The college friends who discovered the four University of Idaho students dead in a gruesome crime scene just off campus have finally spoken out — years after the murders and weeks before the suspect’s trial.
Hunter Johnson, now 24, and Emily Alandt, 23, were summoned to the residence at 1122 King Road on November 13, 2022, by two surviving roommates, referred to in court documents only as DM and BF.
Their names were initially redacted, but Johnson and Alandt have broken their silence in an interview with People over the weekend, and both are set to appear in an upcoming documentary about the case.
Johnson was staying at Alandt’s off-campus apartment the night of the murders and told the magazine he had an unusual gut feeling to lock their door that night. It was something he usually didn’t think about, he said.
The Moscow Police Department investigation dragged on for weeks, with help from the county sheriff, state police and the FBI. By Dec. 19, authorities had secretly identified Kohberger, then 28, as a suspect — based on DNA recovered from a knife sheath under Mogen’s body.
They also allege his white Hyundai Elantra is the suspect vehicle.
They arrested him on Dec. 30 at his parents’ house in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Kohbeger had driven home cross-country with his dad riding shotgun ahead of the Christmas break.
At the time of the crime, he was studying for a criminology Ph.D. in Pullman, Washington, 10 miles from the University of Idaho.
Kohberger’s trial was set to begin in August. He could have faced the death penalty if convicted of any of the four counts of first-degree murder.
