Idaho

Oct. 10 (UPI) — The Qatari Emiri Air Force will base several F-15 fighters and their pilots at a base in Idaho, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced on Friday.

The Qatari fighter jets and pilots will be hosted at the Mountain Home Air Force Base in southwestern Idaho, which Hegseth said will enable training exercises with the U.S. military to make joint operations more effective, according to The Hill.

Hegseth announced the Qatari base agreement while meeting with Qatari Defense Minister Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the Pentagon on Friday.

“The location will host a contingent of Qatari F-15s and pilots to enhance our combined training, increase lethality [and] interoperability,” Hegseth said, as reported by CBS News.

Hegseth and Al Thani signed a letter of acceptance to build the Qatari air force facility at the Idaho base, which also is home to a Singapore Air Force unit.

Qatar will build its base at the Idaho facility, but the dates of the planned construction and when the base would be operational were not announced.

Qatar has been instrumental in helping to secure a cease-fire in Gaza and potentially bring a lasting peace in Gaza and elsewhere in the Middle East, Hegseth added.

Al Thani called the Gaza peace effort a “historic achievement” that shows “what can be accomplished when our nations work together,” Fox News reported.

Hegseth and Al Thani referred to the peace agreement between Israel and Hamas that President Donald Trump announced on Wednesday.

The president credited Qatar, Turkey and Egypt with mediating the negotiations that resulted in what Trump said will ensure peace throughout the Middle East.

While Qatar will have an air force training base in Idaho, the United States likewise has a military base at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, which is the largest U.S. base in the Middle East, according to Grey Dynamics.

The U.S. has used the Qatar base since 2000, hosted coalition forces and served as the U.S. military’s headquarters for its operations in Iraq.

A 2002 agreement formally made the U.S. military the manager of the Al Udeid base in Qatar.

A DEVASTATED family ripped apart by the death of their beloved son in the Idaho murder tragedy was forced to quickly move on from unimaginable heartbreak in less than five months for the sake of their surviving children. 

Ethan Chapin, 20, was a triplet and one of Bryan Kohberger’s four victims in the sickening University of Idaho knife attack in November 2022.

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Brave mom, Stacy, opened up her heart to The U.S. Sun at Crimecon last month about the nightmare of dealing with her beloved, fun-loving son being murdered with the world at his feet. 

She stressed that even though sick Kohberger will rot behind bars for the rest of his life after eventually pleading guilty to the savage killings of Ethan, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves and Xana Kernodle, her family aren’t interested in the reasons why. 

But Stacy, who has thrown herself into vitally important advocacy work in the wake of her son’s shocking death, has revealed there was no time for her and husband Jim to wallow in misery. 

With Ethan’s brother and sister, Maizie and Hunter, who were on campus on that fateful evening, recently completing their own studies, the couple made the decision to somehow come to terms with the tragedy and move on for the sake of the remaining triplets’ future.

She says a heart-heart with Jim over a cup of morning coffee helped them realize that the best way forward was to “just get up and live life.”

They will never forget their beloved son, who they joked was minoring in Bud Light Lime and Taco Bell.

But with his brother and sister needing their parents more than ever to deal with the aftermath of Ethan’s senseless killing, Stacy and Jim vowed to honor his memory by ensuring Maizie and Hunter have their unconditional attention and support. 

“We just decided that you can lose yourself in grief, “ Stacy told The U.S. Sun.

“We had to do that for Ethan’s siblings. They didn’t deserve parents who had potentially gone in the tank or lost themselves. 

“We made a decision on a day in March of 2023 that we couldn’t change the outcome, and we had to still live our life and be great parents to Maizie and Hunter, giving them the best life they deserved.”

BRAVE FACE

The Chapin’s were the only family to abstain from attending Kohberger’s sentencing hearing earlier this summer.

They didn’t want to subject themselves to any more pain. 

Once the deranged Washington State graduate admitted to his heinous crimes, that at least removed the prospect of Ethan’s brother and sister having to take the stand and retrace the moments leading up to the sickening murders in a potential retrial.

Kohberger has never revealed why he cut short the lives of the four students. 

Stacy admits she won’t waste any time wondering why. 

The agony remains and will never leave her. Seeing her children recover from the nightmare and thrive, however, fills her and husband with hope.

