Father of Idaho Murder Victim Shares New Details on Confrontation with Kohberger

June 8 marks what should have been Kaylee Goncalves’s 25th birthday.

Tragically, it now signifies 1,303 days since her life was brutally taken while she slept beside her best friend, following what had been a typical night out for college students.

“It’s really hard. It’s a day we just reflect,” Kaylee’s mother, Kristi Goncalves, shared in a heartfelt interview with the Daily Mail, as her daughter’s birthday approached.

Fighting back tears, Kristi, a mother of five, recalled, “Her last birthday was her 21st, and it was a big celebration. She went down to Boise with her friends.”

“She was only 21 years, five months, and five days old when she was taken from us. We never imagined that would be her last birthday.”

At the time, no one could have foreseen that a 27-year-old stranger would perpetrate one of the nation’s most horrific crimes, leaving four families shattered, engulfing a small college town in fear, and shocking the entire country with its brutality and apparent lack of motive.

On November 13, 2022, Bryan Kohberger broke into 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, and murdered Goncalves, her best friend Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.

The criminology PhD student at nearby Washington State University was arrested six weeks later.

After fighting the charges for more than two years, he finally pleaded guilty to the murders last July as part of a plea deal that would hand him life without parole but spare him from the death penalty.

His motive remains a mystery and no connection has ever been found between him and any of his victims or their two surviving roommates.

Before her own murder, Kaylee had long taken a keen interest in true crime, her parents Kristi and Steve Goncalves told the Daily Mail at an event in Las Vegas.

Now, she is helping to solve other cases through a new foundation launched by her parents in her memory.

Murder Has a Name provides funding for advanced forensic DNA testing to help catch killers and give other victims and their families justice in cases that have gone unsolved and where resources are sparse.

The new foundation works in partnership with forensic laboratories such as Othram, which identified Kohberger as the source of the DNA on the brown leather Ka-Bar knife sheath left at the scene of Kaylee’s murder.

Kristi grew emotional as she said Kaylee would be ‘so proud’ of the work her family is now doing in her memory.

‘I think Kaylee would be so proud. I think about that, and I just want to tell her so bad: “Look at this foundation with your face on it, your name,”‘ she said.

‘We’re doing this because Kaylee was a true crime person. She watched true crime. I watched cases with her.

‘So, I want to say to her, Kaylee, unfortunately, you are one of those cases now, but we’ve made this foundation to help people get answers. And maybe some of those cases that we talked about, this girl, or that girl, maybe we could be a part of helping that family.

‘To think of her thinking, “Oh, my gosh, I helped such and such’s case,” there’s a meaning, a reason to this. I know she’s rooting us on. She would give us an A for effort.’

Steve added: ‘She is directly playing a role in us doing this, and as long as we’re successful, as long as we keep working and keep doing what we’re doing today, then we can get these cases solved.’

It’s something Kaylee actively tried to help with when she was still alive.

Around one year before her murder, she submitted a tip about a possible sighting of a missing woman.

Sharon Archer, a 62-year-old ‘endangered’ woman, went missing in September 2021. Kaylee contacted Moscow police that October to report seeing a woman resembling Archer at Walmart in Moscow.

It is not clear if it was the missing woman. When police responded, they could not locate the woman or her car. Archer was found dead in her submerged car in a lake around three weeks later.

Kaylee’s interest in true crime brought people together in other ways too.

Following her murder, her family sat down for an interview with one of her favorite true crime content creators, Olivia Vitale.

That newfound relationship ultimately led to Olivia and Kaylee’s brother Steven falling in love and getting engaged.

Now, Kaylee’s passion for solving crimes will help ‘hunt down killers’ through advanced DNA testing, her parents told the Daily Mail.

‘I want to hunt killers. I want to hunt them down,’ Steve said.

‘I want to turn the tables on them. We’re going to hunt those people down. We’re going to find them. It’s time to hunt the killers down and give them a taste of their own medicine.’

By giving more families access to advanced DNA testing, ‘the hunter is going to become the hunted,’ Kristi said. ‘This technology is just evolving every single day. It’s crazy.’

Through their advocacy work, the Goncalves family also want to push to change the courtroom processes which require victims to address the court, not the perpetrator, at their sentencing.

In most US courts, victim impact statements are considered part of the official court proceeding. Because of that, victims and family members are usually instructed to address their remarks to the judge or the court, rather than directly to the defendant.

The rationale is that sentencing is a judicial process, not a confrontation between private parties.

That was something Steve and Kristi refused to comply with at Kohberger’s sentencing in July because they felt it would ‘revictimize’ them and ‘empower this monster.’

In a powerful moment, Steve physically moved the lectern away from the judge to confront Kohberger directly, eye to eye.

‘The world’s watching because of the kids, not because of you. Nobody cares about you,’ Steve said at the time.

‘In time, you will be nothing but two initials, forgotten to the wind.’ He called Kohberger a ‘joke’ and bragged about how easy it was to track the killer down.

Steve said: ‘Long story short, we broke the rules,’ adding that he believed he might get arrested for contempt of court. 

The judge ultimately did not intervene and allowed them to deliver their statements.

‘We need to refocus what our courtrooms are, and it should be more focused on the victims,’ Steve said.

‘These guys need to be treated like the animals that they are. You’re going to behave like an animal, treat him like an animal.

‘Then maybe all these kids that are watching these crimes, thinking the same things [murderous tendencies], say, “You know what? That was embarrassing. I’m going to talk to a counselor [instead], take my medication, and work through this [and not kill].” And that’s what we’re hoping for.’

To mark Kaylee’s birthday, her family has pledged to personally match every dollar raised through her foundation.

‘It takes a community to help,’ Kristi said.

Advanced DNA testing costs between $10,000 and $20,000 a case, on average.

Kristi pointed out that if all 188,000 followers on the family’s Facebook page were able to donate just $1, multiple families could soon get answers in their loved ones’ cases.

Murder Has a Name has been launched to 

As well as catching perpetrators quickly with this technology, Kristi and Steve hope that these advancements might even act as a deterrent to budding killers who might now think twice about committing crimes knowing that they likely won’t be able to get away with it.

‘Some people might just decide that things have gotten too good, that they can’t outsmart the system so maybe I’m not going to do it,’ Kristi said.

Steve added: ‘You can’t do these crimes anymore and not leave evidence. That’s the message that we have to get out.’

‘A murder starts way before the action happens. And that’s what we’re trying to find out: when did this first start? When did he start doing these types of red flags and how do we fix the system so that this never happens again to another family?’ Steve said.

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