Bryan Kohberger is expected to conclude a advocacy agreement Wednesday in the murders of Idaho students. However, the key elements of the crime remain a mystery

One month before the planned start of his murder trial during the murders in 2022 of four students from Idaho College in their house outside campuses, the defendant Brian Kohberger should conclude a plea agreement which would eliminate the possibility of the death penalty, the families of the victims said.

A hearing is set at 11 a.m. Wednesday in Boisse, Idaho, before the district judge of the State Steven Hippler, and this will concern a advocacy agreement, said a letter from the family of a victim, said the Idaho statesman. The family of a victim requested a delay to give them more time to go to Boisse, said his lawyer to the Associated Press.

Kohberger, a former 30 -year -old doctoral student in criminology, is accused of four first degree murder leaders and a burglary chief in the county of Latah, Idaho, where the horrible discovery in a house in Moscow first attracted national attention.

A plea agreement – that at least the family of a victim condemned – would put an end to a tumultuous case which included a cross-country hunt for the suspect and a long legal battle, including several defense attempts to have the accusations or the death penalty removed from the table reject.

Wednesday’s audience should be quite simple, to hip, likely to read Kohberger, the offer of plea before asking him if he voluntarily accepted him and “was informed of the consequences of plea, including minimum and maximum sanctions, and other direct consequences that may apply”, according to the Idaho law on calls.

Key questions, however, are likely to linger: how and why were these victims chosen? Why were the other roommates at home spared? And how did the killer entered the house, did the crimes, then avoid capture for weeks?

The answers would surely have been surveyed at the trial.

Now, if they never emerge, they would probably come to a subsequent condemnation hearing – perhaps being fixed on Wednesday – when the family and friends of the victims could also be invited to share impact declarations on victims, often heartbreaking certificates in agony and grief.

The victims Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were 20 years old, while Goncalves and Mogen were 21 years old when they were killed. These three questions, at the heart of their death, are always unanswered as the hearing of the advocacy agreement begins:

Why the Goncalves, Mogen, Chapin and Kernodle were killed remain a mystery. All four were students from the Idaho University, and three lived together – as well as two other roommates – in a residence near the campus in Moscow, a university city of around 25,000 inhabitants.

On Saturday November 12, 2022, Goncalves published a series of photos on his Instagram with legend: “A lucky girl to be surrounded by these people every day.” A photo watch mogen sitting on Goncalves’ shoulders, with Chapin and Kernodle standing next to them.

That night, the group of friends went out to Moscow and returned late to their common house. The next day, the police found the four students slaughtered inside the house, without a sign of entry or forced damage.

There was “no link between Mr. Kohberger and the victims”, a defendant’s lawyer argued in a legal file in mid-201-2023, highlighting a “total lack of DNA evidence of the victims of the apartment, office, home or vehicle of Mr. Kohberger”.

But while the authorities had “not said that if the victims knew Kohberger … The instagram account now deleted from the suspect – which was examined by people before its abolition – followed the accounts of Mogen, Goncalves and Kernodle,” reported the outlet in early 2023.

The suspect reportedly contacted one of the women victims “repeatedly” at the end of October, about two weeks before the murders, people reported, adding that the unidentified victim had responded to messages. It is not known if this victim had seen the presumed messages of Kohberger.

Kohberger also visited the restaurant where two of the victims worked in the weeks preceding their murders, according to people. It is not known if one or the other of the victims was at the restaurant during the visit of Kohberger, if he never interacted with them there or if he has ever sat in the restaurant to eat his food.

Xana, Goncalves and Mogen shared their three -story house with six bedrooms with Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke. Both were at home during the murders – but spared – The police said.

Mortensen, identified in court documents like “DM”, told investigators that she had “heard cry” in the house in the morning of murders and heard a voice say: “It’s good, I’m going to help you.”

She then saw a “silhouette dressed in black clothes and a mask that covered the mouth and nose of the person heading to her”, according to a probable affidavit published in early 2023 in the case of prosecutors against Kohberger.

“DM described the figure as 5’10” or larger, male, not very muscular, but built athletic with bushy eyebrows. The man passed before the DM while he was standing in a “frozen shock phase”, reveal the legal documents.

“The male went to the sliding door in rear glass. DM locked himself in his room after seeing the male,” said the document, adding that the roommate did not recognize the male.

“I panic,” said Mortensen to Funke about the masked man dressed in black in their house almost eight hours before calling 911 to report to Kernodle unconscious at home.

Funke then sent a text to Mortensen: “Come to my room” and “Run”.

After the arrest of Kohberger, Mortensen could not say definitively if he was the man she had seen at her house at the time of the killings, shown legal documents.

The two surviving roommates had to testify during the Kohberger trial.

Under the proposed advocacy agreement, “there is no guarantee”, Kohberger would share the details of the crime, said Goncalves’s father Steve Goncaves on Tuesday.

“We want something like his knife – where he threw him – his killing kit, his costume, something like that,” he said. “If he gave these kinds of details, people would be fair:” We were wrong. He did it, and let everyone alone and let’s go to another case. “”

A “weapon bordered like a knife” was used in the killings, said the Moscow police, but only a knife sheath was found at crime scene, on the bed next to the body of Mogen. Kohberger had bought a military -style knife, a sheath and a knife sting on Amazon in the months preceding the murders, according to the prosecution deposits.

A Kohberger selfie would have taken the morning of November 13, 2022 – just a few hours after the murders – is also one of the cases. In this document, he stands in front of a shower, dressed in a white shirt, smiling and giving a boost.

Five days after the deaths of the students, Kohberger obtained a new license plate for his Hyundai Elantra Blanche, reveal court documents. An officer of the Washington State University, where Kohberger was a doctoral student at the time of the murders, found a Hyundai Elantra White 2015 registered in Kohberger in a complex parking lot of apartments, and the investigators in the case of killed students concentrated on Kohberger because the information and the photo of his driver were conforming to the description of the surviving roommate.

Trash, recovered from the Kohberger family residence by Pennsylvania police and sent to Idaho State Lab for DNA tests, was used to help investigators refine Kohberger as the suspect in the Idaho students in December 2022, according to court documents.

Shortly after, “Idaho State Lab reported that a DNA profile obtained from the trash” corresponded to a tanned leather knife sheath had found “pose on the bed” of one of the victims, according to the documents.

Kohberger was arrested for the killings on December 30, 2022, in his original state, in Pennsylvania, the authorities announced.