Bryan Kohberger is set to receive his sentence Wednesday for murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022 — and crowds of people want to watch.
Members of the public started lining up outside the Boise, Idaho., courthouse Tuesday evening, hoping to get a glimpse of the admitted quadruple-murderer ahead of his sentence, the Idaho Statesman reports. By 5 a.m., there were more than 50 people in the queue, the outlet reported.
Some, like Denise Feldman-Ersland, were hoping to see Kohberger go to trial, but nonetheless hope the families of the victims can receive some closure.
“I know it’s not the closure that many of them want. It’s not the closure I want to see,” Feldman-Ersland told CNN while standing in the line. “I think we should have gone to trial, but our legal system works in many different ways.”
Kohberger pleaded guilty earlier this month to the brutal Nov. 2022 murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. All four were students at the University of Idaho and were in the residence shared by Goncalves, Mogen and Kernodle early in the morning when Kohberger broke in and stabbed them to death.
Two other roommates in the house at the time survived the ordeal.
Kohberger, a criminology graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash., at the time of the killings, was arrested after DNA on a knife sheath left at the crime scene was traced to him.
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Kohberger was expected to go to trial but abruptly opted to plead guilty on July 2, taking a deal that spared him the possibility of capital punishment.
He will most likely hear impact statements from loved ones of the victims before he is expected to be handed four consecutive life sentences, plus an additional ten years for a burglary charge.
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