“I would be lying if I didn’t say there are still tough moments,” Stacy continued. 

“But even now, every day feels like we’re a little bit closer to our new normal, whatever that looks like. Our kids are doing great. 

“They’ve also persevered in a way that amazes me as a mom. They were there that day. They all went to college together; they spent every second together.

“The fact that they went back to school and graduated and are now looking at their careers. I couldn’t be more proud of them.”

Kohberger avoided the death penalty upon pleading guilty on July 23 and was hit with four consecutive life sentences. 

The full details of Bryan Kohberger’s sentence

On July 23, 2025, Judge Steven Hippler sentenced Bryan Kohberger to the following:

• Count 1: Burglary – 10 years fixed, zero years in determinate. $50,000 fine.
• Count 2: First-degree murder of Madison Mogen: Fixed term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. $50,000 fine and civil penalty of $5,000 payable to the family of the victim.
• Count 3: First-degree murder of Kaylee Goncalves: Fixed term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. $50,000 fine and civil penalty of $5,000 payable to the family of the victim.
• Count 4: First-degree murder of Xana Kernodle: Fixed term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. $50,000 fine and civil penalty of $5,000 payable to the family of the victim.
• Count 5: First-degree murder of Ethan Chapin: Fixed term of life in prison without the possibility of parole. $50,000 fine and civil penalty of $5,000 payable to the family of the victim.

The sentencings will run consecutively to one another.

ALWAYS REMEMBERED

While the Chapins stayed away from court, Ethan was on their mind. Stacy posted an emotional message on social media declaring her late son would “forever” be in their hearts.

His name will also shine on through Ethan’s Smile Foundation, which was established by the family to honor his memory. 

It aims to showcase “his love of life, people and new adventures” by providing scholarships for fellow students to “follow their dreams.”

“Ethan’s love for life was boundless. With a booming laugh and infectious smile, he spread joy to all who were fortunate enough to know him. Ethan was our storyteller, hard worker, and friend-maker,” Stacy and Jim declared on the foundation website.

‍“In the wake of his absence, the foundation was born—a tribute to Ethan’s unwavering passion for life. Our mission is simple yet profound: to carry forward the legacy of Ethan by providing scholarships that enable others to follow their dreams.

‍“In every corner we venture, in every heart we touch, we strive to keep the spirit of Ethan alive, reminding ourselves and others of the adventures and kindness that life has to offer.”

Stacy has also begun to foster a strong relationship with cutting-edge forensics company Othram, who helped accelerate the process of proving Kohberger’s guilt.

The Texas based specialists were able to extract DNA from the tan leather knife sheaf which was found in the room of Goncalves following the killings.

Investigators believe she was the first victim, with Kohberger leaving it behind after her friends came back to check on her wellbeing. 

“Myself and Jim are a team,” Stacy concluded. “To have closure means the world to us.”

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WASHINGTON — For decades, Doug Wilson was a relatively unknown pastor in Idaho, relegated to the fringe of evangelicalism for his radical teachings.

Now he’s an influential voice in the Christian right. That shift in clout was apparent this past week as he took a victory lap through Washington, sharing a stage with Trump administration officials and preaching at his denomination’s new church.

“This is the first time we’ve had connections with as many people in national government as we do now,” Wilson told The Associated Press in August.

Wilson and his acolytes within the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches still teach that empathy can be a sin, that the U.S. is a Christian nation, that giving women the right to vote was a bad idea. But as evangelicalism has aligned more closely with President Trump’s Republican agenda, these teachings have a larger and more receptive audience.

“Whatever he may have been in the past, he’s not fringe now,” said Brian Kaylor, a Baptist minister and Wilson critic who wrote the forthcoming book “The Bible According to Christian Nationalists.”

Wilson’s Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, opened a church blocks from the U.S. Capitol this summer. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, member of a CREC church in Tennessee, attended the opening.

On Saturday, the fledging congregation gathered for its first church conference. It rented a larger space in Virginia for the weekend to accommodate the 350 people who went to hear Wilson, more than doubling their usual Sunday attendance.

Wilson said they started the congregation to serve church members who relocated to work in Trump’s administration.

“We didn’t come to D.C. in order to meet important people,” Wilson told the gathering. “We’re here because we want to create the opportunity for important people and other people to meet with God.”

