Defense Expert Decides the Guy He Was Hired to Help Should Probably Fry Anyway

 Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. (Instagram @xanakernodle / @maddiemogen / @kayleegoncalves)

Every now and then a story comes along that reminds us reality has a better sense of humor than Hollywood. Bryan Kohberger's former defense expert has now landed on a position that probably wasn't in the original job description: "Yeah, the guy's guilty, give him the death penalty."

That's got to make for one awkward invoice.

Sy Ray, a former Arizona homicide investigator turned digital forensics expert, was hired by Kohberger's defense team before the admitted killer pleaded guilty to avoid facing execution for the brutal murders of four University of Idaho students: Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin.

Now, with Kohberger serving four consecutive life sentences without parole and trying to wriggle out of his guilty plea for yet another trip through the legal system, Ray says he'd be perfectly happy if that meant putting the death penalty back on the table.

"Bring back the death penalty," Ray told journalist Brian Entin on a recent podcast. "I am all for this."

Well, that's one way to lose repeat business.

Ray says investigators overlooked key digital evidence that, in his view, makes the case against Kohberger even stronger than what prosecutors presented. According to him, cellphone geolocation data suggests Kohberger was not merely lurking around the neighborhood, but may have actually been inside the King Road house before the murders.

"I 100% believe that the offender, who is Bryan Kohberger — there’s no alternative theory in my head at this point," Ray said. "I 100% believe he’s been in the house before."

Human excrement

If true, that's a bombshell. It is also where things start getting messy.

Ray told Entin that several location "hits" landed directly on the victims' home.

"If you look at those precise measurements, there’s probably five that land directly on what would be the living room of the house," Ray said. "Like the latitude-longitude is the physical house itself, and if you put the house back on the map, and you map those, the hits are inside the house."

Entin, sounding like every listener at that moment, asked for clarification.

"I just want to make sure I understand correctly… because I haven't heard this before — so you're saying, based on the data you saw, the latitude-longitude for Bryan Kohberger’s Samsung was in the living room?"

The eyes are the mirrors of the soul? He may not even have one.

Ray replied, "The AT&T-derived latitude-longitude from the AT&T’s network that it estimates a location, it lands in the house — and it's a 25-meter range, so we're talking 75 feet, so it could be anywhere in the house on any floor. It could technically be outside the house, it could [be] on the property, but it's showing in the immediate area. My personal opinion is when I look at those, and I map what's happening before and after and I'm looking at all the other evidence. I think these are accurate locations."

There is just one tiny problem. Ray's own expert report from January 2025 appears to say almost the exact opposite.

"It is my opinion that the geolocation data I have been provided as of the writing this report does not provide any evidence of association between Mr. Kohberger and any of the decedents and/or Mr. Kohberger’s or decedent’s residence," he wrote.

That's not exactly a minor footnote. That's the legal equivalent of saying the weather is sunny on page one and reporting a blizzard on page two.

Ray also now believes Madison Mogen was Kohberger's intended target.

"I believe Maddie was the target," he said, arguing that repeated cellphone "collisions" placed the two in similar locations before the murders, including at a Pullman party and an A&W restaurant near the crime scene.

He also described what he believes was a broader stalking campaign.

But once again, his earlier report tells a different story.

"I am unable to locate any period of time between June 23, 2022 and November 13, 2022 where Mr. Kohberger’s mobile device is in the same specific area as any of the deceased’s mobile devices," he wrote.

Morgan Wright, CEO of the National Center for Open and Unsolved Cases and host of Crime: Reconstructed, didn't exactly let that contradiction slide.

"This is the sharpest contradiction," Wright said. "The state's search warrant sought records specifically to determine whether Kohberger 'stalked' any victim or 'conducted surveillance on the King Road Residence.'"

Ray insists investigators missed critical evidence.

"They didn’t even look at it," Ray said of the stalking evidence. "It’s incredible to me."

Maybe. Or maybe that's why consistency matters when you're presenting forensic conclusions that could decide whether someone lives or dies.

Even prosecutors have been more restrained. After Kohberger pleaded guilty, Moscow Police Cpl. Brett Payne acknowledged investigators still could not identify a specific target.

"The evidence suggested that there was a reason that this particular house was chosen," Payne said. "What that reason is, we don't know. We don't know who the target was, and we're not going to speculate on that up here today. But we can tell you that, for whatever reason, Mr. Kohberger chose that residence. Perhaps it's the location, layout, we do not know."

When Fox News Digital later asked investigators whether they had identified a motive, the answer remained refreshingly honest.

"We don't."

That sort of restraint is increasingly rare in a world where everyone with a podcast and a Wi-Fi signal believes they can solve a murder before lunch.

