The man who pleaded guilty to stabbing four University of Idaho students to death now wants to take it back, and the forensic expert his own defense team once hired says the former lawyers should answer for it under oath.
Bryan Kohberger, the former criminology student sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole for the November 2022 murders in Moscow, Idaho, has filed a handwritten petition for post-conviction relief from inside the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary. He wants to withdraw the guilty plea he entered in July 2025 and go to trial. His argument: that his attorneys coerced him into the deal, lied about prison conditions, and withheld evidence he says could have cleared him.
The petition lands more than a year after Kohberger stood in an Ada County courtroom in Boise and told Judge Steven Hippler, under oath, that he was pleading guilty because he was guilty. Now he says the opposite, and the people closest to the evidence are pushing back hard from both sides.
Kohberger pleaded guilty on July 2, 2025, to the fatal stabbings of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves. The plea deal spared him from a possible execution by firing squad. On July 23, 2025, he was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole plus an additional 10 years for burglary. His motive was never publicly explained.
During the plea hearing, Judge Hippler asked Kohberger directly: "Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?" Kohberger replied, "Yes."
That exchange now sits at the center of a legal contradiction Kohberger created himself. In his handwritten petition, he alleges his attorneys told him his plea "need not be truthful, despite petitioner's vehement denial of actual guilt." He claims they fed him "elaborate lies" about life on death row and dangled promises of better prison conditions, "immediate contact visits, freedom of movement, employment", none of which materialized.
Kohberger wrote in the petition:
"My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn."
He declined to specify the evidence or improper conduct he alleges beyond broad strokes. Idaho law sets a high bar for withdrawing a guilty plea after sentencing: the defendant must demonstrate "manifest injustice", a standard that requires far more than buyer's remorse.
The physical evidence Kohberger points to as exculpatory is a collection of hair strands found on the bed frame in Xana Kernodle's room, where Ethan Chapin's right hand was photographed by investigators. Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and senior partner at Forensic Solutions LLC who has testified at more than 70 trials, was originally retained by Kohberger's defense team. He traveled to Moscow, Idaho, to examine the state's evidence in person shortly before sentencing, and says the hair was still affixed to the bed frame by dried blood, on the side touching the wall.
Turvey estimated roughly more than two dozen visible strands, between three and four inches long, in a mix of light and dark brown. And he says the FBI's own lab reached a conclusion that matters.
"The FBI lab said Kohberger is excluded. This is not his hair."
Fox News Digital noted it has not independently reviewed the complete laboratory documentation underlying Turvey's statement, and the FBI declined to comment when contacted. The hair evidence was first publicly described in a book titled "Broken Plea" by author Christopher Whitcomb. Kohberger later referenced the book and mentioned the hairs specifically in an interview with the New York Times.
Kohberger's handwritten affidavit describes the evidence as "clumps of hair" found in Chapin's hands, and he alleges his defense team withheld this information from him. His petition frames the hair as part of a broader pattern of what he calls "coercion, disinformation, false promises, and the withholding of exculpatory discovery."
What makes this case unusual is that the forensic expert once hired to help Kohberger's defense is now publicly demanding that the defense attorneys themselves face questioning. Turvey and lead defense attorney Anne Taylor have had a public rift, Taylor previously accused Turvey of violating a confidentiality agreement, and she and her co-counsel said they were "appalled" by his public comments. Turvey denied disclosing confidential information.
Now Turvey says the court needs to hear from Taylor directly. He told Fox News Digital:
"Everybody involved needs to be put under oath, starting with Anne Taylor and her legal team."
He went further:
"This will require Anne Taylor and her co-counsel to answer some very difficult questions. Not just why she attacked her own experts for revealing the possibility of the exculpatory material, but for failing to respond to another expert that is out there claiming he's guilty and that he knew it from the start."
Turvey also argued the court has an independent interest in getting to the bottom of Kohberger's allegations:
"The court should want to know what evidence Bryan Kohberger has regarding these clear accusations of coercion and ineffective assistance."
Taylor did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. Kohberger has never responded to the outlet's letters or emails.
Shanon Gray, the attorney representing the family of victim Kaylee Goncalves, pushed back sharply on the idea that the hair evidence changes anything. Gray told Fox News Digital the defense already had access to that evidence, and that someone was prepared to testify about it.
"If he's talking about the hairs, that's not exculpatory evidence."
"The defense had that evidence. And someone was gonna testify about it."
Gray also identified what he called "the other glaring issue":
"The other glaring issue is that all that proves is that there could've been another person, not that he wasn't present."
That distinction matters legally. Even if the hair belongs to someone other than Kohberger, it does not prove he was not in the room. It does not erase the other evidence prosecutors built their case on: Kohberger's DNA on a Ka-Bar knife sheath found at the crime scene, surveillance footage of a matching white Hyundai Elantra near the house, and cellphone data showing his phone was turned off during the murders.
The petition has split the victims' families. Kaylee Goncalves' mother expressed disappointment but said she was not surprised by the move. Some family members have reportedly welcomed the prospect of a trial, a chance for the full evidence to be aired publicly and for Kohberger's motive to be examined. Others had supported the plea deal precisely to avoid prolonged public proceedings and the toll of a trial.
Kohberger prepared the petition himself from prison. He filed it as a handwritten document, a detail that underscores how far he is operating outside normal legal channels. Under Idaho law, the "manifest injustice" standard he must meet is deliberately steep. Courts do not routinely allow defendants to walk back guilty pleas, especially when the defendant affirmed guilt under oath in open court.
No hearing date for the petition has been publicly announced. The court has not indicated how it will proceed, and several key questions remain unanswered: Were all the hair strands tested, or only some? Whose hair is it, if not Kohberger's? What specific coercion does the petition describe beyond promises about prison conditions? And who is the unnamed expert Turvey references, the one "claiming he's guilty and that he knew it from the start"?
Kohberger told a judge he killed four college students. He accepted a deal that let him keep his life. Now he says none of it was real, and the evidence trail he is leaning on may prove nothing more than that someone else's hair was in the room where his victims died. Courts exist to sort fact from desperation, and this petition will test whether Kohberger has the former or only the latter.
