BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Friends and relatives of four University of Idaho students murdered in their rental home by Bryan Kohberger delivered powerful statements of love, anguish and condemnation as his sentencing hearing began Wednesday.
“This world was a better place with her in it,” Scott Laramie, the stepfather of Madison Mogen, told the court. “Karen and I are ordinary people, but we lived extraordinary lives because we had Maddie.”
The father of Kaylee Goncalves taunted Kohberger for leaving his DNA behind and getting caught despite being a graduate student in criminology at nearby Washington State University at the time.
“You were that careless, that foolish, that stupid,” Steve Goncalves said. “Master’s degree? You’re a joke.”
Judge Steven Hippler ordered Kohberger to serve four life sentences without parole for the brutal stabbing deaths of Mogen, Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin early on Nov. 13, 2022. The defendant pleaded guilty early this month, just weeks before his trial was to start, in a deal to avoid the death penalty.
Kohberger broke into the home through a kitchen sliding door and brutally stabbed the four friends, who appeared to have no connection with him. No motive has been offered, and Kohberger chose not to speak at the hearing.
Dylan Mortenson, a roommate who told police of seeing a strange man with bushy eyebrows and a ski mask in the home that night, sobbed as she described how Kohberger, seated across the room in an orange jumpsuit, “took the light they carried into each room.”
“He is a hollow vessel, something less than human,” Mortenson said. “A body without empathy without remorse.”
Mortenson and another surviving roommate, Bethany Funke, described crippling panic attacks and anxiety after the attack.
“I slept in my parents’ room for almost a year, and had them double lock every door, set an alarm, and still check everywhere in the room just in case someone was hiding,” Funke wrote in a statement read by a friend. “I have not slept through a single night since this happened. I constantly wake up in panic, terrified someone is breaking in or someone is here to hurt me, or I’m about to lose someone else that I love.”
Alivea Goncalves’s voice didn’t waver as she asked Kohberger questions about the killings, including what her sister’s last words were. She drew applause after belittling Kohberger, who remained expressionless as she insulted him.
“You didn’t win, you just exposed yourself as the coward you are,” Alivea Goncalves said. “You’re a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser.”
Kohberger’s mother and sister also attended the hearing, sitting in the gallery near the defense table. His mother quietly wept at times as the other parents described their grief. She sobbed briefly when Maddie Mogen’s grandmother said that her heart goes out to the other families, including Kohberger’s.
Xana Kernodle’s aunt, Kim Kernodle, said she forgave Kohberger and asked him to call her from prison, hoping he would answer her lingering questions about the killings.
“Bryan, I’m here today to tell you I have forgiven you, because I no longer could live with that hate in my heart,” she said. “And for me to become a better person, I have forgiven you. And any time you want to talk and tell me what happened, get my number. I’m here. No judgment.”
Police initially had no suspects in the killings, which terrified the rural western Idaho city of Moscow. Some students at both universities left mid-semester, taking the rest of their classes online because they felt unsafe.
A knife sheath left near Mogen’s body had a single source of male DNA on the button snap, investigators said, and surveillance videos showed a white Hyundai Elantra near the rental home around the time of the murders.
Police used genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect and accessed cellphone data to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings. Online shopping records showed Kohberger had purchased a military-style knife months earlier, along with a sheath like the one at the home.
Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania about six weeks after the killings.
Both the investigation and the case drew widespread attention. Discussion groups proliferated online, members eagerly sharing their theories and questions about the case. Some armchair web-sleuths pointed fingers at innocent people simply because they knew the victims or lived in the same town. Misinformation spread, piling additional distress on the already-traumatized community.
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