Accused of murdering four students in the US wants to annul confession

Kohberger, it is worth remembering, pleaded guilty to the five charges against him in July 2025, after an agreement that freed him from the possibility of being sentenced to the death penalty.

The agreement between Bryan Kohberger and prosecutors divided the victims' families, with Kaylee Goncalves' family being the most critical.

Sentenced to four life sentences, the former Washington State University doctoral candidate filed a request for criminal review last Monday in the Ada District Court in Idaho.

Bryan Kohberger claims, in court documents obtained by American broadcaster NBC News, that he received "ineffective" legal assistance from his defense lawyers and that he was "convinced to falsely confess" to a crime he claims he did not commit.

In his request for criminal review, the killer wrote that he believed the guilty plea was not an important factor in accepting the plea deal. He also claimed that he was "advised to lie" and that he would gain a "legal victory" by submitting a "false statement."

The documents are in line with an interview he gave to the New York Times (NYT), in which he claimed to be innocent and said he had been convinced to confess to the murders.

"My innocence is my truth, and the confession request based on false promises and blatant misinformation must be withdrawn," he said in a statement sent to the NYT last Sunday.

The former Criminal Justice student, however, declined to speak about any evidence or other details related to his innocence claim, as well as specific concerns regarding the plea deal process.

Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21 years old, and Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, 20 years old, were murdered in the early hours of November 13, 2022, in the house where the three young women lived, near the University of Idaho campus.

At the time, local authorities responded to an emergency call and found the bodies of four young people stabbed to death in their respective beds, probably while they slept.

Kohberger was arrested by the FBI in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, where his parents lived, weeks later. Investigators said they linked his DNA to genetic material recovered from the sheath of a knife found at the crime scene.

To this day, the motive for the murders has never been revealed, as has the reason why the attacker spared two roommates who were also in the house. According to authorities, cellphone data and security camera footage show that Kohberger visited the neighborhood where the victims lived at least a dozen times before the murders.

"Mosquito that cannot be scared away"

Kaylee Goncalves' family reacted to Kohberger's statement, saying that the killer is "a mosquito that cannot be scared away."

"The true tragedy is this: If even some of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks named after them, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist," the family said in a statement.

"The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare"Last Wednesday, March 29, a documentary series premiered about the brutal crime that shocked Idaho in 2022.

Composed of three episodes, "The Idaho Murders: University Nightmare" presents never-before-seen images of the investigations, police records, archived materials and testimonies from family and friends of the victims.