Bryan Kohberger has mounted a dramatic effort to undo his guilty plea, insisting he is innocent of the murders of four University of Idaho students.
Kohberger, now serving four life sentences, told the New York Times in a prison interview that he intends to petition to have his plea withdrawn, saying he has an “absolute claim of innocence” and alleging he was misled into admitting responsibility for the killings.
The stunning move comes only days before Netflix is due to release a new documentary on the Idaho murders, which includes previously unseen footage from the aftermath of the attack.
The newly surfaced video provides a grim glimpse inside one of the most infamous crime scenes in recent American history, capturing visibly shaken officers as they encounter the victims for the first time.
The documentary also includes emotional interviews with the two roommates who survived the attack, along with new details surrounding reports that one of the victims believed she had been stalked before the murders.
The footage adds unsettling context to the night of November 13, 2022, when University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin and Kaylee Goncalves were stabbed to death inside their off-campus home by criminology PhD student Bryan Kohberger.
Kohberger was not arrested until six weeks later. In July 2025, he pleaded guilty to the murders and received four life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Police bodycam footage shows the harrowing moment the first officer reaches the house after authorities were sent there in response to a frantic 911 call reporting an unconscious person.
Left to right: Dylan Mortensen, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee’s shoulders) Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Bethany Funke
Gurneys are seen before the four young victims’ bodies are taken from the student house in old bodycam footage
He initially appears calm as he enters through the front door and climbs the stairs. Red party cups and a beer pong table reveal the remnants of typical college life.
Moments later, after entering Kernodle’s bedroom where she and her boyfriend, 20-year-old Chapin, lay dead, the officer’s demeanor changes instantly.
‘F**k!’
Over the radio he reports a homicide with two college-aged victims and, chillingly, ‘lots of blood.’
Autopsy reports would later reveal that 20-year-old Kernodle suffered 67 stab wounds and Chapin 17.
Officers soon discover Mogen and Goncalves, both 21, dead upstairs.
‘F**k dude,’ one officer exclaims.
For the small Moscow Police Department, which had not investigated a murder in seven years, it was a scene unlike anything officers had experienced.
Police interviews with surviving roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke also offer a rare insight into the terror the two survivors endured as they tried to piece together what had happened.
Although their faces are redacted, the fear is unmistakable in their voices.
Funke recalls hearing something fall in the middle of the night before Murphy, Goncalves’ dog, barked.
‘Dylan, she said she thinks she saw someone.’
Mortensen’s voice becomes increasingly high-pitched as she recounts seeing the masked intruder.
‘I didn’t know what to do. I jumped up and locked my door because I was so scared.
‘After that, I didn’t hear anything,’ she adds, her voice rising.
Officers also learn just how close Mortensen had come to becoming another victim.
Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle (left) and Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves (right) were knifed to death by Bryan Kohberger
Inside 1122 King Road in the aftermath of the mass murder of the four University of Idaho students
Kohberger appears at the Ada County Courthouse during his sentencing hearing
Woken by noises at around 4am, she had peeked around her second-floor bedroom door to see a masked man dressed in all black walk straight past her toward the back door.
Terrified, she and Funke desperately tried to contact their roommates before hunkering down in Funke’s room on the first floor until daylight, when they called friends over and the bloodbath was discovered.
Outside the house, officers discuss what happened.
‘Jesus, man,’ one sighs.
‘There was another girl that was in here, saw a guy walk in with a ski mask on.’
He gestures to the route the killer took, adding, ‘and uh locked herself in her room.’ ‘Heard all of this s**t going on.’
Another responds: ‘Holy s**t! And she didn’t call last night?’
One officer concludes: ‘That girl is lucky to be alive.’
In the interviews, both survivors also describe unsettling incidents at the home in the weeks before the murders.
Asked if any of the roommates believed they were being stalked, Funke recalls Goncalves saying someone had been watching her from the trees outside the house.
‘She could see like a man’s silhouette staring at her.’
Mortensen also describes returning home around a week before the murders to find the front door wide open.
To this day, it remains unclear whether either incident had any connection to Kohberger.
November 13, 2022, was the day when everything changed for the small college community of Moscow, Idaho
Speaking in the Netflix show, Kristi and Steve Goncalves reveal the moment they learned their daughter was dead
While the surviving roommates were speaking to police, the victims’ families were learning that their worst nightmares had become reality.
Speaking in the Netflix show The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, which premieres July 29, Goncalves’s parents Steve and Kristi describe how the rumors reached them before the police did.
Choking up with tears, Kristi recalls receiving a ‘hysterical’ call from a relative telling her that ‘something bad had happened to Kaylee.’
Initially, she was told that ‘there was a party and someone went in and shot up the party.’
Soon, she began receiving messages on Facebook from people saying, ‘Sorry for your loss.’
Kernodle’s father Jeff and sister Jazzmin also relive the devastating moment they learned of her death.
That weekend, Jeff was visiting Jazzmin, who was studying at Washington State University. Chillingly, Bryan Kohberger had also previously studied there.
That morning, Jeff planned to call at Kernodle’s home to fix a light but when she didn’t answer his call, he began the journey home.
‘I got about ten miles out and Jazzmin called,’ he says.
Some of Kernodle’s friends had contacted Jazzmin telling her something ‘bad had happened.’
Jazzmin and Jeff rushed to the house where they were told to go to the police station.
The back sliding door leading out of the kitchen where Bryan Kohberger fled into the night
Kernodle’s DoorDash order from Jack in the Box, delivered moments before Kohberger broke in and began his murderous rampage
‘I just asked if I could go see my sister and they just didn’t say anything and I didn’t really know what was going on,’ Jazzmin remembers.
Surveillance footage shown in the series captures the moment Kernodle’s dad and sister walk into the precinct and are met by lead investigator Anthony Dahlinger to be told the unthinkable.
Mogen’s mom Karen and stepdad Scott, and Chapin’s parents Stacy and Jim are also seen on security cameras entering the precinct separately to speak to police.
Those moments were the final seconds of the families’ lives before they learned that their children were dead.
Lead investigator Anthony Dahlinger says in the documentary that he has conducted many death notifications during his career, but informing the families of the deaths of the four students ‘has got to be one of the hardest I’ve ever had to do.’
