The night 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 unsealed Thursday 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 that they should be included as evidence in the trial of Bryan Kohberger.
Kohberger, 30, 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.
Latah County prosecutors have not detailed a motive for the attack, and a gag order prevents many involved in the case from speaking publicly. But the unsealing of documents in recent days has provided a glimpse into the strategies of the prosecution and defense going into trial and pieces together additional details of the timeline on the early morning of the killings.
Authorities have indicated the students were killed after 4 a.m. on Nov. 13, 2022, and their bodies were found later that morning in various rooms of the three-level home. 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 the call. Police previously said a 911 call was placed at 11:58 a.m.
Police tap surrounds the home where four University of Idaho students were found dead in Moscow, Idaho on Nov. 13, 2022.Ted S. Warren / AP file
“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.”
One of the texts in the prosecutors’ motion, from Mortensen, refers to something “like a ski mask” and says “he” had something on his head.
The motion says 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).”
Police have previously said Mortensen provided the most detailed eyewitness account from the time of the killings, describing that she saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask and that she stood in a “frozen shock phase” when she noticed the person walking toward a back sliding glass door. She then “locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” according to a probable cause affidavit.
The texts between the surviving roommates from 4:22 a.m. to 4:24 a.m. show increasing panic as they failed to reach their housemates by phone, according to the unsealed filing.
“I’m not kidding o I’m so freaked out,” Mortensen wrote to Funke.
“So am I,” Funke replied.
“My phone is going to die f—,” Mortensen wrote.
“Come to my room,” texted Funke, who resided in a first-floor bedroom.
She also texted: “Run” and “Down here.”
At 4:32 a.m., Mortensen texted Goncalves twice to “Pls answer,” and then again at 10:23 a.m.: “R u up??”
Mogen, Kernodle, Goncalves and the two other women who survived lived at the off-campus home on King Road. Goncalves had recently moved out but returned to attend a nearby party, her family has said. Chapin was Kernodle’s boyfriend.
Goncalves’ family wrote on their Facebook page that the release of unsealed transcripts and documents in recent days “has been exceptionally hard” to read.
“We need this to be over. God help us all,” they posted.
Kohberger, who was a doctoral student of criminal justice at nearby Washington State University, 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 has been set for Aug. 11. Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.
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.
In another motion unsealed this week, the defense indicated they would like to argue Kohberger should not be put to death if found guilty because he has autism spectrum disorder and it would violate his constitutional rights. The defense had request for the filing and others to be sealed.
But District Court Judge Steven Hippler also voiced frustration that too many sealed motions were being filed and warned attorneys on both sides to take the least restrictive actions, such as using initials or redacting certain information, rather than expecting content to be shielded from the public.
“This runs counter to the public’s First Amendment rights to know what is going on in its courts,” Hippler wrote in an order this week.
Shanshan Dong
