The Idaho Four
An American Tragedy
By James Patterson
Category: History | Reading Duration: 22 min
About the Book
The Idaho Four (2025) pulls you inside the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, where four students were brutally killed in the middle of the night. Their murder sparked fear, grief, and a desperate search for answers. This story weaves together a chilling timeline of the crime, the frantic search for answers, and the raw voices of the shattered families. It’s a gripping true-crime story that asks how such horror could unfold in a place that seemed so safe.
Who Should Read This?
- True crime enthusiasts
- News junkies eager for behind-the-scenes details
- Anyone interested in criminal psychology
What’s in it for me? Learn more about the disturbing details surrounding a shocking mass murder.
If you’re familiar with the horrific murders that took the lives of four University of Idaho students in November 2022, you probably know that the suspect who was arrested, Bryan Kohberger, has since pleaded not guilty to the crimes. With this plea, Kohberger avoids the death penalty, and without a trial, there are likely to be many questions about his motives that will continue to go unanswered.
In this Blink, we’ll look at some facts and theories that point to possible answers as to why this man killed four people in a seemingly random fashion. We’ll uncover a lot of damning evidence that paints a picture of a man with a deeply troubled background – and a man who was likely influenced by another recent mass murder. We’ll get into all of it in the sections ahead.
Chapter 1: Best friends for life
Since middle school, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen were inseparable best friends. Maddie, the only child from a quiet household, had practically grown up inside Kaylee’s bustling home, where four siblings and constant commotion made her feel like she belonged somewhere. It was a foregone conclusion that, when it came time for college, they were going to continue being there for one another. They chose the University of Idaho – or UI as it is known – not just for academics, but for its vibrant Greek system.
Nearly one in four students joined a fraternity or sorority, and for Kaylee and Maddie, this was the key to friendship, social life, and future opportunities. So it was a real good news/bad news situation on Bid Day in August 2019 and Kaylee found out she’d been accepted to Alpha Phi – the crown jewel of campus sororities – and Maddie’s bid read: Pi Beta Phi. Not a bad house, but not Alpha Phi. At Pi Phi, as it was better known, Maddie leaned into her skills with the camera to take charge of the sorority’s social media, creating scenes that wouldn’t look out of place in a Disney movie – balloons, matching outfits, radiant smiles. Kaylee was always quick to leave loving, exclamation point-heavy comments, like, “That’s my best friend! !
4 life, baby! ! ” It hurt to be part of different groups, but their separation didn’t last long. When COVID hit, students had to leave campus, and sorority houses were suddenly empty. This meant that students were paying dues for houses they couldn’t live in. So Kaylee and Maddie began eyeing off-campus rentals in the town of Moscow, Idaho, where UI is located.
Maddie’s pick was a place that loomed on a hill: 1122 King Road. With its deck perfect for parties, it promised independence. “It’s gonna be great,” she told Kaylee. Already, Maddie had a third roommate in mind, Xana Kernodle – a fearless and funny freshman with a troubled past and an independent streak. Rules meant little to Xana, so she was also bristling at the COVID restrictions – and eager to break free.
Chapter 2: The unimaginable happens
By summer 2022, Maddie’s plan was being fully realized. She’d secured the lease at 1122 King Road, and was finally sharing a roof again with Kaylee. Along with Xana, their lively house was also home to two younger Pi Phis, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke. The young women became a tight-knit household.
Their many visitors included Ethan Chapin, a student who was in a steady relationship with the charming Xana. He was tall, easygoing, and Xana was soon spending long stretches at the Chapins’ home, where Ethan’s family welcomed her as one of their own. Meanwhile, the house on King Road was a busy hub for friends, parties, and game-day traditions. In November of 2022, their routines looked like those of any other college seniors. But then came the night of Saturday, November 12th. Maddie and Kaylee closed the evening at a local bar, grabbed a late-night snack from a food truck, and headed home.
Ethan and Xana partied at his frat house before walking back just after 2:00 a. m. Dylan was in her room downstairs. And as she was drifting in and out of sleep, she heard the familiar noises of her roommates returning home late at night. But then, at around four in the morning, Dylan heard unfamiliar sounds from the floor above. Maybe crying?
And maybe a man’s voice saying something like, “It’s okay. I’m going to help you. ” Slowly, she worked up the nerve to crack her bedroom door and peek out. She glimpsed a figure moving in the darkness – masked, with bushy eyebrows. Could it be a firefighter? She quickly closed the door.
