University of Idaho undergraduates and roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle – and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin – had their whole lives ahead of them, until a seemingly random attack cut short their dreams.
In a case that shocked the world, the girls’ three-level off-campus home in King Road, Moscow, became a horrific crime scene on November 13, 2022, when an intruder stabbed them all to death.
The culprit was Bryan Kohberger, who was only found and arrested after a six-week nationwide manhunt.
Two other housemates, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, were home at the time and exchanged frantic text messages about a possible masked intruder.
They also called and texted the other female roommates, not knowing they had already been ruthlessly murdered.
Kaylee, a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, and Madison, a sister at the Pi Beta Phi sorority, were both 21 and had been best friends since childhood. Kaylee’s dad Steven said, “They went to high school together, started looking at colleges, they… get into the same apartment together.
“And in the end, they died together.”
For 30 months, Kohberger, a former PhD student of criminology, had protested his innocence until he changed his plea to guilty in June 2025 to avoid the death penalty.
He’s never given a motive for the brutal killings, nor why he targeted these students but spared their other roommates.
Recently, Kaylee’s mum Kristi made this emotional plea to Kohberger to explain why he stabbed her daughter 38 times: “I’m a mother, and you have a mother, too. Can you please just tell me why?”
Co-workers and cellmates had described Kohberger as “annoying” and “socially awkward”.
While studying at the nearby Washington State University, he’d also been reprimanded multiple times for inappropriate and troubling behaviour on campus.
One woman who believed she had matched with Kohberger on Tinder just months before the murders told police they had some discussions that “made her uncomfortable” and led to her cutting contact.
During one chat about horror movies, Kohberger asked what she thought would be the “worst way to die”.
He is serving four life sentences, without parole.
DEATH BY HAZING
Pledging to join a frat house can also have deadly consequences
At the Beta Theta Pi fraternity at Penn State University, it was a common practice for eager pledges to “run the gauntlet” – that is, scull a disturbing number of alcoholic drinks in front of their future “brothers”.
In February 2017, 19-year-old Tim Piazza was one of 14 pledges attempting the dangerous challenge, only his attempt ended in unimaginable tragedy.
Tim fell down the steps of the frat house’s basement, fracturing his skull, rupturing his spleen and sustaining traumatic brain injuries.
It took the fraternity members 12 hours to call for medical help, and he died soon after.
In a group text message that was later revealed, one of the frat members had written just before midnight, “Also, Tim Piazza might actually be a problem. He fell 15 feet down a flight of stairs, head-first, going to need help.”
The FBI later recovered a surveillance video they believed had been purposely deleted.
In the footage, Tim was given at least 18 drinks in just over an hour before his fatal fall.
Penn State permanently banned the fraternity from operating.
Eighteen students were charged in connection with Tim’s death and hazing is now banned in US campuses.
THE CHI OMEGA SLAUGHTERS
The most infamous of sorority house slayings is the tragedy that unfolded just outside the Florida State University campus on January 15, 1978, and it remains one of America’s most chilling cases.
Serial killer Ted Bundy had already been on a murderous spree for four years and was on the run from authorities when he arrived at the Chi Omega house in the early hours of the morning, a faulty lock on the back door allowing him to break in. Within 15 minutes, two young women sleeping inside had been slain.
Margaret Bowman, only 21 years old, was beaten with a log Bundy had found in the firewood pile outside.
He then choked her to death with a nylon stocking.
Moving across the hall, Bundy bludgeoned and strangled her sorority sister, Lisa Levy, who he then brutally sexually assaulted.
That same night, roommates Kathy Kleiner and Karen Chandler survived a frenzied attack from Bundy, but the ordeal left a lifetime of scars.
Decades later, Karen recalled how she’d had “pretty much” every bone in her face broken, while Kathy had her jaw broken in three places.
“I remember squinting into the dark… and seeing this black shadow standing above me,” Kathy, now 68, says of that horrific night.
“The next thing I see, he raises his arm up over his head and slams something down on my face.”
Bundy was executed in the electric chair in 1989.
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