The four University of Idaho students stabbed to death in November 2022 were Kaylee Goncalves, top left; Xana Kernodle, top right; Ethan Chapin, bottom left; and Madison Mogen, bottom right.

Moscow Police Department/Moscow Police Department/TNS

BOISE, Idaho — Bryan Kohberger admitted in court Wednesday to the murder of four University of Idaho students in 2022, finally bringing some closure to the highly publicized case that brought national attention to the grieving college town.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” 4th Judicial District Judge Steven Hippler asked Kohberger during a 50-minute change-of-plea hearing.

“Yes,” Kohberger replied.

Hippler, seated from the bench, asked Kohberger four times — once for each victim — if he “willfully, unlawfully, deliberately with premeditation and with malice aforethought” stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin to death after breaking into a Moscow home in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022.

“Yes,” Kohberger said stoically, seated between his attorneys, as his parents sat in the front row of the Ada County Courthouse.

The hearing hastily scheduled within days of the plea deal came a month before Kohberger’s attorneys were expected to begin their fight for their client’s innocence at his capital trial. Hippler apologized to both the families of the victims and the family of Kohberger, who had all rushed to travel to Boise for the hearing with less than two days’ notice.

Kohberger, dressed in a white button-down shirt, dark tie and khaki pants, pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of the U of I students at an off-campus home, as well as felony burglary. In exchange, he will no longer face the death penalty as a potential sentence. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 23.

Originally from Pennsylvania, Kohberger was a Washington State University Ph.D. student of criminology who lived just 10 miles west of the students on the other side of the Idaho-Washington state line in Pullman.

Kohberger had faced the prospect of capital punishment if found guilty by a jury. His public defense team spent nearly a year trying to remove the death penalty as a possible sentencing option, but to no avail, ahead of the plea agreement in exchange for a life sentence with no ability to appeal.

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Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for a hearing at the Latah County Courthouse on June 27, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho.

August Frank/Pool/Getty Images North America/TNS

The plea agreement came over the protest of half of the four victims’ families. Most outspoken were the parents of Kaylee Goncalves, who worked this week to inspire supporters to call the judge, the U.S. Department of Justice and Gov. Brad Little’s office to force Kohberger’s capital murder trial to proceed, in pursuit of a possible death sentence.

Hippler addressed these sentiments during Wednesday’s hearing. Calls to contact him and his staff have been “extraordinarily disruptive” for court staff and their ability to do their jobs for not only Kohberger’s case but for others, he said, calling it “highly inappropriate.”

“A court is not supposed to — and this court will never — take into account public sentiment in making an opinion regarding its judicial decisions in cases,” Hippler said. “Courts should, and I always will, make decisions based on where the facts and the law lead me. Period.”

Kohberger’s parents seemed emotional during the hearing, with his father embracing Kohberger’s mother as they watched their son admit to the murders.

A Pennsylvania law firm representing Kohberger’s family did not return a request for comment from the Idaho Statesman on Wednesday. The day before, their attorneys shared their request for privacy.

“We ask that you respect our wishes during a difficult time for all those affected,” read the statement from attorney Martin Souto Diaz of Amori & Associates.

Hours before the hearing was scheduled to start, reporters and onlookers, sectioned off on the left side of the hallway, lined the fourth floor of the Ada County Courthouse, waiting to enter the building’s largest room, courtroom 400. The same courtroom that was used in recent years for several of the state’s other high-profile cases, including Chadd and Lori Vallow Daybell.

There was also a ramped-up security presence at the Ada County Courthouse on Wednesday, with K-9s from the Boise Police Department circling outside of the building, and extra bag checks before members of the public were allowed inside the courtroom. Even plastic bottles weren’t permitted in the courthouse out of concerns of potential violence, a sheriff’s deputy told people waiting to enter the courthouse.

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