When Bryan Kohberger entered a guilty plea on July 2 in the case of four murdered Idaho students, it brought an abrupt conclusion to one of the biggest true crime sagas in decades, but it has arguably left the public with more questions than answers. Soon, a new wave of true crime content, including two documentaries and a major book co-written by James Patterson, will attempt to answer those questions.

Kohberger’s trial, previously scheduled to begin in August, would likely have surfaced much more information regarding the killings of Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison “Maddie” Mogen, and Xana Kernodle — students at the University of Idaho in small-town Moscow, Idaho, slaughtered in a late-night off-campus home invasion so horrific that it instantly became global news.

Years of delays in the journey to trial, paired with strict ongoing gag orders in the case, have meant that even three years later, most of what we know about the crime still comes from the initial probable cause affidavit filed against Kohberger prior to his arrest in December 2022, about six weeks after the murders took place on November 13. (He was charged, and eventually pleaded guilty, to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.) Since then, other pieces to the puzzle have been filled in primarily from anecdotal reports shared by friends and family of the Idaho Four and Kohberger, as well as clues gleaned unofficially from social media accounts and occasional investigation leaks.

The end result is that while the public can play connect-the-dots with much of the information surrounding the Moscow murders, the biggest question of all — why? — remains unanswered.

Here’s a look at what we know so far, what we’re likely to learn from upcoming media in the case, and what’s next for the players in this awful saga.

Why Kohberger pleaded guilty: He was out of moves

Given that Kohberger staunchly maintained his innocence for nearly three years, his sudden reversal might have come as a surprise to anyone not following the court proceedings closely. In fact, it may have been inevitable.

After stalling the judicial process for years, Kohberger’s defense team had swiftly been running out of plays following a series of judicial rulings favoring the prosecution and limiting the defense’s strategies. These included the court rejecting a potential alibi defense — with Judge Steven Hippler ruling that Kohberger’s claim to have been driving around looking at the stars during the time of the murders was not actually an alibi — and rejecting a potential alternate suspect defense, with Hippler dismissing the defense’s coterie of alternate perpetrators as “rank speculation.” With few other moves left, Kohberger faced a mountain of overwhelming evidence, including his DNA on the knife sheath left at the crime scene, phone records tracking him at the location and across town the night of the crime, and a recently revealed second eyewitness, a Door........

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