Making the case for Christian nationalism

At the National Conservatism Conference days earlier, Wilson was a featured speaker along with members of Congress and Trump’s Cabinet, including border czar Tom Homan, budget director Russell Vought and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri. Two more CREC ministers were on the program to give an opening prayer and speak on a panel.

From the lectern in his affable baritone, Wilson gave a full-throated endorsement of Christian nationalism.

“America was deeply Christian and Protestant at the founding,” he said, while admitting numerous “credentialed” historians dispute this notion, “which should tell you something about our credentialing system.”

He talked to a sympathetic crowd, filled with conservatives who support a populist, nationalist and largely Christian America. Like Wilson, their movement has momentum, thanks to Trump’s return to the White House.

Wilson’s vision for a renewed Christian America calls for the end of same-sex marriage, abortion and Pride parades. He advocates restricting pornography and immigration.

“It is not xenophobic to object to the immigration policies of those who want to turn the Michigan-Ohio border into something that resembles the India-Pakistan border,” he said onstage.

He questioned, in particular, Muslims’ ability to assimilate: “There’s only so much white sand you can put in the sugar bowl before it isn’t the sugar bowl anymore.”

Downplaying the horrors of slavery

Wilson and the CREC, which he co-founded, ascribe to a strict version of Reformed theology — rooted in the tradition of 16th-century Protestant reformer John Calvin — that puts a heavy emphasis on an all-powerful God with dominion over all of society.

Since the 1970s, Wilson’s ministry and influence have grown to include the Association of Christian Classical Schools and New Saint Andrew’s College in Moscow, Idaho. Wilson is a prolific writer and content creator, and he and his ministry have a robust media presence, including a publishing arm, Canon Press.

His extensive catalog of books and blog posts provides plenty of fodder for his critics. In one infamous example, he co-authored a 1996 book that downplayed the horrors of slavery, an effort not dissimilar from recent Trump administration moves to revise museum exhibits.

Today Wilson says he’d make some points more clearly in “Southern Slavery as It Was.” While he condemns slavery, he still contends some slave owners and enslaved people “had a good relationship with one another.”

“There was horrific maltreatment on the one hand, and then there are other stories that are right out of Disney’s ‘Song of the South,’” Wilson told the AP, referring to the 1946 film that hasn’t been released in decades because it paints a sunny picture of plantation life with racist stereotypes.

Worries that patriarchy can fuel abuse

Wilson’s hard-line theology and happy-warrior ethos have attracted a cadre of young, internet-savvy men to his ministry. They help make slickly produced hype videos to circulate online, like one in which Wilson uses a flamethrower to torch cardboard cutouts of Disney princesses.

CREC leaders like to use humor to poke fun at their reputation.

“We want our wives to be barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen making sourdough,” joked Joe Rigney, one of Wilson’s Idaho pastors, at the church conference.

“Of course, this is a gross slander,” Rigney said. “We are more than happy for our wives to wear shoes while they make the sourdough.”

CREC practices complementarianism — the patriarchal idea that men and women have different God-given roles. Women within CREC churches cannot hold church leadership positions, and married women are to submit to their husbands.

Christ Church allows only heads of households, usually men, to vote in church elections. Though Wilson said his wife and daughters vote in nonchurch elections, he would prefer the United States follow his congregation’s example with household voting.

To the uproar of critics, Wilson has argued sex requires male authority and female submission, a point he acknowledges is “offensive to all egalitarians.”

“The sexual act cannot be made into an egalitarian pleasuring party,” he writes in “Fidelity.” “A man penetrates, conquers, colonizes, plants. A woman receives, surrenders, accepts.”

Former CREC members have accused Wilson and the denomination of fostering a theological environment ripe for patriarchal abuse of women and children.

“I’ve seen how much this hurts people,” said journalist Sarah Stankorb, who documented allegations of mishandled abuse within CREC for Vice and in her 2023 book “Disobedient Women.”

In her 2024 memoir “A Well-Trained Wife,” Tia Levings, a former CREC member, alleges Wilson’s writings on marriage and patriarchy provided a theological justification for her ex-husband’s violence toward her.

“I call it church-sanctioned domestic abuse,” Levings told the AP.

Wilson denies condoning abuse or ever sanctioning physical discipline of wives.

“Our teaching has to be taken as a whole,” he said, emphasizing wives should submit but husbands must love them in a Christ-like way.

