Featured Image Credit: Getty Images/Pool
Topics: News, US News, Bryan Kohberger, Crime
Gerrard Kaonga
Bryan Kohberger's sentencing hearing heard various statements from the families of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves, and Madison Mogen, including a particularly fiery one from Alivea Goncalves.
Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison by a judge on July 23 for the murders of the four Idaho college students, who were found dead at their residence in 2022.
Last month, Kohberger, 30, changed his plea to guilty and accepted a plea deal, which allowed him to avoid the possibility of ending up on death row, as well as a scheduled August trial.
At the hearing, the families of Chapin, Kernodle, Gonclaves, and Mogen, as well as Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, who were also in the home at the time of the murders, gave their victim statements to the court.
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Kaylee's father, Steve Gonclaves, gave a brief but heartbreaking statement, however, her sister, Alivea, was more brutal in hers.
She began her statement by saying she wasn't here to 'to speak in grief', but 'to speak in truth', adding: “My sister Kaylee and her best friend Maddie were not yours to take. They were not yours to study, to stalk or to silence.
"They're everything you could never be: loved, accepted, vibrant, accomplished, brave and powerful. They would've been kind to you. If you had approached them in their everyday lives, they would've given you directions, thanked you for the compliment. ... In a world that rejected you, they would've shown mercy."
Alivea went on to call Kohberger a 'coward' and 'a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were so much smarter than everybody else'.
She continued: “Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because no one ever paid you any attention in the light.
“You thought you were exceptional all because of a grade on a paper, you thought you were elite because your online IQ test, from 2010, told you that.
“All of that effort to seem important, it is desperate. There is a name for your condition thought, your inflated ego just didn’t let you see it. Wannabe.”
She said that if Kohberger hadn’t 'attacked the students in their sleep', ‘Kaylee would’ve kicked your f****** ass.”
Adding that Kohberger wasn't 'special or deep, not mysterious or exceptional', Alivea said that 'no one is scared of you today'.
"The truth is, the scariest part about you is how painfully average you turned out to be. The truth is, you're as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty.
Let me be very clear. Don’t ever try to convince yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name out loud.
"I see through you."
Mortensen said in her statement that 'what happened that night changed everything', adding: "Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason."
Meanwhile, Funke said she 'carried so much regret and guilt for not knowing what had happened and not calling right away', as she continued to say that she'd 'not only lost some of my best friends, but I also lost a sister'.