Xana Kernodle's Mom Says She Doesn't 'Hate' Bryan Kohberger Despite Murders

Xana Kernodle’s mother Cara Northington says she has forgiven her daughter’s killer, Bryan Kohberger.

“I don’t hate Bryan Kohberger,” Northington told local Spokane, Washington, publication Spokesman-Review in an interview published on Saturday, September 6, adding that her 30-year drug addiction and own incarceration changed her outlook on life.

“The lord just had me surrender it all,” she said of her substance abuse issues, explaining that while incarcerated she couldn’t stop reading the Bible. “And I did, and I haven’t gone back.”

In July 2025, Kohberger, 30, confessed in writing to killing Kernodle, 20, as well as her fellow University of Idaho roommates Ethan Chapin, 20, Kaylee Gonclaves, 21, and Madison Mogen, 21.

Northington said that when it comes to her daughter’s convicted killer, she is “washing my hands” of him. Instead, she fondly described who her daughter was in life.

“She was funny. She just had a way of making you feel special,” Northington said, recalling an instance in which her daughter and a group of friends toilet papered a house. “She was always doing crazy things like that.”

In July 2025, Kohberger was sentenced to four life sentences in prison for each of the murders.

“This unfathomable and senseless act of evil has caused immeasurable pain and loss,” Ada County District Court Judge Steven Hippler said to Kohberger as he handed down his sentence. “No parent should ever have to bury their child. This is the greatest tragedy that can be inflicted upon a person.”

He continued, “Parents who took their children to college in a truck filled with moving boxes had to bring them home in hearses lined with coffins.”

Kohberger entered the group’s home at 1122 King Road in the early hours of the morning on November 13, 2022, and stabbed Kernodle, Chapin, Gonclaves, and Mogen to death. Their roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were also home at the time of the attack.

Kohberger was arrested in December 2022. He initially entered a plea of not guilty, but ultimately changed his plea as part of a deal that removed the possibility of the death penalty. He also confessed to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary.

According to the Amazon Prime Video documentary One Night in Idaho: The College Murders, Mortenson called her friend Emily Alandt the morning of November 13, and Emily’s boyfriend Hunter Johnson also arrived and inspected Kernodle’s room first before he told everyone to call 911.

“​​Hunter had enough courage to tell them to call the police for not a real reason. He worded it very nicely, he said, ‘Tell them there’s an unconscious person,’” Alandt recalled. “Hunter saved all of us extreme trauma by not letting us know anything.”