What followed was confusion, fear, and disbelief. The reality of the situation was unthinkable. Dylan tried texting, calling her roommates, but there were no answers. When Bethany, the other roommate on the lower floor, texted her to come down, Dylan left her room and ran downstairs. The two stayed hidden in Bethany’s room until daylight, too frightened to leave or check upstairs. Hours later, after the sun rose, Dylan finally got through to her friends, Jenna, Emily, and Hunter.
Still scared, she asked them to come over. It was Hunter who entered first, and discovered the horrifying truth of what happened that evening. The lives of Kaylee, Maddie, Ethan, and Xana had been brutally taken. Something evil had visited 1122 King Road.
Chapter 3: Is the path warm?
The origins of that night, however, lay far from Idaho, in a different time. Nine years earlier, an 18-year-old named Bryan Kohberger was already in serious trouble. Everyone knew that his best friend, Jeremy Saba, was a junkie and a bad influence. But it was becoming apparent that Bryan was also breaking into homes – friends, family members, neighbors – and stealing anything he could get his hands on in order to keep his own heroin habit going.
His first stint in rehab was just around the corner. Around this same time, Bryan starts posting online about his neurological condition, known as visual snow, where occasionally your field of vision is impaired with static-like dots. He also writes and records rap songs, posting them on SoundCloud – signs of an angry, restless brain trying to explain itself. By 2018, he seems to be working on his recovery. He shows up unannounced at Connie Saba’s home, the mom of his old friend, Jeremy. Now rail-thin, with bulging eyes, Bryan is there to apologize for breaking in and robbing the place years ago.
Connie thanks him, but asks him to leave and never come back. At this point, Bryan appears to be moving in the right direction. He's enrolled at DeSales University, working his way towards a master’s degree in criminology. Still, his classmates nickname him “the Ghost. ” There’s something distant, detached, and downright spooky about him. But at least one classmate notices that he seems to wake up during one class, Dr.
Katherine Ramsland’s Psychological Sleuthing. She immerses the class in staged scenes – teaching them about blood patterns, trajectories, the way adrenaline narrows vision and leads to sloppy mistakes. She also teaches them about an acronym used for profiling a potential suicidal mass murderer: IS PATH WARM. Those signs are Ideation, Substance abuse, Purposelessness, Anxiety, Trapped, Hopelessness, Withdrawal, Anger, Recklessness, Mood changes. Little did his professor or classmates know, but if he was being honest with himself, Bryan could tick all of these boxes.
Chapter 4: New location, same problems
To demonstrate the principles of the IS PATH WARM acronym, Professor Ramsland used the case study of Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in a violent 2014 attack near the University of California, Santa Barbara. The killing spree ended with Rodger committing suicide, but not before he left behind numerous videos and a 137-page manifesto detailing his motivations. According to Rodger, the only thing he had to live for was getting revenge against the kinds of women who’d been constantly rejecting him. For this reason, Elliot Rodger went on to be seen as a “saint” to the “incel” community.
The term, short for “involuntary celibate,” describes an online community of men who blame women and society for their lack of sexual relationships. But what the professors and classmates didn’t know is that, just like Rodger, Bryan was a virgin who felt a profound sense of inadequacy and alienation around women – and coped with his loneliness with video games and online message boards. And, just like Rodger, he went on long, nighttime car rides and visited a gun range. After graduating from DeSales, Bryan traveled to Washington State University to get his PhD. Professor Ramsland even recommended him for an internship with the local police there, but the interview didn’t go well. The police chief felt something was off about Bryan and passed.
But he did get a job as a teacher’s assistant at WSU’s criminology department. And it’s here, with this change in his surroundings, that Bryan tried something new. Instead of being “the Ghost” he becomes more extroverted, forceful, and eager to speak up. But more often than not, this new confidence came out in aggressive, confrontational ways. When grading papers, he targeted female students, leaving long, critical messages. And in a research methodology class, he interrogated the woman sitting beside him, launching a barrage of critical questions, scanning the room for approval that never came.
Some women believe he followed them to their car after class. Complaints from students were piling up. But then, in the fall of 2022, his new confidence was shattered in front of a class. In his capacity as a teaching assistant, Bryan attempted to explain a legal principle but was publicly corrected by the professor. Instead of deferring to the expert, Bryan became defensive, repeatedly arguing with the professor. As it dawned on him that he had been embarrassed in front of the whole class, his face turned red with anger.
It was becoming clear his new persona wasn't winning people over, and the unprofessional outburst only deepened the faculty's concerns about him. Things in Pullman, Washington weren’t going a lot better than in Pennsylvania. He wasn’t getting invited to the weekly drink night with the rest of his cohorts. He was still alone.
