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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
"The Whole Story" By Anderson Cooper. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired July 06, 2025 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:00:35]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to "The Whole Story", I'm Anderson Cooper.
On November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus home. Two other roommates who were in the house at the time of the crime were unharmed, though one of them spotted a strange figure dressed in black walking out the door.
In the weeks that followed, law enforcement narrowed in on a suspect. This man, Bryan Kohberger, a PhD student of criminology who had no apparent connection to the victims. He was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. He pleaded not guilty and the trial was set to begin in August.
But just this week, he reversed his plea and admitted to the crimes, avoiding the possibility of the death penalty. He'll be sentenced later this month.
Over the next hour, CNN's Chief Law Enforcement Analyst John Miller lays out how authorities traced the murders to Kohberger and looks at the biggest unanswered question in this case. Why did he do it?
(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR, THE SOURCE: There's a manhunt underway as a college town in Idaho is on edge this morning.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Potential killer on the loose is terrifying.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Police are saying they cannot guarantee anyone's safety.
JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Whoever went to that house came there deliberately. It appears with the intent to kill everyone inside.
MILLER (voice-over): When I first heard of the Idaho murders, four students in a rented house, a small college town, as someone who spent years in law enforcement going to homicide scenes, you go down a list of questions. The excessive violence, does it indicate passion, hate, or anger? Was the killer close to them? Or a random stranger who is fed by the violence? And of course, if they're still out there, will they strike again?
It was Saturday, November 12, 2022. It was the last home game for the Vandals, the University of Idaho football team.
JORDYN QUESNELL, KAYLEE GONCALVES' FRIEND: Game day in Moscow is exciting. You can feel it in the air, like the energy.
MILLER (voice-over): Senior Kaylee Goncalves posted a picture on Instagram with four former roommates and one of their boyfriends with the caption, "one lucky girl to be surrounded by these people every day."
QUESNELL: I know that they were just kind of probably tailgating and stuff that Saturday.
KEVIN FIXLER, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, IDAHO STATESMAN: It's, you know, a lot of revelry. And as with many college communities, a lot of drinking and partying.
MILLER (voice-over): That night, Xana Kernodle, who lived at the home at 1122 King Road, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, went to a party at his fraternity, Sigma Chi.
Kaylee, who had recently moved out of the home, but was back for a visit, headed downtown to the Corner Club with Maddie Mogen, Xana's roommate.
QUESNELL: The Corner Club's like the place that everyone goes to hang out and stuff. It's like the college bar. We would probably make it to the Corner Club at least once a weekend.
BEN MOGEN, MADDIE MOGEN'S FATHER: They study hard during the week, and so they were just doing the normal college kid thing and having a few drinks. There was nothing out of the ordinary.
MILLER (voice-over): Around 1.30 a.m., Kaylee and Maddie left the bar and walked to a food truck down the street.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Welcome back.
FIXLER And you can see them buying a bowl of macaroni, late night eats. And then they ultimately hopped into a car service that got them home.
MILLER (voice-over): By 2:00 a.m., Xana, Ethan, and two other roommates also returned to the girls' rental house.
FIXLER: Xana Kernodle ordered DoorDash. She got Jack in the Box, and this was delivered at 3:59 a.m.
MILLER (voice-over): Then, one of the roommates, Dylan Mortensen, woke to what she said sounded like Kaylee playing with her dog upstairs. And she heard something odd. FIXLER: She thought she heard Kaylee say, someone's here. And then she heard what sounded like crying coming from Xana's room. And a voice saying, it's OK, I'm here to help you.
[22:05:03]
MILLER (voice-over): Dylan opened her door to see what was going on.
FIXLER: After opening the door a third time, because she had come out several times, she saw an individual she described, I believe, about 5'10", athletic build, wearing all black, a black hat and face mask. So the only thing she could see were bushy eyebrows, as the person walked toward her, and then exited the house through the sliding glass door.
MILLER (voice-over): She stood frozen, in shock, and locked herself in her room. Only one of the girls, Bethany Funke, whose bedroom was on the first floor, answered her texts.
