Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson said the plea agreement his office reached with Bryan Kohberger was not a “popularity contest.”
“We accept and recognize that not everybody agrees with the decision we made,” he said during a news conference. “We made what we thought was the most appropriate decision under the law and on the facts to give this case closure.”
Speaking outside the courthouse, Kaylee Goncalves’ brother criticized Kohberger’s plea agreement while reading from a victim impact statement that he did not provide during the sentencing hearing.
Steven Goncalves accused Latah County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Thompson of choosing “expedience over justice” and said the agreement was handed down “without our voice.”
“The system didn’t fight for her,” he said.
In court earlier, Thompson said that each of the victims’ families was entitled to their own opinions about the agreement.
The father of Kaylee Goncalves said he learned from prosecutors that she was stabbed more than 30 times the night of the murder.
Speaking to reporters outside the courthouse, Steve Goncalves said she was struck and suffered “quite a bit of damage to her face.”
“It was horrific what Kaylee went through,” he said.
Hippler imposes his punishment against Kohberger: 10 years in prison for the one count of burglary and four life sentences without the possibility of parole to be served consecutively for each first-degree murder count in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen.
Kohberger must also pay a fine of $50,000 and a civil penalty of $5,000 payable to the family of each victim per count.
The sentence is widely anticipated as part of the plea deal in which Kohberger admitted guilt in exchange for not going on trial and avoiding a potential death sentence.
Families of the victims are also crying in the courtroom, including Mortensen.
Before Hippler sentenced Kohberger, he said people may never get the real answers from the defendant.
“Even if I could force him to speak, which legally I cannot, how could anyone ever be assured that what he speaks is the truth?” Hippler asked, adding that now is the time to end Kohberger’s “15 minutes of fame.”
Hippler also informed Kohberger that, although he had waived his right to appeal, he still had the option to file a notice of appeal.
“The appeal, you should be aware, may be deemed a violation of the plea agreement, and so I certainly suggest you discuss that with counsel if that is your desire,” he said.
Ada County District Court Judge Steven Hippler called Kohberger a “faceless coward” and said he “senselessly slaughtered” the four students.
“The loss this killer inflicted was not just the death of these people’s children, siblings, grandchildren, as we’ve heard today, it has ripped a hole in their soul, destroying a special part of their very essence,” he said.
Hippler said that while he shares the desire to understand why Kohberger carried out the killings, he said seeking to understand a motive gives the defendant more power and control.
“There is no reason for these crimes that could approach anything resembling rationality,” he said.
“In my view, the time has now come to end for Mr. Kohberger’s 15 minutes of fame,” he said. “It’s time that he be consigned to the ignominy and isolation of perpetual incarceration.”
A family member of a victim said “surprise, surprise” after Kohberger told the judge he “respectfully” declined to speak.
Hippler asks Kohberger if he wishes to make any remarks, but the defendant refuses.
“I respectfully decline,” Kohberger said, earning a response from the courtroom.
While he is free to speak or make statements from prison, his reluctance is expected as he has not commented about the case following his arrest in December 2022.
His continued silence only furthers questions about what happened on the night of the killings, what motivated Kohberger to select the victims, why he left two other housemates alive and what he did with the murder weapon.
Thompson appears emotional as he asks Hippler to impose his punishment on Kohberger: 10 years in prison for the one count of burglary and four life sentences to be served consecutively for each first-degree murder count in the deaths of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen.
“We can’t undo and we can never undo the horror that occurred,” Thompson said. “From today forward, our memories should be focused on these innocent victims whose lives were taken on their families, on their friends, on the community.”
As he showed photos of each victim, audible crying could be heard from the courtroom.
The victim impact statements in today’s sentencing hearing are now over.
The last speaker was Xana Kerndole’s mother, who said she had prayed for Kohberger.
“I pray that you come to the end of your pray that before this life is over, that you ask our Lord and Savior in your heart and to forgive you. I do pray for that, but after today, I wash my hands of you and you are no longer a thing,” Xana’s mother said.
Prosecutor Bill Thompson is now speaking.
Xana Kernodle’s stepfather told Kohberger that he is “evil” and “going to hell.”
At the end of his statement, Randy Davis pointed at Kohberger and said: “You are going to suffer. I am shaking because I want to reach out to you. Go to hell.”
Stratton Kernodle, Xana Kernodle’s uncle, says Kohberger has dishonored his family and his actions have “contaminated, tainted their family name and pretty much made a horrible, miserable thing to be ever related to him.”
“I know that that’s what he has to live with, and that has to be his pain, and that’s all I have to say,” Stratton Kernodle adds.
Kohberger’s mother is crying as he mentions their family, holding a tissue to her face.
