Bryan Kohberger, the Pennsylvania man who pleaded guilty to fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students in 2022, was sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday.
Earlier this month, Kohberger, 30, had accepted a plea deal that spared him the death penalty in exchange for four consecutive life sentences earlier this month. That sentence was formally handed down Wednesday by District Judge Stephen Hippler after the victims' family members and friends addressed Kohberger at his sentencing hearing.
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Kohberger pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one charge of felony burglary for the 2022 fatal stabbings of Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. They were killed in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho on Nov. 13, 2022.
"In time, you will be nothing but two initials, forgotten to the wind," Steve Goncalves told Kohberger, the New York Times reported. "No visitors, nothing more than initials on an otherwise unmarked tombstone."
Kohberger declined to make a statement to the courtroom. Someone from the audience called him a "coward," the Times reported.
Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University at the time of the killings. He was arrested one month afterward at his parents' home in Chesnuthill Township, Monroe County — about 70 miles north of Philadelphia. He previously had attended DeSales University in Lehigh County, earning a master's degree in criminal justice in 2022.
The killings drew national media attention. Earlier this month, Peacock released a documentary, "The Idaho Student Murders," on the case earlier this month, and Prime came out with a documentary series, "One Night in Idaho: The College Murders."