Defense Expert Urges Bringing Back the Death Penalty Amid Bryan Kohberger Reneging Guilty Plea

Bryan Kohberger, who admitted to brutally murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022, could face the death penalty now that he has taken back his guilty plea.

“Bring back the death penalty,” Sy Ray — who worked as an expert witness for Kohberger’s defense team — said on the Thursday, July 30, episode of Brian Entin Investigates. “I am all for this.”

Ray, who said that the case going back to trial “could happen,” also explained why he believes Kohberger is truly responsible for the deaths of the college students — and said that Kohberger may have been in their off-campus home before the killings.

“There is no alternative theory in my head at this point: he’s been in the house before,” Ray claimed.

“I think there’s absolutely no doubt he was familiar with the basic layout of the house,” Ray, who cites Kohberger’s cell phone data, said. “I’m not saying he was intimately familiar with the entire house, but he had a working knowledge of the house.”

Host Brian Entin asked, “Based on the data you saw, the latitude/longitude for Bryan Kohberger’s Samsung was in the living room?”

While Ray admitted that accuracy issues are always possible, he said that he believes Kohberger was previously at or around 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, where Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death.

Kohberger, 31, pleaded guilty to the murders to avoid the death penalty.

“If you look at those precise measurements, there’s probably five that land directly on what would be the living room of the house,” Ray claimed on the podcast.

In the lengthy episode, Ray also said that Kohberger “could have been at that house at certain times and not necessarily even been noticed.”

Ray also theorized that Mogen was Kohberger’s “target.”

“There’s a lot more collisions between Bryan’s phone and Maddie’s phone than any of the other victims,” Ray claimed. “And what I’m saying about collision is they start to occupy the same space at the same time.”

“I believe he’s a serial killer,” Ray stated. “I believe that was the intent here — he was going to start his serial killer spree, if you will.”

In the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, the four students were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus Moscow apartment.

As Globe previously reported, Kohberger told the New York Times last week that he has filed a petition to withdraw his guilty plea.

Kohberger said in a written statement provided via his family that he is innocent. “Justice was not served,” he said, adding that “unanswered questions seem to multiply with each piece of discovery unsealed, and the public demands the truth.”

“Circumnavigated by a broken plea, the trial never provided the public the clarity conducive to closure, and justice shall remain abjectly miscarried unless that plea is withdrawn,” he added. “I hereby declare my intention to enter a not guilty plea, and welcome the State the opportunity to prove their case at trial, as well as to, again, file for the death penalty.”

Kohberger — who is behind bars at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution — is currently serving four life sentences without parole.