Bryan Kohberger's decision to accept plea deal came after efforts to strike death penalty failed

MOSCOW, Idaho (AP) — Bryan Kohberger 's attorneys had done what they could to spare his life.

They tried to bar prosecutors from seeking the death penalty in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students on an array of grounds — that it would violate standards of decency or flout international law, that prosecutors had failed to provide evidence properly, that their client's autism diagnosis reduced any possible culpability.

They challenged the legitimacy of DNA evidence and sought permission to suggest to a jury that someone else committed the crime.

None of it worked. And with Kohberger's quadruple-murder trial set to begin next month, they turned to a final option: a plea deal to avoid execution.

Kohberger, 30, is due to appear at 11 a.m. MDT Wednesday before Idaho Fourth Judicial District Judge Steven Hippler in Boise, where he is expected to plead guilty to charges that he murdered Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho, early on Nov. 13, 2022.

“This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family,” prosecutors wrote in a letter to the families quoted by ABC News. “This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction, appeals."

The family of Chapin — one of three triplets who attended the university together — supports the deal, their spokesperson, Christina Teves, said Tuesday. Attorney Leander James, who represents Mogen's mother and stepfather, declined to give their views but said he would deliver a statement on their behalf after Wednesday's hearing. Mogen's father, Ben Mogen, told CBS News he was relieved by the agreement.

“We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don’t want to have to be at, that we shouldn’t have to be at, that have to do with this terrible person,” he said. “We get to just think about the rest of lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and the rest of the kids.”

But it enraged the Goncalves clan, who posted statements on Facebook criticizing the deal and urging any supporters who “feel called or moved to try to make a difference” to contact the Ada County Courthouse.

“We are beyond furious at the State of Idaho,” the Goncalves family wrote Monday. “They have failed us."

In another post Tuesday, they added: “We stand strong that it is not over until a plea is accepted. We will not stop fighting for the life that was stolen unjustly. ... At a bare minimum, please - require a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, & the true facts of what happened that night. We deserve to know when the beginning of the end was.”

The family spoke with the prosecution on Friday about the idea of a plea deal and said they were firmly against it. By Sunday, they received an email that “sent us scrambling,” and met with the prosecution again on Monday to explain their views about pushing for the death penalty.

“Bryan Kohberger facing a life in prison means he would still get to speak, form relationships, and engage with the world,” Kaylee Goncalves' 18-year-old sister, Aubrie, wrote. “Meanwhile, our loved ones have been silenced forever. That reality stings more deeply when it feels like the system is protecting his future more than honoring the victims’ pasts.”

In Idaho, judges may reject plea agreements, though such moves are rare. If Kohberger pleads guilty Wednesday as expected, he would likely be sentenced in late July. His trial is set for August in Boise, where it was moved following pretrial publicity in rural northern Idaho.

At the time of the killings, Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, about 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) west of the University of Idaho. He was arrested in Pennsylvania, where his parents lived, weeks later. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.

Autopsies showed the four victims were all likely asleep when they were attacked. Some had defensive wounds and each was stabbed multiple times. Online shopping records showed that Kohberger months earlier had purchased a military-style knife — and a sheath like the one found at the scene.

No motive has emerged for the killings, nor is it clear why the attacker spared two roommates who were in the home. Authorities have said cellphone data and surveillance video shows that Kohberger visited the victims’ neighborhood at least a dozen times before the killings.

The murders shocked the small farming community of about 25,000 people, which hadn’t had a homicide in about five years, and prompted a massive hunt for the perpetrator. That included an elaborate effort to track down a white sedan that was seen on surveillance cameras repeatedly driving by the rental home, using genetic genealogy to identify Kohberger as a possible suspect, and using cellphone data to pinpoint his movements the night of the killings.

Telisa Swan, whose tattoo shop is in Moscow, described the town as “shocked and devastated" after the killings.

“I never really locked my doors at night before and I have ever since,” she said. “I think the town is healing, but I don’t think it’ll ever be the same.”

In a court filing, Kohberger’s lawyers said he was on a long drive by himself around the time the four were killed.

Last week, the judge rejected an effort by the defense team to suggest at trial that any one of four other people could have committed the crimes, ruling that the evidence offered to support that theory was “entirely irrelevant.”

“Nothing links these individuals to the homicides or otherwise gives rise to a reasonable inference that they committed the crime; indeed, it would take nothing short of rank speculation by the jury to make such a finding,” Hippler wrote.

Johnson reported from Seattle.

An empty lot stands on Monday, June 30, 2025, at the site where four University of Idaho students were killed in November 2022 inside a house in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

A hearing about Pennsylvania-based defense witnesses in the upcoming murder trial of Bryan Kohberger, accused of killing 4 University of Idaho students in 2022, is held in the Monroe County Courthouse in Stroudsburg, Pa., Monday, June 30, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Scolforo)

An empty lot stands on Monday, June 30, 2025, at the site where four University of Idaho students were killed in November 2022 inside a house in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Manuel Valdes)

FILE - A flyer seeking information about the killings of four University of Idaho students who were found dead is displayed on a table along with buttons and bracelets on Nov. 30, 2022, during a vigil in memory of the victims in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

FILE - Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students, is escorted into court for a hearing in Latah County District Court, Sept. 13, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool, File)

FILE - A private security officer sits in a vehicle on Jan. 3, 2023, in front of the house in Moscow, Idaho, where four University of Idaho students were killed in November 2022. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Sunday fired off another warning to the government of Cuba as the close ally of Venezuela braces for potential widespread unrest after Nicolás Maduro was deposed as Venezuela's leader.

Cuba, a major beneficiary of Venezuelan oil, has now been cut off from those shipments as U.S. forces continue to seize tankers in an effort to control the production, refining and global distribution of the country's oil products.

Trump said on social media that Cuba long lived off Venezuelan oil and money and had offered security in return, “BUT NOT ANYMORE!”

“THERE WILL BE NO MORE OIL OR MONEY GOING TO CUBA - ZERO!” Trump said in the post as he spent the weekend at his home in southern Florida. “I strongly suggest they make a deal, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.” He did not explain what kind of deal.

The Cuban government said 32 of its military personnel were killed during the American operation last weekend that captured Maduro. The personnel from Cuba’s two main security agencies were in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, as part of an agreement between Cuba and Venezuela.

“Venezuela doesn’t need protection anymore from the thugs and extortionists who held them hostage for so many years,” Trump said Sunday. “Venezuela now has the United States of America, the most powerful military in the World (by far!), to protect them, and protect them we will.”

Trump also responded to another account’s social media post predicting that his secretary of state, Marco Rubio, will be president of Cuba: “Sounds good to me!” Trump said.

Trump and top administration officials have taken an increasingly aggressive tone toward Cuba, which had been kept economically afloat by Venezuela. Long before Maduro's capture, severe blackouts were sidelining life in Cuba, where people endured long lines at gas stations and supermarkets amid the island’s worst economic crisis in decades.

Trump has said previously that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, would slide further with the ouster of Maduro.

“It’s going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It’s going down for the count.”

A person watches the oil tanker Ocean Mariner, Monrovia, arrive to the bay in Havana, Cuba, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

President Donald Trump attends a meeting with oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)