Idaho murders: Bryan Kohberger sentenced, survivors speak for first time
A woman delivered a blistering takedown of Bryan Kohberger as he was jailed for killing her sister. But there was a hidden message in her powerful speech.
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A woman who bravely confronted her sister’s killer Bryan Kohberger as he was jailed for life weaved in a hidden message in her powerful courtroom takedown.
On Wednesday, US time, Kohberger was sentenced to jail for the rest of his life for the November 2022 murders of Idaho State University students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20 and Ethan Chapin, 20 in Moscow, Idaho.
All four were killed by Kohberger, now 30, in their share house at around 4am on November 13. They were stabbed to death in their beds. Two other flatmates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were unharmed, despite Kohberger being seemingly aware they were there.
He had driven to Moscow from Pullman, Washington, where he was a student at a different university, around 16km west.
Kohberger came to a plea deal that saw him admit to the murders and waive his right to appeal in exchange for not getting the death penalty.
Moments before the sentencing, Kohberger was asked if he wanted to make any remarks. The hope was he might reveal why he slaughtered the four, where the murder weapon was and why he left the two other flatmates alive.
“I respectfully decline,” he told Ada County District Court Judge Steven Hippler in the Boise courthouse.
He has rarely spoken of his crimes. Police have found no link between Kohberger and his victims nor any motive.
“Surprise, surprise,” said one victim’s family member after he refused yet another opportunity to explain his actions.
‘Sit up straight when I talk to you’
One of the most forthright victim impact statements came from Ms Goncalves’ sister Alivea.
“I won’t stand here and give you want you want. I won’t offer you tears. I won’t offer you trembling,” she said while staring down the killer.
“Disappointments like you thrive on pain, on fear and on the illusion of power. And I won’t feed your beast.
“Instead, I was call you what you are: Sociopath. Psychopath. Murderer,” she said. “Sit up straight when I talk to you.”
Alivea then confronted Kohberger with a series of questions, but there was a hidden meaning behind her decision to include these in her victim impact statement to the court.
She asked: “How was your life right before you murdered my sisters? Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your apartment? Please detail what you were thinking and feeling at this time. Why did you choose my sisters? Before making your move, did you approach my sisters? Detail what you were thinking and feeling.
“Before leaving their home, is there anything else you did? How does it feel to know the only thing you failed more miserably at than being a murderer is trying to be a rapper? Did you recently start shaving or manually pulling out your eyebrows?
“Why November 13th? Did you truly think your Amazon purchase was untraceable because you used a gift card? How do you find it enjoyable to stargaze with such a severe case of visual snow? Where is the murder weapon, the clothes you wore that night? What did you bring into the house with you? What was the second weapon you used on Kaylee? What were Kaylee’s last words?
“Please describe, in detail, the level of anxiety you must have felt when you heard the bearcat pull up to your family home on December 30, 2022. Which do you regret more: returning to the crime scene five hours later or never, ever going back to Moscow, not even once after stalking them there for months?
“If you were really smart, do you think you’d be here right now? What’s it like needing this much attention just to feel real? You’re terrified of being ordinary, aren’t you? Do you feel anything at all, or are you exactly what you always feared? Nothing.
“If you’re so powerful, then why are you still hiding? Defendant, you see, I’m here today as me, but who are you?”
While Kohberger’s motive has never been revealed, people from across the world have dug into his past trying to find clues.
One Reddit post was uncovered from a user who identified himself as Kohberger and a student from DeSales University.
It included a survey for criminals asking questions about how they committed their crimes and asked them consistently to “detail” what they were “thinking and feeling”.
Kohberger received a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in criminal justice from DeSales. He was a criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University when he was arrested.
Many of the questions Alivea asked Kohberger bore a striking similarity to those on the original survey thought to have been compiled by the deranged killer.
The survey asked former criminals: “How was your life right before the crime occurred? Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your home? Please detail what you were thinking and feeling at this point. Why did you choose that victim or target over others?”
Ms Goncalves told Kohberger he was “a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser”.
“Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because you were nothing in the light,” she said.
But it was her final, stinging takedown that drew the loudest applause from the courtroom.
“The truth is, the scariest part about you is how painfully average you turned out to be. The truth is, you’re as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty.
“Let me be very clear. Don’t ever try to convince yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name out loud.
“I see through you.
“You want the truth? Here’s the one you’ll hate the most: If you hadn’t attacked them in their sleep, in the middle of the night like a paedophile, Kaylee would have kicked your f***ing ass.”
‘What if it happens again?’: Survivor speaks publicly for first time
An emotional Dylan Mortensen, who was inside the house during the brutal murders, has described the devastating impact it has had on her life while speaking publicly for the first time since Kohberger killed her friends.
“What happened that night changed everything,” Ms Mortensen said through tears.
She described her friends as “beautiful, genuine, compassionate people” and did not address Kohberger by name.
“He didn’t just take them from the world. He took them from me. My friends. My people who felt like my home. The people I looked up to and adored more than anyone,” the now 21-year-old said. “He took away my ability to trust the world around me.
“What he did shattered me in places I didn’t know could break.
“I was barely 19 when he did this. We had just celebrated my birthday at the end of September. I should have been figuring out who I was. I should have been having the college experience and starting to establish my future. Instead, I was forced to learn how to survive the unimaginable.”
She continued: “I had to sleep in my mom’s bed because I was too terrified to close my eyes. Terrified that if I blinked, someone might be there. I made escape plans everywhere I went. ‘If something happens, how do I get out? What can I use to defend myself? And who can help?’”
