NBC’s “Dateline” and ABC’s “20/20” debuted Friday night special episodes about the quadruple homicide in Moscow where four University of Idaho students were murdered in an off-campus house on King Road.
The four victims were U of I seniors Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; junior Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Washington.
The episodes look at the lives of the four students, with some of the victims’ parents and friends. The episodes also include insights from forensic experts investigating 28-year-old Bryan Kohberger, who was arrested Dec. 30 after detectives used DNA evidence, cell phone records and security footage to identify him as a suspect. Former classmates and students were also shocked to learn that Kohberger was the suspect.
Below are three takeaways from the two specials.
A look into how parents, friends heard the news
The Idaho Statesman previously reported that the three women, Kernodle, Mogen and Goncalves, were living at the King Road residence along with two surviving roommates. Chapin stayed the night with Kernodle, his girlfriend.
Kristi Goncalves, mother of Kaylee Goncalves, told NBC’s Keith Morrison that her daughter had recently moved out of the King Road residence, but returned on the weekend of Nov. 12 to spend time with Mogen, her best friend since sixth grade. Goncalves was preparing to graduate in December and had a job at a technology company in Austin, Texas.
On November 13, Goncalves’ mother said she received a call from a relative with connections in Moscow. The relative told her that “something bad happened to Kaylee”. Goncalves then tried to call her daughter, who didn’t answer, so she called Mogen.
“I said, ‘Everyone needs to relax because if anything happened to Kaylee last night, Maddie would have called me,'” Goncalves said in the interview.
Soon after, Goncalves said someone from the sheriff’s office knocked on the door to tell the family the news of their daughter and Mogen’s death.
Meanwhile, for many classmates and friends of the victims at the University of Idaho, it was a normal Sunday.
Martha, a sophomore at the University of Idaho and a friend of Kernodle and Chapin, said she met classmates at noon on Nov. 13 for a group project. The group met at the Sigma Chi house where she, Kernodle, and Chapin had been. the night before at a party. The group of students waited for one person: Hunter Chapin, Ethan Chapin’s brother.
“We called him and we said, ‘Hey, are you coming?'” she said in an interview. “And he said, ‘No, I think Ethan’s dead.’
Martha proceeded to text Kernodle, but was later told that she had also died.
“We didn’t know if it was something about carbon monoxide, we didn’t know, and so we all just stood in a big silent circle and watched all the starting stuff,” she said in the episode.
University of Idaho students subsequently received a Vandal Alert text, informing the students that the Moscow Police Department was investigating a murder on King Road.
Imaginations and control: Forensic experts offer insight about suspect
Bryan Kohberger, 28, was arrested at his Pennsylvania home two weeks ago on suspicion of four counts of first-degree murder. His next court date is scheduled for June 26.
With a suspect in custody, there’s one more question the authorities haven’t resolved yet: why these four students?
Jon Matthias, a forensic psychologist and host of the “Hidden True Crime” podcast, gave his insight into the suspect’s intentions in the episode “Dateline.”
“I think this is someone who had a lot of revenge fantasies and had a lot of violent and aggressive impulses over the years that weighed heavily on him and caused a lot of anxiety and stress,” Matthias said in an interview. “I see this as a kind of liberation for him.”
Moscow police previously said there were no signs of sexual assault among the victims, but that doesn’t mean there weren’t fantasies, Matthias said.
“The killer had to get in and out quickly, so if there were sexual assault fantasies, he probably realized he couldn’t do that with so many people in the house,” he said.
According to the statement of probable cause, detectives believe the murders occurred between 4 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.
Other forensic experts spoke about the suspect’s choice of weapon. Greg Rodgers, a retired FBI agent and college professor, told NBC in an interview that the suspect deliberately chose a combat knife to instill fear in the victims.
“He could have easily gotten his hands on a gun if he wanted one,” said Rodgers. “He may have obtained it legally or illegally. He purposely chose a knife… to really scare the victims and gain control.”
Rodgers said the suspect was well prepared for what to say to the victims during the attack, referring to one of the surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen, and her testimony in the affidavit of probable cause. She told police she heard someone say, “It’s okay, I’m going to help you.”
“If one roommate’s statements are correct about what she heard the man say to one of her roommates, he was well-rehearsed,” Rodgers said. “He had thought about this for a long time… He is well versed in the psychological aspect of how people think and behave during a crime. He’s trying to calm them down, and don’t want them to yell or warn their housemates.”
Kohberger, a Ph.D. candidate and teaching assistant at Washington State University, has an extensive background in criminology.
According to the statement of probable cause, detectives found a knife case in the bedroom where Goncalves and Mogen were found. Rodgers said leaving the scabbard behind was a “huge mistake” for the suspect.
“I think he became obsessed with one of these victims,” Rodgers said. “It could just as easily be that she served him at one of the restaurants where they worked. Maybe he just saw her. He may have talked to one of them and did something awkward and asked for a number and got rejected and obsessed.
‘Bullyed’, ‘uncomfortable’: former classmates, students describe Kohberger
As word spread across the country about Kohberger’s arrest, former high school classmate Casey Arntz reacted with her shock on social media, revealing that she had met Kohberger on their school bus in eastern Pennsylvania.
Arntz told reporters from “Dateline” and “20/20” that Kohberger was overweight in school and that she believed girls used to bully him.
Arntz stayed in touch with Kohberger after high school and later learned that he had entered rehab for a heroin addition in 2013. The next time she saw Kohberger was at a wedding in 2017 where she said he had lost significant weight and seemed uncomfortable in a social setting.
A former student classmate from DeSales University, Madison, also told NBC she was shocked to see Kohberger lose so much weight in his mugshot. She described Kohberger as someone who over-explained topics in class.
“It was always like, ‘Oh Bryan answer this question,'” she said. “This is going to take the whole class.”
The Statesman previously reported that Kohberger earned a bachelor’s degree in May 2020 and a master’s degree in criminal justice in May 2022 from DeSales University. In November, Kohberger was pursuing a Ph.D. in the criminal justice and criminology department at Washington State University, while also working as a teaching assistant.
In the episodes “Dateline” and “20/20”, one of Kohberger’s students described him as clumsy and quiet.
Hayden Stinchfield, a junior at WSU, told “Dateline” and “20/20” reporters that Kohberger was unapproachable as a teaching assistant.
“He got out before we did, probably because he had to be somewhere, but also because he had no reason to stay because no one would come and talk to him,” he said in an interview.
Stinchfield expressed frustration with Kohberger’s harsh assessment of assignments.
“You’re not telling us we did it wrong,” Stinchfield said of Kohberger’s feedback on assignments. ‘You tell us how you would have done during your promotion. level, and then you take our points for it.”
That pattern of harshly judging assignments suddenly changed in the last few weeks of the fall semester, Stinchfield said, when Kohberger started giving everyone full marks and stopped leaving notes.
“Looking back, it lines up pretty well with November 13,” he said.
