(Los Angeles) An American criminology student, suspected of having murdered four students in a small university town in the northwest of the United States, formally pleaded guilty on Wednesday to avoid the death penalty.
Bryan Kohberger, 30, was to be tried in August for this quadruple murder committed in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.
After having kept silent for more than two and a half years, he finally decided to plead guilty, as part of an agreement which must assert the life imprisonment, without going through a trial and without the possibility of appealing.
The story had intrigued America: the bodies of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen – both 21 years old -, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – 20 years each and as a couple – had been discovered in a house, bacon with stab wounds. These unexpected students were killed in their sleep, without it waking up their two other roommates.
“Do you plead guilty because you are guilty?” “Asked him on Wednesday judge Steven Hippler at a hearing at the Boisse court in Idaho.
“Yes,” replied the American in a clear shirt. He should know his sentence during a hearing fixed for July 23.
The investigation had patinated for almost two months before the arrest of Bryan Kohberger. To date, the accusation still has no mobile to explain its gesture.
He was charged because the investigators found his DNA on a knife case recovered at the crime scene. A video also shows a car similar to his circulating in the victims district at the time of the murders.
He was arrested on December 30, 2022 with his parents in Pennsylvania, more than 4,000 kilometers from the crime scene. At the time of the murders, he studied about fifteen kilometers from this city, at the University of the State of Washington, with the ambition to pass a doctorate in criminology.
The guilty pleading agreement was strongly disputed by the family of one of the victims, Kaylee Goncalves.
The relatives of the young woman demanded the death penalty, and pushed in favor of a law promulgated in the spring in Idaho, who provides that the death row inmates be killed by an execution peloton.
“The fact that Bryan Kohberger risks prison for life means that he can always express himself, to build relationships and to interact with the world,” wrote Kaylee’s sister on social networks. “Meanwhile, our loved ones were silenced forever. This reality is all the more painful since it has the impression that the system protects its future more since it honors the past of the victims. »»
During the hearing on Wednesday, the Judge Horipler validated the agreement to plead guilty and denounced a series of calls to put pressure on the court.
“This court cannot demand from the prosecutor that he require the death penalty, and it would not be appropriate for him to try to do so,” he said.