“Beating their wives or spanking their wives is a call-the-cops situation,” he told reporters Saturday after his church conference concluded.

CREC has more than 150 churches in the United States and abroad. Wilson said its goal is to have thousands of churches, so most Americans can be within driving distance of one.

Wilson often says his movement is playing the long game, that its efforts won’t come to fruition for two centuries.

“Doug loves to play humble,” Levings said, “that his vision is going to take 250 years to manifest. That’s actually not the case when we look at the results of what his ministry has done.”

After all, it took him only a few decades to get this close to the White House.

Stanley writes for the Associated Press.

Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death in their home in Moscow, Idaho, in 2022, with roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke surviving

Friends of the two University of Idaho students who survived the brutal stabbing of four roommates in 2022 have revealed why the pair didn’t call 911 for several hours after the massacre.

The revelations come in One Night in Idaho, a new Prime Video docuseries that premiered on July 11. The show includes interviews with relatives and friends of the victims – Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – as well as insight into the surviving roommates’ state of mind in the hours following the killings.

Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, who lived in the Moscow, Idaho, off-campus house where the four students were murdered, were home at the time but were unharmed. They placed the 911 call at 11:58am on November 13, 2022 – roughly eight hours after the attack, which investigators believe happened between 4am and 4.20am.

READ MORE: True Crime fans told to watch Prime Video’s new ‘gut wrenching’ documentary

Dylan later told police she had opened her bedroom door around 4am after hearing noises and saw a masked man with bushy eyebrows walking toward a sliding glass door before locking herself in her room, according to a probable cause affidavit.

Speaking in the docuseries, friends Hunter Johnson, Emily Alandt and Josie Lauteren shared how Dylan and Bethany contacted them that morning asking for help. “She was like, ‘Something weird happened last night. I don’t really know if I was dreaming or not, but I’m really scared. Can you come check out the house?’” Emily recalled.

Dylan told her she had been in the basement with Bethany and had tried calling Xana several times but received no response. Emily said she didn’t initially think the request was serious. “I was like, ‘Ha, ha, sure. Should I bring my pepper spray?’ Not thinking anything of it,” she said.

Josie explained that Dylan had previously called friends for support after hearing strange noises in the house. “She’s called us before and been like, ‘Oh, I’m scared. Can you bring your boyfriends over?’ But it was never anything serious… because it’s Moscow.”

When Emily, Josie and Hunter arrived at the house, they quickly realised something was terribly wrong. “Dylan and Bethany had exited the house. They looked frightened, just kind of like, hands on their mouth, like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’” Emily said.

“As soon as I stepped in the house, I was like, ‘Oh, something is so not right.’ Like, you could feel it almost,” Josie added. Hunter, who entered the home first, urged them to call police without revealing what he actually saw when entering Xana and Ethan’s bedroom.

“Hunter had enough courage to tell them to call the police for not a real reason,” Alandt said. “He worded it very nicely. He said, ‘Tell them there’s an unconscious person.’ Hunter saved all of us extreme trauma by not letting us know anything.”

Dylan made the 911 call, but was too distraught to speak. “I had to take the phone from her because she was so completely hysterical,” Josie said. “They’re like, ‘What’s the address, what’s the address?’ and I was like, ‘1122 King Road.’”

Even then, Josie said she believed paramedics might revive the victims. “I mean, even when [Hunter] said they had no pulse, I still was like, ‘Oh, the paramedics are gonna come and revive them.’”

In the series, the friends say Dylan and Bethany’s delay in calling 911, and hazy memory, was likely caused by shock and confusion. “It wasn’t until the morning that [Dylan] realised, holy s***, that couldn’t have been a dream,” Emily said.

“She just called and said, ‘Something weird happened, I thought it was a dream, I’m not quite sure anymore. I tried to call everybody to wake them up and no one’s answering.’”

Bryan Kohberger was arrested nearly six weeks after the murders and charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary. On July 2, Kohberger pleaded guilty to all charges. He is scheduled to be sentenced on July 23 and faces life in prison.

Dylan and Bethany did not take part in the documentary and have not commented publicly about the new revelations. A psychologist in the docuseries said it’s likely Dylan – who came face to face with the killer – acted in a “trauma response”.