She went on to describe debilitating panic attacks — “the kind that slam into me like a tsunami out of nowhere”.
“I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stop shaking,” she said. “All I can do is scream because the emotional pain and grief is too much to handle. My chest feels like it’s caving in.
“Sometimes I drop to the floor with my heart racing, convinced something is very wrong.
“It’s far beyond anxiety. It’s my body reliving everything over and over again. My nervous system never got the message that it is over, and it won’t let me forget what he did to them.”
Ms Mortensen said she is forced to scan every room she enters and flinches at sudden sounds.
“He stole parts of me I may never get back. He took the version of me who didn’t constantly ask ‘what if it happens again? what if next time I don’t survive?’”
She referred to Kohberger as “a hallow vessel, something less than human, a body without empathy, without remorse”.
“He chose destruction. He chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me: my friends, my safety, my identity, my future,” she said.
She said speaking today was her way of getting justice for Ms Mogen, Ms Goncalves, Ms Kernodle and Mr Chapin.
“He may have taken so much form me but he will never get to take my voice,” she said. “He will never take the memories I had with them. He will never erase the love we shared, the laughs we had, or the way they made me feel seen and whole. Those things are mine.”
She said she would go on to live her life while he would stay “empty, forgotten and powerless”.
‘Why did I get to live?’
While fellow surviving housemate Bethany Funke did not speak, a statement was read out on her behalf by friend Emily Alandt, who a frightened Ms Mortensen had called after the murders.
Ms Mortensen, who had seen a strange man in the house, had moved from her room to stay in Ms Funke’s room in the basement during the night.
Late in the morning, she called Ms Alandt, who lived across the road, and asked her to come check out the house, saying something strange had happened during the night but she didn’t know if she was dreaming.
Ms Alandt and two other friends, Josie Lauteren and Hunter Johnson, met Ms Mortensen and Ms Funke outside the house. Mr Johnson went into the house and found bodies, telling them to call 911.
“I thought that we were going to wake up and go upstairs see them and tell them how they had scared us and they were going to tease us about how we are constantly scaredy cats and make jokes about it as we would go to Taco Bell as always,” Ms Funke said in her statement.
She said she woke up with “no idea what happened” but it turned out to be her “worst nightmare”.
“I still carry so much regret and guilt for not knowing what happened and not calling (911) right away even though I understand it wouldn’t have changed anything, not even if the paramedics had been right outside the door,” she said.
Kohberger was not arrested until more than a month after the quadruple murder.
In the meantime, strangers online turned on the surviving housemates and their friends.
Ms Funke said she received death threats and attacks online while “trying to survive emotionally and grieve”. She also noted she was scared that the murderer would come for her next.
She expressed feeling survivor’s guilt.
“I hated and still hate that they are gone but for some reason I am still here and I got to live,” she said.
“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.”
She said she had not slept through a single night in years, constantly waking up in a panic.
“I slept in my parent’s room for almost a year. I made them double lock every door, set an alarm, and still check everywhere in the room just in case someone was hiding, and I still check my room every night,” she said.
She said while she is still scared to go out in public, she forces herself to live for her late friends and does everything with them in mind.
‘Perpetual incarceration’
Judge Hippler, presiding over the case, poured scorn on Kohberger in his sentencing remarks calling him a “faceless coward” who “senselessly slaughtered” the four.
“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.
“It’s time that he be consigned to the ignominy and isolation of perpetual incarceration.”
The judge added: “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?”
The sentence breaks down as 10 years in prison for one count of burglary and four life sentences without the possibility of parole to be served consecutively for each murder.
Kohberger will also have to pay a $US50,000 fine and a civil penalty of $US5000 to the family of each victim.
Prior to the sentencing, the family members of the victims were given the chance to confront Kohberger.
‘Big Ds in prison’
Kristi Goncalves, Kaylee’s mum, was colourful in her condemnation of Kohberger.
“Your fellow inmates will be awaiting your arrival,” she said.
She then read a message from her youngest daughter.
“You may have received As in school,” it read. “But in prison you’ll be getting Big Ds.
“A dead killer doesn’t kill again, so while I’m disappointed the firing squad won’t get to take their shots at you, I’m confident that the men in prison will have their way with you in more ways than one.
You will finally get what you wanted: physical touch”.
Father Steve Goncalves also tore into Kohberger, calling him a “joke” during his victim impact statement.
“You’re a joke, a complete joke,” he said, while ridiculing the lazy trail of evidence he left behind at the scene of his gruesome quadruple murder.
“You were that foolish, that careless, that stupid,” he added, pointing out how police told him Kohberger’s DNA was found “within minutes” along with footage of his car arriving and leaving the scene of the crime.
“Today we are here to prove to the world that you picked the wrong families. Our actions have united everyone in their disgust for you.”
“Today you have no name,” he concluded.
“Nobody cares about you. You’re not worth the time, the effort to be remembered. In time you’ll be nothing but two initials forgotten to the wind.”
‘Moved in ways I can’t verbalise’
The Goncalves family’s blistering address of the killer in court has been widely praised online.
“This probably impacted him the most,” noted one on a video of the moment shared to TikTok.
“Now that’s a big sister!” agreed another.
As one noted: “’Don’t ever try to convince yourself that you mattered just because someone finally said your name out loud’, that was powerful.”
“Her words couldn’t have been more perfect,” said someone else.
While one declared: “WOW THATS THE BEST F**KING SPEACH EVER EVER.”
“I have been moved in ways I can’t verbalise, that was just perfect,” another added.
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