FIXLER: They were frantic, trying to figure out what was going on. They were calling their roommates, and also Ethan Chapin, who stayed over for the night. But none of them answered.
The first floor roommate invited her to come down. She did say, well run, come down, now. The second floor roommate did come out of her room and did race down the stairs where they slept for the evening.
They woke about 10:30 the next day. Also tried to reach some of their roommates to no success.
MILLER (voice-over): Around eight hours after Dylan saw a strange man leaving their home, a 911 call was made.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: 911 location of your emergency?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hi, something is happening. Something's happened in our house and we don't know what.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is the address of the emergency? I need to know what's going on right now.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She's passed out, what's wrong? She's not waking up.
MILLER (voice-over): Maddie's father, Ben Mogen, was at the movies when he received a text from her mom, Karen.
MOGEN: She said to call her, and the movie was almost over, so I was going to just call her when I got out. And then my mom texted me too, and said that you need to come home. And so I knew something was wrong.
I rushed to my mom's house, and they were just crying.
MILLER (voice-over): Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin had been stabbed to death. Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were unharmed.
QUESNELL: I got the vandal alert that came out to everyone that said there was a homicide on King Street. So I texted Kaylee, and I was like, hey, like, is everything OK? Please let me know ASAP. I love you.
One of my other friends called me, and she was like hyperventilating, and my stomach just dropped. I dropped to my knees, and I don't think I said a word.
MILLER (voice-over): Moscow police had never seen anything like it.
FIXLER: Police did acknowledge, and as did the coroner, that it was a pretty gruesome scene.
CATHY MABBUTT, CORONER LATAH COUNTY, IDAHO: There were four dead college students who were stabbed to death all in one location. There were stab wounds on the hands of at least one of the students that make it appear that it would be defensive wounds.
MILLER (voice-over): I worked in law enforcement for nearly 20 years, and it is rare to see a murder this violent with no apparent motive.
FIXLER: They were not familiar with a crime of this magnitude. Four deaths, again, historically in Idaho, it's unheard of. They really had their work cut out for them. They showed up, and there were students outside, you know, they were aware of what was going on. Police had to show up and figure it all out.
MILLER (voice-over): With the killer at large, the university canceled classes and urged students to shelter in place.
QUESNELL: I think it was just so unreal, like that whole day for everyone was just something that, it's just so unimaginable.
FIXLER: This is a community that's peaceful and tranquil, and a place where you feel safe. You don't lock your doors, you don't even lock your car door. Now people really had to second guess where they were going at night. The university started offering escorts in the evening. So people were going to class and going home and closing their shutters and locking their door.
MILLER (voice-over): Coming up, investigators obtain the cell phone records of a potential suspect.
JENNIFER COFFINDAFFER, FORMER FBI SPECIAL AGENT/CRIMINAL INVESTIGATOR: These 12 pings that show that Bryan Kohberger was in the area of 1122 King Road are so important.
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[22:13:05]
RET. CHIEF JAMES FRY, MOSCOW POLICE DEPARTMENT: My name is Chief James Fry with the Moscow Police Department. We know you have questions, and so do we. That is why we're here. MILLER (voice-over): It's been three days since the horrific murders of the four students in Moscow, Idaho, and the community was shaken to its core. Conflicting information coming from police only added to the fear.
FRY: We believe this was an isolated, targeted attack on our victims.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But you guys have said repeatedly that there's no threat to the public, but we don't know who the suspect is, we don't know where he's at. How is there no threat to the public at this point?
FRY: Well, that's kind of an unknown. Like I said, we took the information that we had at the time, but we do need to be aware. The individual is still out there, right? We need to be vigilant.
COFFINDAFFER: When the chief initially said there's no need for concern in the community, that to me caused a lot of confusion and distrust of what was really happening.
FRY: The reality is, I probably should have been standing here a day or so ago, but I'm here now.
FIXLER: Public officials, you know, elected officials, whether it was the mayor or the police chief or the prosecutor, I mean, they kind of spent days spinning their wheels saying one thing and having to go to backtrack and then reconfirm and then unconfirm. And I'm not sure the community had a lot of confidence that this smaller police department is really ever going to get to the bottom of this.