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It’s the biggest question that’s been asked over and over again about the night of Nov. 13, 2022, when four University of Idaho students — Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves — were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus house in the college town of Moscow, Idaho: Why?

With no apparent motive or clue as to who could have committed such a heinous crime, Moscow became the epicenter of an intense investigation and a social media storm that Prime Video’s “One Night in Idaho: The College Murders” delves into over four episodes dropping on Friday.

Liz Garbus (“Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer”) and Matthew Galkin (“Murder in the Bayou”) share directing and executive producing duties on the docuseries, which is based on reporting by author James Patterson and investigative journalist Vicky Ward, and they knew early on what angle their production would take. “We decided that a very interesting and unexplored angle was to see what it was like inside the eye of the hurricane,” Galkin says. “So, for the people, the family members, the friends of the victims that had not ever spoken to the media, that was where we chose to focus our energies as far as access is concerned.”

That included exclusive interviews with Stacy and Jim Chapin, parents of 20-year-old Ethan, and Karen and Scott Laramie, parents of 21-year-old Mogen, who have never talked about the murders — despite numerous projects on the subject — and how it ripped apart not only the town of Moscow but their respective families.

Garbus and Galkin talked with The Times about how they gained the families’ trust, how social media affected the case, and the recent twists and turns that happened just before the series was set to air. For one, on July 2, primary suspect Bryan Kohberger, a former criminal justice doctoral student who was arrested six weeks after the murders, entered a plea agreement with a full confession of the murders — done to avoid the death penalty — just weeks before his trial was set to begin.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What were the origins of your involvement in the production and with crime novelist James Patterson?

Matthew Galkin: This was a story that I started tracking, obviously, when it happened, which was mid-November of 2022, and I didn’t make any outreach to any key people within the story, any of the families, until it was almost spring of 2023. We were tracking it to see how it developed once they made an arrest and once we could see the contours of the story and that things like social media played a major part in the energy created around this story.

Liz Garbus: Concurrently, as Matthew was laying the foundation for this by reaching out and trying to see where the families were on this story, I got outreach from James Patterson’s company about their interest in collaborating on a project around this case. That was quite fortuitous, and we laid some of those building blocks together and shared access and research. The film was made by its filmmakers, and the book [“The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy” by Patterson and Ward, which is being released on July 14] was reported by its writers, so they were operating on parallel tracks. We were able to support and help each other, but, truly, Matthew’s original outreach to the Chapin family is what laid the building blocks for this show and is really the bedrock of it.

Matthew Galkin, co-director of Prime Video’s “One Night in Idaho: The College Murders.”

(Matthew Galkin)

How was the gag order for law enforcement and other key people close to the case a challenge in telling your story?

Galkin: In this particular story, there was a probable cause affidavit that was filed in early January of ’23, which really laid out, up to that point, what investigative details existed in order to bring law enforcement toward the suspect and ultimately make the arrest. So we were able, at the very least, to tell that story through the details we learned through the probable cause affidavit.

It’s always a challenge if you don’t have all of the participating members of a story to try to tell the complete story. But in my past work, we tended to pick projects that are victim-centric more than law enforcement-centric. I’ve had experience telling stories through that perspective, so in a lot of ways, the limited access that we had actually lined up with the story we were trying to tell anyway.

Garbus: Even on “Gone Girls,” which was a show I made recently for Netflix, those murders were 10, 20, 30 years old. There were no gag orders, but there were certain people who didn’t want to talk for their own reasons, so sometimes, as documentary filmmakers, you have to pick a lane. What are you bringing to the story? What point of view can you fully express? And we clearly had that lane here.

And when you have that lane so clear early on, does that actually help get people to talk to you, especially those who hadn’t spoken to anyone before?

Galkin: I flew out to Washington state, and the first contact I made was to Jim and Stacy Chapin, who are the parents of Ethan, Hunter and Maizie. I convinced them to let me take them to lunch and just talk through what our vision of how to tell the story would be. I was probably the 50th in line to try to make a documentary project about it. They’ve been inundated at that point, and it was probably five or six months of journalists, documentary filmmakers [and] podcasters just coming out of the woodwork.

I know for a fact they looked at Liz’s track record, they looked at my track record, and I think they felt comfortable in the fact that if we were going to do crime stories, they were not usually from the killer’s point of view or even from law enforcement point of view. It’s usually from family or victim, so I think that gave them some comfort to know that they would have real input in how Ethan’s story was told. They liked the idea of picking one project to really go deep on and be able to help put Ethan’s narrative out to the world through their own voice, as opposed to other people who didn’t know Ethan telling it.

