One Night in Idaho: The College Murders

One Night in Idaho: The College Murders

On Nov. 13, 2022, the lifeless bodies of four University of Idaho students — Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle — were found in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho. For nearly two months following the murders, a killer walked free. 

A new three-part documentary series, The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, definitively chronicles one of the most chilling murder cases in recent memory — honoring the four young lives that were taken while tracing every step from the night of the killings to the suspect’s eventual arrest. From director Skye Borgman (Unknown Number: The High School Catfish) and Academy Award–nominated executive producer Joe Berlinger (Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey), the series features unprecedented access to police footage, plus archival materials and firsthand accounts from the victims’ families, peeling back the layers of a case that forever changed the tight-knit college town of Moscow, Idaho.

“Making this series became deeply personal to me because I felt a responsibility to keep Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin at the center of every decision we made,” Borgman says. “At a time when so much attention has been focused on the case itself, I felt it was important to create something that brings the focus back to who they were, the lives they lived, and the love that still surrounds them.”

Here’s everything to know about the documentary.The guilty plea meant that Kohberger, 31, avoided the death penalty, although it’s recently been revealed that he is attempting to have his guilty plea withdrawn.A motive for the murders has never been revealed, but Skye Borgman, who directed the recent Netflix documentary about the case has said that she believes the house may have been targeted because young women lived there.

The property had been home to Goncalves, 21, Mogen, 21, and Kernodle, 20, as well as fellow students Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen when the murders took place on 13 November, 2022.

In an interview with Fox News, Borgman said: "The fact that [this] was the house that he chose.

"This was a house that had five women living in it. The night that the murders happened, Xana Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, was over, but really, this was a house full of women, and it seems quite clear that he targeted it.

"He watched the house; he was around the house in the days, weeks and months leading up to the murders.

“So, it seems pretty likely that he had a very low regard, if not hatred, for women."The filmmaker went on to say that it was ‘all conjecture’ but noted that he ‘seemed to struggle with his relationships with women’.“And we look at this incel movement and the question of whether or not he was an incel, and whether or not he didn’t like women,” she added.An incel (short for 'involuntary celibate') is someone who describes themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite wanting one. While many people use the term simply to describe loneliness or frustration, it has become associated with online communities where some members express extreme misogynistic views, blaming women for their lack of relationships.The documentary series featured stories from Kohberger’s Washington State University classmates, who recalled him ‘not being particularly well liked’ and said he had spoken negatively about women.

Kohberger eventually lost his job as a teaching assistant at the university after a female student claimed he followed her to her car.

"There were just strange incidents and strange behaviour," Moscow Police Chief Anthony Dahlinger said in the documentary.

Borgman went on to say that we may never know the real reason behind the horrific attacks.

“That's a frustrating thing for myself ... and I know especially for the families,” she said.

The director added that she believes Kohberger had hoped to ‘commit the perfect crime’.

"He failed in doing that," she said."But I think his silence is a way of attempting to keep the spotlight focused on him."Kohberger has launched a bid to have guilty plea withdrawn
Public attention is firmly back on the case, due to the release of the new Netflix series and the shock announcement that Kohberger is attempting to withdraw his guilty plea.In a statement to the New York Times, Kohberger said: “My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn.”The family of Kaylee shared a statement in response to the news, branding Kohberger a ‘narcissist’.

"He chose not to leave his fate - or the facts of the case - to a jury," the statement from the Goncalves family said.

"He never cried foul, never claimed he was uninformed or pressured, and never suggested there were problems with the discovery materials he and his counsel had reviewed for two years that should have been challenged."

Bryan Kohberger is seeking to challenge his conviction after previously pleading guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students.

Kohberger, who previously accepted a plea deal which saw him admit to killing students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, has provided a statement to The New York Times claiming that his previous plea was made from 'disinformation' and must be withdrawn.

"My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn," he told the outlet from prison, adding that his previous plea deal had 'hinged on false promises and blatant disinformation'."Over a year later, it is self-evident that, in State v. Kohberger, justice was not served."In November 2022, the bodies of Madison, 21, Kaylee, 21, Xana, 20, and Ethan, 20, were found at a student home in Moscow, Idaho, after a distress call was placed by the friends' surviving roommates.

Lifelong best friends Madison “Maddie” Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were roommates with Xana Kernodle, who also shared their King Road house with two other close friends, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, from sorority life. Students at the University of Idaho, the roommates were a tight-knit group whose off-campus home became a hub for their social circles, which included Ethan Chapin, a popular and kind freshman who had formed an exciting and loving relationship with Xana. Kaylee was on the cusp of graduating and had already been hired for a big job in Austin, Texas. As seen in the documentary, all four were big dreamers with big ambitions, whose lives were brimming with endless possibilities.

