The admitted murderer Bryan Kohberger plans to file for post-conviction relief after pleading guilty to killing four University of Idaho students in a 4 a.m. home invasion attack, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Kohberger plans to argue that he had bad counsel. Court records show he filed a petition for post-conviction relief Monday, but the filing itself was not immediately available.
Kohberger, in his handwritten petition, claims that he was “convinced to falsely confess,” claiming his high-profile defense team of Anne Taylor, Elisa Massoth and Bicka Barlow didn’t tell him about “exculpatory discovery” — evidence mentioned in the recent “Broken Plea” book but never vetted in court.
The New York Times was first to report this story after Kohberger called a reporter directly and claimed that he has an “absolute claim of innocence” in his first public remarks outside the courtroom.
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“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” he told the outlet.
The family of victim Kaylee Goncalves ripped into Kohberger and his supporters as “the mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.” Kohberger’s petition fails to acknowledge that he told Idaho Judge Steven Hippler last year that he “knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently” admitted to the crime in court, the family said in a statement.
“Quite the opposite,” the statement continued. “He appeared in court for a hearing before a judge, accompanied by his four lawyers. He chose not to leave his fate—or the facts of the case—to a jury. He never cried foul, never claimed he was uninformed or pressured, and never suggested there were problems with the discovery materials he and his counsel had reviewed for two years that should have been challenged. He admitted his guilt. When asked whether he was actually guilty, he answered, ‘Yes.'”
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The family would have preferred the case go to trial with the death penalty still on the table.
“Instead, BK received exactly what he asked for: a deal that spared his life,” the family said. “Know this—he hates that life.”
Kohberger has repeatedly complained about prison conditions as he sits in isolation at the Idaho Maximum Security Institute.
Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador told Fox News Digital his office is “ready to do whatever is necessary to ensure justice is fully carried out.”
“My heart goes out to the families of Madison, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan, who have already endured unimaginable loss and now must face today’s deeply painful news,” he said.
Labrador’s office assisted Latah County prosecutors in defeating virtually all of Kohberger’s pretrial motions seeking to suppress evidence in the case, which resulted in his guilty plea weeks before hew would have gone to trial and faced the potential death penalty if convicted.
In his message to the Times, Kohberger claimed that “justice was not served” and that it was “circumnavigated by a broken plea.”
“Broken Plea” is the title of a recent book about the case that shed new light on what the defense may have looked like at trial — and his use of the term surprised author Chris Whitcomb, who says he had never spoken to Kohberger.
“He would have to show ‘manifest injustice,’” said Joshua Ritter, a California-based defense attorney and Fox News contributor. “Essentially his lawyers lied to him.”
One hypothesis floated in Whitcomb’s book is that Kohberger may not have fully understood or meaningfully participated in the decision to plead guilty.
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Kohberger is serving four consecutive life sentences with no possibility of parole plus another 10 years for the Nov. 13, 2022 murders of Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves after pleading guilty in July 2025.
Police found his DNA on a knife sheath in a bed with two of the four victims, Mogen and Goncalves. They also tracked his vehicle coming and going, and forensic investigators were prepared to testify about how although he shut his phone off during the murders, the evidence suggested he drove to and from the crime scene anyway.
As part of the plea deal, he waived his right to an appeal — and Monday’s filing caught some of the victims’ relatives by surprise.
“I didn’t think he could do that, since that was part of the stipulation in the first place — he wasn’t going to be able to do that,” said Cara Northington, Kernodle’s mother.
This is a breaking news story. Stick with Fox News Digital for updates.
