BOISE, Idaho — One after another, the friends and family of the four University of Idaho students killed in their home by Bryan Kohberger vented their emotions in sobs, insults and curses before a packed courtroom Wednesday as he was sentenced to life in prison.
Ben Mogen, the father of Madison Mogen, credited her with helping keep him alive through his fight with addiction. He called her “the only thing I’m proud of.”
Dylan Mortensen, a roommate of the victims who told police of seeing a strange man with bushy eyebrows and a ski mask in the home that night, called Kohberger “a hollow vessel, something less than human.” She shook with tears as she described how Kohberger “took the light they carried into each room.”
“Hell will be waiting,” Kristi Goncalves, the mother of Kaylee Goncalves, told the killer.
Judge Steven Hippler ordered Kohberger to serve four life sentences without parole for first-degree murder in the killings of Mogen, Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Kohberger was also given a 10-year sentence for burglary and assessed $270,000 in fines and civil penalties.
Kohberger, 30, pleaded guilty weeks before his trial was to start in a deal to avoid the death penalty. Prosecutors and defense attorneys agreed on the sentence.
Kohberger gives no explanation
When it was his turn to speak in court, Kohberger said, “I respectfully decline,” shedding no light on why he slipped into the rental home in Moscow through a sliding glass door early on Nov. 13, 2022, and stabbed four of the students inside.
“I share the desire expressed by others to understand the why,” Hippler said. “But upon reflection, it seems to me, and this is just my own opinion, that by continuing to focus on why, we continue to give Mr. Kohberger relevance, we give him agency and we give him power.”
The crime horrified the city, which had not seen a homicide in about five years, and prompted a massive search for the perpetrator. Some students took the rest of their classes online because they felt unsafe. 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 was used to match Kohberger’s DNA to material recovered from a knife sheath found at the home, investigators said. They used cellphone data to pinpoint his movements and surveillance camera footage to help locate a white sedan that was seen repeatedly driving past the home the night of the killings.
But investigators told reporters after Wednesday’s hearing that exhaustive efforts failed to find the murder weapon, the clothes Kohberger was wearing at the time or any connection between him and the students.
Within hours of the sentencing, the Moscow Police Department posted hundreds of documents about the investigation on its website. They detailed how investigators processed the gruesome crime scene; ran down tips from people who claimed to have gone on a Tinder date with Kohberger or to have seen him walking along a highway; and tested soil and pollen found on a shovel in his car to see if they could narrow down where it had been used.