“As a father of two daughters who had great college experiences, this case struck a nerve with me unlike many stories I’ve covered,” Berlinger tells Netflix, explaining why the case resonated so deeply with him. “We felt the best way to honor the victims was to tell the full, accurate story of everything that happened that horrible night in Idaho.”

What happened in The Idaho Murders?

After a typical evening out, the King Road roommates had returned home in the early morning. By 4:20 a.m., Kaylee, Madison, Xana, and Ethan had been fatally stabbed. Later that day, the surviving roommates fled to a neighbor’s home when they realized that one of their roommates was not waking up, and called the police. When law enforcement arrived, officers initially believed they were responding to a case of alcohol poisoning. But as seen through bodycam footage in the documentary, police quickly realized they were dealing with a horrific quadruple homicide.

The documentary walks through the unfolding discovery of the crime and the ensuing chaos that entangled local Moscow police, Idaho State Police, the FBI, and the University of Idaho as they worked to understand the situation, inform family members, investigate the crime, and keep students safe as they tracked down the murderer.

It took more than a month before investigators were able to zero in on a suspect. A knife sheath found at the scene of the crime, as well as residential surveillance footage from a neighbor, provided critical evidence that finally broke the case open.

Who committed the Idaho murders?

As heard in the doc, about a month before the murders, Kaylee had seen a man staring at her while she was taking her dog for a walk outside the King Road house, a concern that she shared with her roommate Bethany. A few weeks later, Dylan, Maddie, and Bethany arrived home to find the front door had been left wide open — a fact that Dylan shared with police.

Using DNA analysis run on the knife sheath and investigative genetic genealogy, the FBI was able to match DNA from the sheath to trash collected from the family home of Bryan Kohberger, a graduate student at the neighboring Washington State University. Cell phone data showed that Kohberger had made several trips to the vicinity of King Road during late-night hours, and showed his phone as active and on the move during the early morning hours of the murders. After that evening, he never returned to Moscow, a fact law enforcement found suspicious.

Investigators came to believe that this was a premeditated crime that Kohberger had meticulously planned. As described in the documentary, Kaylee’s sister Alivea dug into Kohberger’s life and found old online posts that seemed to describe his feelings of disconnection from society and an unusual interest in what it’d feel like to commit crimes. Investigators also learned that Kohberger had a masters in criminal justice from DeSales University in Pennsylvania, and was pursuing a PhD in criminology at the Washington State University, where he was under review because of numerous complaints from faculty and students — especially women — about his inappropriate demeanor as a teaching assistant. He was later fired from his TA position between the murders and his arrest.

Kohberger pleaded guilty to all charges and was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, avoiding the death penalty — an outcome that some families, including the Goncalves family, found to be far short of justice. He is currently serving out his sentence at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution. However, on July 26, 2026, Kohberger announced he was looking to take back his guilty plea, and had already filed a petition challenging his conviction. He claimed that he is actually innocent, and wants to obtain a trial.

“My actual innocence is my truth, and the plea, hinged on by false promises and blatant disinformation, MUST be withdrawn,” Kohberger said in a statement.

In response, the Goncalves family released a statement likening Kohberger to a “mosquito you just can’t seem to swat.”

“The real tragedy is this: If even a fraction of the energy spent trying to free a guilty man were directed toward honoring the victims, there would be statues of them on every corner, parks bearing their names, and days set aside to remember the lives they lost at the hands of a narcissist,” they wrote.

The most cathartic moment of the devastating saga told in The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare — a new three-part documentary series about the tragic murders of four University of Idaho students, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle — is not necessarily in the capture of the perpetrator. It’s an impassioned, fierce impact statement by Kaylee’s older sister Alivea Goncalves.

As seen in the documentary, Alivea deliberately turns the courtroom podium towards Bryan Kohberger, who pled guilty to the murders in 2025, in order to look him directly in the face. “I won’t stand here and give you what you want,” she says, addressing him. “I won’t offer you tears. I won’t offer you trembling. Disappointments like you thrive on pain, on fear, and on the illusion of power, and I won’t feed your beast.

When Academy Award–nominated executive producer Joe Berlinger (Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey) first read about the case in November 2022, it was Madison, Kaylee, Ethan, and Xana’s stories that hit him hardest. “I’m the father of two daughters who each had recently finished their collegiate experiences around the time of these murders, and it just struck a very deep nerve," he tells Tudum. Berlinger sent a crew to Moscow, Idaho, almost immediately, and Skye Borgman (Unknown Number: The High School Catfish) was pulled in to direct. The team set out to tell the story of this case as it unfolded. Below, Borgman and Berlinger share their insights about how they approached the series, and what it means to keep the victims and their families at its center.

Posted on 2026/08/04 09:16 AM