The gruesome murder case of four college students in the Idaho town of Moscow more than two and a half years ago concluded Wednesday, with killer Bryan Kohberger sentenced to spend the rest of his life in prison for the slayings.

University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in the frenzied attack at their college home in the middle of the night on November 13, 2022.

Two other roommates, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, were the only roommates to survive the killings — and they spoke out for the first time in emotional testimony at Kohberger’s sentencing hearing on July 23, 2025.

For weeks after the killings, only scant details about the carnage that night were revealed as the community reeled from the tragedy and grappled with fears of a murderer on the loose.

That changed when Kohberger was arrested in December 2022 after authorities raided his apartment, office and family home in search of evidence.

For over two years, Kohberger maintained his innocence and his long-awaited trial was due to begin on August 18. But in a dramatic turn, the 30-year-old publicly admitted to the killings for the first time at a plea-deal hearing on July 2 to avoid the death penalty.

Prosecutors said there’s still no known connection between the victims and Kohberger, who had been planning the murders for months.

In pleading guilty, Kohberger waived all rights to an appeal and was handed four consecutive life sentences at Wednesday’s hearing.

Here, The Independent takes a deep dive into the complex case.

The night of the murders

The students had all enjoyed a typical Saturday night out in the small college town. Goncalves and Mogen had been at a local bar, while Kernodle and Chapin went to a party at a frat house.

After they returned in the early hours of November 13, Kohberger broke into the three-storey, six-bedroom house at around 4 a.m., as most of the students slept, and crept through the kitchen sliding door.

Dressed in all-black with a balaclava, Kohberger headed to the third floor of the house and killed Mogen and Goncalves first, Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson said at the plea-deal hearing. For some reason, Kohberger left the tan leather knife sheath next to Mogen’s body. His DNA was later discovered on the sheath, according to an arrest affidavit.

Chillingly, Kernodle was still awake and had just received a DoorDash order when she came face to face with Kohberger immediately after he murdered her roommates. Kohberger was coming down the stairs from the third floor when he encountered Kernodle and killed her with a large knife, the prosecutor said. As her boyfriend Chapin slept in the second-floor bedroom, Kohberger stabbed him to death too.

Two other roommates, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, were the only roommates to survive the killings.

Mortensen also encountered Kohberger, according to a police report. She was asleep in her bedroom on the second floor when she was woken by what sounded like Goncalves playing with her dog in one of the third-floor bedrooms.

Mortensen told investigators she was in her bedroom on the second floor– the same floor where Kernodle and Chapin were killed – and was standing in the doorway as the killer walked right past her.

At one point, Mortensen said she heard someone believed to be either Goncalves or Kernodle saying, “There’s someone here.”

Minutes later, Mortensen said she looked out of her bedroom for the first time but did not see anything. She then opened her door a second time when she heard what she thought was crying coming from Kernodle’s room.

At that point, she said she heard a man’s voice from above say something like, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.”

When she opened her door a third time minutes later, she said she saw “a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her.”

Mortensen stood in a “frozen shock phase” as the man walked past her. She said she did not recognize him, but noted in her testimony that he had one bushy eyebrow. The figure headed toward the back sliding glass door of the home.

Terrified, Mortensen then locked herself in her room and started exchanging panicked text messages with Funke. The students tried texting and calling their roommates, who unbeknownst to them, were dead in their bedrooms.

“Pls answer,” Mortensen texted Goncalves at 4:32 a.m., according to documents.

A 911 call wasn’t made until 11.56 a.m. – eight hours later. The call, made from one of the surviving roommates’ cellphones, reported an “unconscious individual.”

Prosecutors said that Kohberger took a selfie that morning at his Pullman residence in Washington state, approximately 9.5 miles from Moscow, with his thumbs up.

The murder weapon has still never been found, prosecutors said at July’s hearing.

Kohberger arrested in Pennsylvania weeks after murders

After weeks of no updates on the investigation, law enforcement in Idaho and Pennsylvania announced Kohberger’s arrest on December 30, 2022. A search warrant was executed at Kohberger’s apartment in Pullman, Washington state, the same day he was arrested at his parents’ home in Pennsylvania.

A record of evidence recovered during the apartment search revealed the seizure of 15 items, including hairs, receipts, a computer tower, a disposable glove and items with peculiar stains.

In the search warrant record, investigators listed several items with stains, including cuttings of a mattress cover, a “reddish/brown” stain on an uncovered pillow and a “collection of dark red spot.”

Kohberger was linked to the crime through cellphone location records, police said, and security video of a white Hyundai Elantra, a similar model of the car seen near the murder home around the time of the murders. Kohberger changed the license plates on his Hyundai Elantra just days after the murders.

Who are the victims?

Goncalves and Mogen were seniors at the University of Idaho and would have graduated in 2023.

At a vigil weeks after the murders, Goncalves’s father, Steve, told how the two “absolutely beautiful” young women first met in sixth grade and became inseparable.

“They just found each other and every day they did homework together, they came to our house together, they shared everything,” he said at the time. “Then they started looking at colleges, they came here together. They eventually get into the same apartment together.

