The families of the University of Idaho murder victims have filed a lawsuit against Washington State University, alleging that WSU did not take adequate action against Bryan Kohberger prior to the murders.
The lawsuit was filed in Skagit County, Washington, on Jan. 7, by plaintiffs Steve Goncalves, Karen Laramie, Jeff Kernodle and Stacy Chapin. The plaintiffs are the parents of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, respectively, who were murdered just off the UI campus on Nov. 13, 2022, by Kohberger. Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison on July 23, 2025, after pleading guilty to four counts of murder and one count of burglary.
On Jan. 27, the case was moved from Skagit County to the U.S. District Court’s Western District of Washington in Seattle. WSU filed its response to the lawsuit on Feb. 11.
In the lawsuit, the families of the murdered UI students allege that WSU did not respond sufficiently to complaints about Kohberger’s behavior while he was enrolled and employed in its Criminal Justice and Criminology Department. Kohberger was working on a Ph.D. focused on sexually motivated burglars and serial killers.
“Almost immediately upon his arrival to the Pullman-Moscow community, Kohberger developed a reputation for discriminatory, harassing and stalking behavior, instilling substantial fear among young female students and fellow WSU employees, necessitating regular security escorts for multiple females. 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 lawsuit read.
Kohberger broke into the King Road residence in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, where he stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin to death.
“These deaths should not and would not have occurred if WSU had acted appropriately,” the lawsuit claims.
According to the lawsuit, Kohberger had a history of heroin addiction, theft and alarming behavior toward women.
“In August 2022, early in the semester, a fellow graduate student began leaving her office door open because she believed ‘this guy was going to do something inappropriate with a student,’ and said that Kohberger struck her as a ‘stalker’ or ‘sexual assaulter type,’” the lawsuit said. It claimed that Kohberger’s supervising instructor was aware that several female students had reported discomfort with Kohberger.
“On multiple occasions and with multiple WSU female staff members and fellow students, Kohberger would regularly stand close to their desks, loom over them and would block their exits from on-campus offices for long periods of time,” the lawsuit said.
“As early as mid-September 2022, WSU professors were discussing the ‘need to do an intervention with Kohberger’ because of his treatment of female students. By September or October 2022, a WSU professor believed that Kohberger was stalking people,” the lawsuit said. “The WSU office of Compliance and Civil Rights had at least 13 formal complaints related to Kohberger; yet, the individual in charge of acting on those complaints later reported that she had neither met nor even spoken with Kohberger.”
WSU denies nearly every allegation in the lawsuit.
WSU admitted that Kohberger murdered four UI students on Nov. 13, 2022; WSU admitted Kohberger into its Criminal Justice and Criminology Department Ph.D. program, providing a teaching assistantship and associated pay as well as housing; it has a WSU Police Department on its Pullman campus, which aims to protect the safety and security of the campus community; and that it has a Threat Assessment Team.
WSU claimed that it acted with reasonable discretion and good faith and that it was not responsible for Kohberger’s actions.
WSU also claimed that the plaintiffs did not meet the statute of limitations in filing the lawsuit. The university requested that the court dismiss the lawsuit and also award WSU with coverage of all legal costs.
The lawsuit was originally filed in the Superior Court of Skagit County, Washington, the county in which Stacy Chapin, mother of Ethan Chapin, lives. WSU requested to move the case to the Eastern District of Washington, based in Spokane, Washington, from the Western District.
The plaintiffs’ team submitted a list of 69 total witnesses, including former WSU graduate students, expert witnesses and people who knew Kohberger in Pennsylvania, his home state.
Of those witnesses, at least nine are based in Pennsylvania, according to the motion. These include family members of Kohberger, a school administrator that removed Kohberger from a trade school program due to complaints from female students, Kohberger’s criminology professor at DeSales University, at least two female employees of a local business that raised concerns about Kohberger’s behavior and two forensic examiners that examined Kohberger’s devices after the murders.
The plaintiffs argued for the change in location primarily due to more flights being available to Seattle than to Spokane. The plaintiffs also claimed that the average “time to outcome” in the Western District was 70 days shorter than in the Eastern District.
Dakota Steffen can be reached at [email protected].