During the sentencing hearing for Bryan Kohberger, the families of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves, and Madison Mogen shared impactful statements, including a powerful one from Kaylee’s sister, Alivea Goncalves.
On July 23, Bryan Kohberger received a life sentence from a judge for the murder of the four Idaho college students, whose bodies were discovered in their home in 2022.
In the previous month, Kohberger, 30, changed his plea to guilty and agreed to a plea deal. This decision spared him from the possibility of facing the death penalty and also canceled a trial that was scheduled for August.
At the court hearing, family members of Chapin, Kernodle, Gonclaves, and Mogen, along with Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, who were present in the home during the murders, provided their victim statements.
While Kaylee’s father, Steve Gonclaves, delivered a brief yet moving statement, her sister Alivea offered a more intense response.
Alivea began her remarks by stating she was not there ‘to speak in grief’, but rather ‘to speak in truth’. She emphasized: “My sister Kaylee and her best friend Maddie were not yours to take. They were not yours to study, to stalk or to silence.
“They’re everything you could never be: loved, accepted, vibrant, accomplished, brave and powerful. They would’ve been kind to you. If you had approached them in their everyday lives, they would’ve given you directions, thanked you for the compliment. … In a world that rejected you, they would’ve shown mercy.”
Alivea described Kohberger as a ‘coward’ and ‘a delusional, pathetic, hypochondriac loser who thought you were so much smarter than everybody else’.
She added: “Lurking in the shadows made you feel powerful because no one ever paid you any attention in the light.
“You thought you were exceptional all because of a grade on a paper, you thought you were elite because your online IQ test, from 2010, told you that.
“All of that effort to seem important, it is desperate. There is a name for your condition: your inflated ego just didn’t let you see it. Wannabe.”
She asserted that if Kohberger hadn’t ‘attacked the students in their sleep’, ‘Kaylee would’ve kicked your f****** ass.”
Alivea further stated that Kohberger was not ‘special or deep, not mysterious or exceptional’, and emphasized that ‘no one is scared of you today’.
“The truth is, the scariest part about you is how painfully average you turned out to be. The truth is, you’re as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty.
Let me be very clear. Don’t ever try to convince yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name out loud.
“I see through you.”
Dylan Mortensen remarked in her statement that ‘what happened that night changed everything’, adding: “Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason.”
On the other hand, Bethany Funke expressed she ‘carried so much regret and guilt for not knowing what had happened and not calling right away’. She lamented that she had ‘not only lost some of my best friends, but I also lost a sister’.