Maizie and Hunter Chapin were Ethan’s siblings. Both were interviewed for the documentary along with their parents. (Courtesy of Prime Video)

Did you know early on that social media would play such a big part in the case?

Galkin: It was actually the two main topics of conversation. My first conversation with the Chapins was our vision of how we were going to tell the story and also their experience dealing with the insane noise and pressures of social media sleuths and people reaching out, going into their DMs, creating theories about their children, about them, about their children’s friends — just the insanity. Obviously, there have been crime stories that deal with social media, but I have never experienced something of this magnitude with this much social media attention.

Garbus: Social media has become much of the atmosphere in the telling and digestion of crimes in the American public’s imagination of them. In some cases, it can be helpful, like the case of the Long Island serial killer, where the victims were not commanding national interest, and social media and advocates can play a huge role. Then there are other times in which the voracious appetites can overtake the story.

In your series, you don’t spend a lot of time dissecting all the gruesome details of the murders. Was that due to the law enforcement gag order?

Galkin: Maybe a little, but it was also a choice of ours. There are many other projects, documentary series or news specials about this case that go into all of the really horrific details of what happened in that house. It was a conversation from the beginning of how do we present this so it’s factual. We’re not necessarily avoiding things, but we didn’t feel like there was a reason to linger on those details because there were other aspects of the story that were of more interest to us.

Garbus: When you’re with these families and you experience the grief and trauma through them, that’s kind of what you need to know. The ways in which the ripple effect of the trauma has affected this entire friend group and all of these young people, that speaks volumes to what happened that day and we wanted to experience it through them.

Given the recent developments with Kohberger’s plea deal, did you change the tag at the end of your show?

Garbus: Thanks to some great postproduction supervisors and assistants, we will be updating the end card to have viewers be up to date with the plea.

Matthew Galkin and director of photography Jeff Hutchens on set of the re-created King Road house, where the murders occurred, in “One Night in Idaho: The College Murders.”

(Matthew Galkin)

In the latter half of the series, there’s talk about Kohberger and the notion of him being an incel, or involuntary celibate [where a person, usually male, is frustrated by a lack of sexual experiences]. How did that help understand a potential motive in the murders?

Garbus: That was something that was very interesting to us right at the beginning: Why were these young women targeted? We may never know with this plea deal now and it may remain a mystery, but there were signs, for sure, about involvement in that culture for us to explore that angle. As families watch this and they’re sitting with their sons and wondering what they might be doing online, this is the kind of conversation that people need to be having about the media, the infiltration of messages that young men receive today and it’s only getting more extreme in this moment.

Was four episodes always the amount to tell this story? Obviously, the case is still unfolding with Kohberger’s plea agreement. Could a sequel happen?

Galkin: Four episodes felt like the right amount of space to tell the story that we told. Obviously, there are still chapters unfolding, and if there is an appetite to continue to tell this story with our subjects and all of our partners, then certainly I think we’d be open to doing that. But we feel like we told a complete story here … every episode offers a pivot as to the perspectives that we’re seeing this case through, and every episode has a different lens.

Garbus: Clearly, our filmmaking stops at a certain point. You’ve had this plea deal, and the gag order will be lifted, so it is a capsule of time of what the families knew and understood since this tragedy happened up until a couple of months ago. We will see over the next weeks and months how much more we will learn, but it is a fragment of experience very much rooted in time.

Since there is so much interest in this case with many podcasts, documentaries and news stories out there, do you worry about that at all?

Garbus: In some ways you don’t think about it, but at the same time, when you’re setting off to make a project like this, you want to make sure you are saying something unique. We’re going to spend X number of years of our lives on this, and you want to make sure you’re adding something new to the discourse on the case. And, of course, it matters to us that this is the place where the Chapins and the Laramies will tell their story and that we are able to take care of it for them and the friends in the way that we intended. It matters just in that you want to make sure you have a lane that’s needed in the discourse and I think in this case we felt very clearly that we did.

Galkin: We knew from Day 1, given the access that we had, that our series would be unique to anything else on the market, because these are people that have never told their story before, and the way we were planning on doing it, which was truly from the inside, without any sort of outsider voices. So that was not an anxiety for us.

