Idaho prosecutor in Kohberger case has history of plea deals over death penalty

At noon on a Sunday in November 2022, police dispatched to a Moscow home near the University of Idaho campus after a report of an unresponsive person, but the officer soon suspected it was a homicide — and not just one, but three more.

At the top of the call list for the local police department was Bill Thompson, the longtime Latah County prosecutor.

He happened to be out of town, he later told the Idaho Statesman. But Thompson said he still received word that afternoon among a small, initial group that four college students were found dead at the off-campus house on King Road. He raced back to the tucked-away North Idaho community he’s called home since the late 1970s, where he met his wife and raised two sons.

Two days before police announced their arrest of a suspect, Thompson wrestled in a conversation with the Statesman how to explain what went through his mind when he received that phone call about the four students’ deaths.

“I can tell you that there’s nothing— ” Thompson said, and hung on the thought for several moments. He restarted: “A homicide scene is never going to be a pleasant experience, but it’s necessarily part of what we do.”

A month after Bryan Kohberger was formally charged with four counts of first-degree murder, Thompson indicated his intent to seek the death penalty for the former Washington State University graduate student of criminology. That changed after two more years of legal proceedings.

Thompson and his prosecution team spared themselves the highly anticipated trial in Boise. They agreed to drop a possible death sentence for Kohberger in exchange for his guilty plea. Life in prison. No parole. No appeals.

At the plea hearing, the veteran prosecutor conceded, if only for a moment, the weight he shouldered from the case. As he described to 4th District Judge Steven Hippler the state’s evidence against the defendant, Thompson paused, excused himself and took a sip of water.

He restarted. Kohberger entered the King Road home on Nov. 13, 2022, Thompson told the court.

“He did that with the intent to kill,” he said. “We will not represent that he intended to commit all of the murders that he did that night, but we know that that is what resulted.”

“And that he then killed — intentionally, willfully, deliberately, with premeditation and with malice aforethought,” he continued, his voice shaking, and growing quieter with each name, “Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle.”

The three women were from North Idaho and Chapin from western Washington.

To much of the public closely following the case, Thompson’s decision to offer a plea bargain was a shock. But the prosecutor’s deal in lieu of capital punishment followed a history of similar decisions in other high-profile murder cases. Thompson has secured one death sentence in 33 years as Latah County prosecutor, which was later reversed after federal review.

Thompson outlined for the four victims’ families his rationale for brokering a deal with Kohberger.

“We cannot fathom the toll that this case has taken on your family,” he said in a June 30 letter, obtained by the Statesman, that informed them of the plea agreement. “This resolution is our sincere attempt to seek justice for your family. This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals.”

The victims’ families split evenly in their support of the plea bargain with Kohberger. The most pointed in their objections was the Goncalves family, who called the lead prosecutor’s actions “cowardly” and “gutless.”

“Thompson robbed us of our day in court. No negotiations, no jury of our peers, not even the pretense of cooperation and fairness,” the Goncalveses posted on a family-run Facebook page. “He’s retiring on this deal, his shadow slithering toward the exit, leaving only the stench of his betrayal.”

‘That’s a lot of pressure’

William Wofford Thompson Jr., 68, became Latah County’s prosecuting attorney in 1992 and has since been reelected eight times, making him the longest-serving active prosecutor in Idaho. In the middle of prosecuting the Kohberger case, he was reelected after facing no challenger.

Moscow Mayor Art Bettge said he believes Thompson, a former longtime neighbor, ran again largely to complete the college student homicide case, and help put it to rest for the city.

“I think he just wants to see it through,” he told the Statesman in an interview. “And, frankly, who else would want the job at this point?”

Nearly eight years earlier Thompson oversaw his last mass homicide incident. In January 2015, John Lee, 29, killed three people, including his adoptive mother, and injured a fourth during a shooting rampage in Moscow. Thompson helped broker a deal that saw Lee accept life imprisonment in exchange for removing the possibility of the death penalty.

In a notable trial from 2000, Thompson obtained a conviction, and a judge imposed a death sentence for defendant Dale Shackelford, 37, for the May 1999 double-murder in Kendrick, Idaho, of his ex-wife and her boyfriend, whose bodies he then burned. Shackelford’s sentence was later vacated when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an Arizona case that only a jury, rather than a judge, may make findings to sentence someone to death.

Thompson opted not to seek the death penalty again, and Shackelford was resentenced to two life terms.

The Kohberger case presented new challenges for Thompson. He never before encountered this level of publicity and scrutiny of his actions. Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs felt Thompson’s ability to hold on to the office amid the homicide investigation represented the public trust he maintains with the community.

“I think that speaks to the confidence his citizens in his county have in him, not only to be competent, but do things by the book,” he said in a phone interview with the Statesman. “I can’t think of anybody else I’d rather have doing this case.”

Loebs has known Thompson for more than 30 years. He said his friend confided in him obstacles in the closely watched case. He declined to disclose what those conversations entailed or when they took place.

