Bryan Kohberger Witness List: Killer Planned to Make Surviving Roommates of Murder Victims Testify for Defense

“He is a hollow vessel. Something less than human. A body without empathy or remorse.”

That’s how Dylan Mortensen described Bryan Kohberger through tears during his sentencing — the man who murdered four of her closest friends while she hid just a few feet away in her bedroom.

Despite those emotions, Mortensen was listed as a potential defense witness in the Idaho case, according to a recently unsealed court filing. The filing read: “Bryan C. Kohberger, by and through his attorneys of record, will call the following witness(es) at trial…”

Also included was Bethany Funke, the only other survivor of the Nov. 13, 2022 attack at an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, where Kohberger brutally killed roommates Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20.

The trauma from that night continues to affect Funke deeply, which is why she couldn’t attend Kohberger’s sentencing. Instead, her statement was read in court by her friend, Emily Alandt.
“I was scared the person who did this would come for me next,” Funke wrote.

Funke and Mortensen weren’t the only University of Idaho students the defense had planned to call. Kohberger’s team also listed Alandt and her boyfriend, Hunter Johnson — the first to arrive at the scene the morning the victims were found. Johnson discovered the bodies, told Funke and Mortensen to leave the residence immediately, and checked the house to ensure no one else was inside.

Jack DuCoeur, the ex-boyfriend of Kaylee Goncalves, was another name on the defense witness list.

However, Kohberger did not include Hunter and Maizie Chapin, siblings of victim Ethan Chapin and fellow University of Idaho students, among those listed.

Their mother, Stacy Chapin, later expressed relief that her children and others wouldn’t have to relive the tragedy in court. “There were so many kids, including our own, that had been subpoenaed that no longer have this hanging over their heads. I mean, we just all get to go live our life,” she said after Kohberger accepted a plea deal on July 2, 2025.

The defense list included 138 total potential witnesses, as well as 53 mitigation witnesses — people who might testify during the penalty phase if Kohberger had been convicted by a jury. Among them were members of his own family: his sisters Amanda and Melissa, his parents Michael and Maryann, and John Snyder, a professor at Washington State University where Kohberger worked as a teaching assistant.

Snyder’s inclusion remains puzzling, as he had previously complained about Kohberger following a verbal altercation that led to a formal warning from the university’s criminology department.

In the end, only Alandt and Mortensen came face-to-face with Kohberger in court.

“He chose destruction, he chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me,” Mortensen said at the July 23, 2025 sentencing hearing.

She then spoke about the victims, moments before Kohberger was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason,” she said, her voice breaking as Kohberger sat emotionless. “He didn’t just take their lives — he took their light that carried into every room.”