Texts, 911 call reveal new details about UI homicides

Text messages from two surviving roommates in the University of Idaho student homicides and a transcript of the 911 call — both unsealed by the court Thursday afternoon — shed new insights into the morning when the four college students were stabbed to death in November 2022.

The texts between the female roommates, whom the Idaho Statesman is not identifying by name, revealed that the second-floor roommate saw someone in their three-story rental house wearing all black and a ski mask or covering over his head and mouth, and texted the first-floor roommate between 4:22 and 4:24 a.m., according to the prosecution’s court filings.

“I’m not kidding. (I) am so freaked out,” she wrote, as her phone was about to lose power. 

“So am I,” the other responded. 

“Come to my room / Run / Down here” 

Later that morning, a 911 call sent police to the off-campus home on King Road in Moscow to discover four students stabbed to death. After a nearly seven-week manhunt, suspect Bryan Kohberger, 30, a former Washington State University graduate student, was arrested. He now faces four counts of first-degree murder, and prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty if he is convicted.

The four victims were U of I undergraduates Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Wash. 

The three women lived in the home with the two other young women, who went physically unharmed in the early morning attack. Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend and stayed over for the night. 

The surviving roommates and two unidentified friends called 911 on Nov. 13, 2022, to report that “something happened” in their house the night before and that one of their roommates was passed out after drinking the night before and not waking up, according to the unsealed court filing.

“Oh, and they saw some man in their house last night,” one of the unidentified friends interjected, according to a transcript of the 911 call.

The 911 call was placed on the first-floor roommate’s cellphone, according to a defense filing. Moscow police previously denied a Statesman public records request for audio of the call, citing the ongoing investigation. 

Kohberger is expected to stand trial in Boise this summer. Both surviving roommates are expected to testify during the trial, the prosecution wrote in the filings. 

The fact that one roommate saw an intruder was already known in the case, but the contents of her conversations via text were not.

New filings provide insight on moments surrounding killings 

The night before — a Saturday — all five of the roommates, as well as Chapin, went out in Moscow. 

Chapin and Kernodle went to a party at his fraternity, while the two surviving roommates were out separately in the community, according to police. Mogen and Goncalves had been together at the Corner Club bar in downtown Moscow before stopping at Grub Truck, a food truck open late that parks nearby. 

By about 2 a.m., everyone was back at the house, according to a probable cause affidavit written by law enforcement.

Around 4 a.m., the second-floor roommate said she was awakened by a noise she thought was Goncalves playing with her dog in one of the third-floor bedrooms. Not long after, she heard someone she thought was Goncalves say something along the lines of, ‘There’s someone here,” the affidavit said.

The second-floor roommate looked outside her bedroom but saw nothing, she told police. Then she heard what she thought was crying coming from Kernodle’s second-floor bedroom and looked again. Finally, a third time, she saw an unknown intruder dressed in black clothing and a mask, with “bushy eyebrows,” walking toward her, the affidavit said.

In a separate court filing, the defense is attempting to exclude her “bushy eyebrows” description of the man, on account of her reliability after she indicated in an interview with police four days after the crime that “she was really sleepy and probably very drunk” at the time she witnessed the intruder, the filing read. 

During her testimony before a grand jury in May 2023, she said she was uncertain of what the male intruder was wearing, according to the filing.

After seeing the unknown man a little after 4 a.m. that day, the second-floor roommate attempted to call all four of her roommates. All calls went unanswered, and she eventually texted the first-floor roommate. 

“No one is answering / I’m rlly confused rn,” she wrote to the other survivor. 

She then texted Goncalves. “Kaylee / What’s going on”

The first-floor roommate, at 4:24 a.m., told her to come sleep in her room. 

“Im scRwd tho,” the second-floor roommate replied. 

“Ya I (know) but it’s better than being alone” 

Police used the two roommates’ texts to develop a timeline that the stabbing deaths occurred between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m. 

The second-floor roommate eventually went downstairs and the two surviving roommates fell asleep, according to a recent legal filing from Kohberger’s defense. 

Later that morning, the two roommates still hadn’t heard from either Goncalves or Mogen, texting them at 10:23 a.m. to see whether they were awake. 

“Pls answer,” the second-floor roommate texted Goncalves. “R u up,” a message to Mogen read. “R u up??” read another to Goncalves.

Not quite two hours later, at 11:56 a.m., the 911 call was placed, according to a defense filing. Throughout the chaotic phone call, the phone was passed back and forth between the roommates and friends as they tried to answer questions from the dispatcher. 

“Hi, something is happening. Something happened in our house. We don’t know what. We have …” the 911 call began, according to the transcript.

Moments after police arrived, one of the emergency responders told dispatch, “I think we have a homicide,” after finding Kernodle unresponsive, according to the transcript in the redacted court filing.

Trove of new court filings unsealed this week 

The motions, with the text messages and transcript detailed, specifically asked Ada County Judge Steven Hippler of Idaho’s 4th Judicial District to allow the prosecution to present the evidence during trial. Several other so-called motions in limine were filed by the prosecution and Kohberger’s defense to exclude a variety of evidence.

The latest motions, filed Feb. 24, were sealed and unavailable to the public until Thursday. These motions were among dozens of legal briefs in the case unsealed this week after Hippler admonished the prosecution and defense for their “pervasive practice” of sealing filings. 

In his order earlier this week, he wrote that rather than attorneys sometimes sealing documents, it’s become “the norm rather than the expectation.” 

“This approach runs counter to the public’s First Amendment rights to know what is going on in its courts,” Hippler said.