By Matt McKnight and Eric Cox
BOISE, Idaho (Reuters) -A man pursuing a doctorate in criminal justice when he was charged with the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students was due back in court on Wednesday, expected to plead guilty under a deal with prosecutors that avoids the threat of capital punishment.
Bryan Kohberger, 30, previously pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and burglary charges in a gruesome multiple homicide in 2022 that stunned the small college town of Moscow in northwestern Idaho and drew national media attention.
Relatives of at least two of the victims were expected to attend Wednesday’s hearing, set to begin at 11 a.m. Mountain Time (1 p.m. EDT/1700 GMT) at a courthouse in Boise, the Idaho state capital. According to news media accounts, the families are divided on the plea deal.
At the time of the killings, Kohberger was pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, a short distance from Moscow, where the four victims were enrolled as undergraduates at the University of Idaho.
The murders occurred during the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, in an off-campus group house shared by five women.
Three of the roommates – Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum, Idaho – were found slain inside the house along with Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington.
All suffered multiple stab wounds, according to authorities.
Kernodle and Chapin had attended a party the night before, while best friends Mogen and Goncalves had visited a local bar and food truck, with all four returning to the house before 2 a.m. Their bodies were found hours later that morning.
Two other women in the house at the time survived unharmed.
According to an affidavit unsealed in January, one of the surviving roommates told investigators she heard someone crying in one of the victims’ bedrooms on the night of the murders and opened her door to see a masked man, clad in black, walk past her and out of the house.
Authorities have not publicly suggested a motive for the killings but have said they were confident Kohberger was responsible for all four slayings.
The affidavit said police linked Kohberger to the murders using DNA, cell phone data and video footage. He was arrested weeks after the killings in Pennsylvania, where he was visiting family, and was returned to Idaho to face charges.
Had a jury found him guilty on four counts of first-degree murder as charged, Kohberger would have been eligible for the death penalty. But according to the Goncalves family, terms of the plea deal would spare him from the possibility of execution.
ABC News reported the plea agreement calls for Kohberger to face four consecutive life terms and to waive his right to appeal.
The Goncalves family, in a statement shared by their attorney, criticized the plea agreement as a mishandled, “secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families.”
Citing a notice to the victims’ families about the deal, ABC News reported that prosecutors expect Kohberger to be sentenced in late July if he enters the guilty plea as planned at Wednesday’s hearing.
(Reporting by Matt McKnight and Eric Cox in Boise, Idaho; Additional reporting and writing by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles)
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