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The Idaho Student Murders | Full Episode
The full 48 Hours episode, 41 min: the case told start to finish in one sitting.
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What happened
In the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students—Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle—were fatally stabbed inside a rented, off-campus house in Moscow, Idaho, a town that had not had a homicide since 2015. Mogen and Goncalves, both 21 and lifelong friends from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, shared a third-floor bedroom; Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Chapin, 20, were in her second-floor room. Detectives believe all four were killed between 4:00 and 4:25 a.m. Two roommates on the lower floors survived; one told investigators she saw an unfamiliar man dressed in black and masked leave through a sliding glass door, and that she had earlier heard him tell someone, "It's okay; I'm going to help you." Goncalves had more than twenty stab wounds and Kernodle more than fifty, many of them defensive; none of the four had been sexually assaulted or restrained. A roommate called 911 to report an "unconscious person" before noon, and all four victims were pronounced dead at the house.
The Moscow Police Department led the investigation with the Idaho State Police and the FBI, eventually receiving more than 15,000 tips from the public. Investigators recovered a knife sheath bearing DNA at the scene; after an initial genealogy search stalled on a distant match, the FBI used ancestral DNA databases to identify a closer relative. Separately, security video showed a white Hyundai Elantra passing the house several times around the time of the killings, and police searched records of roughly 22,000 similar cars. That trail led to Bryan Christopher Kohberger, a 28-year-old criminology PhD student and teaching assistant at Washington State University in Pullman, less than eight miles west of Moscow; cell-phone data placed his phone near the victims' home around the time of the murders. Kohberger, terminated from his teaching-assistant post on December 19, 2022, over concerns about his conduct, was surveilled at his parents' home in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, before his arrest there on December 30, 2022, on four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary; a search of the home reportedly turned up a knife, a pistol, and a black face mask.
Kohberger was extradited to Idaho in January 2023 and formally charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. A Latah County grand jury indicted him on the same five charges in May 2023, and prosecutors announced in June 2023 that they would seek the death penalty. The trial venue was later moved to Boise, Idaho. On July 2, 2025, Kohberger pleaded guilty to all charges as part of an agreement to avoid the death penalty and waive any future appeal. On July 23, 2025, he was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, plus ten years for burglary, and ordered to pay $250,000 in fines and $20,000 in restitution to the victims' families.
The killings prompted widespread alarm on campus: the university canceled classes, victims' families criticized the limited flow of information from police and the university, and unverified rumors spread on social media, which Moscow police publicly denounced. The house where the murders occurred was later donated to the university and demolished; a memorial garden opened on campus in 2024, and the university awarded posthumous degrees to the four victims in May 2023. In 2025, a documentary series about the case aired on Amazon Prime Video, and news reports that November said Goncalves' family intended to sue Washington State University over Kohberger's conduct before the killings.
