The fatal stabbing of four university students in their off-campus home in Idaho stunned America.
But two-and-a-half years later, a plea bargain in the case has triggered a media storm.
It already had all the elements – four murders, an unlikely suspect, death penalty stakes, reporting restrictions and social media proliferation.
But an 11th-hour deal between prosecution and defence has divided the families of the victims, one of them describing it as “anything but justice”.
Kaylee Gonclaves, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Ethan Chapin from the University of Idaho were stabbed to death in Moscow, Idaho on 13 November 2022.
Following an extensive police investigation, authorities charged Bryan Kohberger, 30, a former Washington State University PhD student, with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary.
The case against him was largely built on DNA from a knife sheath found at the crime scene, mobile phone location data and surveillance footage.
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Prosecutors were seeking the death penalty, but less than a month before his trial, Kohberger was reported to have struck a deal to avoid that.
The plea deal will include a sentence of four consecutive life sentences for the murder charges, according to a letter sent to the victims’ families.
The families of two victims – Ethan Chapin and Madison Mogen – welcomed the plea, conceding that life imprisonment was preferable to years of appeals and delays.
But Kaylee Goncalves’ family accused prosecutors of “adding insult to injury” by rushing the deal without input on it from the families of the victims.
Her father, Steve Goncalves, said he wanted a jury to decide on Kohberger’s fate and called on the judge to reject the last-minute plea deal.
“This is anything by justice. This is the opposite of our will. There was no majority believing that this was acceptable,” he told News Nation.
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Media scrutiny of the plea bargain has been relentless in the United States, with many of the commentators describing it as “betrayal” or “political expedience”.
The agreement exposes wider fault lines between victims’ rights and prosecutorial authority, the media’s role in justice and public trust in the entire judicial process.
