Surviving roommates in Idaho student murders speak at Kohberger sentencing

The surviving roommates of the four University of Idaho students who were fatally stabbed at their off-campus home by Bryan Kohberger in 2022 shared victim impact statements at his sentencing on Wednesday, both expressing sadness and saying that speaking out is “justice.”

“He is a hollow vessel, something less than human, a body without empathy, without remorse,” Dylan Mortensen said in a Boise courtroom in her first public appearance since the killings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.

“He chose destruction. He chose evil. He feels nothing,” Mortensen added.

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Mortensen, who sat at the prosecution table as she emotionally spoke, did not identify Kohberger, who sat at the defense table wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and flanked by his lawyers. A second roommate, Bethany Funke, was not in court but had a written statement shared by a friend.

“What happened that night changed everything. Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason,” Mortensen said, her voice breaking repeatedly as she spoke. “He didn’t just take their lives. He took the light they carried into every room. He took away how they made everyone feel safe, loved, and full of joy.”

“What he did shattered me in places I didn’t know could break,” Mortensen said. “I was barely 19 when he did this.”

Kohberger, 30, was facing trial next month, but changed his plea to guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and burglary in a winding case that has left unanswered questions, including why he targeted the victims, whom he had no apparent connection with.

Kohberger, a former Ph.D. student in criminology, also waived his right to appeal in exchange for prosecutors agreeing not to seek a death sentence.

In her statement, Mortensen said the night of the murders changed her life, and she suffers from panic attacks, hypervigilance, exhaustion, scans rooms when she enters and flinches at sudden sounds.

Still, Mortensen said, Kohberger “may have shattered parts of me, but I’m still putting myself back together piece by piece.”

She said she had a dream a year ago in which she had to say goodbye to her friends.

“They all kept asking, ‘Why?'” she said. “And all I could say was ‘I can’t tell you, but I have to.'”

“When I woke up, I felt shattered and heartbroken,” she said.

But the dream, she said, helped her to let go.

“He tried to take everything from me: my friends, my safety, my identity, my future,” she said. “He took their lives, but I will continue trying to be like them, to make them proud.”

“Speaking today is to help me find some sort of justice for them,” Mortensen said.

Throughout Mortensen’s statement, Kohberger sat expressionless and listened intently. Hers was among several powerful victim impact statements at the packed sentencing hearing on Wednesday.

As a friend of Funke tearfully read a victim impact statement on her behalf, victims’ relatives and University of Idaho students cried in the courtroom gallery.

In the statement, Funke said that she still speaks to the four victims in her prayers every night, and she will continue to live in their memory.

“I hated and still hate that they are gone, but for some reason, I am still here, and I got to live. I still think about this every day. Why me? Why did I get to live and not them? For the longest time, I could not even look at their families without feeling sick with guilt,” Funke wrote.

Funke mentioned what she loved about each of her friends: Kernodle was “one in a million”; Goncalves was “so full of energy and life”; Mogen was “a ray of sunshine”; and Chapin was “so kind and easy to talk to.” Chapin’s and Kernodle’s relationship showed that a “storybook love and true romances really do exist.”

“Who they were was so beautiful, and they deserve to be remembered in the highest way,” Funke wrote in the statement read in court.