With Bryan Kohberger now serving four consecutive life sentences in an Idaho prison for stabbing University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin to death in November 2022, the families of victims have filed a civil lawsuit against the school the convicted murderer attended as a graduate student.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed last week against Washington State University (WSU) claims officials failed to act on numerous warning signs about Kohberger’s inappropriate behavior and alleges that inaction led to the students’ deaths.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Maureen Callahan, host of MK Media’s The Nerve, to discuss the explosive details of the lawsuit.
The Lawsuit
The civil complaint – filed on January 7 in Skagit County Superior Court – was brought by Steve Goncalves, father of Kaylee Goncalves; Karen Laramie, mother of Madison Mogen; Jeffrey Kernodle, father of Xana Kernodle; and Stacy Chapin, mother of Ethan Chapin.
The families are seeking unspecified monetary damages for violations of Title IX, gross negligence, and wrongful death. A civil lawsuit carries a lower burden of proof than a criminal case, but the 126-page complaint lays out a litany of allegations against the university.
Kohberger was a graduate student in criminology and worked as a teaching assistant at WSU at the time of the murders. That means WSU covered his tuition, paid him a salary, and provided him on-campus housing and medical benefits, which, the lawsuit says, were “all conditioned on his behavior and subject to being revoked.”
According to the complaint, WSU received at least 13 formal reports accusing Kohberger of predatory behavior toward female students and staff. It alleges he repeatedly blocked exits, invaded women’s personal spaces, and followed multiple women to their vehicles to the point that they requested personal campus security escorts. One WSU employee even advised other employees to email them with the subject line “911,” if they were in a situation with Kohberger where they felt threatened by him. School staffers would apparently often stay in the room when Kohberger was meeting with students in fear of leaving them alone together.
Brian Entin took a deep dive into the lawsuit on his Brian Entin Investigates podcast and said it features complaints from female graduate students who said Kohberger struck them as “a stalker,” “a sexual assaulter type,” or “a possible future rapist.”
Entin highlighted one particular incident in which a sophomore student reported Kohberger had followed her. She told WSU about the incident, and they allegedly told her she should not be alone with Kohberger, suggested campus security should escort her, and commented she was not the first to report this type of issue.
The complaint alleges that these types of predatory occurrences happened from the moment he arrived in Washington state, and the families argue university officials did not meaningfully investigate the complaints or remove Kohberger from campus before the murders, despite having the authority to do so.
What Comes Next
Megyn admitted that she didn’t understand how the families could blame the university until she got her hands on the “very dark” lawsuit. “The more I read, the more I was like, Oh, my God, the university knew a lot,” she said.
Callahan said there are also reports of Kohberger breaking and entering and displaying alarming behavior towards women while frequenting local bars and businesses. Yet none of that seemed to compel WSU into any definitive action.
“[The attitude was like,] ‘We’re going make sure that we, you know, don’t offend him. And girls, you know what? Call us when you want to leave for the day and wait around until somebody can walk you to your car. Are you kidding me,” Callahan asked. “Well, now you’ve got a lawsuit.”
Entin interviewed a former FBI agent who has put together threat assessment programs for universities and he said WSU will likely end up settling this case because of what they knew, when they knew it, and what they didn’t do about it.
But that is exactly why Callahan hopes the case ends up in court. “I kind of don’t want the suit to be settled because I want as much discovery as possible,” she said. “You can’t tell me that there weren’t people in positions to know at that university who, upon hearing of that crime, thought, ‘Holy shit, it’s Bryan Kohberger and we ignored every single glaring, waving, enormous red flag because we were worried that he would sue us. And now four coeds are dead, and the blood is also on our hands.’ I hope those families get everything they ask for.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Callahan by tuning in to episode 1,232 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.