The Slammer

Ray says he even offered to brief the FBI after Kohberger pleaded guilty, claiming he had uncovered evidence investigators overlooked. According to Ray, they never responded.

Meanwhile, Kohberger is attempting to undo the guilty plea that spared him from execution by arguing he received ineffective assistance from his defense team. Ironically, if he somehow succeeded, he'd be reopening the very door that leads back to the death penalty.

Ray says that's exactly where the case should go.

"This can never be the standard investigation that we see in cases," Ray said. "This can never be acceptable."

Still, despite all the criticism, Ray says the outcome wouldn't change.

"The time is now to start this investigation over," he said.

He also believes Kohberger had multiple potential victims throughout the Moscow and Pullman area.

"I think he had multiple targets throughout the entire Moscow-Pullman area," Ray said. "Location information and pattern of life is by far the most telling."

And his final assessment leaves little room for ambiguity.

"If he ever does walk, he will kill again."

That may ultimately be the strangest twist in this already bizarre saga. The man hired to help the defense now sounds more convinced of Kohberger's guilt than many of the people who prosecuted him. The only unresolved mystery is whether Ray uncovered groundbreaking evidence, changed his mind after the fact, or somehow managed to argue both sides of the same forensic report. 

In a case already overflowing with twists, that may be the oddest one yet.

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Bryan Kohberger Demands Do-Over After Pleading Guilty to Butchering Four Idaho Students

Convicted murderer Bryan Kohberger, who last year admitted to slaughtering four University of Idaho students in cold blood, now wants to yank his guilty plea and demand a shiny new trial, according to The New York Times. 

Kohberger, already locked up for life without parole, issued a statement from his Idaho prison cell to the paper. "My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” the murdering scumcrumpet said. 

The weird-eyed admitted killer now doubled down on an “absolute claim of innocence.” In July 2025, this aspiring criminologist pleaded guilty to murdering 21-year-olds Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, and 20-year-olds Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin inside their off-campus rental home back in November 2022. 

Pretrial evidence piled up like unpaid student loans. 

Cops found his DNA on the sheath of the murder knife, the very same knife he ordered off Amazon months earlier. His car matched the one captured on surveillance circling the crime scene like a hungry vulture. No motive or personal link to the victims ever turned up, yet prosecutors still cut him a deal: skip the death penalty if he confessed and waved goodbye to any appeals. 

Kohberger refused to address the mountain of evidence against him, insisting the whole mess would be handled "appropriately in a trial setting." He also told the Times he drafted the challenge documents all by himself, noting that plenty of his defense lawyers recalled how he always griped about the plea deal and the evidence. 

"Unanswered questions seem to multiply with each piece of discovery unsealed," Kohberger said in his statement. Apparently, he doesn't like the idea of living in prison for the rest of his life, and his biggest worry is what might happen to him if he drops the soap in the shower.

Steve Goncalves, father of murdered Kaylee Goncalves, declined comment, saying he first needed to talk it over with his family. Smart move when the man who butchered your daughter suddenly rediscovers his "truth."

After more than a month with zero suspects, Pennsylvania state police and the FBI finally nabbed Kohberger in a dawn raid at his parents’ home near the Poconos. At the time he was a graduate student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University. 

Former professors and classmates described him as "obsessed" with serial killers, criminal behavior, and the psychology of antisocial types during his classes. 

If anything is true here, it's that Kohberger is an “expert on crime” because he committed one, a really big one.

Legal experts note that convicts usually get one year from judgment to attack a conviction over major constitutional defects or incompetent counsel. Whether this late-blooming innocence claim earns him a second shot remains anybody’s guess.

It's possible, if he gets a new trial and is convicted, that he gets the death sentence, proving justice moves in mysterious ways.

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Idaho Victims’ Families Cry Foul Over Kohberger’s Plea Deal: Where’s the Accountability

Folks, it’s a gut punch for the families of the four University of Idaho students brutally murdered in 2022. Bryan Kohberger, the 30-year-old accused of knifing to death Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin in a chilling 4 a.m. home invasion, has reportedly taken a plea deal to dodge the death penalty. 

And get this, according to a source close to the case, he won’t even have to explain why he committed these heinous, horrible crimes. Talk about a slap in the face to justice--it really sucks.

The Goncalves family, still reeling from the loss of their daughter Kaylee, isn’t staying silent. They’re demanding the scumcrumpet stand in court and confess, lay it all bare, from the location of the murder weapon to whether he acted alone. “We deserve to know when the beginning of the end was,” their Tuesday statement reads, adding that a confession “should be the minimum price to pay for his own life.” They’re calling on supporters to flood Ada County Judge Steven Hippler with calls for accountability. 

