Two of the University of Idaho students who were stabbed to death at their off-campus home debated going out for a snack just a couple of hours before a masked intruder killed them.
The chilling new details were revealed in a recent court order by Judge Steven Hippler on a request to allow the surviving roommates’ texts and 911 call into evidence at Bryan Kohberger’s upcoming murder trial.
Kohberger, 30, is charged with four counts of murder in the November 13, 2022 deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle.
Their two roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, referred to as D.M. and B.F. in the court documents, were also in the house in Moscow, Idaho on the night of the slayings, but survived.
After a night out, Goncalves and Mogen, along with their roommates, Mortensen and Funke, returned to their off-campus home on King Road and around 2 a.m., and gathered in Goncalves’ room where they “talked for awhile before going to bed,” the court order reads.
“The roommates debated going out to a food truck for a late snack, prompting D.M. to send text at 2:10 a.m. to an Uber driver she knew to see if he was driving,” according to the order.
“Ultimately, however, the girls decided to just go to bed.”
The fifth roommate, Xana Kernodle, was still out with her boyfriend Ethan Chapin at this time, the order clarified.
Then around 4 a.m., nearly two hours later, Mortensen reportedly “heard strange noises and crying coming from the bathroom” and later said she saw a person “dressed in black with a ski mask on walking by her bedroom door.”
She texted all four roommates, but only Funke answered. Mortensen and Funke texted that they were “freaking out” when they couldn’t get in touch with the other four roommates in the house.
At around 4:26 a.m., Mortensen joined Funke in her room. On her way, she saw Kernodle’s body, according to the order.
“On her way, [D.M.] noticed Xana lying on the floor of her bedroom, with her head towards the wall and her feet toward to the door,” the order reads. “D.M. thought Xana was drunk.”
The two girls fell asleep until later that day when their roommates’ slain bodies were found and a 911 call was made around noon.
Both surviving roommates are set to testify at Kohberger’s trial, which is scheduled to begin on August 11 and is expected to last more than three months.
Kohberger’s defense team filed a response to a motion asking the judge to block all the evidence from being admitted at trial. But the judge ruled that select portions of the texts, testimony and 911 call were hearsay and could not be admitted during trial.
He has pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Kohberger was a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, in Pullman, about 10 miles from Moscow, at the time of the killings in November 2022. He was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks later.
Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene. Prosecutors have also said that investigators traced the location of his cell phone and obtained surveillance footage that showed a car which appeared to be his driving to and from the scene of the crime.
Last week, the judge ruled that prosecutors can pursue the death penalty against Kohberger if he is convicted, despite the defendant’s recent autism diagnosis.
“Mr. Kohberger’s autism spectrum disorder (ASD) reduces his culpability, negates the retributive and deterrent purposes of capital punishment, and exposes him to the unacceptable risk that he will be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death,” defense attorneys wrote in court papers.
They argued that executing someone with autism would constitute cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
But prosecutors argued that under U.S. Supreme Court precedent, the only mental disability that precludes imposition of the death penalty is an intellectual disability — and Kohberger’s diagnosis was of mild autism “without accompanying intellectual . . . impairment.”
