(CNN) — Bryan Kohberger, who pleaded guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students in their off-campus home in 2022, has filed a petition to reopen the case and take back his guilty plea.
One year after a stunning hearing in which Kohberger admitted to his crimes in court, the former criminology graduate student says his defense team misled him and persuaded him to enter a false guilty plea.
His request to reverse his plea not only revives the case, but it also may renew the frustrations and emotions of the grieving families of his four victims: Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. They were fatally stabbed in the overnight hours of November 13, 2022.
Interviews with the surviving roommates in the docuseries, “The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare,” highlight their fear and confusion the night of the murders. The three-episode series, released Wednesday on Netflix, follows the case through Kohberger’s arrest and conviction.
The documentary, which includes interviews with family and friends of the victims, as well as investigators, lays out the timeline of the case and details of the investigation with body camera and surveillance video from the days and months surrounding the murders of the four students.
Being interviewed by an officer on scene, roommate Dylan Mortensen recalled hearing victim Goncalves scream and run inside their shared home. “And I remember hearing this guy’s voice that I didn’t recognize, saying: ‘You’re going to be OK. I’m going to help you,’” she told the officer. “It wasn’t in a nice way. It was a weird way. Like, a weird tone … After that I didn’t hear anything. So then I kept calling her name.”
As investigators are shown putting together the pieces of the case, roommate Bethany Funke is questioned about whether any of her roommates had complained about someone stalking them. In a police interview, Funke recalled Goncalves telling her she had seen “a man’s silhouette staring at her” while she took the dog out around a month before the murders.
The series also highlights some of the victims’ families’ disappointment over the news that Kohberger had entered a plea deal and would no longer face the death penalty. “Justice would only be if the kids came back,” Kaylee’s mother, Kristi Goncalves, says in an interview. “The kids are gone. They’re never coming back. But I want him to die.”
Now, the next legal steps for Kohberger to take back his guilty plea are unclear. Idaho law does permit a plea withdrawal, but a person must meet a high bar to prove the sort of claims he is making, lawyers say.
Here’s a timeline of the legal developments since Kohberger’s case reached the courtroom.
June 9, 2023: A coalition of media organizations and the family of one of the victims came to court to challenge the gag order placed on the parties in the case.
June 23, 2023: Latah County Judge John Judge denied both requests but issued a revised gag order allowing the parties to discuss topics that do not have a “substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing or otherwise influencing the outcome of the case.”
August 2, 2023: Kohberger’s attorneys said they would use an alibi defense but couldn’t pin down their client’s specific location on the night of the killings because he was “driving during the late night and early morning hours.”
“Mr. Kohberger is not claiming to be at a specific location at a specific time; at this time there is not a specific witness to say precisely where Mr. Kohberger was at each moment of the hours” of the attacks, his attorneys said in a court filing.
October 26, 2023: The judge denied a request to dismiss the grand jury indictment after the defense argued there was an error in the grand jury instructions.
December 18, 2023: The judge denied a second motion to dismiss the indictment after the defense argued prosecutors failed to comply fully with state rules on jury selection and the jury questionnaire.
February 28, 2024: Defense attorney Anne C. Taylor asked the court to allow three defense experts and others to view the investigative genetic genealogy evidence, which had been sealed, to understand the full timeline of how police began to focus on Kohberger.
Genetic genealogy is a practice that blends DNA analysis in the lab with genealogical research, such as tracing a person’s family tree. In this case, investigators found a single source of male DNA on the button snap of a leather knife sheath left at the crime scene, according to a probable cause affidavit. FBI investigators loaded the DNA profile to public genealogy sites to search for a match and then sent a tip to investigate Kohberger, according to a prosecution court filing.
The judge initially declined to give the defense investigators extended access to the investigative genetic genealogy, saying he would rather the experts already approved to view the material give justification for digging deeper.
April 4, 2024: The judge criticized Kohberger’s defense attorney, saying she commissioned phone surveys to potential jurors that could have hindered Kohberger’s ability to get a fair trial. However, Taylor said the judge violated her client’s right to due process by ordering a stop to the anonymous survey without hearing the defense’s side first.
The judge said he wanted a “hearing at least every month,” noting the importance of “cleaning up” the legal proceedings.
April 17, 2024: Kohberger’s defense lawyers filed a court document saying they planned to offer a cell phone tower and radio frequency expert to partially corroborate his proposed alibi that he was out driving west of Moscow on the night of the slayings.
April 19, 2024: The judge allowed surveys conducted with potential jurors to continue “without modification” after temporarily pausing them.
April 29, 2024: The prosecution asked the court to deny Kohberger the opportunity to add to his alibi and to preclude anyone other than the defendant to testify as to his whereabouts on the night of the killings.
May 2, 2024: Kohberger’s defense had asked for an upcoming evidentiary hearing with witnesses be made public, while the prosecution asked for it to be sealed. The judge ruled it would be closed to the public.
After the hearing, the family of Goncalves, one of the victims, criticized the slow pace of the proceedings, saying, “This case is turning into a hamster wheel of motions, hearings, and delayed decisions,” adding they were “incredibly frustrated.”
May 23, 2024: Taylor, the defense attorney, questioned a Moscow police detective about the preparation of visual cell phone logs and methods for searching for certain videos. The testimony was related to two motions to compel prosecutors to share discovery with the defense, but the contents of the motions were sealed, so it was not clear what they were requesting.
May 30, 2024: The Moscow police detective leading the investigation and a defense expert in cell phone location data testified the defense had not received some key evidence in the case.
Cpl. Brett Payne, the lead investigator on the case, testified he and other investigators collected thousands of hours of video surveillance as they tried to locate a white Hyundai Elantra connected to the suspect. The videos were saved on various thumb drives, but there was no central inventory of the videos, he testified. He also said investigators did not see on any of the videos the Elantra going south from Moscow toward Pullman, Washington, in the early morning hours after the killings.
The probable cause affidavit used in the case alleged Kohberger drove south toward Pullman after he committed the four killings.
Sy Ray, an expert on cell phone geolocation data, testified he had not been provided the underlying AT&T source data and list of nearby cell towers used by detectives to create a map of Kohberger’s movements with his cell phone. Based on the data he had received, he believed some statements in the records were not accurate, and he said the missing data could