Bryan Kohberger's mom sent him a disturbing text days after he brutally killed four Idaho students.
In November 2022, four University of Idaho students - Xana Kernodle, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20 - were brutally murdered in their off-campus home in Moscow.
The shocking killings gripped the nation, sparking a months-long investigation that ended with the arrest of Kohberger, a criminology student.
The 29-year-old pleaded guilty earlier this summer, avoiding a possible death sentence but receiving four consecutive life sentences without parole.
Families of the victims confronted Kohberger in court, including Ben Mogen, Maddie’s father, who said: “Maddie was my only child that I ever had.
"It was just the only great thing I ever really did, and the only thing I was really ever proud of.”
“She did encourage me to - not just to do my best - but to live on,” he continued.
“I went through a lot of issues with addiction and with substance abuse."
"When I wasn’t wanting to live anymore, she was what would keep me from just not caring anymore and knowing that she was out there and that she was just such a beautiful person,” Mogen added, per E! News.
While Kohberger showed little visible emotion at sentencing, his mother, Maryann, broke down sobbing in the courtroom.
New forensic revelations suggest her connection to the case went deeper than many realized.
According to digital forensic experts Jared and Heather Barnhart of Cellebrite, who examined Kohberger’s phone and hard drive, just four days after the murders, Maryann sent her son a chilling message.
On November 17, Jared explained on NewsNation's Banfield: “He had more mother interaction that day than normal, which was a lot.
"He was on the phone with her for hours that day.”
That evening, she texted him a link to a news story about victim Xana. “The link was to a news article basically describing how Xana had bruises on her body and how she had put up such a fight,” Jared said.
“There was no response, no text back.”
Kohberger and his mother were “actually speaking on the phone” about the murders that night, Jared added, but “the next morning, there’s just kind of nothing.”
Instead, Maryann abruptly shifted to an unrelated text about “a girl who was very sweet to the older lady customers” at a coffee shop.
The Barnharts’ investigation also uncovered an alarming digital trail on Kohberger’s devices.
His internet history revealed repeated searches for terms like “raped,” “forced,” “sleeping,” “passed out,” and “voyeur.”
Jared said, “The easiest way to say it is that all of his terms were consistently around nonconsensual sex acts,” per Daily Mail.
Although prosecutors say he did not sexually assault his victims, Kaylee Goncalves’ father has long believed his daughter’s killer was driven by “weird sexual fetishes."
Authorities have suggested Kohberger may have abandoned a planned assault when confronted with unexpected resistance inside the house.
Just three days after the murders, Kohberger attempted to erase incriminating evidence by running data-wiping software on his laptop.
Despite his efforts, investigators recovered autofill records, selfies, including one shirtless and flexing, and a photo taken just hours after the killings in which he gave a thumbs-up gesture.
“He did his best to leave zero digital footprint. He did not want a digital forensic trail available at all,” Heather explained.
Prosecutors also revealed he had saved a PDF about Danny Rolling - the so-called “Gainesville Ripper” who murdered five students in Florida in 1990 using a Ka-Bar, the same type of knife believed to have been used in the Idaho attacks.
The horrific findings reinforced what investigators and victims’ families already feared: that Kohberger’s violent obsessions foreshadowed the senseless murders that ended four young lives.