The parents of a University of Idaho student who was killed along with three others said she had recently moved from the house where the murders took place in November, but had gone back to show her close friend her new car and throw a party. to attend nearby.
Kristi and Steve Goncalves told Dateline that their daughter, 21-year-old Kaylee Goncalves, was graduating early and had found a job at an IT company in Austin, Texas.
Kaylee Goncalves had just moved out of the house she shared with her longtime best friend, 21-year-old Madison “Maddie” Mogen.
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“These girls were best friends since sixth grade, like inseparable,” said Kristi Goncalves.
The two had lived together and “were true, ultimate best friends,” she said. “Maddie had been a big part of our lives.”
Kaylee Goncalves, who had just bought a new Range Rover, told her parents she wanted to go back to Moscow, Idaho, to show it to Maddie and go to a party nearby.
“That was the last time I saw Kaylee,” her mother said.
On November 13, Kaylee, Mogen and two others were stabbed to death in a home in Moscow’s largely rural university community.
Also killed in the attack were Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington, and Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona.
Police arrested a suspect, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, about seven weeks after the murders. He has been charged with four counts of first degree murder and felony burglary.
Authorities tied Kohberger to the case through male DNA left on a knife sheath at the scene, as well as tracing Kohberger’s car and his cell phone records.
Kohberger, who is from Pennsylvania, was a graduate student at nearby Washington State University and majored in criminal justice and criminology.
Police have not disclosed a motive for the killings or said if or how Kohberger knew the victims.
A former criminal justice classmate of Kohberger’s at DeSales University, where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s of arts in criminal justice, said she was shocked to hear the news of Kohberger’s arrest.
“It absolutely shocked me,” the classmate, Madison, told Dateline.
Madison, who requested that her last name not be used for fear of harassment, said she remembered the detailed answers Kohberger gave during the criminology course they took together in 2018.
“Whenever he raised his hand, he certainly took it upon himself to answer the question, but then gave every detail he possibly could to further his point,” she said. “It was always like, ‘Oh, Bryan answers this question.’ This is going to take up the whole class.’”
She also felt that Kohberger would “stare” at her and her friends.
“He would stare at us. He definitely had very bulging eyes,” she said. “I used to catch him staring at us. He would never really try to ‘talk’ to us.”
Hayden Stinchfield, a junior in the criminal justice program at WSU, had Kohberger as a teaching assistant.
“He wasn’t a super approachable guy,” Stinchfield told Dateline, adding that Kohberger was a hard sorter at first.
But that suddenly changed.
“At some point he started giving everyone hundredths and giving super high marks,” he said. “By the end of the semester, no one was thinking about the little deductions from earlier.”
Stinchfield said that, looking back, he believes the change in Kohberger’s grading habits “corresponds quite well” to the timing of the murders.
Steve and Kristi Goncalves said they take some comfort in the thought and hope that their daughter may have helped solve her own death by snatching the scabbard from the knife that was ultimately used to tie Kohberger to the murders.
“I hope maybe she took it from him in a struggle,” said Kristi Goncalves.
“It’s a checkmate-like moment,” Steve Goncalves added.
The two said they hoped for a conviction and the death penalty.
“He chose time and time again to end people’s lives and that has to be accounted for,” said Steve Goncalves.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
