Bryan Kohberger identified at least one victim by name before fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students while they slept, according to surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen.
Kohberger — now serving four life sentences — confessed to killing Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle on November 13, 2022, at their off-campus home in Moscow.
Two newly unsealed documents state that Mortensen told officials she heard the killer say Kaylee Goncalves’ name during the heinous attack.
Trooper Jeffory Talbot from the Idaho State Police reported that when he arrived at the crime scene in Moscow, Sgt. Dustin Blaker of the Moscow Police Department briefed him on the information that investigators had gathered earlier in the day.
“Dylan Mortensen awoke in the early hours and opened her door, hearing a male voice say, ‘It’s okay Kaylee, I’m here for you,’ followed by crying,” Talbot recorded in his summary of Sgt. Blaker’s briefing, as reported by People.
Mortensen, for her part, believed she heard Goncalves, 21, beeline for the stairs while trying to escape from Kohberger before she heard him speak.
“She later heard another unfamiliar male voice say, ‘It’s okay, I’m going to help you.’ Mortensen suspected the male was inside the bathroom with the individual who was crying, whom she believed was Kaylee,” the official report highlighted, summarizing Mortensen’s initial interview after the horrific murders.
Mortensen went on to tweak her story that day after learning more details about what had happened.
She speculated it was “probably” Kernodle who was weeping at that moment, though initially, she thought it was Kaylee, according to the documents.
She speculated that Kernodle was likely the person she heard attempting to flee the killer, and admitted to being in shock over the horrific ordeal.
Still, Mortensen, who was left unharmed despite encountering Kohberger as he fled the scene through the rental property’s sliding door, told police she was certain that the killer said Goncalves’ name out loud.
“She advised she knows what she heard, especially about hearing who she believed was Kaylee crying and the male voice telling her he was there for her,” Det. Victoria M. Gooch wrote in a report filed after Mortensen’s first interview.
Goncalves endured “more than 20 stab wounds,” alongside blunt-force trauma, authorities revealed in recently released police documents.
Elsewhere, Mortensen struggled to identify Kohberger as the man she saw on the night of the fatal stabbings.
Mortensen shared with authorities that she had noticed an intruder with “bushy eyebrows” on the night of the attack on 1122 King Road in Moscow, who had told her that he was “here to help.”
“From people releasing Bryan Kohberger’s name, I know it’s him, but I don’t know,” the surviving roommate said after his arrest, according to the unsealed interview.
After seeing a picture of Kohberger in an Det. Joe Lake, Motensen added, “Nothing came back to me at all. I feel like if I saw that my mind would be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s him, but … I just don’t remember at all.’”
Mortensen attended Kohberger’s sentencing in court last month, where the killer was ordered to serve four life terms behind bars.
“He is a hollow vessel. Something less than human. A body without empathy or remorse,” she said through the tears. “He chose destruction, he chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me.”
Weeks before the trial, Kohberger copped a plea deal weeks which allowed him to avoid facing the death penalty.
After his sentencing, Kohberger was transferred from jail to a prison where his fellow inmates have been psychologically tormenting him by yelling into the vents that lead to his cell at all hours of the day.
