The mother of a student murdered in the University of Idaho massacre discovered her daughter has been killed when she travelled to console her about the death of her friend.
The parent had no idea Madison Mogen was one of twisted Bryan Kohberger’s victims when she went to pick up the teenager after the heartbreaking news. Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were also stabbed to death in their off-campus home in 2021. Their roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke survived the chilling attack.
The revelations come in One Night in Idaho, a new Prime Video docuseries. The show includes interviews with relatives and friends of the victims as well as insight into the surviving roommates’ state of mind in the hours following the killings. In it, viewers heard how one family was informed about the tragedy.
Madison Mogen, top left, Kaylee Goncalves, bottom left, Ethan Chapin, center, and Xana Kernodle, right were all killed
Karen Laramie took a call from her daughter’s boyfriend about an incident, saying they believed Xana was dead. “My heart just sank,” Ms Laramie said. “I called Maddie and Kaylee, and there was no answer, so I called the Moscow Police Department and they were like ‘well we can’t really tell you anything.’
“The whole time my mindset was that we were going to go pick up Maddie and Kaylee and bring them home and console them and hug them and figure out just what happened. I remember running up the stairs and just trying to find anyone to talk, like anyone to … just anyone.”
Bryan Kohberger agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence without parole (Image: Getty Images)
They were then taken into a room by police officers and told the news that shattered their world. She went on: “The officer kind of explained there has been a homicide in your daughter’s house and there are four victims, and instantly we were like ‘what?’. It just made no sense. And he said Maddie was a victim. Then I said ‘what about Kaylee?’ He said Kaylee was also a victim.”
Following a plea agreement Kohberger is likely to face four consecutive life terms in prison, and to waive his rights to appeal or seek reconsideration of the sentence. He will be formally sentenced on July 23. As a result of pleading guilty, he will no longer have to face the death penalty.
Madison Mogen and her close friend Kaylee Goncalves were both butchered (Image: @autumngoncalves/Instagram)
Friends of the two University of Idaho students who survived the brutal stabbing later revealed why the pair didn’t call 911 for several hours after the rampage. Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, who lived in the Moscow, Idaho, off-campus house where the four students were murdered, were home at the time but were unharmed. They placed the 911 call at 11:58am on November 13, 2022 – roughly eight hours after the attack, which investigators believe happened between 4am and 4.20am.
Dylan later told police she had opened her bedroom door around 4am after hearing noises and saw a masked man with bushy eyebrows walking toward a sliding glass door before locking herself in her room, according to a probable cause affidavit.
Speaking in the docuseries, friends Hunter Johnson, Emily Alandt and Josie Lauteren shared how Dylan and Bethany contacted them that morning asking for help. “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 recalled.
The student home where the quadruple killing took place(Image: KREM News)
Dylan told her she had been in the basement with Bethany and had tried calling Xana several times but received no response. Emily said she didn’t initially think the request was serious. “I was like, ‘Ha, ha, sure. Should I bring my pepper spray?’ Not thinking anything of it,” she said.
Josie explained that Dylan had previously called friends for support after hearing strange noises in the house. “She’s called us before and been like, ‘Oh, I’m scared. Can you bring your boyfriends over?’ But it was never anything serious… because it’s Moscow.” When Emily, Josie and Hunter arrived at the house, they quickly realised something was terribly wrong. “Dylan and Bethany had exited the house. They looked frightened, just kind of like, hands on their mouth, like, ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’” Emily said.
“As soon as I stepped in the house, I was like, ‘Oh, something is so not right.’ Like, you could feel it almost,” Josie added. Hunter, who entered the home first, urged them to call police without revealing what he actually saw when entering Xana and Ethan’s bedroom.
“Hunter had enough courage to tell them to call the police for not a real reason,” Alandt said. “He worded it very nicely. He said, ‘Tell them there’s an unconscious person.’ Hunter saved all of us extreme trauma by not letting us know anything.”
