The night that four college students were fatally stabbed, their surviving roommates at the Idaho home expressed worry about not being able to reach their friends and referred to someone in a “ski mask,” court documents show.
“No one is answering,” Dylan Mortensen texted to Bethany Funke at 4:22 a.m. the day the bodies were found. “I’m rlly confused rn.”
The texts were included in a motion, which identifies them only by their initials, from prosecutors who argue that the messages are not hearsay and should be included as evidence in the trial against accused killer Bryan Kohberger.
Kohberger is accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students — Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — in an off-campus home in the town of Moscow in November 2022.
The students’ bodies were found Nov. 13, 2022. A person not identified in court documents told Funke and Mortensen to call 911 after discovering Goncalves’ body.
“Something happened in our house. We don’t know what,” the 911 caller says, according to a transcript of that 911 call.
“One of the roommates who’s passed out and she was drunk last night and she’s not waking up,” the caller said. “Oh, and they saw some man in their house last night,” the caller added.
One of the texts in the prosecutors’ motion is from Mortensen and refers to something “like a ski mask” and that a “he” had something on his head.
The motion says that Mortensen gave grand jury testimony “where she indicates she just witnessed a startling event (i.e. heard noises in residence and saw an unknown male in the residence).”
The 911 call was made at 11:58 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022, authorities have said.
Before that, texts show the surviving roommates worried that their messages went unanswered.
“Pls answer,” Mortensen texted Goncalves twice, at 4:32 a.m. and also at 10:23 a.m. “R u up??” she then asked.
Mogen, Kernodle, Goncalves and two other women who survived lived at the off-campus home on Kings Road. Goncalves had recently moved out but returned to attend a nearby party, her family has said. Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend.
Kohberger, who was a doctorate student of criminal justice at the nearby Washington State University in Washington state, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.
A judge has entered a plea of not guilty on Kohberger’s behalf. A trial date has been set for Aug. 11. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty in the case.
Kohberger was arrested in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30, 2022, more than six weeks after the killings on a fugitive from justice warrant.
He is being held without bond in jail in Ada County, Idaho.
The killings happened in Latah County, but the Idaho Supreme Court granted the requests of Kohberger’s defense to move the trial to Ada County over fears that he would not be able to get a fair trial where the slayings occurred.
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