Idaho murders: Students haunted by terrifying question after finding four friends dead
The friends of four brutally murdered young people have revealed the terrifying question that haunted them after finding the college students dead.
When four American college students were brutally murdered in their off-campus sharehouse, it captivated the world.
Questions were being asked about the horrific quadruple homicide in which the police initially had no suspect.
We quickly learnt the victims’ names and a photo of the housemates snapped smiling on what would be their last day alive became synonymous with the gruesome case in Moscow, Idaho.
But while all eyes were on the hunt for the killer and those who lost their lives, the friends of the victims lived with the terrifying thought they could be next.
And as the weeks stretched on with no one in custody, the friends faced a different kind of threat to their lives as strangers accused them of being involved in the heinous crime.
Their friends were murdered, they thought they were next
Hunter Johnson, Emily Alandt, Josie Lauteren and Ava Wood recall being in a state of shock and fear staying in a hotel the night of the murders, alongside surviving housemates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, in a new docuseries on Amazon Prime Video titled One Night in Idaho: The College Murders.
Ava said they all sat in the hallway in shock, but Hunter, who was the one to find their dead friends, looked particularly affected – like a “ghost”.
Hunter said it was at the hotel that night that he finally cried.
“I think the realism actually set in and I was very terrified. I didn’t sleep that whole first night,” he said.
“I was like, is there someone here right now? I don’t even know. I was truly scared.”
He shared the most troubling thought: “They are our best friends. If that just happened to our best friends, who’s to say it’s not going to happen to us?”
Emily said the fear of the unknown got to them all.
“Me and Hunter went to bed scared and every noise we heard, we thought we were going to be attacked,” she said.
It was November 13, 2022 and earlier that morning, University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death inside their home on King Road.
The house had three floors. The top floor was where Madison and Kaylee lived. Dylan and Xana lived on the second floor, and Bethany lived on the first floor in the “basement”. The night of the murders Xana and Ethan slept in Xana’s room and Dylan ended up staying in the basement with Bethany after seeing someone in the house and getting scared.
Emily and Josie lived across the road in one apartment, where Hunter also stayed the night, and Ava lived in another apartment next door.
Late in the morning, Dylan called Emily.
“She was like, ‘something weird happened last night, I don’t really know if I was dreaming or not but I’m really scared, can you come check out the house?’” Emily said.
“She was like, ‘I’m in the basement with Bethany’. She said, ‘I called for Xana a few times and she hasn’t responded but will you just come over.’”
Emily, Josie and Hunter went over to the house but none of them were overly concerned, explaining that they thought nothing much of the call.
They met a “frightened” Dylan and Bethany outside, then Hunter went into the house and found Xana and Ethan dead.
“Hunter was ahead of me and Emily. I stepped foot in the house and was immediately pushed out and Hunter was like ‘get out, someone call 911,’” Josie recalled.
“Hunter saved all of us extreme trauma by not letting us know anything,” Emily added.
She said he had not initially told them anyone was dead and instead “worded it very nicely” by telling the friends to tell 911 that there was an unconscious person. He later added there was no pulse.
The 911 call was made public for the first time in March.
As the friends had rushed out of the house and called the police, they did not know Madison and Kaylee were also inside, and dead.
They found out later when a “vandal alert” - a warning system for University of Idaho students - was sent that advised police were investigating the death of four people.
Investigators had described the murders as a “targeted attack” and revealed in a first press conference days later on November 16, 2022 they still didn’t have a suspect.
It wasn’t until over a month later that Bryan Kohberger, a criminology Ph.D. student at a different university, was arrested on December 30, 2022.
This month, the now 30-year-old pleaded guilty to breaking into the home and stabbing them to death.
But in the weeks before there was any arrest in 2022, online amateur sleuths, YouTubers and TikTokers were sharing viral conspiracy theories and misinformation with devastating consequences.
A murderer on the loose was not the friends’ only fear
Strangers determined to find someone to blame for the quadruple homicide turned on Hunter Johnson and Emily Alandt.
While mourning the loss of his best friend Ethan, Hunter said he had to also deal with people thinking he was a killer.
“It felt like a movie, people were thinking we were murderers,” he said.
Emily said they were getting death threats daily.
“There was a lot of people commenting on social media like ‘I know what you did’ like, ‘we’re going to come find you,’” she recalled.
David Berriochoa, who was in the Sigma Chi fraternity at the university with Ethan, was also hounded.
“It came like a freight train out of nowhere,” he said. “My Facebook inbox was full of the worst most heinous things I’ve ever read.
“People said I had conspired to commit this murder from high school.”
David said his address, family’s cars and even parents’ workplaces had been shared online.
“I was once again fearing for my life but for a completely different reason,” he said.
Surviving housemates Dylan and Bethany, Madison’s boyfriend Jake Schriger and Kaylee’s boyfriend Jack DuCoeur were also targeted.
A week after the murders on November 20, 2022, Moscow Police held a second press conference to clear up some of the rumours, including that Dylan and Bethany were not suspects.
Over a month later the true murderer was brought into custody.
Bryan Kohberger stood silent during his arraignment hearing in May, 2023, with the judge then entering not guilty pleas on his behalf.
But on July 2 this year, Kohberger pleaded guilty to four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary after accepting a plea deal in order to avoid the death penalty.
He will be sentenced on July 23.
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