University of Idaho killer Bryan Kohberger’s sister Amanda could have been called as a witness for the prosecution if his case went to trial, according to a report.
Kohberger, 30, accepted a deal to plead guilty to the murders of four students — Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — just days after prosecutors listed his sister as a potential trial witness, reported TMZ on Tuesday, October 14, citing newly unsealed court documents.
Amanda was Kohberger’s only immediate family member listed in the documents, per TMZ.
Kohberger, a PhD criminology student at Washington State University, pleaded guilty to four counts of first degree murder on July 2 in a deal to avoid the death penalty. On July 23, he was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole as well as an additional 10 years for burglary.
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Since his sentencing, Kohberger has been moved into solitary confinement at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, the Idaho Department of Corrections confirmed to Us Weekly in August.
Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle and Chapin were killed inside an off-campus student house in Moscow, Idaho, in the early hours of November 13, 2022. Goncalves, Mogen and Kernodle lived at the house with two other roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, who survived the attack. (Chapin was sleeping over with his girlfriend, Kernodle, on the night of the murders.)
Kohberger was arrested in connection with the deaths in December 2022.
At his sentencing hearing, Mortensen delivered an emotional victim impact statement, expressing her grief over the deaths of her roommates and friends.
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“What happened that night changed everything,” she said, per CBS News. “Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason.”
“What he did shattered me in places I didn’t know could break. 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,” Mortensen added.
“I can’t breathe, I can’t think, I can’t stop shaking. 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,” she continued.
At the time of the murders, Mortensen told police that she “observed a male described as approximately 6-feet tall, slim build, with a black ski mask leave the second-floor patio area” on the night of the tragedy, per unsealed police records.
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Bill Thompson, the lead prosecutor in the case against Kohberger, told the Idaho Statesman in July that it’s likely the assailant also saw Mortensen, though he didn’t attempt to attack her.
“From what Dylan described, I have a hard time imagining that the killer did not see Dylan,” Thompson said.
The prosecutor theorized, “At that point, he’d been in the house probably longer than he planned, and he had killed more people than he planned. … It wouldn’t surprise us that the killer was scared at that point and decided they had to leave, not knowing if law enforcement already had been called.”
