Bryan Kohberger motive returned to focus after he told he was innocent and had filed a petition to withdraw his guilty plea. He made the filing one year after he was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of four University of Idaho students. The move keeps the case active despite that sentence.
New York Times interview
Kohberger said he was innocent in the interview and tied that claim to his attempt to take back the plea. That is the clearest procedural change since he was sentenced, because a withdrawal petition asks the court to undo an earlier guilty plea rather than leave the conviction untouched.
The case had returned to public view after Netflix released The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare on July 29. Skye Borgman said to Netflix's Tudum, "At a time when so much attention has been focused on the case itself, I felt it was important to create something that brings the focus back to who they were, the lives they lived, and the love that still surrounds them."
1122 King Road
Investigators say the killings took place on Nov. 13, 2022, just after 4 a.m., at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho. They say Kohberger entered through a sliding kitchen door, killed Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves on the third floor, left the knife sheath next to Mogen's body, then encountered Xana Kernodle after she had recently received a food delivery and killed her. They say he also killed Ethan Chapin, who had been sleeping in Kernodle's room.
Dylan Mortensen said she woke up to crying and strange noises, then saw a man dressed in black walking toward her and locked herself in her room. Bethany Funke slept through the stabbings and later told Mortensen that a man wearing what looked like a ski mask had been in the house. A 911 call was placed just before noon to report that Kernodle was unconscious, and Moscow police arrived to find the four victims dead.
DNA and Hyundai Elantra
Investigators have not identified any known connection between Kohberger and the victims. They say the DNA found on the knife sheath did not initially match anyone in the FBI's database, so they sent the sample to a private lab to search for genetic relatives through publicly available genealogy databases. That search led investigators to build family trees for possible suspects.
In mid-November, investigators were also looking for a white Hyundai Elantra captured by surveillance cameras driving around the crime scene at the time of the murders. Washington State University police identified one registered to Kohberger, linking the vehicle search to him and giving investigators another path in the case.
The filing now puts the court back in the middle of a case that had already reached a life sentence. What grounds he gave for trying to withdraw the plea is the next question hanging over the record.
