One victim’s aunt urged the killer to call her and answer her questions. Another’s sister demanded to know her sibling’s last words. Even the White House weighed in, saying President Donald Trump “would have forced this monster to publicly explain why he chose to steal these innocent souls.”
Instead, Bryan Kohberger is taking those details to prison with him after declining to make any statement as he was sentenced Wednesday for murdering four University of Idaho students in their rental home on Nov. 13, 2022.
The plea deal that spared Kohberger’s life required him to admit the elements of the crimes he committed, but it didn’t force him to provide a narrative or say why he did it. That has raised questions about whether prosecutors could have or should have insisted on a full confession — including motive — as a condition of the deal.
“Rarely does somebody in his situation give an accurate, true statement of what occurred,” Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson said in an interview Thursday. “We would all like to know the details of what happened, but Mr. Kohberger is not going to be the source of getting the truth.”
Judge Steven Hippler sentenced Kohberger to four consecutive life terms for the brutal stabbing murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — four students with whom he had no apparent connection. Hippler suggested in court that he too wanted to know why Kohberger did it, but he cautioned against continuing to wonder.
“By continuing to focus on why, we continue to give Mr. Kohberger relevance, we give him agency and we give him power,” the judge said. “The need to know what is inherently not understandable makes us dependent upon the defendant to provide us with a reason, and that gives him the spotlight, the attention and the power he appears to crave.”
Plea deals typically require defendants to admit the elements of the offense and sometimes to provide a factual basis to support those elements. Prosecutors can also require defendants to provide testimony against co-defendants or give other cooperation.
In some cases, they can require defendants to admit to crimes that couldn’t otherwise be proved. Gary Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, who terrorized the Seattle area in the 1980s, had to give a full accounting of his criminal activities and lead investigators to previously undiscovered bodies before prosecutors took the death penalty off the table.
Kohberger acknowledged he committed the “willful, unlawful, deliberate” murder of the victims “with premeditation and with malice aforethought” as part of his agreement.
But — whether in front of a jury or as part of a plea agreement — prosecutors don’t have to prove motive to obtain a conviction.
“Motive is something that we really want to know as humans, but it’s not legally a part of the crime,” said Mary D. Fan, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at the University of Washington Law School.
The Goncalves family criticized the agreement, saying the case should have gone to trial or that any deal should at least have required a full confession and the location of the murder weapon.
“Truth—spill it, BK,” the family posted on Facebook. “Every sickening detail only the killer could know.”
Others supported it.
“There’s no one way to respond adaptively to a horrific experience like this, other than to honor what one feels like they need in order to restore a sense of safety or equilibrium,” said Dr. Patricia Harney, who teaches psychology at Harvard Medical School and who lost her own boyfriend in an unsolved stabbing in the late 1980s.
Knowing motive can sometimes help those who lose a loved one.
“What underlies that is a desire to have some way to make sense of something that is so senseless,” she said.
A sense of connection, community or purpose can also be valuable tools, Harney said.
Anna Cominsky, director of the criminal defense clinic at New York Law School, said it was reasonable for the public to want to understand, as well. “This is all of our worst nightmare,” she said.
But she doesn’t think that by wondering about a motive people are necessarily giving Kohberger power.
“It’s hard to argue at this point that the defendant has any power, given that he will now be serving the rest of his life in prison,” Cominsky said. “That said, he had a lot of power, unfortunately, over those four victims.”
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Johnson reported from Seattle.