The doctoral student has admitted to breaking into the rental home and killing four University of Idaho students.

A former criminology doctoral student has pleaded guilty to murdering four roommates in an Idaho college town in 2022.

Bryan Kohberger, 30, admitted to the killings under a plea agreement that takes the death penalty off the table. The case drew national attention in the United States for its brutality and the shock it caused in a community where murders are relatively rare.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Kohberger answered a series of questions from Judge Steven Hippler.

“Did you, on November 13, 2022, enter the residence at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, with the intent to commit the felony crime of murder?” the judge asked.

“Yes,” Kohberger replied.

“Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?” the judge then inquired.

“Yes,” Kohberger said.

Kohberger had previously pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder and burglary charges. On Wednesday, however, he confirmed to the court that he had broken into a rental home where four University of Idaho students were staying.

Passing through a sliding door in the kitchen, Kohberger then killed the four friends, who appear to have no prior connection to him. Prosecutors did not disclose a motive for the slayings.

The plea agreement, as outlined by Hippler, called for Kohberger to be sentenced to four consecutive life terms in prison and to waive his rights to appeal or seek reconsideration of the sentence.

Formal sentencing is tentatively set for July 23.

The killings initially baffled law enforcement and unnerved the rural college town of Moscow, which hadn’t seen a murder in five years.

The victims were identified as Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen.

Mogen and Goncalves hailed from Idaho, while Kernodle was from the southern state of Arizona. Her boyfriend, Chapin, was from Washington state. All four of the victims were either 20 or 21 at the time of their deaths.

Autopsies showed each was stabbed multiple times, including some defensive injuries.

Families react as Kohberger faces life sentence

The murders occurred during the early morning hours in an off-campus house the three women shared.

Kernodle and Chapin had attended a party the night before, while best friends Mogen and Goncalves had visited a local bar and food truck. All four are believed to have returned to the house before 2am local time (9:00 GMT). Their bodies were found hours later that morning.

Two other women in the house at the time survived unharmed.

According to prosecutors, a surviving roommate told investigators she heard someone crying in one of the victims’ bedrooms on the night of the murders and opened her door to see a man, clad in black, walk past her and out of the house.

Authorities said they linked Kohberger to the murders using DNA evidence, cellphone data and video footage. He was arrested weeks after the killings in Pennsylvania, where he was visiting family, and was returned to Idaho to face charges.

In a statement through a lawyer, Goncalves’s family criticised the plea agreement as mishandled: a “secretive deal and a hurried effort to close the case without any input from the victims’ families”.

On Wednesday, prior to the hearing, Steve Goncalves, father of victim Kaylee, was asked whether he believed the four life sentences provided justice in the case.

He replied, “No, of course not. It’s daycare. Prison is daycare.”

But a statement read by a lawyer representing Mogen’s family members said they “support the plea agreement 100 percent”, adding that the outcome brought them closure.

Two firefighters were killed by gunfire while responding to a brush fire in Coeur d’Alene, a lakeside town in the northwestern US state of Idaho.

The local sheriff’s office reported that a shelter-in-place order was lifted on Sunday night after a tactical team found the body of a man with a firearm nearby. The dead man is believed to be the suspect.

Officials did not disclose his identity or specify the type of weapon recovered.

What happened in Idaho, and when?

Officials said crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain in the city at about 1:22pm (20:22 GMT), and gunshots were reported about a half hour later at 2pm (21:00 GMT).

Kootenai County Sheriff Robert Norris said the shooter used high-powered sporting rifles to open rapid fire on first responders.

Two firefighters were killed and, according to authorities, a third one came out of surgery and is in a stable condition but “fighting for his life”.

Norris told reporters on Sunday that authorities believe the suspect intentionally started the fire as “an ambush”.

“We do believe he started it and it was totally intentional what he did,” he added.

However, officials have not spelled out any possible motives for why the suspect might have wanted to ambush the firefighters.

According to reports, more than 300 law enforcement officers and FBI agents responded to the emergency, while police snipers searched the area from helicopters.

Video footage from the area showed smoke rising from forested hillsides, with multiple ambulances and emergency vehicles seen arriving at a local hospital.

