US3 min(s) read
Published 09:31 03 Jun 2026 GMT
Coming face-to-face with your daughter’s killer is not something many parents would willingly do, but the mother of a murdered college student is desperate to find out why the heinous crime was committed.
Kristi Goncalves is searching for answers to why Bryan Kohberger murdered her daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, and her three friends, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, were brutally murdered inside their college home in Idaho four years ago.
It was not just the grotesque nature of the knife attacks that shocked the nation about the 2022 killings, but also the fact that Kohberger had no connection to any of the students and no clear motive has ever been proven.
As the 31-year-old struck a plea deal that spared him the death penalty and avoided a trial, the young victim’s families never had the chance to hear Kohberger explain himself in front of a judge or jury.
While the former criminology PhD student is serving life behind bars in Idaho's maximum-security prison in Kuna, Kristi Goncalves has revealed that she “absolutely” wants to meet her daughter’s killer.
In a recent video interview with the Daily Mail, she even revealed why and what her first words to him would be.
Looking directly at the camera, as if to address the mass murderer directly, Goncalves said, “I would ask him why”.
“Please, please, please. Do you not think that our family has been through enough?” she begged.
Explaining the monstrous and unsurvivable injuries Kohberger inflicted on her daughter, the grief-stricken mother said, “Do you not think what you did to our daughter - when we found out that you stabbed her 38 times with a seven-inch KaBar military model knife, 24 times to her face, to her head, 11 times to her chest and neck, and three defensive wounds as she sat up in that bed, and she fought for her life?
“And you know this because you were there. You broke bones in her face. You knocked her teeth out, you broke her nose, her ocular bones were broken. Can you just tell me why?”
As Goncalves became increasingly upset, she pleaded, “I'm a mother, and you have a mother, too. Can you please just tell me why?”
Kaylee’s father, Steve Goncalves, simply added in a subdued tone, “That's all you would have to do. Explain to us how that happened and what other weapon you used.”
This gut-wrenching plea to the killer comes less than a year after Kohberger finally admitted he was guilty of the four shocking murders in a court of law.
However, the judge’s decision to reach a plea deal, allowing the murderer to swerve the death penalty, was shunned by the Goncalves family because it meant Kohberger was not required to reveal his motivation.
