Victim's Father Speaks Out After Kohberger's Guilty Plea

After Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty Wednesday to murdering four University of Idaho students, the father of one of the victims apologized to his daughter. Before the hearing, Steve Goncalves, father of Kaylee Goncalves, criticized the plea deal, which allowed Kohberger to avoid the death penalty. "It's my mistake. I'm sorry, Kaylee," Steve Goncalves told NewsNation's Banfield show. "I'm truly sorry that I didn't get you a prosecutor who really believed what happened to you could only be fixed with life." Goncalves, who refused to enter the courtroom during Wednesday's hearing, said he probably wouldn't attend Kohberger's July 23 sentencing hearing, calling it a "pointless exercise."

The plea deal split the families of the four victims, the New York Post reports. Xana Kernodle's father said he was disappointed after years of waiting for a trial that could have answered questions surrounding the case, including Kohberger's motive. The families of Madison Mogen and Ethan Chapin said they were glad they would be spared the ordeal of a lengthy trial.

• During Wednesday's hearing, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson set out some of the evidence against Kohberger, the Idaho Statesman reports. Thompson, who stressed that there was no "sexual component" to the crime, said Kohberger first killed Mogen and Goncalves on the third floor of the Moscow, Idaho, home, then "encountered" Kernodle on the second floor as he was leaving. Thompson said Kohberger killed Kernodle and then killed her boyfriend, Chapin, who was asleep in her bed.
• Thompson said DNA from a Ka-Bar fixed-blade knife sheath found next to Mogen's body linked Kohberger to the scene. He said a Q-tip found in a "trash pull" at Kohberger's family home in Pennsylvania had DNA identified "as coming from the father of the person whose DNA was found on the knife sheath."
• Thompson said that when investigators caught up with Kohberger weeks after the crime, his car had been stripped so clean of evidence that it was "essentially disassembled inside," the AP reports. "The defendant has studied crime," he said. "In fact, he did a detailed paper on crime scene processing when he was working on his PhD, and he had that knowledge skillset."