Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.
In similar tone, last week I almost got kicked off an online panel for laughing at one of the Idaho 4 “Victim Impact” statements when the girl reading it began to intersperse awkwardly dramatic words with even more awkwardly dramatic sobbing.
“Now is not the time,” the host admonished me, but I couldn’t help it. Right from the start, the hearing had seemed so unprofessional that I couldn’t keep from reacting to what was, in my opinion, outright ridiculousness.
Keep in mind that I have followed the quadruple homicide case from the beginning. I’m fully aware that Bryan Kohberger recently entered a plea of guilty for life imprisonment instead of the death penalty, recently changed in Idaho from lethal injection to a “firing squad.”
The Plea Hearing granted for the defense, removing the possibility Kohberger would be offed by five simultaneous .38 rounds—some blank so no squad member knows if they fired the killing shot—replacing his fate to life in prison at the judge’s discretion.
But if any crime deserves the ultimate sentence, even a firing squad, wouldn’t it be the bloody slaying of four innocent young people?
To address the judicial decision, the Victim Impact Hearing took place on July 23, allowing the judge to hear from people affected by the crime prior to declaring his official sentence. The first statement of the afternoon came from Bethany Funke, one of two housemates called “survivors” of the tragedy, who did not attend and had her words read by an unnamed representative.
Bethany left Idaho soon after the case broke and, prior to the impact hearing, had not spoken on it since the notable 911 call was made from her cell phone almost eight hours after the killings occurred.
Unrelated side note: a recent short clip noted she was “Alpha Tau Omega fraternity sweetheart” at her new college, University of Nevada, where she graduated last year. Fortunately, she has been able to move on.
But Bethany’s part of the hearing started off oddly. After two and a half years of publicity, one would think the court announcer would know the rather unusual Funke surname, which rhymes with “trunk,” but her statement was introduced as that of “Bethany Foon-kah.” And then the Funke representative really got into it, whining and ultimately sobbing, and that’s when I got in trouble later on the panel.
I seldom follow crime court TV coverage but I’m told that the script-like drama in this one, including clapping after each person’s remarks, was over the top even for avid fans of Victim Impact Hearings, the purpose of which is to inform the judge about the effect of a loved one’s loss.
The two-hour event featured more than fifteen family members and friends of the four murdered college students.
Most of the participants spoke directly to Kohberger instead of to the judge and, scarcely mentioning their victim, used their time to tell Kohberger that he’s a horrific demon, a loser, stupid, and— one of the strangest—what a “basic person” he is. Among all threads, and there were a lot, charges that he is unintelligent were apparently calculated to wound the most, since he was a PhD candidate.
In addition to the wide range of insults delivered to Kohberger’s mostly expressionless face, a number of threats were made alluding to “prison justice,” in lieu of the death penalty that his plea agreement spares him. Steve Goncalves, the most prominent of the four victims’ parents, has appeared on every major media show speaking at length on every aspect of the case, including that he intends to see that inmates “have a little gift” for Kohberger.
Even though Goncalves has a brother currently serving a murder sentence in an Idaho penitentiary, experts familiar with prison affairs have said that outsider influence is unlikely.
We know that big homicides always need a perpetrator to remember; in our nation’s history we have many, among the names everyone knows: John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald. And how many hundreds of books have been written since reminding us that it’s not always that simple?
If presidential assassinations are still being examined and disputed long —even centuries—after the fact, can we really be surprised that a shocking murder of four vibrant college students, among six roommates in an off-campus house, happening within minutes of each other, is strangely attributed to one PhD candidate from a neighboring university?
OK, he pled guilty, but with few official details, sparse circumstantial evidence left us hanging without the prospect of a trial, which I was hoping would fill in the blanks.
I’ve watched the Netflix and Amazon specials (boring) and read the Blum and Patterson books, mediocre writing in my opinion, even though Blum’s has been Pulitzer-nominated and Patterson sells a million books no matter what he writes. Neither book is in the stratosphere of “In Cold Blood.”
I’m over it, but it’s not crazy to be left with a lot of questions; where’s Truman Capote when you really need him?
Marilyn Stokes was a public school teacher in Fort Worth for 15 years and subsequently worked at KERA public television for four years. She retired after 15 years at Ford Motor Company, Southwest Region.