COFFINDAFFER: It's so difficult in a case like this when it comes to communicating with the media, because of all the things you have to do to try to get the perpetrator identified and arrested. As far as the nuts and bolts of the investigation and what they were achieving, this chief didn't have a big ego and say, we'll just handle it ourselves. Instead, he got 60 FBI agents that were full time assigned to this. That is almost unheard of, unprecedented.
[22:15:18]
MILLER (voice-over): The police chief called this a targeted attack. So did that mean the killer knew the victims?
COFFINDAFFER: I was initially thinking this is somebody who had a passionate rage of anger towards someone in that house. And once you start to pare down that the inner circle was not involved, that's when it gets interesting. That is not going to be easy to identify because they probably had a very loose connection with the victims.
MILLER (voice-over): By November 20th, seven days after the murders, Chief Fry said investigators had fielded 646 tips and conducted more than 90 interviews.
QUESNELL: I talked to the police two days after, I think it was that Monday they called me. And then the FBI came to my house. They were just trying to get a sense of who Kaylee was. Tell me about Kaylee. Tell me about your relationship with Kaylee. Tell me about what you know with Kaylee's other relationships. A couple of my friends, like my good friends and Kaylee's friends, were at the Corner Club with her that night. They were all like, yes, we hung out with her. We saw her. But like nothing was weird. Nothing was off.
MILLER (voice-over): Less than two weeks after the murders, law enforcement was on to a strong lead.
RET. CAPT. ROGER LANIER, MOSCOW POLICE DEPARTMENT: The white car that we've been interested in, we believe that that car was in the area during the time of the murders. And we also believe that the occupant or occupants may have seen something.
MILLER (voice-over): Surveillance videos obtained by police from the King Road neighborhood showed multiple sightings of a white Hyundai Elantra passing through the area on the night of the murders, starting at 3:029 a.m. and ending at 4:20 a.m. when the car left at a high rate of speed. Authorities found that a car of that description was registered in nearby Pullman, Washington.
FIXLER: The Washington State University police, one of them searched their database for permits issued for student parking and landed on Bryan Kohberger's vehicle.
MILLER (voice-over): Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old PhD student studying criminology at Washington State University, about 9 miles away from Moscow, Idaho.
Remember, one of the surviving roommates told police the man she saw in her home that night had bushy eyebrows. So does Bryan Kohberger.
DAVID LERDY, FORMER IDAHO ATTORNEY GENERAL CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY: It was interesting and significant that before anyone identified this particular human being, that the characteristics that she described, bushy eyebrows, slender build, were entirely consistent with the gentleman who was ultimately identified as the likely criminal here.
MILLER (voice-over): On December 19th, the FBI also identified Kohberger as someone to look at.
FIXLER: A knife sheath was found underneath partly Madison Mogen's body and partly under the covers of her bed where she died. And they retrieved that during the investigation and through lab work were able to discover that there was a single strain of male DNA on the knife sheath.
MILLER (voice-over): The FBI uploaded the DNA to public genealogy websites and the data they recovered pointed them towards Kohberger's family tree. Days later, Idaho investigators pulled Kohberger's cell data, which showed his phone hit cell towers near the King Road residence on at least 12 occasions prior to the night of the murders. All but one instance in the late evening or early morning hours.
EDWINA ELCOX, CRIMINAL DEFENSE LAWYER, FORMER ADA COUNTY DEPUTY PROSECUTOR ATTORNEY: It puts him in the area. It's another piece of the puzzle.
MILLER (voice-over): According to police, cell phone records also showed Kohberger's phone left his apartment the night of the murders at 2:42 a.m. and then stopped connecting to the network or was turned off. And it stayed off during the time of the murders.
COFFINDAFFER: We know Bryan Kohberger's phone was turned off for approximately two hours, a little before the murders and just around 30 minutes after the murders. We see this happen often.
[22:20:01]
You think that if you turn your phone off during a crime, it's not going to give any information. And that's true. But just turning it off gives people a lot of information. Why did they turn it off at that exact time when they don't ever turn it off for two hours at 4:00 in the morning?