Multiple heroic firefighters were attacked today while responding to a fire in North Idaho. This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters. I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more. Teresa and I are heartbroken.

As this…

— Brad Little (@GovernorLittle) June 29, 2025

Where exactly did it happen?

The Canfield Mountain area is on the eastern outskirts of Coeur d’Alene. It is a popular 24‑acre (10-hectare) natural space featuring hiking and mountain‑biking trails.

Coeur d’Alene, a city of about 55,000 people, is located roughly 260 miles (420 km) east of Seattle.

The mountain is densely covered with trees and thick brush, and its network of trails extends into a national forest.

Who was the shooter?

Based on preliminary evidence, the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office believes there was only one shooter involved in the attack. Initially, authorities had suspected there might be as many as four.

Authorities located the suspect after detecting mobile phone activity in the area and tracing the signal.

There, they discovered a man who appeared to be deceased with a weapon found nearby. They did not say how the man died, or what firearm was discovered. Norris said that authorities believe the dead man was the shooter. However, the police have not yet revealed his identity.

Police said a man called 911 to report the fire but said that it was unclear if the caller was the gunman.

Update: pic.twitter.com/S60CnpFsyX

— Secretary Brooke Rollins (@SecRollins) June 30, 2025

What do we know about the victims?

Kootenai County officials said they would not release the names of the two firefighters who died.

“Their families will need support,” Sheriff Norris said.

“This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” Idaho Governor Brad Little wrote on Facebook.

Officials said the bodies would be transported in a procession to nearby Spokane, Washington, accompanied by a convoy of official vehicles. One of the firefighters was working with the Coeur d’Alene Fire Department; the other served with Kootenai County Fire and Rescue.

Is the area now safe? Was the fire controlled?

The shelter-in-place notice was lifted at 03:50 GMT on Monday.

The wildfire on Canfield Mountain scorched approximately 20 acres (81 hectares), Norris said on Sunday, but no structures were lost in the fire, authorities confirmed.

At 03:00  GMT, authorities confirmed that the fire was still burning.

Kootenai County Sheriff says law enforcement officials are taking sniper fire as they hunt for the killer.

At least two people have been killed in the United States after a gunman shot at firefighters responding to a blaze in the state of Idaho, according to officials.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office said that crews responded to a fire at Canfield Mountain, just north of the city of Coeur d’Alene, at about 1:30pm (19:30 GMT) on Sunday, and gunshots were reported about a half hour later.

Sheriff Bob Norris said officials believe the two people killed were fire personnel. He did not know if anyone else was shot.

The sheriff said it was not immediately clear if there was one gunman or more, and urged the public to stay clear of the area.

“We don’t know how many suspects are up there, and we don’t know how many casualties there are,” Norris told reporters. “We are actively taking sniper fire as we speak.”

The Canfield Mountain, an area popular with hikers, is located near Coeur d’Alene, a city of 57,000 people about 260 miles (420 km) east of Seattle in Washington state.

Norris said the shooter or shooters were using high-powered sporting rifles to fire rapidly at first responders, and that the perpetrators “are not, at this time, showing any evidence of wanting to surrender”.

The sheriff said it appeared the attacker was hiding in the rugged terrain and using a high-powered rifle. He said he has instructed deputies to fire back.

“If these individuals are not neutralised quickly, this is going to be likely a multi-day operation,” he added.

Idaho Governor Brad Little said “multiple” firefighters were attacked.

“This is a heinous direct assault on our brave firefighters,” he said on X. “I ask all Idahoans to pray for them and their families as we wait to learn more.”

Little did not give further details on any casualties or how the incident unfolded.

“As this situation is still developing, please stay clear from the area to allow law enforcement and firefighters to do their jobs,” Little added.

Law enforcement is investigating whether the fire could have been intentionally set to lure first responders to the scene, Kootenai County Sheriff’s Lieutenant Jeff Howard told ABC News.

The broadcaster reported that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been briefed on the shooting.

The FBI said it has sent technical teams and tactical support to the scene.

“It remains an active, and very dangerous scene,” the agency’s deputy director, Dan Bongino, wrote in a post on X.

Gun ownership is widespread in the US, where the country’s Constitution protects the rights of Americans to “keep and bear arms”.

Deaths related to gun violence are common. At least 17,927 people were murdered by a gun in 2023 in the US, according to the most recent available data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.