In a surprising development, Bryan Kohberger, who had previously confessed to the brutal killing of four Idaho college students, is seeking to retract his guilty plea. The convicted murderer now seeks a courtroom trial to contest his guilt.
Now 31, Kohberger is currently serving four consecutive life sentences. He announced his latest legal maneuver during an interview with The New York Times, asserting that he possesses an “absolute claim of innocence.”
“My actual innocence is my truth,” Kohberger declared in the interview, adding that his initial plea was influenced by “false promises and blatant disinformation.” He insisted it “MUST be withdrawn.”
Last July, Kohberger admitted guilt to the November 2022 slayings of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, both aged 21, along with Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20.
His plea led to a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Though Kohberger admitted responsibility for the killings as part of a plea deal that spared him the death penalty, he has never publicly explained why he targeted the four friends.
He declined to comment on specifics about the alleged evidence that he says will exonerate him, the Times reported.
He also reportedly refused to talk about the concerns he has surrounding the plea process.
Bryan Kohberger has petitioned to revoke his guilty plea in the 2022 killings of four Idaho students
Best friends Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, were sleeping in the same bed after a night out. They were both stabbed multiple times
Young couple Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were also murdered by Kohberger
Mogen, Kernodle, Goncalves and Chapin were found stabbed to death on November 13, 2022, in a rented off-campus house in the small, rural town of Moscow.
Prosecutors say that Kohberger, who was masked, snuck into the home and brutally murdered the students.
Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador called Kohberger’s U-turn ‘deeply painful’ for the victims’ families and said he was standing by them.
A spokesperson for the Goncalves family called Kohberger ‘the mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.’
The spokesperson added: ‘(Kohberger) appeared in court for a hearing before a judge, accompanied by his four lawyers. He chose not to leave his fate – or the facts of the case – to a jury.
‘He never cried foul, never claimed he was uninformed or pressured… He admitted his guilt.’ The spokesperson added that they wished Kohberger had been given a death penalty trial and suggested he now wants more attention.
Kohberger, a graduate student in criminology at nearby Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania, where his parents lived, roughly six weeks later.
A Q-tip from the garbage at his parents’ house and genetic genealogy were used to match Kohberger’s DNA to material recovered from a knife sheath found at the home, investigators said.
They also used surveillance camera footage to help locate a white sedan that was seen repeatedly driving past the home on the night of the killings.
Cellphone location data also showed that Kohberger had been in the neighborhood multiple times before the attack.
Kohberger’s attorneys got the trial moved to Boise after expressing concerns that the court wouldn’t be able to find enough unbiased jurors in Moscow.
But Judge Stephen Hippler rejected their efforts to get the death penalty taken off the table and to strike critical evidence – including the DNA – from being admitted in trial.
The student home at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, where the murders were committed
No blood or DNA was found in Kohberger’s white Hyundai Elantra after his arrest
From left: Dylan Mortensen, Goncalves, Mogen (on Goncalves’s shoulders), Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Bethany Funke
In exchange for Kohberger admitting guilt and waiving his right to appeal, prosecutors agreed not to seek his execution. Both sides recommended that he serve four consecutive life sentences without parole.
After his arrest in December 2022, Kohberger’s initial court-appointed lawyer said that the murderer was ‘eager to be exonerated.’
The defense spent more than two years challenging the evidence against hi before accepting the surprise plea deal just weeks before he was set to go to trial.
Kohberger acknowledged he committed the ‘willful, unlawful, deliberate’ murder of the victims ‘with premeditation and with malice aforethought’ as part of this agreement. But it didn’t force him to provide a narrative or say why he did it.
It’s unclear why Kohberger killed the four students and spared two roommates who were home at the time.
Investigators also never found a connection between Kohberger, the four victims or the two surviving roommates.
Judge Steven Hippler suggested in court that he too wanted to know why Kohberger did it, but he cautioned against continuing to wonder.
‘By continuing to focus on why, we continue to give Mr Kohberger relevance, we give him agency and we give him power,’ the judge said at the defendant’s sentencing.
‘The need to know what is inherently not understandable makes us dependent upon the defendant to provide us with a reason, and that gives him the spotlight, the attention and the power he appears to crave.’
This is a breaking news story. Check back for updates.