“He’s empty inside. Something missing. A shell of a man with no empathy, no remorse.”
That’s how Dylan Mortensen described Bryan Kohberger — her voice shaking, eyes red with tears — as she faced the man who murdered four of her closest friends while she hid just feet away in her bedroom.
Bryan Kohberger Defense Planned to Call Dylan as a Witness
Despite her pain, court documents show that Kohberger and his defense team had plans to call Mortensen as a witness if the case had gone to trial. According to a recently unsealed filing, both surviving roommates — Mortensen and Bethany Funke — were on the list of individuals the defense intended to question in court.
Funke, however, never attended the sentencing hearing. The trauma from that night still runs deep. Instead, her statement was read aloud by her friend, Emily Alandt:
“I was scared the person who did this would come for me next,” Funke wrote.
It’s a fear that never really goes away.
Alandt and her boyfriend, Hunter Johnson, were among the first to discover the horrifying scene that morning in November 2022. Johnson found the bodies of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin — all brutally stabbed to death inside their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. He immediately told Funke and Mortensen to leave before checking the rest of the house to make sure no one was still inside.
Even Jack DuCoeur, Goncalves’ ex-boyfriend, appeared on Kohberger’s defense witness list. But strangely, the list left out Hunter and Maizie Chapin, Ethan’s siblings and fellow University of Idaho students.
Ethan’s mother, Stacy Chapin, said the plea deal that spared these students from testifying was one small mercy after years of grief.
“There were so many kids, including our own, that had been subpoenaed. Now, that’s no longer hanging over their heads,” Stacy said. “We just all get to live our lives.”
The Defense List Named 138 Individuals
In total, Kohberger planned to call 138 people as witnesses — including 53 so-called “mitigation witnesses” meant to testify during sentencing if he’d been convicted by a jury. That list included his parents, Michael and Maryann Kohberger, his sisters, Amanda and Melissa, and even a former Washington State University professor, John Snyder — the same professor who had previously filed a complaint about Kohberger’s behavior in class.
In the end, though, only Dylan Mortensen and Emily Alandt came face-to-face with the man who destroyed so many lives.
Mortensen’s voice trembled but didn’t break as she addressed him directly:
“He chose destruction. Kohberger chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me.”
Then, with the quiet strength of someone who has lived through hell and refused to let it define her, she honored her friends:
“Because of him, four beautiful, genuine, compassionate people were taken from this world for no reason. He didn’t just take their lives — he took their light. The kind that lit up every room.”
Bryan Kohberger sat motionless as the judge sentenced him to spend the rest of his life behind bars — no parole, no escape, and no more control over anyone’s future but his own.
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