What Happened That Night?

 

Before the Murder

Before the murders occurred on November 12th, the victims Saturday night was like any other. Childhood best friends Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves had gone out to a bar in Moscow called the Corner Club. The friends were seen at around 1:40 am on video camera footage from a Grub Truck. They were then seen on the footage being taken home by a friend, who was cleared as a suspect. 

Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were also having a ordinary night the night of their murders. The couple had gone Xana's sorority house, Sigma Chi, that night and returned back at the apartment around 1:45am. According to phone records, Xana had gotten DoorDash at about 4am and was heard playing with her dog by surviving roommates. Phone records then show that Xana was on TikTok at 4:12am and according to investigators the murders occurred at around 4:25. 

Bethany Funke (left) and Dylan Mortensen (right)

The Survivors Story 

The two surviving roommates of the murder, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were thought to have been asleep when the murders occurred. Dylan said that she had heard a male voice attempting to comfort and peeked out her bedroom door, but didn't seen anything. The roommate looked out her door a second time after she had heard crying, and when she did so she saw the killer (now thought to be Bryan Kohberger). She watched a man she didn't recognize, "athletic built with bushy eyebrows," walk past her and to their slider door. Security camera footage located 50 feet from Xana's room, picked up sounds of barking, whimpers, and a loud thud at around 4:17am.

The thing that confuses me most about this case is that the killer spares two of the roommates and walked past one. The only explanation I found regarding this was that the assailant could have been "out of energy" after already stabbing the other four victims. 

Order of Events 

The building where the murders occurred was a three story off campus house. The killer was thought to have gotten in the house through an unlocked sliding door on the second and gone up to the third floor (passing Dylans room). Once on the third floor the suspect looked into Kaylees room (which is empty), waking her dog. They then move onto Maddie's room, where the two best friends are sleeping together, and stabs them both (this is when the one of the surviving roommates had peeked out her door the first time, but the killer had not returned to the second floor yet). 

The suspect then goes back down to the second floor and to the room of Xana, where she and he boyfriend Ethan were sleeping. He stabs them both to death and exits the same way he had entered, again passing, but this time being seen by surviving roommate, Dylan's room.