Brian Coberger’s initial two victims were asleep when he attacked their home in Moscow, Idaho, around 4 a.m. on November 13, 2022.
Prosecutors revealed that best friends Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were in bed when Coberger murdered them with a Ka-bar knife he purchased on Amazon months earlier.
During court on Wednesday, prosecutor Bill Thompson struggled to contain his emotions while detailing the brutal murder, which Coberger admitted to.
His guilty plea has effectively divided the families of the victims, and prosecutors believe that the evidence they gathered may paint the clearest picture of what transpired at the residence near the University of Idaho.
Thompson asserted that Coberger had plotted the murder for almost six months, describing the act as intentional and calculated.
Coberger’s plea agreement means if he is convicted at his upcoming trial in August, he won’t face execution by firing squad; rather, he would receive four consecutive life sentences without parole.
This shocking confession came after prosecutors amassed a daunting array of evidence directly linking Coberger to the crime, which he laid out prior to his plea.
The case traces back to March 2022 when Coberger was living in Pennsylvania with his parents, where he bought the military-grade Ka-bar knife and sheath online.
Later, he moved to Pullman, Washington, in June to pursue a Ph.D. in Criminology at Washington State University, just a short distance from Moscow.
By early July, weirdly enough, Coberger’s phone was connecting to a nearby cell tower at odd hours of the night, which raised eyebrows.
In the months leading up to the murder, his phone pinged off that same tower 23 times between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., but there was no evidence that he contacted the victims during those times.
On the day of the murder, Coberger’s phone activated at around 2 a.m. in Pullman and then moved to the Moscow area by 5 a.m.
Within that time frame, he drove his white Hyundai to park behind the victims’ home, as confirmed by security footage.
Wearing a dark face mask, he entered through a sliding kitchen door around 4 a.m.
Coberger then made his way to the third floor, where he used the knife against his victims. He left behind the knife sheath, which contained his DNA—an oversight that would later prove disastrous for him.
He encountered 20-year-old Kernodle on the stairs; she was still awake after receiving a food delivery. He attacked her first, leaving her for dead where she stood.
“Her room was on the second floor, not the third,” Thompson stated. He emphasized how Coberger then murdered her boyfriend, who was still sleeping in their room.
While it’s unclear if Coberger had intended to kill all the individuals he did that night, the tragic reality is that it occurred.
After committing the murders, one of the two surviving housemates spotted a man with “bulging eyebrows” leaving the home. Security footage captured Coberger’s vehicle leaving the neighborhood, and cell records showed he returned to Pullman around 5:30 a.m.
Later that morning, he returned to the victims’ house around 9 a.m. but went home by 9:30 a.m., where he took an odd selfie in the bathroom with a thumbs-up.
In the following days, Coberger attempted to cover his tracks. He traveled to Lewiston, Idaho, where prosecutors speculate he may have discarded the murder weapon, which has never been found.
Meanwhile, he began searching online for another knife and tried to erase his purchasing history on Amazon.
He also changed his car registration from Pennsylvania to Idaho and continued with his life as if nothing had happened.
Thompson noted that Coberger completed his semester at Washington State University before returning to Pennsylvania for a holiday.
However, investigators soon identified him as a suspect. After examining his parents’ trash, they found DNA evidence linked to the sheath found at the murder scene.
Coberger was arrested soon after, revealing the extent of his efforts to conceal his actions during the searches of his home and belongings.
Thompson described Coberger’s apartment as eerily sparse and his vehicle as “almost disassembled internally,” noting it was unusually clean.
“We all have a level of clutter in our cars, but Coberger’s was meticulously cleaned,” he observed.
The prosecutors suggested that Coberger had utilized the knowledge from his criminology studies to help him evade capture, as he had previously written about crime scene analysis.
Despite the overwhelming evidence against him, the motive behind the murders remains a mystery, and Coberger’s plea means that the public may never understand why he committed such heinous acts.
His sentencing is set for July 23, and he will have a chance to speak following the victim impact statements, although it’s uncertain if he will choose to do so.
