The killings of four University of Idaho students in an off-campus home in Moscow in November 2022 were as brutal as they were perplexing.
The group of friends had gone out in the college town and returned to their shared home late. The next day, police found the four students slaughtered inside, and there were no signs of forced entry or damage.
The slayings led to weeks of investigation from police, frustrations from the victims’ families about the pace of the policework and fear in the local community of a mass killer on the loose.
Nearly two months later, Moscow Police arrested a 28-year-old man in Pennsylvania on a murder warrant in the killings of the four students. The man, Bryan Kohberger, lived in Pullman, Washington, and was a graduate student studying criminal justice. A judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and he’s now being held in the Latah County Jail without bail. A trial date has yet to be set.
The lurid case has riveted the public, but police have not released a potential motive, and a sweeping gag order has kept the parties from speaking publicly or revealing further details.
CNN put together a timeline showing what we know about the victims’ final hours, how police came to focus on the suspect and the progress of the court case in the year since the killings took place.
Saturday, November 12
Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were students at the University of Idaho who lived at a nearby off-campus residence in Moscow, a college town of about 25,000 people.
They had two other roommates in the three-floor, six-bedroom apartment.
Goncalves posted a series of photos on her Instagram at some point with the caption, “one lucky girl to be surrounded by these ppl everyday.” One of the photos shows Mogen sitting on Goncalves’ shoulders, with Chapin and Kernodle standing next to them.
That night, Chapin and Kernodle went to a party on campus, and Mogen and Goncalves went to a downtown bar, police said.
Sunday, November 13
Mogen and Goncalves ordered at a late-night food truck at about 1:41 a.m., the food truck’s live Twitch stream shows.
They ordered $10 worth of carbonara from the Grub Truckers and waited for about 10 minutes for their food. As they waited, they could be seen chatting with each other and with other people standing by the truck.
The two students did not seem to be in distress or in danger in any way, said Joseph Woodall, 26, who manages the truck.
Chapin and Kernodle are believed to have returned home around 1:45 a.m., and Goncalves and Mogen used a private party for a ride home at about 1:56 a.m., according to police.
One of the surviving roommates, identified in court paperwork as “D.M.,” told investigators she “heard crying” in the house the morning of the killings and heard a voice say “it’s ok, I’m going to help you.”
She then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” the affidavit said.
“D.M. described the figure as 5’10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase,’” court documents reveal.
“The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male.
Statements by “the surviving witness and other evidence leads investigators to believe the homicides occurred between 4:00 a.m. and 4:25 a.m.,” according to court documents.
The two roommates at the home who were not injured woke up later in the morning and summoned friends to the home because they believed one of the victims had passed out and was not waking up. A call to 911 was made just before noon about an unconscious person at the residence, police said.