Bryan Kohberger, the convicted Idaho college killer, is now seeking to withdraw his previous guilty plea days before the release of the Netflix documentary about the killings.
In a conversation with The New York Times published Monday, Kohberger said from prison that he was petitioning to reopen his case. He asserted that he had an “absolute claim of innocence.”
“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Kohberger told the Times.
Kohberger was arrested in December 2022 for the fatal stabbings a month earlier of four University of Idaho students in their off-campus home. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were all killed. Following his arrest, Kohberger, a former PhD criminology student, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary.
His push to flip his plea comes just days before the Netflix docuseries “The Idaho Murders: College Nightmares” premieres. The three-episode series releases on July 29 and is the second to chronicle the University of Idaho attack. A Hulu series called “The Idaho College Murders” premiered back in 2022.
In July 2025, Kohberger entered a plea deal that had him pleading guilty to four counts of murder, so long as prosecutors dropped the potential of him facing the death penalty. The agreement came a month before jury selection for the trial was to be made. Following the announcement, Steve Goncalves expressed his disappointment in an interview with NewsNation’s Ashleigh Banfield.
“This is anything but justice. This is the opposite of our will. There was no majority [of victims’ family members] believing that this was acceptable,” he told Banfield. “I want to honor all the police officers, the FBI and all the people that worked their tail off. The failure is at the court level. 100%.”
