BOISE, Idaho — A criminal justice student who avoided a potential death sentence by pleading guilty Wednesday to the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students carefully planned the attack for months and took multiple steps to cover his tracks, the lead prosecutor said.
Bryan Kohberger, who was a graduate student at nearby Washington State University, pleaded guilty to murder in the killings that terrified the Idaho campus and set off a nationwide search, which ended weeks later when he was arrested in Pennsylvania.
Kohberger remained impassive as he admitted to breaking into a rental home through a kitchen sliding door and killing the four friends who appeared to have no connection with him. Prosecutors did not reveal a motive behind the slayings.
The killings initially baffled law enforcement and unnerved the rural college town of Moscow, which hadn’t seen a murder in five years until Kaylee Goncalves,