MILLER (voice-over): But police could not share everything they knew about the suspect with the media, the public, or even the victim's family. Some of the families grew frustrated, as Kaylee Goncalves' mother, Kristi, told NBC's TODAY Show.
KRISTI GONCALVES, MOTHER OF KAYLEE GONCALVES: It's sleepless nights. It's feeling sick to your stomach. It's just being left in the dark.
MILLER (voice-over): The pressure intensified as reporters flooded into Moscow.
FIXLER: It's clearly drawn such a national interest, international really. We had reporters from all over, including the U.K. and many other places who were coming to Moscow, this tiny little dot on the map.
ELCOX: Well, as citizens, we want that information. We want to know what's going on. We want to be assured and made to feel like they're doing a good job, but they can't because they have the integrity of their investigation to protect.
LANIER: I want to let everybody know that we are still 100 percent committed to solving this crime. We're not releasing specific details because we do not want to compromise this investigation. We want more than just an arrest. We want a conviction. We owe that justice to Xana, Kaylee, Madison, and Ethan.
MILLER (voice-over): Saying they had a suspect, even if they didn't name him, could have taken a lot of pressure off the police. But at that point, with Kohberger in their sights, their biggest enemy was a leak.
MOGEN: I knew that the case was taking longer than people thought it should, but I just knew that they were doing everything for a reason. And that if they were taking their time with it, then it was for a good reason and that it was all going to work out in the end.
MILLER (voice-over): Coming up -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We obtained information through some of our
interviews that Kaylee had made some comments about a stalker.
MILLER (voice-over): Police narrow in on their lead suspect.
ELCOX: When you're putting trash in a neighbor's trash bin, there's a clear implication that you're trying to conceal something.
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[22:26:01]
MILLER (voice-over): On Thursday, December 15th, a little more than a month since the murders, Bryan Kohberger was driving his white Hyundai Elantra across country to his parents' home in Pennsylvania. His father had flown out to Washington State to ride with him.
FIXLER: He was pulled over twice in Indiana along a stretch of I-70, just outside of Indianapolis.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is this your car?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, it is.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: OK. Cool. Where are you headed?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, we're coming from WSU.
FIXLER: He was pulled over first by a sheriff's deputy for following too closely, and then about 10 minutes later, he's pulled over yet again by an Indiana State trooper, also for following too closely.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I'm not going to give you guys another ticket or warning if you just got stopped.
FIXLER: It turns out those were kind of routine drug interdiction stops.
MILLER (voice-over): No drugs were found. Interestingly, Kohberger chose an unusual route for the trip.
FIXLER: It's about 2,500 miles cross country. And according to a license plate ping on the border of Utah and Colorado, they identified his license plate. So he went pretty far south, through Idaho and down to Utah and then through Colorado in what wouldn't necessarily be the quickest way. So it was, I think, about 4 hours or 5 hours out of your way and about another 500 miles. We don't know why.
MILLER (voice-over): Investigators were working around the clock to narrow in on Kohberger and to look for the connection between him and the victims.
FIXLER: Police have never said what a potential connection might be. There's a lot of rumors that have gone out. Things like social media, but we still to this day don't know.
MILLER (voice-over): Early in the investigation, Moscow police confirmed they were looking into reports that Kaylee had a stalker.
LANIER: We obtained information through some of our interviews that Kaylee had made some comments about a stalker, so that's where that came from. We have followed up, looking at specific time frames in specific areas of town. So far we have not been able to corroborate it, but we're not done looking into that piece of information.
MILLER (voice-over): Police looked at this surveillance video of Maddie and Kaylee walking to the grub truck the night they were killed.
KAYLEE GONCALVES, STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO: Maddie, what did you say to Adam?
MADISON MOGEN, STUDENT, UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO: I told Adam everything.
MILLER (voice-over): But the person they're talking about has been cleared by police, Kaylee's father told Fox News.
STEVE GONCALVES, FATHER OF KAYLEE GONCALVES: It's just two girls having a good time talking about, you know, asking about their bartender and just being girls on their way to the grub truck. It was pretty clear that this individual was not a part of the investigation as far as a suspect.