“Those families have been victimized by the very prosecutors who should have had their backs,” said Ted Williams, a Fox News contributor and former D.C. homicide detective and a lawyer who’s been on this case from the jump. 

The Goncalves family echoed that sentiment, slamming what they called a “secretive deal” cooked up by the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office. They’re livid, and rightfully so, claiming they were kept in the dark. “They vaguely mentioned a possible plea on Friday, without seeking our input, and presented the plea on Sunday,” their statement reads. “Latah County should be ashamed of its Prosecutor’s Office. Four wonderful young people lost their lives, yet the victims’ families were treated as opponents from the outset.”

The family says they got just one day to scramble and show up at the courthouse for a plea hearing set for Wednesday in Boise, after Kohberger got his change of venue. “Who do they think they are?” they fumed, pointing out the prosecutors’ failure to even call them directly about the deal. For a family living over seven hours away in Rathdrum, that’s not just inconvenient—it’s insulting.

The Kernodle family is equally pissed off.

Xana’s aunt, Kim Kernodle, told TMZ they were dead-set against the plea when prosecutors first floated it over the weekend. The families’ frustration isn’t new, they’ve questioned the investigation from the start, only to be “branded as adversaries” by the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office. A gag order and pressure from school officials didn’t help matters, either. Calling them adversaries is like calling the IDF attackers of innocent Palestinian and Iranian victims.

Now, let’s talk about this plea deal. 

Kohberger, a Ph.D. student in criminology at Washington State University, just 10 miles from the crime scene, allegedly left his DNA on a Ka-Bar sheath near Mogen’s body. He's definitely not a forensics genius or perhaps he skipped that class.

The evidence seemed damning, and prosecutors fought tooth and nail to keep the death penalty on the table. Yet, somehow, this deal materialized out of thin air. Boise defense attorney Edwina Elcox told Fox News Digital it’s a shocker but means Kohberger “has insulated himself from a sentence that would require his execution.” Elcox hopes it brings the families peace, sparing them the agony of a trial and appeals, but peace feels far off when the families are this blindsided.

But the families want him dead, like he did to their kids, and I don't blame them one bit.

Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector, called it “the most incomprehensible deal of all time” if Kohberger isn’t forced to explain himself. Williams agrees, insisting, "These four kids did not deserve to die this way, and as a part of any plea, he should be required to tell when, how and why he committed these offenses." The families and the public deserve answers, not a rushed, hush-hush deal.

The Goncalves family isn’t giving up. "We stand strong that it is not over until a plea is accepted. We will not stop fighting for the life that was stolen unjustly," they declared. They’re pushing for "a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, [and] the true facts of what happened that night." Anything less, they argue, is a betrayal of justice.

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This case has been a nightmare for these families from day one, and now they’re left grappling with a system that failed them again. As they put it, "The notion that someone can plead guilty to a crime and still face years of appellate delays reveals a systemic failure." That’s not just a critique—it’s a call to action. 

Will the court listen? Only time will tell, but one thing’s clear: these families won’t stop fighting for the truth.

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Suspect in U. of Idaho slayings arrested: who is this guy

The suspect in the murders of University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, has been arrested. He is Bryan Kohberger whose age has been listed both as 25 and 28, so it isn't clear, nor important how old he is.

Kohberger was taken into custody in Scranton, PA, NBC news reported Friday.

The bodies of the four students were discovered a week before Thanksgiving by a friend in the Kings Road rental home in Moscow, ID.

Local Moscow police had been joined by the FBI and State police in a huge investigation to find the killer since the brutal killings, that likely took place while they were asleep. There had been about 20 thousand tips and thousands of pieces of evidence but little information was released to the public during the entire investigation. Law enforcement sources told the media that the horrifying crime scene was “the worst they’ve seen.”

A Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) team entered the residence where Kohberger was staying and took him into custody at about 3:00 p.m. Friday. Cops seized a white Hyundai Elantra that matched the description of the vehicle that police had said they were seeking out from the scene.

The suspect appeared briefly in a Monroe County court a few hours after his arrest and he is being held without bail and due to be extradited after a January 3rd hearing.

According to online records, the suspect was pursuing a PhD in criminal justice at Washington State University in Pullman, which is less than 10 miles from Moscow. A man with the same name is also listed as having received a MA in criminal justice from DeSales University in Center Valley, PA, this year.

Police say the students were murdered sometime between 3 and 4 a.m. but they were not discovered by roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke until much later that morning. Mortensen and Funke had become worried when they could not reach their friends and called police, who made the grim discovery on November 13th.

Hopefully, law enforcement has the right person in custody and he receives the justice he deserves.

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