The aunt of Xana Kernodle told Kohberger that she had forgiven him “because I no longer could live with that hate in my heart.”
“Anytime you want to talk and tell me what happened, get my number,” Kim Kernodle said. “I’m here, no judgment.”
She has questions that she wants answered.
“I’ll be the one that listens to you,” she said.
Jeff Kernodle says his daughter, Xana, was a ‘big blessing’ to him, and what he misses most was when she would call him up on weekends to check on him.
“My life’s been changed, and [she] had a great impact on me,” Jeff Kernodle says. “And the impact was, when she was gone, I realized how important she was, and what she really did for me, influenced me, was way beyond what I ever thought.”
When she’d call, “I really miss that,” he says, adding, “She made a big impact on me, on other people, her family.”
Kernodle adds that he was only 7 miles away from the house where the murders took place, and that his daughter told him she wasn’t feeling well.
“I would have been sitting right there on that couch,” he says. “And I regret that, and I regret not going. But the reason why I didn’t is because she said, ‘Dad, don’t be drinking and driving.'”
Jeff Kernodle speaks in court today.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
The sister of Xana Kernodle told the court that she was unsure whether to provide a victim impact statement at today’s sentencing.
“I realized this moment isn’t about you, it’s about justice for Xana, Ethan, Kaylee and Maddie,” Jazzmin Kernodle said. “It’s about honoring the beautiful, beautiful people, they were and still are in God’s eyes.”
“Xana was everyone’s best friend,” she said. “Although I am her older sister, I often found myself looking up to her.”
Kaylee Goncalves’ mother called Kohberger a “loser” and said he is entering a place “where no one will care who you are and no one will ever respect you.”
“You will be forgotten, discarded, used and erased,” Kristi Goncalves said.
At one point, she made a joke about Kohberger entering prison that drew laughter and applause from the courtroom.
“When those prison doors slam shut behind you, I hope that sound echoes in your heart for the rest of your meaningless days,” she said.
Claps erupted in the courtroom after Kaylee Goncalves’ sister told Kohberger that her sibling would have “kicked your f—ing ass.”
Alivea Goncalves speaks in court today.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
“You didn’t win,” Alivea Goncalves added. “You just exposed yourself as the coward you are. You’re a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were so much smarter than everybody else.”
The lawyer for Madison Mogen’s mother, Karen Laramie, read the grieving mother’s statement in court.
It began with Laramie thanking her husband, Scott Laramie, for “his courage and his unending love and support during this dark time.” She also said she was grateful to Maddie’s great uncle, Brian Caulfield, “for assisting me with a difficult, difficult task of putting our pain into words for me and my extended family.”
“Maddie was our hope and our light,” Leander James read from the statement. “Her beauty, both outside and in, shown its light upon everyone with whom she came in contact.”
Maddie “carried that hope and light into the future for our entire family. We have memories of our Maddie and grief and pain at her being taken, taken from our presence,” the statement continued.
“Anyone of us would have given our own light to have been outshone by hers,” James read.
“We now look to our Creator to know that her light continues, where we look to see her in his presence,” James read. “Those who commit evil for their own twisted gains and purposes truly defile the efforts and sacrifices of mothers, fathers, families, teachers, clergy, public servants, service members, and all those who commit themselves to the greater good, freedoms and the future light of our nation.”
Madison Mogen.@maddiemogen via Instagram
Alivea Goncalves, Kaylee Goncalves’ sister, spoke directly to Kohberger during her victim impact statement.
“Disappointments like you thrive on pain. I won’t feed your beast. Instead, I will call you what you are. Sociopath. Psychopath. Murderer,” Alivea Goncalves said.
As she spoke, Kohberger looked back at her without emotion.
“If you were really smart, do you think you would be here right now? What is it like needing this much attention to feel real?” she asked.
The father of Kaylee Goncalves turned the courtroom lectern to face Kohberger directly while he read his victim impact statement.
“Today, we are here to finish what you started,” Steve Goncalves said. “We are here to prove to the world that you picked the wrong families, wrong state, the wrong police officers, the wrong community.”
“You tried to break our community apart. You tried to plant fear, you tried to divide us,” Goncalves said. “You failed.”
“You united everyone,” he said. “Everyone was united after you.”
Calling Kohberger a “complete joke,” Goncalves said that the world was watching because of the slain college kids, not him.
“Nobody cares about you. You’re not worth the time, the effort to be remembered in time, you will be nothing but two initials, forgotten to the wind, no visitors, nothing more than initials on an otherwise unmarked tombstone,” he added.
Bryan Kohberger’s mother began to cry after Maddie Mogen’s father, Ben Mogen, said his victim impact statement about his only child.
