Washington State University denies any responsibility for Bryan Kohberger’s behavior. In a recent court filing, the university was placed under fire, claiming they should be held partially responsible for the horrific actions of convicted murderer Bryan Kohberger.
Kohberger was sentenced in 2025 to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole plus an additional 10 years after pleading guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, who were stabbed to death in their off-campus house.
Victims’ Families Sue University
At the time of the brutal murders, Kohberger was attending Washington State University (WSU) as a graduate student and working as a teaching assistant. The families of the victims came together and filed a lawsuit in January 2026 against the university, accusing it of ignoring any warning signs and failing to take action to protect the community.
The basis of their lawsuit was centered on the documents investigators released following Kohberger’s sentencing, which revealed that multiple female students raised concerns to the school about his behavior in the months leading up to the murders.
These concerns were raised in a faculty meeting by a professor who warned that Kohnberger was “harassing, stalking, and sexually abusing” his students. It was recommended that his funding be cut and that he be removed from the program.
“Despite receiving at least 13 formal reports of Kohberger’s inappropriate, predatory, and menacing behavior, WSU failed to respond in any meaningful way and allowed Kohberger’s escalating behavior to continue unchecked,” the victims’ families stated in the lawsuit.
The 13 complaints referenced in the lawsuit were submitted to the university’s Office of Compliance and Civil Rights, and the person responsible for handling them allegedly admitted to never speaking or meeting with Kohberger.
Response to Lawsuit
WSU filed a response last week confirming Kohberger’s employment as a teaching assistant in its Criminal Justice and Criminology Department, but denies any responsibility for his actions outside the school. Their response included blanket denials of the allegations and asserted that the damages or injuries caused were by Kohberger, not the university.
“All actions of the defendant, WSU, herein alleged as negligence, manifest a reasonable exercise of judgment and discretion by authorized public officials made in the exercise of governmental authority entrusted to them by law and are neither tortious nor actionable,” their response read.
The Idaho College Murders
In the early morning of November 13, 2022, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin were found fatally stabbed in their off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho. The group was survived by two other roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, who became key witnesses and leads to finding the perpetrator responsible for the horrific murders.
All five roommates and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Chapin, returned to the house by 2:00 a.m. that morning. Detectives believed the murders occurred between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m., and Kernodle was assumed to be awake at the time the murderer entered the house, as she received a DoorDash order around that time and was active on TikTok. One of the survivors, Mortensen, was asleep at the time but was awakened by a noise from upstairs, and later heard someone say, “There’s someone here.”
The bodies of the victims were discovered by authorities the following afternoon after the surviving roommates called friends to help, since they were scared about what was going on. They eventually called the authorities, and the investigation began.
On December 30, 2022, then 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary. At the time of the murders, he was studying at Washington State University, only 8 miles from the murders. The death penalty was originally on the table when Kohberger pleaded not guilty. However, on July 2, 2025, he entered a guilty plea to avoid the ultimate sentence.