With his own experience prosecuting several major murder cases, Loebs shares in the unique understanding of the stress of that responsibility, which includes heightened media attention and publicity, with more eyes watching your every decision. That all extends into the expectation of delivering a conviction at trial, he said.

“Certainly it is an unpleasant situation when a big case doesn’t go right, and when you know and believe you have the right person, but for some reason a jury doesn’t agree with you, and doesn’t think you did a good job,” Loebs said. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

But for Thompson, being a prosecutor is a calling — an opportunity to pursue justice on his community’s behalf, he told the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in 2017.

“If you are going to do this job correctly, it becomes all consuming,” Thompson said. “This is not a job you do halfway.”

And he found the right place for him to do it, too. After growing up as a military brat, he rarely lived in a single place for more than a few years during his childhood. He set down roots in the Idaho Panhandle when he moved there for law school and never left.

After earning his law degree from U of I and getting married in 1980, he established a firm in Moscow with his wife, Frances, who finished at the law school the following year. They referred to it as a “mom and pop law shop,” he told the Daily News, where he handled criminal and public defense, as well as civil and juvenile cases.

“Latah County is truly my home,” Thompson wrote in a prosecutor biography.

After a dozen years in private practice, Thompson told the Daily News, his wife spurred him to run for county prosecutor. A registered Democrat, Thompson narrowly won his first election against a Republican senior deputy prosecutor among voters largely based in a progressive college town.

Thompson’s wife retired from practicing law in 2022, according to the Idaho State Bar. But she has frequently joined her husband at annual conferences for the Idaho Prosecuting Attorneys Association, Loebs said.

“She seems to be very supportive of him,” he told the Statesman in May, as he thought of Kohberger’s murder case. “These things are very hard on the families of everyone involved, because of the enormous time commitment — and single-minded time commitment. You might come home, but you’re going to be thinking about work. And once trial starts, you might not come home.”

Thompson declined an interview request from the Statesman for this story, citing a desire to limit pretrial publicity in the case. The gag order that restricts attorneys from any public statements about the Kohberger case outside of court remains in effect until after sentencing.

But in his sit-down interview in late December 2022, Thompson spoke of the seriousness with which he approaches his job.

Kohberger’s murder case became a priority, if not a singular focus, for him building up to the trial. That prospect ended with the plea deal.

“Anytime you have a tragedy like this in a community like Moscow, it’s going to be felt,” Thompson told the Statesman. “And that’s the nature of what we have to do as prosecutors involved in the judicial system in the criminal justice system. We don’t always deal with the most pleasant of situations, but it’s our job.”

Prosecutor not seeking the limelight

When he’s not pursuing legal matters, Thompson spends his limited downtime playing guitar and banjo in several local bands.

“He looks like he should be a guitar player, right? He even looks more like he should be a banjo player,” Loebs said. “I’m surprised he finds time to do that, but maybe it’s a way that he unwinds.”

On one occasion nine months into the prosecution of Kohberger, Thompson played live at a coffee shop in downtown Moscow the night before a court hearing. The case was later moved to Boise.

The gig with his old-world folk band Gefilte Trout — made up of an upright bass, clarinet, Ukrainian-born singer and Thompson on acoustic guitar — was booked months in advance, he told the Statesman after the hearing. Plus, playing live music in his scant downtime is part of maintaining his sanity, he said.

“It’s really the only time that my mind doesn’t have actively something from the office going on,” he previously elaborated to the Daily News. “It just disappears for a while.”

At another show at Spokane’s annual fall folk fest in November, no one in attendance at the community college auditorium appeared to recognize Thompson from his primary vocation. If they did, they didn’t let on. He appeared quite happy just to blend in, strumming away with his bandmates.

Similarly, Thompson is not chasing fame with the Kohberger case, said longtime capital defense attorney Keith Roark, a former president of the state’s prosecutors association. He called Thompson an ethical and fair-minded prosecutor who seeks justice rather than convictions.

“He’s the right guy for this, will do things professionally, is not trying to make a name for himself, and will not use this case as the rocket fuel to increase his stature in the state,” Roark said in a phone interview with the Statesman.

Thompson’s choice to secure a plea deal underscored his intention not to leverage the case to draw the spotlight to himself, Roark said. The longtime prosecutor is not a showman, and also made the right call, he added.

“I have no doubt that he did what he did out of absolutely proper principles,” Roark said. “He did the job that every prosecutor should do — and that’s to pursue justice.”

Armed with a sudden degree of national notoriety, Thompson has kept his same routine as he prepared for the biggest case of his lengthy career. He still showed up each day driving his years-old SUV, complete with a ski rack, to his office next to the county jail, backpack slung over a shoulder, with a short-sleeve, button-down shirt he often wears under a blazer on days when he has court.

No longer on his home turf of nearly a half-century after the capital murder case moved to Boise, Thompson tried to project calm once seated at the prosecution table. He settled in, stroked his bristly white beard, first his mustache before reaching a point on the tuft at his chin. Eyes up, and ready to go.

Bettge, who lived near the Thompsons for more than two decades, described the county prosecutor as friendly, low-key and very approachable. He can frequently be found outside working the yard and landscaping. A patch of sunflowers and a small greenhouse line the Thompsons’ driveway.

