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The booming business of true crime<\/a> suffered a setback last week, when Bryan Kohberger<\/strong>, the man accused of the 2022 mass slaying of University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, and Madison Mogen, changed his plea<\/a> to \u201cguilty.\u201d Social media users who<\/a> built their summers around commenting on\u2014or even traveling to\u2014his trial appear at a loss, seemingly unaware that August in Idaho is far less fun than it sounds. But those whose business model revolves around online speculation about every move Bryan Kohberger makes will only have one more chance: His sentencing hearing on July 23, after which he\u2019s expected to serve four consecutive life sentences at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution, notorious as one of the most unpleasant prisons in the US\u2014and as a place where visitors are tightly restricted.<\/p>\n Kohberger likely made that plea deal to avoid the death penalty, but it also has an unintended consequence: It\u2019s put an endpoint on a media circus that\u2019s plagued Moscow, Idaho since November 13, 2022, when four students were stabbed to death<\/a> in their college residence. In the days that followed, amateur sleuths descended on the small town virtually and in person, falsely identifying suspects and spinning theories.<\/p>\n It was professional detective work and science that led police to their suspect, not TikTok. Genetic genealogy tools were used<\/a> to link DNA on a knife sheath to Kohberger, a PhD student in criminology at nearby Washington State University. That discovery was made almost seven weeks after the crime, and by then, rumors had reached a fever pitch.<\/p>\n Kohberger’s arrest did little to quell the media obsession with the case, as Kathleen Hale<\/strong> reported for Vanity Fair<\/em><\/a> at the time. That he \u201cstood silent\u201d instead of entering a plea when he was arraigned<\/a> in 2023 took speculation to yet another level.<\/p>\n