“And in the end, they died together, in the same room, in the same bed.”

Kernodle was a junior and Chapin was a freshman at the college. They had begun dating months before their deaths.

Six months after the stabbings, the families of the slain students accepted posthumous awards for their achievements.

Mogen and Goncalves’s relatives walked the stage for their degrees in an emotional ceremony on May 13, 2023.

Mogen was going to school for marketing and Goncalves for general studies. Kernodle’s family also accepted her certificate in marketing at a separate ceremony, while Chapin’s award in sports, recreation and management was mailed to his parents.

The house in Moscow was demolished in December 2028 after the high-profile killings.

Who is Bryan Kohberger?

At the time of the murders, Kohberger was studying for his PhD and working as a teaching assistant in criminal justice at Washington State University.

Kohberger previously studied criminology at Pennsylvania’s DeSales University, first as an undergraduate, and then was set to finish his graduate studies in June 2022.

According to online school records, Kohberger received an associate arts degree in 2018 from Northampton Community College in Albrightsville and received a master’s degree in criminal justice from DeSales University.

While at DeSales, he studied under renowned forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, who interviewed the BTK serial killer and wrote the book Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer.

Ramsland said that Kohberger did not present any “red flags” to her in a recent interview with News Nation, but added: “I have to look at the framework of what I taught and wonder, did I inspire him in some way?”

He had carried out a research project “to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.”

Kohberger had also reached out to potential participants on Reddit with the survey resurfacing after his arrest.

“In particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience,” the post said.

His fascination appears to have continued around the time of the killings when he applied for an internship with the local police department.

The affidavit revealed he applied for an internship in the fall of 2022 with the Pullman Police Department and wrote in an essay how he had an interest “in assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations.”

Eerie plea-deal hearing where killer admitted guilty for the first time

Kohberger did not display any emotion at an eerie plea-deal hearing in Boise, Idaho, three weeks ago, as he entered a guilty plea and spoke for the first time in the legal proceedings against him.

Silence was broken only by muffled sobs by some of the victims’ family members, who looked down or away as the names of their slain loved ones were read aloud. Kohberger’s parents, Michael Jr and Maryann, were in court for the hearing.

Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger if he had murdered Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin on that night two years ago. One by one, Kohberger answered each question with a simple but confident “yes.”

The plea deal came as a shock to many, dividing the victims’ families — and the public.

The Goncalves family, who has been among the most vocal throughout the case, strongly opposed the plea.

“This ain’t justice, no judge presided, no jury weighed the truth,” they wrote in a statement on Facebook.

“Thompson robbed us of our day in court. No negotiations, no jury of our peers, not even the pretense of cooperation and fairness.”

Kernodle’s father told The New York Times that he does “not agree” with the plea deal, and said he is “disappointed in the prosecutors’ decision.”

Earlier this week, Kernodle’s aunt said the prosecution told the family the deal was to “spare” them from hearing grisly details of the murders in court. “We know the graphics. They were not trying to spare us,” she said.

But the families of Chapin and Mogen supported the plea deal.

“While we know there are some who do not support it, we ask that they respect our belief that this is the best outcome,” Attorney Leander James said in a statement on behalf of Mogen’s family outside the courthouse on July 2.

“We now embark on a path of hope and healing.”

Emotional sentencing hearing where roommates speak out for first time

A judge Wednesday sentenced Bryan Kohberger to die in prison for the “senseless slaughter” of four Idaho college students after the killer refused to reveal his motive before learning his fate.

An emotional and, at times, choked up Judge Steven Hippler condemned Kohberger to spend the rest of his life behind bars for committing “unspeakable evil” during his July 23, 2025, sentencing hearing. The judge handed him four consecutive life sentences, and an additional 10 years for burglary, without the possibility of parole.

During the nearly three-hour hearing, devastated parents, grandparents, siblings and surviving roommates of the four slain students told Kohberger that “nobody cares” about him as they confronted the mass murderer.

Mortensen, one of the two roommates who survived the killings, told Kohberger he was “evil” as she defiantly told him he would “never take away” her voice — even though she revealed that the murders had left her suffering extreme panic attacks that “slam into me like a tsunami.”

Through tears, Mortensen told Kohberger that he was “a hollow vessel, something less than human.”

The other surviving roommate, Bethany Funke, whose statement was read aloud by a friend, revealed that she slept in her parents’ bedroom for a year after the murders.

Funke also expressed regret over not calling 911 sooner, even though she said she knows there wouldn’t have been enough time to save her friend’s lives.

“Everything I do, I do it with them in mind,” Funke wrote. “I am still scared to go out in public, but I force myself to do things because I know that they would want me to keep living my life to the fullest. I am beyond blessed to still be here, and I refuse to take that for granted when they do not get a chance.”

The only time Kohberger spoke at his sentencing hearing was to “respectfully decline” the opportunity to address the court or reveal why he committed the gruesome crimes.

With additional reporting from Rachel Dobkin, Andrea Blanco, Rachel Sharp and Sheila Flynn