“He’s very congenial,” Bettge said. “You go by and prop your arms up on the fence and have a chat for a while, and he’s weeding away. Never anything work related, just more community related and, ‘What event are you going to go play next?’ ”

On a lunch break from a recent Kohberger case hearing at the courthouse in Boise, Thompson toted a stickered Nalgene-style water bottle on a rope. He reached for the courtroom door to fetch his laptop, but it wouldn’t open. A reporter inquired whether the blockade applied even to VIPs.

“The locks work for everyone,” Thompson quipped, and decamped without his computer.

‘We will never forget’

Thompson has been honored with several notable accolades during his lengthy legal career, and holds the distinction as Idaho’s longest-serving active prosecutor. In 2017, the Idaho State Bar recognized him with its professionalism award for “exemplifying the epitome” of ethical conduct in the legal field. In 2011, he received an award for excellence in county government from the Idaho Association of Counties.

Besides the Lee and Shackelford cases, Thompson has still more experience with homicide cases. In one of them, he earned a conviction without police ever finding the victim’s body — believed to be the only such successful prosecution like that in Idaho history.

In 2014, Thompson led the prosecution of defendant Charles Capone, 49, for killing his estranged wife, Rachael Anderson, of Clarkston, Washington, in April 2010. That was in spite of investigators never finding her body. In exchange for a lighter sentence, a friend of Capone’s agreed to testify that he helped him dispose of Anderson’s body by dumping it into the Snake River, and Capone was sentenced to life in prison without the chance of parole.

In yet another murder case, this one from 1996, Thompson reached a plea deal with defendant Wenkai Li, 25, for fatally stabbing a fellow Chinese U of I graduate student and the man’s wife. In exchange for a guilty plea to two counts of second-degree murder, Thompson withdrew the possibility of the death penalty for Li, who was sentenced to 65 years in prison.

“Each one is unique, each one is different,” Thompson previously told the Statesman. “The circumstances are different, the amount of community interest or media interest is different.”

The size of law enforcement’s response to the King Road killings was like nothing Thompson had seen during his tenure, he’d recall in the emotional days after. He arrived in the early wave, to advise and oversee the investigation, and file search warrants.

He acknowledged that the amount of attention — including from national media — the Kohberger case received was beyond anything he previously experienced in homicide cases, by multiple orders of magnitude.

“As a practical matter, that doesn’t change how we handle the case,” he told the Statesman.

Whenever such cases occur, however, Thompson and his team are involved almost immediately after police arrive to a crime scene, former Moscow Police Chief James Fry said in an interview with the Statesman. The U of I college student homicide investigation that Fry oversaw was no different, he said.

“I mean, he’s just a wealth of knowledge, he’s done this for so long,” Fry said. “Not only is he, I think, a great prosecutor — maybe one of the best in the state, maybe the best in the state — but he’s also been a friend.”

Latah County Sheriff Richie Skiles echoed his former law enforcement colleague’s words. Thompson is proactive, available and at the ready when the three-term elected sheriff needs advice on an investigation, he said in an interview with the Statesman.

“He’s very hands-on,” Skiles said. “If I send a text and say, ‘Hey, can we talk?’ he calls me within no time at all. He’s always been that way.”

Fry last year retired from his role as city police chief after eight years, as part of nearly 29 years overall with the department. Thompson always acted as a steady hand that helped guide him, including the shaping of Fry’s law enforcement career, he said. Fry recently took over as chief of a police department in Washington’s Tri-Cities.

“I always valued the man’s opinion,” Fry said. “He was always so professional.”

He and Thompson never got together much socially outside of work, Fry said. He’s seen Thompson sing and play live music a few times around town, including at an annual National Night Out against crime event hosted by the city police department.

“He’s kind of got the ZZ Top look,” or that of Uncle Jesse from the TV show “The Dukes of Hazzard,” Fry said.

But Fry recalled they got together on two memorable occasions. They did so to smoke cigars with a glass of Scotch on the patio at Thompson’s home to commemorate the end of two major homicide cases they worked together.

“He drinks the cheap stuff,” Fry said with a laugh. “That’s kind of his … .”

The most recent of those meetups was in 2014 after the Capone trial, Fry said. The time before that was in 2010, after defendant Silas Parks agreed to plead guilty to two counts of voluntary manslaughter for strangling his pregnant wife to death and setting the couple’s Moscow apartment on fire in June 2009.

Thompson didn’t file for the death penalty in that case because there wasn’t enough evidence to prove the homicide was premeditated, KREM2-TV in Spokane reported at the time. Parks received a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison.

With the coming conclusion of the Kohberger case — he will be sentenced on July 23 — Thompson aimed to perform in his trusted role to once more help his hometown heal from a tragedy, in this instance from the murder of four college students.

“We will never forget what happened. But Moscow is a good, resilient town,” he told ABC News. “I have every faith that our community will return to something more normal. But this is always going to be part of our history.”

Reporter Angela Palermo contributed.