Kentucky man gets 40 years for Campbellsville University dorm killing

Charles Escalera was sentenced to 40 years in prison in Taylor County Circuit Court for the 2024 killing of Campbellsville University student Josiah Kilman. The sentence came after Escalera pleaded guilty on June 18, and the plea agreement dropped burglary and theft by unlawful taking charges.

Kilman was 18 when Campbellsville University said he was found unresponsive in his dorm room around 12:43 a.m. on Feb. 24, 2024. He was taken to Taylor Regional Hospital and pronounced dead. Police later said Kilman died from manual strangulation, turning a campus emergency into a homicide case that quickly drew the attention of investigators in Campbellsville, Kentucky.

Kilman was a Biblical studies major and a member of the wrestling team. Campbellsville University President Joseph Hopkins described him as a “champion of character,” a phrase that became part of the campus’s public memory of the student whose death pierced the routine of dorm life. Escalera was identified as Kilman’s wrestling teammate and former teammate, a detail that deepened the shock inside the university community once police charged him in the case.

The university responded with a series of public updates after Kilman’s death, including a Feb. 24, 2024, statement and a March 1, 2024, note about a campus program titled “Looking Forward” with Hopkins, Campus Minister Trent Creason and Dean John Hurtgen. In nearby Columbia, Kentucky, Lindsey Wilson College held a candlelight vigil at 6 p.m. CT on Feb. 29, 2024, in John B. Begley Chapel to honor Kilman and support the Campbellsville University community.

The guilty plea meant there was no murder trial, making the sentencing hearing the central courtroom moment for Kilman’s family, the university, and the wider campus community. The 40-year term gives the case a major legal ending, but it also leaves intact the hardest part of the story, the fact that an 18-year-old student was found dead in his dorm room and that the people around him were left to absorb the aftermath.