Bryan Kohberger is trying to pull back the guilty plea that ended the Idaho murder case, telling in recent days that he was taking it back. He said the plea rested on “false promises and blatant disinformation,” a challenge to the deal that sent him to prison for four consecutive life terms.
The move lands now because the plea once closed one of the state’s most closely watched cases. Kohberger pleaded guilty to murder charges in the November 2022 killings and said he did it to avoid the death penalty, even offering prosecutors another chance to file for it if they wanted to. Last year, he was sentenced to four consecutive terms of life in prison for the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen.
Kaylee Goncalves was one of the four University of Idaho students killed in their off-campus home on 13 November 2022. The case shocked Moscow and drew national attention for almost two months before Kohberger was arrested, and it has left the families with a legal ending that now looks less final than it did a week ago.
That said, Kohberger is fighting a record he helped make. Sam Newton said he told the judge under oath at the plea hearing that he understood the deal, was acting voluntarily, and was pleading guilty because he was guilty. Newton also said courts do not take kindly to walking a voluntary plea back without hard proof that something went seriously wrong behind the scenes. That is the gap in Kohberger’s new claim: he says he was misled, but he has not spelled out what those supposed promises or falsehoods were.
The Goncalves family called him a “narcissist” and said he chose not to leave his fate, or the facts of the case, to a jury. They said he never cried foul, never claimed he was uninformed or pressured, and never suggested there were problems with the discovery materials he and his counsel had reviewed for two years that should have been challenged. Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador said the families had “already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today's deeply painful news,” adding that his office stands ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out.
The legal hurdle for Kohberger is a high one. A defendant can withdraw a plea only by showing something materially went wrong with how it was entered, not simply by changing his mind after the sentence is imposed. With no motive ever given in court and no public explanation yet for the alleged disinformation, Kohberger’s bid looks less like an opening than a last attempt to reopen a case that had already reached its ending.
