On November 13, 2022, Idaho in Moscow was quiet. The kind of quiet that only exists in college towns before finals season, when campus sidewalks thin out, when roommates sleep in, and the air smells like the winter creeping in slowly. But by the time the sun was overhead, the silence had shattered. A 911 call placed just before noon led police to a small, off-campus rental house on King Road. Inside, four students at University of Idaho had been stabbed to death in their sleep. There were no screams reported, no forced entry. Just a home full of horror and two surviving roommates in shock.
For the next 47 days, the town lived in suspended grief. Four young lives had been stolen – Kaylee Goncalves, 21, her best friend Madison Mogen, also 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, also 20. The campus went silent. Students withdrew from classes. Parents came to take their children home early for the holidays. And all the while, the question hung unanswered – Who could do something like this?
There hadn’t been a single homicide in Moscow for seven years. Now, the town had four in a single night. With no suspect and no weapon, the public eventually filled the vacuum. Reddit threads speculated wildly. TikTok users accused random people in the town. Some targeted the surviving roommates. Others turned their attention to former boyfriends, professors and even delivery drivers.
Meanwhile, investigators worked quietly behind the scenes, tracking cell data, examining surveillance footage, and comparing DNA found at the scene on a single sheath of a Ka-Bar knife left behind near one of the victims. On December 30, after nearly seven weeks, police arrested 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger in Pennsylvania. A PhD criminology student at Washington State University, located just across the state border, Kohberger had been studying serial killers and reportedly participated in academic surveys asking former inmates about their thought processes during violent crimes. He had attended classes while the investigation unfolded. He had driven across the country with his father, likely while under surveillance. He had watched as the nation tried to guess what kind of person could commit such an act, all while knowing it was really him.
Investigators had quietly built this case. The most chilling piece of evidence was a knife sheath left behind at the crime scene – a U.S. Marine Corps Ka-Bar sheath, found on the bed next to Madison Mogen. On its snap button, investigators recovered a single source of male DNA. At the time, they had no direct match in national databases. So they turned to a method that’s becoming increasingly common in high-profile cases and that is – genetic genealogy.
By analyzing the DNA and tracing it through public ancestry records, authorities were able to build a family tree that eventually led them to Bryan Kohberger. In late December, they secretly retrieved DNA from the trash outside Kohberger’s parents’ home in Pennsylvania and it indeed matched the sheath.
But investigators didn’t just rely only on the DNA. They had been tracking Kohberger for weeks by then. His phone records revealed that he had been in the vicinity of the King Road house at least twelve times before the murders took place. More importantly, most of those visits occurred late at night or in the early morning hours. His white Hyundai Elantra had circled the neighborhood on the night of the murders once, twice and then again around 4:04 a.m., right before the police believed the killings took place.
Just weeks after the murders, Kohberger had returned to class at Washington State University, across the border in Pullman, Washington. He reportedly resumed his teaching assistant duties and even gave out grades. But his criminology classmates later described him as socially awkward, obsessive about details, and sometimes aggressive in discussions.
What now struck many in hindsight was his academic fascination with the criminal mind. In a public survey posted online months earlier, Kohberger had asked ex-convicts to describe their thoughts and emotions during the commission of a crime, specifically from planning to the aftermath. It was framed as academic research. Now after his arrest, it definitely felt like foreshadowing.
When police knocked on the Kohberger family’s door in the early hours of December 30, he didn’t resist. He asked if “anyone else had been arrested.” It was the question of someone who either already knew the answer or couldn’t believe it had finally reached up to him.
Kohberger was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary after being brought back to Idaho in early January 2023. He remained silent during his initial court appearances. He nodded when asked if he understood the charges. The judge entered a not guilty plea on his behalf because he refused to enter a plea when asked to do so.
The lack of clear motive, the calculated nature of the crime, and the idea that a criminology student may have committed the perfect murder made it feel like a plot torn from fiction. But for the victims’ families, it was not the case. It was the unbearable reality that their children had been killed in the safety of their own beds, by someone who slipped into their home and vanished without a trace.
In May 2023, prosecutors stated that they would seek the death penalty. They claimed that the crime met the criteria: multiple victims, exceptional immorality, and planning. But Kohberger’s defense pushed back, focusing on the strength of the DNA evidence and claiming that their client had no known connection to the victims.
By the time July 2025 arrived, it had been nearly three years since the murders. The courtroom was packed for the sentencing hearing – a hearing that would offer families their first and perhaps only moment to speak directly to the man accused of taking away their blood.
They spoke one by one. Kaylee’s father read from her journal – dreams of moving to Texas, starting her life with Maddie by her side. Xana’s mother described the way laughter used to echo in their kitchen. Ethan’s triplet siblings stood together, their voices cracking, their message clear -“He took a piece of all of us.”
Kohberger, wearing an orange jumpsuit, remained expressionless. His lawyers declined to speak. The judge sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The death penalty, once a looming question, was no longer on the table.
Outside the courthouse, the families embraced. For the first time in over two years, there was something that resembled an ending.
