When the researchers were working to solve the quadruple murders of the Idaho University, which at first seemed to be an early advantage to help evaluate the killer’s familiarity with the victims quickly evaporated when the only surviving witness began to remember more details of that night.
Dylan Mortensen, one of the two roommates who survived, told for the first time the detectives who arrived at the scene that “at some point in the early hours of the morning” of November 13, 2022, he woke up and opened the door of his room “and” heard a man say “Kaylee is fine, I am here for you”, “I refer to one of the victims of 21 years of age, Kaylee Goncalves, according to the documents. Newly launched.
In a later interview with the researchers, Mortensen retracted that version, omitting the name of Goncalves of the appointment, the documents revealed.
Mortensen, who said he had a lot to drink that night, explained several times to the researchers who was “trying to determine what was real,” according to the documents. She said she was “being sincere, but something he has been discussing, is not sure to be real,” according to the documents. “She has been working to try to remember what happened.”
The defending lawyer Anne Taylor repeatedly questioned Mortensen’s credibility as a witness, saying that “she had too much to drink and could not remember” and “said things that were absolutely false and could not have been true.” The prosecutors retreated, saying that while the versions of Mortensen’s history varied, she was consistent enough, and the judge finally put on the side of the prosecutors.
The recently launched documents revealed that Mortensen said he heard who thought it was Goncalves walking up to his room on the third floor and “heard Kaylee say ‘someone is here’, and it sounded frantic,” according to the police interview. Mortensen “described Kaylee’s tone as somewhere between speaking and shouting,” the interview said.
Mortensen “believed it was Kaylee who was climbing the stairs with [her dog] Murphy, “then” heard who he thought was Kaylee running down the stairs, “said the interview. Mortensen said that Murphy, who usually did not bark,” was barking right now. “
Four students from the Idaho University were found dead in a house outside the Campus in King Road in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.
Idaho Statesman/Tns through Getty Images
Mortensen added that “she doesn’t know if she really listened to this, or if she was drunk,” the document said. “Then he listened to a male voice, who said he had never heard before, say” it’s fine, I’m going to help you. “
She said that the male voice was not the victim Ethan Chapin, who was asleep in the second floor of her girlfriend Xana Kernodle at that time.
Mortensen said he believed that the man was in the second floor bath with the person crying, according to the document. Mortensen said that at first he thought Goncalves was crying, but then thought it was Kernodle.
Goncalves and her best friend, Madison Mogen, were found stabbed in the room of the third floor of Mogen. Goncalves was stabbed more than 30 times and had defensive injuries, according to a police report.
Kernodle, who according to the investigators may have interrupted admitted to the murderer Bryan Kohberger on the third floor, was attacked near his room on the second floor, suffering more than 50 white weapon wounds, according to a police report. Chapin was fatally stabbed in Kernodle’s bed.
Mortensen told the police that his vision was “blurred” when he opened his door, but “he saw a figure of someone who was dressed in black, and that they were masked and he was holding an element of what he initially perceived was a void, but said that it didn’t make sense to her,” the interview said. “She described the suspect as non -muscular, but was thin and toned, as a basketball player.”
“He looked down the hall to Xana’s room and could see Xana lying on her back in her underwear, but thought that at that time Xana passed out,” according to the interview.
“He denied perceiving a threat, even after meeting the man in the hall,” the document said. “She said there were people entering and leaving her house all the time.”
Dylan Mortensen hugs after speaking at Bryan Kohberger’s sentence hearing after he was sentenced in the stabbed deaths of 2022 of four university students from Idaho, in the Palace of Justice of Ada County, in Boise, Idaho, July 23, 2025.
Kyle Green/Via Reuters
Recently published documents say that Kohberger could have carried out the attack in less than four minutes.
A week after the murders, the investigators returned to King Road’s house to carry out “timed runners through the residence,” according to a report by the Idaho State Police, Darren Gilbertson.
“The purpose of the timed races was to obtain an understanding of the approximate time necessary to have carried out the murders,” said Gilbertson’s report. The Moscow police detective, Brett Payne, tracked the time, and a state police detective “walked through the residence with me screaming the amount of strikes to simulate the number of wounds to each victim, according to the autopsy reports,” Gilbertson wrote.
Gilbertson said that “he made two timed races, the first is a fast possible race and the second one a slower and more deliberate chronometer race” during which he was quiet and more “methodical.”
Bryan Kohberger, 30, appears for his sentence hearing after he was sentenced in the stabbed deaths of 2022 of four university students from Idaho, in the Palace of Justice of Ada County, in Boise, Idaho, July 23, 2025.
Kyle Green/Via Reuters
The narration of the games was written after Kohberger’s arrest in December 2022 and calls it by name.
“The timed races revealed that it was possible that Kohberger has carried out the murders in just two minutes and six seconds, going at a quick pace on the shortest route to the vehicle, or up to three minutes and forty -five seconds, going at a slower pace on the longest route to the vehicle,” the report said.
Photos of the crime scene launched with the documents show a common house for the Greek university life: counters full of empty cans of Seltzer, bottles of wine, wraps of sandwiches and gum sticks. A partially crushed beer can sat next to carefully exhibited jewelry and a small dresser mirror, while a backpack remained near a box of outbreak.
Police were not the only ones trying to make sense of the horrible murders.
Friends and classmates of the victims tried to help researchers establish a timeline of their movements that night. Many of the students described the consumption of heavy alcohol and bar and party jump, according to documents. The victims were very dear, according to the interviews, and there was no reason to think that someone housed a violent resentment.
A photo published by Kaylee Goncalves shows the students of the University of Idaho Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Goncalves. The four were found dead in a house outside the campus on November 13, 2022.
Kaylee Goncalves/Instagram
Goncalves had “mentioned jokingly who thought he had” a “stalker” after someone followed her car in the grocery store “a couple of months” before the murders, said one of the neighbors of the victims, according to the documents.
Another friend and sister of the Brotherhood told researchers that 21 -year -old Goncalves “did not seem worried about a stalker, or any other danger,” according to the documents.
Goncalves “would have been afraid if I had a stalker”, but instead “I was planning events for them all the time,” said the friend.
A photo without date of Kaylee Goncalves.
Courtesy of the Goncalves family
But a former roommate at King Road’s house told police that “he was always afraid that” something like that happened, “the documents said.
The 22 -year -old, who had graduated six months before the murders, described the house “as an ‘open doors’ policy, which means that people entered and left constantly,” according to her interview with the police.
“She would review the lock at the door of her room, because she didn’t feel safe,” the document said. “… there were times when I listened to steps in the house and I would fly it thinking that someone had a friend.”
“There would be times when he woke up and saw that the sliding glass door was unlocked. He thought he could have been someone forgetting the door after having people the night before,” the interview said. “Only his nearby friends would use the sliding glass door in the kitchen.”
The researchers believe that Kohberger used that sliding glass door to slide in the house and fatally stabbed Goncalves, Mogen, Kernodle and Chapin.
Last month, Kohberger received four perpetual chains more 10 years after declaring himself guilty of all charges. A reason is unknown, according to the authorities. The Moscow police said they do not know what victim was the specific objective and that they have not found any link between Kohberger and the victims. Kohberger refused to speak in his own name in the sentence.
Matt Furyman of ABC News, Amanda Morris, Vanessa Navarrete and Bennett García contributed to this report.