MILLER (voice-over): Jordyn Quesnell says Kaylee never mentioned a stalker.
QUESNELL: As far as I know, there was no concern of a stalker or someone being creepy on social media or anything like that.
MODEN: Maddie never said anything about a stalker or anything, but I don't think she would have told me something like that because I would have probably overreacted. To my knowledge, none of her friends or anyone was aware of this guy being someone that they had to worry about.
MILLER (voice-over): But investigators were worried about Kohberger. Now at his parents' home in Pennsylvania, authorities began watching him 24/7.
COFFINDAFFER: In a case like this, once law enforcement develops a subject, it's very important to surveil them. Why? Number one, safety.
If you truly believe that this individual could have committed this crime, you better know where they're at and what they're doing. Secondarily, you want to see if they're doing anything to cover up the crime. If they maybe go back to the murder weapon, which we know still hasn't been found.
[22:30:09]
MILLER (voice-over): Also, police wanted to obtain something with Kohberger's DNA, to see if it matched the sample on the knife sheath left at the crime scene.
FIXLER: We know that they obtained the family's garbage at some point and sent that out for testing.
MILLER (voice-over): Police saw Kohberger multiple times outside his family's home, wearing surgical gloves, cleaning his car, and at one point, around 4:00 a.m., putting trash into the neighbor's garbage bins.
ELCOX: Could there be a logical explanation for this, right? He's just detailing his car, has what appeared to be historically odd mannerisms, and so that's just Bryan being Bryan. But again, when you're putting trash in a neighbor's trash bin, there's a clear implication that you're trying to conceal something, right?
MILLER (voice-over): On December 28th, the Idaho State Crime Lab reported DNA taken from Kohberger's trash was believed to belong to the biological father of the suspect DNA profile found on the knife sheath. The next day, Ben Mogen got a phone call.
MOGEN: They told me that they had it figured out, finally. I couldn't tell anybody or tell my family even, and I had to keep it to myself that night. And that was the hardest thing I think I've done through this whole thing was to not be able to tell my family that it was finally over.
MILLER (voice-over): On Friday, December 30th, seven weeks after the brutal murders, the Pennsylvania State Police SWAT team moved in on the Kohberger family home around 1:30 in the morning.
COFFINDAFFER: When you're dealing with somebody that is being accused of a crime that is extremely violent, they want to make sure they had speed and surprise to come upon this individual without detection.
FRY: Last night, in conjunction with the Pennsylvania State Police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, detectives arrested 28-year-old Bryan Christopher Kohberger in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania on a warrant for murders of Ethan, Xana, Madison, and Kaylee.
MOGEN: On the day that the arrest was made was the same day that we were having our service for Maddie and Kaylee, and so it was just the best timing we could have asked for. It was such a relief. I mean, my whole family was just -- and all the families were just so happy that it was over, as happy as you can get at least.
MILLER (voice-over): And it was also a moment of redemption for Moscow police.
LANIER: I recognize the frustration with the lack of information that's been released. However, providing any details in this criminal investigation might have tainted the upcoming criminal prosecution or alerted the suspect of our progress.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They kept a lot of information close to the vest. They'll tell you today that that's ultimately what won the day.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When people are waiting on pins and needles for an answer, and these families are grief-stricken, understandably, every minute is torture. But with this magnitude of a crime, to be thorough in the investigation was something that had to be done.
MILLER (voice-over): With Kohberger now under arrest and extradited to Idaho, officials obtained a DNA sample directly from him, which they say matched the DNA found on the knife sheath.
COFFINDAFFER: This shows an octillion degree of probability that this is no one else's DNA.
ELCOX: That is the icing on the cake, so to speak. There's nothing that I've seen that would put that DNA where it was in the house without it being linked to the crime.
MILLER (voice-over): Coming up --
FIXLER: There were challenges arising with the professor he worked under. Washington State University made the decision to terminate him.
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[22:37:54]
MILLER: When was the first time you heard about these murders in Idaho?
JACK BAYLIS, FORMER FRIEND OF BRYAN KOHBERGER: So I heard about them January. I was like, oh my god, that's Bryan. That was a shock. I was like, holy crap, that's Bryan.