She was the “only great thing I ever really did, only thing I was ever really proud of,” Ben Mogen said. “I thought we would have the rest of our lives together.”
Mogen then read a Father’s Day card that Maddie had written for him. Kohberger remained emotionless as Mogen spoke.
“I’ll never be able to replace her. I wrote a bunch of stuff. I don’t, I just don’t know what to say right now. I just missed her so much,” Mogen said.
Maddie Mogen’s grandmother Kim Cheeley said, “The foundation fell out of our world” after the murders.
“Initially, the fear was truly debilitating,” Cheeley told the court in a victim impact statement. “The first six weeks were excruciating despite the vigils, memorials, candlelight, gatherings of students, friends, family, community members.”
“I now have a stack of books on grief,” she said, adding that she’s attended grief classes and tried a therapeutic technique that helps “replace disturbing visions with something more comforting.”
District Court Judge Steven Hippler grabbed a tissue from his desk and appeared to wipe away tears from his eyes amid victim impact statements.
Maddie Mogen’s stepfather, Scott Laramie, said his family supported the plea agreement and recalled the grief and anxiety he and his wife felt after her murder.
“This world was a better place with her in it,” Scott Laramie said. “Karen and I were ordinary people, but we lived extraordinary lives because of Maddie.”
“First, we felt disbelief, disorientation, and then we felt grief overcome us,” he said. “After Maddie’s loss, Karen felt like she was spinning out emotionally, collapsing in anxiety into an anxiety and depression.”
Speaking directly to Kohberger, Laramie added: “As for the defendant, we will not waste the words, nor will we, nor will we fall into hatred and bitterness. Evil has many faces, and we now know this, but evil does not deserve our time and attention.”
In her emotional victim impact statement, Mortensen states that she is living her life for her friends after the night of the murders changed her life.
“What happened that night changed everything,” she said.
She says she had a dream a year ago in which she had to say goodbye to them.
“They all kept asking, ‘Why?’ I told them, ‘I can’t tell you, but I have to.'”
“When I woke up, I felt shattered and heartbroken,” she says.
On Kohberger, she says: “He tried to take everything from me. My friends. My safety. My identity. My future.”
“Living is how I honor them,” she adds. “He may have taken so much from me, but he will never get to take my voice.”
Dylan Mortensen, the second surviving roommate, sat beside prosecutors while she tearfully recounted her difficulties navigating the aftermath of the murders. This is the first time Mortensen has spoken since the murders.
“Sometimes, I drop to the floor with my heart racing,” she said.
“He is a hollow vessel, something less than human,” she said of Kohberger. “He chose evil.”
“He may have taken so much from me, but he will never get to take my voice,” she said.
Dylan Mortensen is embraced after speaking at the sentencing hearing today.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
A friend of surviving housemate Bethany Funke shared a victim impact statement on her behalf.
In the statement, Funke said that she still speaks to the four victims in her prayers every night, and she will continue to live in their memory.
“I hated and still hate that they are gone, but for some reason, I am still here, and I got to live. I still think about this every day. Why me? Why did I get to live and not them? For the longest time, I could not even look at their families without feeling sick with guilt,” Funke wrote in the statement read in court.
Funke wrote of each of her friends.
“Who they were was so beautiful, and they deserve to be remembered in the highest way,” Funke writes.
Reporting from Boise, Idaho
Victims’ relatives and University of Idaho students cried as a friend of Bethany Funke tearfully read a victim impact statement on behalf of Funke.
Kohberger sat expressionless and listened intently.
Bryan Kohberger appeared in court flanked by defense attorneys and wearing an orange jail uniform.
Prior to pleading guilty earlier this month, Kohberger wore civilian clothes to court proceedings.
Bryan Kohberger at his sentencing hearing today.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said he won’t be presenting new evidence today, as the state had previously presented its evidence at his plea hearing.
The sentencing hearing started at 9:06 a.m. local time.
His mother is quietly crying in the courtroom.
In attendance are some of the victims’ families, including those of Mogen and Goncalves.
Kohberger, who has been held without bond in the Ada County Jail in Boise, is expected to spend his prison sentence 11 miles away at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution.
The prison opened in 1989 to “confine Idaho’s most disruptive male residents,” according to the Idaho Department of Corrections. Officials say it houses as many as 549 inmates who are mostly “close custody” and segregated from others. Its security includes a double perimeter fence reinforced with razor wire and an electronic detection system.
Correction officials will first evaluate Kohberger’s mental and physical health, David Leroy, Idaho’s former attorney general, told NBC affiliate KTVB. They will also examine his criminal behavior and actions to help determine his housing arrangements, the activities he can participate in and the extent of contact with other inmates, Leroy added.
“I would expect him to be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life,” he said.
