Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students as part of a plea deal to avoid the death penalty more than two years after the slayings shocked the nation and touched off a coast-to-coast manhunt.

Bryan Kohberger, who was a graduate student at nearby Washington State University, pleaded guilty to murder in the killings that terrified the Idaho campus and set off a nationwide search, which ended weeks later when he was arrested in Pennsylvania.