MILLER (voice-over): Jack Baylis has known Bryan Kohberger since they were in middle school.
MILLER: Had to stop and think, like, how could that be Bryan? Did I see this coming? Did I miss something?
BAYLIS: Yes, nothing really caught my attention. You know, there's no red flags as far as I know. He wasn't, like, killing, like, you know, neighborhood cats or anything like that.
MILLER (voice-over): Baylis' cousin introduced him to Kohberger, and the boys grew up playing together in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.
MILLER: What did you guys used to do?
BAYLIS: We'd go hang around, walk around the neighborhood. We'd go looking for snakes or whatever, or go back to my cousin's house and play some video games. And if I could describe Bryan, especially in the later years, pretty average. Normal guy, which is, you know, scary to think about. You know, if he did do these murders, he's just a normal guy.
MILLER (voice-over): But Baylis does remember Kohberger changed during high school.
BAYLIS: Yes, he lost a lot of weight.
MILLER: Did you see it?
BAYLIS: Oh, yes. The time I saw him, there was a big shift, you know. I saw him, he was overweight, and the next I saw him, he's not overweight.
FIXLER: Kohberger, who was always known as a heavyset kid, had a drastic weight loss. One friend I spoke to told me that he estimated that Bryan had probably weighed about 300 pounds, you know, through middle school and early high school. You can see it in the yearbook photos, you know, this transformation that he makes.
MILLER (voice-over): The transformation wasn't just physical. Baylis says Kohberger seemed depressed and started using drugs.
BAYLIS: If I was a betting man, I'd say the drugs were an escape from that depression. There's a message between us from forever ago where he said, I've been depressed since I was five. So depression definitely came first.
And then when he got into heroin, it was -- he kind of swapped friend groups, basically. And that was probably late high school, early college when that happened. And that's when I kind of lost contact with him.
MILLER (voice-over): Baylis wasn't the only friend Kohberger lost.
FIXLER: One of his friends had told me they were both sort of like awkward high school kids, like many of us were.
[22:40:05]
And over time, as Bryan gained confidence, he became kind of the alpha between the two and was constantly trying to wrestle him or would -- he'd play mind games with him that he didn't like. And he just didn't know how to stop. And ultimately, that friend walked away.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Bryan Kohberger.
MILLER (voice-over): Kohberger eventually got his life on track, earning undergraduate and master's degrees from DeSales University.
FIXLER: Got a bachelor's degree, also in Psychology, and then stayed on at DeSales for an online master's degree in Criminal Justice.
MILLER (voice-over): Kohberger then moved to Washington State University in the summer of 2022 to study for his PhD in Criminology while also working as a teaching assistant. Kevin Fixler says Kohberger's peers recalled him as actively engaged but without sharing much about his past.
FIXLER: Bryan, they said, was not somebody who was afraid to share his opinions. He was somebody who spoke up. And I recall one student in particular, a colleague, said that, you know, he wanted to come off as smart. He wanted to seem like, you know, he knew what he was talking about. You know, another student told me that he was not shy about, you know, his views either about women or about members of the LGBTQ plus community. He had said that, you know, any woman in here, with relation to whether they were at a bar drinking or whatever, I could have.
MILLER (voice-over): Baylis remembers Kohberger struggled in relationships with women.
BAYLIS: What I remember the general gist of it'd be, you know, just frustrating, you know, getting ghosted a lot. We'd vent to each other about that stuff. That's frustrating.
MILLER (voice-over): Kohberger's classmates at WSU said they noticed a change in his behavior in late November, right after the four students at the University of Idaho were found murdered.
FIXLER: Kohberger was outspoken except for when the Moscow homicides came up. I guess it was during the course of a conversation in class, which I mean, that would be a natural conversation for a criminology course. People remembered after the fact in hindsight that he had gone quiet. And that was surprising given his nature and his history in the coursework.
MILLER (voice-over): Students in one of the three undergraduate classes Kohberger taught recalled seeing a shift in how he graded students around the same time.
