A surviving roommate who encountered the masked intruder who slaughtered four University of Idaho students in an off-campus home in 2022 initially told investigators she heard an unknown male voice refer to a victim by her name.
Amid the rampage, roommate Dylan Mortensen said she had opened her door and “heard a male say, ‘It’s OK Kaylee, I’m here for you,’ and crying,” according to a newly unsealed document written by Idaho State Police trooper Jeffory Talbot, based on a briefing received from a police sergeant in Moscow, Idaho.
Investigators said Kaylee Goncalves, 21, was fatally stabbed on the third floor of the apartment house in the same room with another victim, Madison Mogen, 21. Two others were killed in the home: Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, who was staying over that night. They were murdered on another floor, police said.
Investigators used DNA found on the button of a knife sheath left behind the room where Goncalves and Mogen were killed to help tie the attack to Bryan Kohberger, then a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University.
Mortensen later adjusted what she told police after gathering “additional information,” and said she believed it was Kernodle who had been crying in a bathroom, according to the documents, adding, “She advised she knows the male’s voice was not Ethan’s voice.”
Kohberger, who was facing a quadruple murder trial this month, changed his plea to guilty in the students’ deaths as part of a deal with prosecutors last month. Kohberger, 30, was punished with four consecutive life sentences and waived his right to appeal in exchange for prosecutors’ agreeing not to seek a death sentence.
The plea deal was criticized by some victims’ families who wanted to see Kohberger go to trial.
Key questions, including a motive for the killings and why he chose his victims, remain unknown.
In the wake of Kohberger’s sentencing last month, various law enforcement agencies, including police in Idaho and Washington state, have released new details about the case in documents and videos that were previously sealed.
In the weeks before she was murdered, Goncalves recounted a series of unnerving events to Mortensen and a second surviving housemate, according to a police report released last month.
Goncalves said she believed someone was following her, and she recounted to a roommate that she saw a shadow while she was outside with her dog about a month before the murders, according to a separate report.
The other surviving roommate told investigators that, around the same time, Goncalves saw an “unknown male” above their off-campus house, staring at her when she took the dog outside.
The documents did not specifically link Kohberger to those incidents.
The most recently released documents from the Idaho State Police also describe interviews with former peers and professors at Washington State University.
One professor warned colleagues that Kohberger “is smart enough that in four years, we will have to give him a Ph.D.”
“Mark my word, I work with predators, if we give him a Ph.D., that’s the guy that in many years when he is a professor, we will hear is harassing, stalking, and sexually abusing” students, the professor said.
A fellow student who spoke with police said she had a conversation with Kohberger after the murders and he told her that “whoever committed the homicides must have been pretty good.”
And, according to the student, Kohberger said the timing of the killings just before the start of winter break “made it a good choice.”
Kohberger declined to speak at his sentencing. He is being held in the Idaho Maximum Security Institution near Boise.
Latah County prosecutor Bill Thompson said Kohberger cannot be trusted to provide a believable account of his actions even if he decides to speak from prison.
“I don’t believe that there’s anything that would come out of his mouth that would be the truth,” Thompson told reporters last month.
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