University of Idaho demolishes house where four students were brutally murdered

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The house where four University of Idaho students were killed last year was demolished early Thursday morning.

It marks an emotional step for the victims’ families and a close-knit community that was shocked and devastated by the brutal slayings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were stabbed to death there in November 2022.

The owner of the rental home near the university campus in Moscow, Idaho, donated it to the university earlier this year. It has since been boarded up and blocked off by a security fence.

The sounds of construction equipment pierced the early morning air as an excavator started tearing down the front part of the three-story house. The former walls formed a large pile of crushed and smashed wood on the ground as debris was picked up and loaded into a dump truck. A few onlookers joined dozens of members of the news media.

After about three hours, the home was fully demolished and its concrete foundation had been broken up. Multiple dump trucks continued to remove debris from the site.

Some of the victims’ families have opposed the demolition, calling for the house to be preserved until after Bryan Kohberger, the man accused in the killings is tried.

The former criminology graduate student at Washington State University in neighboring Pullman, Washington, has been charged with four counts of murder in the slayings. A judge entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf earlier this year.

A trial was initially set for October 2023 but was postponed indefinitely when Kohberger waived his right to a speedy trial. Then in late December, prosecutors submitted a request for the high-profile murder trial to begin in the summer of 2024.

Prosecutors told university officials in an email that they don’t anticipate needing the house any further, as they were already able to gather measurements necessary for creating illustrative exhibits for a jury.

Kohberger’s defence team was given access to the home earlier this month to gather photos, measurements and other documentation. And in October, the FBI gathered at the house to collect data that could be used to create visual aids for jurors at the upcoming trial.

School officials, who in February announced plans to raze the house, view the demolition as a key step toward finding closure, university spokesperson Jodi Walker said.

“That is an area that is dense with students, and many students have to look at it and live with it every day and have expressed to us how much it will help with the healing process to have that house removed,” she said.

The fence that had surrounded the property is set to be reinstalled Thursday night and will stay up for about a week, until contractors return to grade and level the site so that it can be planted with grass at some point, Walker said. There are currently no other plans for the site, though the university may revisit that in the future, she said.

Kaylee Goncalves’ family was firmly against knocking down the house, saying doing so would “destroy one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the case” before a trial date is even set.

“It is obvious from the two recent visits to the house, by both the Prosecution and the Defense, that there is still evidentiary value in having the King Road house still standing. There may be additional discovery by either party that prompts one side or the other to go back to the scene of the crime,” the family said in a statement this month.

“Jurors are notoriously unpredictable and they tend to make decisions on a variety of facts and circumstances. It would be foolish of us to try and foresee what they will want or need to make a just verdict in this case.”

“It’s like screaming into a void,” the family added. “Nobody is listening.”

Yet, the family of Ethan Chapin supported the demolition, saying that it is “for the good of the University, its students (including our own kids), and the community of Moscow.”

Ethan, who was a triplet, has a brother and sister who are both current University of Idaho students.

Moscow resident Lilly Topping, who lives on a neighboring street and could see the house from her window, also said she felt relieved as she passed by the demolition, The Associated Press reported.

She said she had felt unsafe for a time after the killings, and her grandparents gave her a door stopper to place underneath her door knob as a precaution against break-ins.

“You could just feel the presence of sadness,” she said. “It was just a tragic event, and I feel like we need to renew everything.”

Kernodle, Mogen and Goncalves lived together in the rental home just across the street from campus. Chapin — Kernodle’s boyfriend — was there visiting on the night of the attack.