HAYDEN STINCHFIELD, BRYAN KOHBERGER'S FORMER STUDENT: He was pretty strict as far as grading goes. When he would grade your papers, he would be grading you on what he ended up calling like a higher standard. What it really felt like to us was he was grading us like he would have graded himself as a PhD student. And so that was just kind of like, you know, we were all annoyed by him.
It would have been about a month before winter break when like the murders happened. Around then, he started grading everybody just a hundreds.
MILLER (voice-over): According to The New York Times, Kohberger was fired from his job as a teaching assistant.
FIXLER: There were challenges arising in his TA-ship with the professor for whom he worked under. On December 19th, Washington State University professors met, had a discussion and ultimately made the decision to terminate him from that role.
MILLER (voice-over): Just weeks after he was fired, Kohberger was charged with the murders of Kaylee, Maddie, Xana and Ethan.
BAYLIS: If he did do it, I want him, you know, in jail. You know, it's a heinous crime and whoever did it should be in prison at the very least.
MILLER: I mean, it's a shocking crime on any level. BAYLIS: It's abhorrent for random people to have their whole lives to live. You know, and just imagine the families, that's devastating. If someone killed, you know, my brother, I'd be out for blood. I can't even imagine what they're going through.
And I hope they catch whoever did it. And if it's Bryan, then, you know, he deserves to be in prison.
MILLER (voice-over): Coming up --
ELCOX: It would be one of the biggest things if something went afoul so that DNA evidence is out.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[22:47:23]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Kohberger, do you understand the charge in count one refer (ph)?
BRYAN KOHBERGER, KILLED FOUR IDAHO STUDENTS: Yes.
MILLER (voice-over): Nearly five months earlier in December of 2022, police went to Bryan Kohberger's family home at 01:30 in the morning to arrest him. At the time, law enforcement sources said surveillance teams observed what they thought might be efforts to destroy evidence by Kohberger, so they were not surprised when they found him in the kitchen wearing latex gloves and placing trash into ziplock bags.
ELCOX: It's extremely odd, suspicious behavior. It could very well come down to this is how he behaves on a regular basis, but it doesn't look good.
MILLER (voice-over): On Monday, May 22nd, 2023, Bryan Kohberger was arraigned in Latah County, Idaho after a grand jury indicted him for the murders of Kaylee, Maddie, Ethan, and Xana.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm going to enter not guilty pleas on each charge.
MILLER (voice-over): Prosecutors vowed to seek the death penalty, and the trial was pushed back multiple times over two years with disputes about evidence and witnesses and to give both sides time to go through the evidence.
ELCOX: Just the sheer magnitude of information on an investigation like this, it's a momentous task, and these people are only human at the end of the day.
MILLER (voice-over): The decision to delay was devastating for the family of Kaylee Goncalves, who shared this on Facebook in August of 2023, "We want to get this trial over. Just thinking it could be years, absolutely kills me."
Over the last several months, critical evidence has been revealed in court records, and legal experts said the case was stacked against him. ELCOX: It's really hard to explain away why your DNA is somewhere that it has no reason to be.
MILLER (voice-over): Kohberger's team fought against the DNA being admitted in court.
ELCOX: The defense is mounting a challenge to hopefully get the evidence excluded from the trial, but clearly that hasn't flown with the judge.
MILLER (voice-over): The prosecutors also had key evidence showing Kohberger's Amazon purchase history.
FIXLER: According to the prosecution, Kohberger purchased a KA BAR knife, a KA-BAR knife sheath. That's a pretty interesting detail given that they found a KA-BAR knife sheath at the crime scene.
[22:50:07]
In the days after the November 13th homicides, he was also searching again on Amazon for a KA-BAR brand knife and also a KA-BAR brand knife sheath. They have portrayed that as him needing a replacement.
ELCOX: But as a defense attorney, where you're like, gosh, that is particularly insurmountable because it is so specific. The argument is that there is certainly an element of premeditation.
MILLER (voice-over): There were also receipts showing Kohberger had purchased a black face mask.
FIXLER: The prosecution has obtained a receipt from Dick's Sporting Goods that he bought a balaclava mask, which would match, as far as we understand, what was described by the second floor roommate in the home of the man who was in their home that early morning.
