Before quadruple killer Bryan Kohberger was sentenced Wednesday to spend the rest of his days in prison, the loved ones of the four University of Idaho students he stabbed to death in 2002 let him have it.
In their victim impact statements, they took turns deriding Kohberger as a “loser” and a “psychopath” and warned the killer that his future cellmates would mete out justice on behalf of his four victims, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Dressed in orange prison scrubs and flanked by his lawyers, all Kohberger could do was sit silently and listen as the victims’ grieving kin tore into him for the harm he did to their families on Nov. 13, 2022.
Clockwise from top left, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
The only talk of forgiveness came from Kernodle’s aunt, Kim Kernodle, who said she had forgiven him “because I no longer could live with that hate in my heart.”
District Court Judge Steven Hippler, at times, appeared to be moved by the statements, reaching at one point for a tissue and dabbing his eyes.
Kohberger, who after years of denying he committed the crimes suddenly pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and burglary before he was supposed to go on trial next month in Boise, declined to make any statement in his own defense.
He has never explained why he broke into the off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho and killed four of the six students who were staying there as they lay sleeping.
Bryan Kohberger at his sentencing hearing Wednesday.Kyle Green / AP
Here are some of the most dramatic moments from the sentencing:
Goncalves’ big sister mocks Kohberger
Barely able to contain her fury, Alivea Goncalves blasted Kohberger as a “sociopath, psychopath, murderer” and took direct aim at his self-esteem, telling him “the only thing you failed more miserably at than being a murderer is trying to be a rapper.”
“If you were really smart, do you think you’d be here right now?” she said. “You’re terrified of being ordinary, aren’t you?”
Alivea Goncalves told Kohberger he was not “special or deep, not mysterious or exceptional.”
“You act like none can ever understand your mind,” she said. “But the truth is basic, you’re a textbook case of insecurity disguised as control. Your patterns are predictable. Your motives are shallow. You are not profound.”
Alivea Goncalves, sister of victim Kaylee Goncalves, speaks at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
Clapping erupted in the courtroom after Alivea Goncalves told Kohberger that her slain sibling, had she been awake, would have “kicked your f—— ass.”
“You didn’t win,” she added. “You just exposed yourself as the coward you are. You’re a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were so much smarter than everybody else.”
Goncalves’ father tells Kohberger “you picked the wrong families”
Standing at a lectern, Steven Goncalves faced Kohberger while he read his victim impact statement.
“Today, we are here to finish what you started,” he said. “We are here to prove to the world that you picked the wrong families, wrong state, the wrong police officers, the wrong community.”
“You tried to break our community apart. You tried to plant fear, you tried to divide us,” Steven Goncalves said. “You failed.”
Calling Kohberger a “complete joke,” Goncalves said “nobody cares about you.”
“You’re not worth the time, the effort to be remembered in time,” he said. “You will be nothing but two initials, forgotten to the wind, no visitors, nothing more than initials on an otherwise unmarked tombstone.”
Kernodle’s stepfather tells Kohberger ‘go to hell.’
Visibly shaking as he addressed Kohberger, Randy Davis said he wished he could take him out into the woods for five minutes to teach him about loss and pain.
“I’m shaking because I want to reach out to you, but I hope you feel my energy,” he said, smacking himself hard on his chest.
Davis then warned Kohberger “you’re gonna go to hell.”
“You’re evil,” he said. “You took our children… you are gonna suffer man.”
Then, in closing, Davis said “go to hell” at which point clapping erupted once again in the courtroom.
Cara Northington, mother of victim Xana Kernodle, is comforted at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen speaks publicly about the murders for the first time
Mortensen and fellow housemate Bethany Funke somehow escaped Kohberger’s wrath. And while Funke stayed away and had a friend read her victim impact statement, Mortensen confronted Kohberger in the courtroom.
Tearfully, Kohberger said the murders of her friends wrecked her life as well.
“What he did shattered me in places I didn’t know could break,” Mortensen said. “I was barely 19 when he did this.”
Dylan Mortensen is embraced after speaking at the sentencing hearing Wednesday.Kyle Green / Pool via AP
Sitting beside the prosecutors, Mortensen called Kohberger “a hollow vessel, something less than human.”
“He may have taken so much from me, but he will never get to take my voice,” she said.
Funke, in her statement, said she remembers her four slain friends every night in her prayers — and wonders why she was spared.
“I still think about this every day,” she said in the statement. “Why me? Why did I get to live and not them? For the longest time, I could not even look at their families without feeling sick with guilt.”
