Convicted serial killer Bryan Kohberger has been granted a chance to withdraw his guilty plea after accusing his lawyers of threatening him with “death row” horror stories — but he’ll have to wait until next summer.
Kohberger, 31, is currently serving four consecutive life sentences without parole, but he’s been appointed a new attorney, and Idaho Judge Steve Hippler has scheduled a status conference and evidentiary hearing for June 2027.
In a handwritten affidavit filed by Kohberger himself, the admitted murderer claims his former legal team misled him — and his family — about the damning evidence before he copped to the heinous crimes.
Kohberger alleges that “coercion, disinformation, false promises, and the withholding of exculpatory discovery” bullied him into entering a bogus guilty plea on July 2, 2025, according to a legal petition obtained by the New York Times.
In the document, the twisted killer writes in a wild barely legible script that he was previously diagnosed with Developmental Coordination Disorder, among a litany of other psychiatric ailments.
He claims his defense team buried exculpatory evidence, specifically pointing to “clumps of unknown hair found in Ethan Chapin’s hands.”
Kohberger was convicted of the 2022 fatal stabbings of four University of Idaho students — Chapin, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kaylee Goncalves — inside a Moscow home.
The plea deal spared him from a potential firing squad execution — but it also denied the families of Goncalves and Kernodle, who opposed the plea deal, the answers that a full trial would have provided.
Lawyers also intimidated him with “fabricated” horror stories of “an actual 8X8 death row cell,” Kohberger claims — alleging they convinced him that pleading guilty was his only path to improved prison conditions.
As part of his original plea deal, Kohberger waived his right to appeal the sentence.
Now, he’s attempting to bypass that by claiming he was hoodwinked by his counsel — and that he deserves a new trial.
Kohberger — formerly a Ph.D. criminology student at nearby Washington State University — was repeatedly questioned during his June 2025 plea hearing whether he admitted to the brutal stabbings.
He answered yes every time.