MILLER (voice-over): And another potential witness was recently made public.
FIXLER: A DoorDash driver delivered food to Xana Kernodle and she has said that while in the neighborhood and making this delivery that she saw Bryan.
MILLER (voice-over): A videotaped interview with police in September 2024 shows a woman being questioned in Pullman, Washington, after an arrest for an unrelated traffic stop. She says she was a DoorDash driver who delivered food to the home where the four college students were murdered.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now I have to testify in the big murder case too. So yes, because I'm a DoorDash driver. The murder case with the college girls. I saw Bryan there. I parked right next to him.
ELCOZ: Certainly her credibility is going to be attacked and whether or not she's believable, but any good prosecutor is going to look to these other things to corroborate what she's saying. You know, DoorDash history orders to show who the DoorDash driver is, where she was at the time, what time the order was dropped off. And then there's this surveillance video that puts the Hyundai Elantra there at the same time.
MILLER (voice-over): And there's the cell phone record that shows Kohberger's phone stopped connecting to the network or was turned off at the time of the murders.
LERDY: One of the most eloquent pieces of evidence here is the absence of cell phone information for two hours and one minute at or about the time that the crime was committed.
COFFINDAFFER: People in a jury have good common sense. Obviously, he is innocent until proven guilty, but the evidence in this case from what we can see is quite overwhelming.
ELCOX: It's not looking good for Bryan Kohberger. With all of the information that has come out, it is becoming increasingly insurmountable to explain these things away.
MILLER (voice-over): Just weeks before jury selection was set to begin, Kohberger agreed to a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A stunning turn of events in the quadruple murder trial of Bryan Kohberger. Tonight, sources tell CNN that Kohberger has agreed to plead guilty.
MILLER (voice-over): The decision was a cruel shock to the family of Kaylee Goncalves.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: I'm talking to Steve Goncalves, father of Kaylee Goncalves. They're extremely upset about this. They wanted their day in court. And to be clear, they wanted the possibility of the death penalty for Bryan Kohberger.
S. GONCALVES: This isn't what we should be doing. You don't deal with terrorists and you don't deal with people who kill your kids in their sleep. So we'll never see this as justice.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As to count two murder in the first degree as it relates to the murder of Madison Mogen, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?
KOHBERGER: Guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As to count three as it relates to murder in the first degree for the murder of Kaylee Goncalves, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?
KOHBERGER: Guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As to count four, the first degree murder of Xana Kernodle, a human being, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?
KOHBERGER: Guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: As to count five, the first degree murder of Ethan Chapin, a human being, how do you plead, guilty or not guilty?
KOHBERGER: Guilty.
MILLER (voice-over): Steve Goncalves did not go into the courtroom for the plea hearing.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You said earlier that they made a deal with the devil. Do you still feel that way?
S. GONCALVES: Yes, Bryan's the devil. Terrible we let her down, let my daughter down. Trusting in this.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As bad as you could possibly imagine.
[22:55:10]
MILLER (voice-over): In a letter to the victim's families that was shared with the Idaho statesman, the prosecution said, "We cannot fathom the toll that this case has taken on your family. This agreement ensures the defendant will be convicted and will spend the rest of his life in prison and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades post-conviction appeals."
Maddie Mogen's father, Ben, told CBS that avoiding a trial brings him some relief.
MOGEN: We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don't want to have to be at that we shouldn't have to be at that have to do with this terrible person. We get to just think about the rest of our lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and without the rest of the kids.
MILLER (voice-over): For now, the victims and friends of the victims will move forward, healing in their own way.
MOGEN: It's something that no parent should go through and especially how it happened. It's -- it was -- it just broke all of our heart. Yes, it's something that I'll never get over. I mean, you can talk about it and do counseling and things like that, but nothing's going to bring our kid back. And -- yes.
QUESNELL: You don't ever think that you're going to be interviewed by the FBI or have all these news outlets reach out to you. It's been very surreal for all of us. With time, it's getting easier, but still like every day. I -- like there's something that happens or I think of Kaylee, you know, in some way. And I just hope that I can continue living big enough for both of us.
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