Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. The date where it all went wrong. The University of Idaho changed forever. What exactly happened that night? Why are so many questions still left unanswered?
On that early morning, five roommates: Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were sleeping in their house located just a few minutes away from the university. Xana’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, was also staying at the house that night.
At around 9 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 12, 2022, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were hanging out at a house that was only about a 5 minute walk from their off campus house on 1122 King Road. Around this same time, Madison “Maddie” Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, were at Corner Club, a historic sports bar in town. They stayed there for about three hours until they left at 1:30 a.m, where they headed to a nearby food truck. They were spotted on surveillance cameras nearby and then soon after on an ongoing twitch stream of the food truck they ordered from, Grub Truck. Minutes later, they receive their food, and walk out of the camera frames before getting into an Uber. The Uber takes them home and they arrive at their house on King Road at approximately 1:56 a.m. At this time, Xana and Ethan, along with two other roommates, are at the house, according to an affidavit.
At approximately 2:53 a.m., a white sedan is seen driving from Pullman, Washington, to the city of Moscow, Idaho, where the students are living. At approximately 4:00 a.m, roommate Xana Kernodle received a doordash order at the residence. At 4:12 a.m., Xana was likely still awake and using the TikTok app, according to phone records. At 4:17 a.m., noise can be heard from a surveillance camera in the neighborhood, which sounds like screaming. One of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, also testifies to hearing noise coming from Xana’s room which sounded like crying. This is likely when the murders began. Dylan Mortensen opens the door to her room three times throughout the night in which the third time she spots a man with a mask that covers almost his entire face as he walks past her room. In shock, she closes the door and locks it. At 4:20 a.m., the white sedan is seen leaving the residence.
One of the most shocking parts of this case is how a 911 call was only made at 11:58a.m., over seven hours after the murders took place. This is when the police discover the bodies of four of the students: Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogen. Although Dylan had seen a mysterious man and heard noises, she instead attempted to text all of her roommates instead of calling police, including her surviving roommate, Bethany Funke, who told her to run down to her room. There really is not an answer to why neither of the roommates called the police sooner after sensing something was wrong, but some believe it may have been due to the fact they were in shock or very tired, which would explain why they were asleep until late that morning.
Police did rule out the murders as stabbings, but did not find a murder weapon on scene. There was very little evidence to go on to try and identify who was the murderer in this case. Police did eventually identify and arrest suspect Bryan Kohberger, a 30 year old man that lives in Pullman, Washington, where he studied Criminology as a PhD student at Washington State University. The white sedan that was involved in the murders and was seen driving to the residence, was found registered under his name.
The suspect, Kohberger, is now being charged with four counts of first degree murder, and some officials want to charge him with the death penalty. He is now set to face trial in August of 2025, in Boise, Idaho.
Although there is a suspect and multiple pieces of evidence that point to him, there are still many questions left unanswered. A clear motive has not been found, or why he would have specifically only killed those four students, especially since he would have no way of knowing one of the victims, Ethan, would be there, since it was not his residence. It is also unclear why he would have not killed the surviving roommates, when he likely knew at least one of them was in the house at the time of the killings. Another confusing aspect of this is why one of the surviving, scared roommates, did not call the police at the time when they knew something was wrong. As time progresses, it is unlikely that some of these questions will ever be answered. One thing is for sure though, we will soon know Kohberger’s fate.
