced on 23 July.

How police caught Kohberger

The small farming community of Moscow, in the northern Idaho panhandle, had not had a homicide in about five years when the murders took place.

The killings grabbed headlines around the world and set off a nationwide hunt, including an elaborate effort to track down a white car spotted on surveillance cameras repeatedly driving by the rental home.

Police arrested Kohberger after investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.

They were also able to access mobile phone data to pinpoint his movements on the night of the killings.

Online shopping records showed that Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier, as well as a sheath like the one found at the scene.

At the time of the murders, Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at nearby Washington State University who had just completed his first semester and was a teaching assistant in the criminology program.

Kohberger’s lawyers said he was simply on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.