Convicted Murderer of Idaho Students Backtracks on Plea

The former criminology graduate student who last year pleaded guilty to murdering four University of Idaho students is now claiming innocence, court records show. 

In a handwritten petition to withdraw his guilty plea filed in Ada County District Court Sunday, Bryan Kohberger—who is serving four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole or appeal—said his decision to take the plea deal was induced by the “unkept promises” made by his “ineffective” court-appointed lawyers during the criminal proceedings. 

Kohberger was arrested for the murders in December 2022, about six weeks after Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found stabbed to death while sleeping in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho; police later said they found Kohberger’s DNA on a knife sheath left on one of the victims’ beds.  

Kohberger originally pleaded not guilty and potentially faced the death penalty if convicted. Then, last June, he entered a guilty plea two months before the trial was set to begin. 

But in the petition to withdraw his guilty plea he filed this week, Kohberger said he only took the deal because of his legal counsel’s “failure to disclose or review exculpatory evidence,” their insistence that his plea “need not be truthful” despite his “vehement denial of actual guilt,” and “promises” that life in prison without parole would include immediate visits, employment and freedom of movement while telling “elaborate lies” about the living conditions on death row. 

“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Kohberger, who has not made any other public statements, told The New York Times Sunday.  

In response to Kohberger’s claims of innocence, the family of Goncalves characterized him as “a mosquito you just can’t seem to swat” in a statement to the Times. “The real tragedy is this: If even a fraction of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks bearing their names, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist.”