The prison is also home to the state’s death row, although Kohberger, under his plea agreement, will not be among them.
Ahead of the sentencing hearing, prosecutors filed a motion asking Hippler to extend an order that bars Kohberger from trying to communicate with the victims’ families.
“This Motion is based on the fact that Defendant has now entered guilty pleas to all offenses charged in the Indictment and will be sentenced on July 23, 2025,” Thompson wrote. “The current No Contact Orders expire on January 5, 2027, and the State respectfully requests that they be extended for an additional ninety-nine (99) years.”
It’s unclear if Hippler would rule on the motion today.
Reporting from Boise, Idaho
Xana Kernodle’s father, Jeff, and sister Jazzmin, along with aunt Kim Kernodle and her husband, Stratton, just entered the courthouse.
Ethan Chapin, 20, had a lighthearted, sometimes goofy presence his loved ones still feel today.
The 6-foot-4 freshman rarely took things too seriously, they said, making their loss staggering and the family’s recovery a daily battle against the weight of darkness.
“The days do get better,” Stacy Chapin, speaking alongside her husband, Jim, told NBC News in an exclusive interview earlier this month.
Kohberger’s plea has so far come without an explanation or a disclosure of a motive, but nearly three years after the murders, the Chapins say they don’t need an explanation anymore.
The Chapins added that they do not plan to attend the sentencing today or address the court. Jim Chaplin said that he would rather spend the day with his children.
The public began lining up around 4 p.m. local time yesterday to try and get a seat inside the Ada County Courthouse for the highly anticipated hearing. Overnight, security had them leave the courthouse property, prompting them to set up their chairs and wait across the street.
But by almost 2 a.m. local time today, about 30 people were waiting to get inside — mostly media and online content creators. News crews began setting up outside the barricades along the sidewalk. Three hours later, there were more than 100 people waiting to enter.
The courthouse opens at 7:30 a.m., and the courtroom itself seats about 50 people. Court officials plan to open an overflow room, where the proceedings will be livestreamed.
President Donald Trump weighed in on the case against Kohberger on his social media platform Truth Social this week, writing that the “deaths of four wonderful young souls” have left “so many questions unanswered.”
“While Life Imprisonment is tough, it’s certainly better than receiving the Death Penalty but, before Sentencing, I hope the Judge makes Kohberger, at a minimum, explain why he did these horrible murders,” Trump wrote. “There are no explanations, there is no NOTHING. People were shocked that he was able to plea bargain, but the Judge should make him explain what happened. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Goncalves’ family, which has been vocal about its opposition to the plea agreement, wrote on Facebook in response to Trump’s post that while it doesn’t want to “get into politics,” it was “absolutely shocked” about his message.
“Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, Ethan — you have always mattered so much,” the family said. “You are so loved & your nature, your light, your entire being is so bright & visible. You guys did this. You guys deserve every last ounce of recognition for this.”
At the plea change hearing this month, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson recited the evidence the state has against Kohberger — including cellphone, DNA and surveillance video — to help lay out its case.
“On Nov. 13, 2022, excuse me,” an emotional Thompson began as he composed himself.
Thompson said Kohberger’s phone connected to the tower near the home at 1122 King Road about 23 times leading up to the killings.
He described how the state believes Kohberger went to the home in the early morning of the murders and entered through a sliding door in the kitchen. He believes Mogen and Goncalves were killed first on the third floor, where a Ka-bar knife sheath was left.
He said, “That sheath was tested, and single-source DNA was found on the snap of the sheath.”
From top left, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle.
Kohberger then came upon Kernodle, who was still up after receiving a Door Dash order, and killed her, Thompson said, and then found Chapin, asleep in bed, and killed him. Two other housemates were home, and one of them saw Kohberger, who was in a ski mask, before he left, leaving them physically unharmed.
Thompson said the defendant’s car was “seen on a surveillance camera for 1122 King Road leaving the area at a high rate of speed.”
The other evidence against Kohberger included online purchases similar to the type of knife and sheath in the case, and a Q-tip taken from the garbage of Kohberger’s parents’ house that was used to match what was recovered on the sheath, Thompson said.
The hearing at the Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho, is slated to begin at 9 a.m. local time and is expected to last throughout the day.
Kohberger, his defense lawyers, prosecutors with Latah County, family members and the state attorney general’s office are expected to attend. District Court Judge Steven Hippler, who has been handling the case since it was transferred from Latah County to Ada County, will preside over the sentencing.
The victims’ families and others involved in the case will be able to provide statements at today’s sentencing. Goncalves’ mother previously told “TODAY” that she plans to address the court.
Kohberger also will be granted the opportunity to address the court directly before he is sentenced. It is unclear whether he will say anything, however.
