Steve Goncalves, the father of murdered University of Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves, insisted that the public deserves to know the details of Bryan Kohberger’s plea deal.
“I think the public should demand [the truth] 100 percent. Sometimes the courtroom doesn’t realize that there is no courtroom without victims, and they need to represent them, people and the community,” Goncalves said during an interview on NewsNation’s Banfield on Wednesday, August 6. “You know, the community has the right to know that they’re arresting the right people, and the punishment is correct.”
Kohberger was originally arrested in December 2024, several weeks after breaking into a Moscow, Idaho, home located at 1122 King Road. While Kohberger initially protested his innocence, he eventually pled guilty to stabbing Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Maddie Mogen and Kaylee to death. In July 2025, the killer was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole, plus 10 years for felony burglary.
Speaking in-depth about the case on Banfield, Goncalves suggested that the parents of the murdered students were not necessarily on the same page as prosecutors.
“I think that, you know, the prosecution here purposely hid the facts of what happened to these kids to try to get all the parents to be in silos and not unite and force [prosecutors] to do the right thing, force them to have a capital case,” he argued. “They never had that. That’s why they didn’t tell [us] what really happened to our kids. They hid that from us because they knew that could be a riling cry for all the parents to get on the same page.”
Prosecutor Bill Thompson previously defended striking a plea deal that spared Kohberger from a potential death penalty sentence, telling The Idaho Statesman in July that he delivered “some immediate finality, which wouldn’t have happened if we had to go through trial.”
Judge Steven Hippler recently issued an order confirming he would examine requests to unseal certain evidence — including crime scene photos and the defense team’s list of “alternate perpetrators” — after consulting with the defense and prosecutors. Reacting to the order, Goncalves told Banfield that the victims’ families previously objected to gruesome crime scene imagery being unsealed.
“I believe all families have let that be known to the prosecuting team, that’s not anything that we were interested in, and we’ve been worried that we would see those leaked at any time when you had certain stories and certain things [have] been leaked since the very beginning,” he said. “We’re afraid that we’d wake up one morning and that maybe [they] might be on TV.”
Goncalves encouraged anyone seeking full access to the Idaho murders’ evidence to consider how a potential unsealing could impact those touched by the horrific crime.
“You don’t get that those are our children, and we’re not settling for that type of thing,” he insisted. “And I think it encourages … you got a whole show here [about] some people that are doing some terrible things to people, and that’s one thing that I think we show a little bit too much of, and I hope that we can give these kids some dignity, and we don’t have to go there.”
He later argued, “[Prosecutors] could have easily done better than this. This trickle effect … I mean, the case is over. Let it out. Stand by what your decisions are, and the information [can] come out. I know you have to give it a little bit of time for sealing, but it’s called ‘control, find, replace.’ We do it at work all the time. It’s not a big deal. We can replace. We can. We can get through these docs real easy.”
Prime Video’s One Night in Idaho: The College Murders offers new insight into the November 13, 2022, deaths of Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — ultimately trying to answer the question of Bryan Kohberger’s motivation. The four-part docuseries, released on Friday, July 11, offered a breakdown of what happened when Kohberger […]
Goncalves insisted that the whole ordeal had been “absolute torture” for the victims’ families, especially as they were now facing even more pain over grim evidence potentially being unsealed.
Steve Goncalves consoles Kristi Goncalves in July 2025. Kyle Green-Pool/Getty Images
As for prosecutor Thompson’s recent series of interviews justifying Kohberger’s plea deal, Goncalves complained: “I prefer that [he] just be quiet. I mean, I want to hear from the officers. I want to hear about the people who actually did their job. I really don’t want to hear about it, hear about a guy who, you know, called into work, talked to a coworker, and said, ‘Hey, let’s make a deal. Let’s be done. I don’t feel like working. Do you not feel like working?’”
“They came up with a plea deal, and they went home, and they got their summers back,” the grieving father noted. “So that’s not who I think we should be talking to. We should be talking to the FBI and those prosecutors and the boots and the men and women that actually helped put this case together.”
NewsNation’s Banfield airs weeknights at 10 p.m. ET.