Chapter 5: From Pullman to Moscow
As we know, Bryan liked to drive at night, and his wanderings frequently took him the short distance across the border over to Moscow, Idaho – home of the University of Idaho. Being a vegan, one of the places he’d read about online was the Mad Greek, a restaurant that serves vegan pizza. It’s also where Maddie Mogen, one of the young women living at 1122 King Road, worked as a waitress. Cellphone data shows that in the weeks leading up to November 12th, 2022, Bryan would drive around, often in the hours after midnight, in the area of King Road, where Maddie and her friends lived.
Friends also recalled how the large window of Maddie’s pink room made it clearly visible from the outside, particularly after dark. To a mind warped by the incel worldview that deified Elliot Rodger, young women enjoying a vibrant social life were the very embodiment of the incel’s grievances – symbols of a world from which he felt excluded and scorned. Meanwhile, the complaints about Bryan kept coming at WSU. By November, he’d already had a formal meeting about conduct, and was on the verge of losing his position if he didn’t change his behavior. He looked emptied out. Hopeless.
His eyes were dark, and he was getting even thinner. Was that meeting the final straw? Those same cellphone records showed that on the night of November 12th, Bryan’s cellphone was on the move, heading toward Moscow, before going silent for two hours. This was the same two hours when a masked intruder enters the King Road home of Maddie, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan. The morning after the murders, the police arrived and a campus alert pinged phones. News was traveling fast.
Friends made efforts to get in touch with the families before they heard about it on the news. In an instant, the lives of the victims’ families were upended. The entire University of Idaho was shaken to its core. The dean of students had to make important decisions about classes, safety, and communication.
Canceling in-person instruction accidentally sent thousands of potential witnesses scattering for the holidays. The media was also on the scene in a heartbeat. A storm was building – the rumor mill was underway, and everyone wanted answers.
Chapter 6: The hunt begins
As people were brought in for questioning, the cops secured the scene and collected evidence at 1122 King Road. Surprisingly, the county prosecutor found that the murderer seemingly made a big mistake. They left behind the sheath of a hunting knife, likely the one used to commit the murders. It was quickly sent to the labs with the hope they’d find DNA evidence.
By Monday, November 14th, the Moscow PD had called in the FBI and a full task force was set up: victimology mapped the lives of the four students; interview teams chased every possible clue; forensics and digital analysts sifted through the victims’ phones; and a tip line crew was set up to catch the flood already pouring in. Twice daily, they briefed one another in a cramped room. Meanwhile, there was constant pressure to answer questions from the media. This created a number of challenges for the police, the school, and the families. Moscow’s chief of police, James Fry, would have preferred to keep his mouth shut to the reporters. He knew that every scrap he shared could help the suspect and taint the jury pool.
The people of Moscow, Idaho were among those panicking due to the lack of official information available. So, three days after the murders, Chief Fry gave his first national press conference. He didn’t mention the knife sheath that was still being processed, but he did say that the attack appeared targeted, there’s no suspect in custody, and the killer is still out there. This wasn’t exactly the news people wanted to hear. Fry tried to hold the line, but the internet ran wild with speculation. Suddenly, every friend, ex, and bystander was dragged into a digital lineup.
Even Fry was theorized as a potential suspect. But unbeknownst to the families and the media, the investigation was moving. Interview teams had a detailed timeline; forensic techs were working on over a hundred evidence items; and the analysts who combed through CCTV noticed a white sedan repeatedly looping the neighborhood that night before zooming off. An FBI vehicle expert narrowed it down to a white Hyundai Elantra. Not unlike the one Bryan Kohberger drove.
Chapter 7: A suspect is captured
It wasn’t until December that the DNA investigation began to bear fruit. They didn’t get any hits from the usual criminal database, but due to a loophole in the law, the FBI was able to access public genealogy sites like GEDMatch and MyHeritage and compare the sample taken from the knife sheath. Maybe the suspect hadn’t sent their DNA to one of these services, but maybe a relative had, which would allow the FBI to build a family tree that could point them in the right direction. Sure enough, the FBI sent the Moscow PD a name: Bryan Kohberger.
This was when the dominoes began to fall in quick succession. Kohberger had a car that matched the one seen in CCTV footage. Cell phone data put him near the scene of the crime, not only in the early morning hours of November 12, but also during many late nights in the preceding two weeks. They began surveillance and followed Kohberger as he visited his parents’ home in Pennsylvania. They noticed the suspicious activity of Bryan emerging from the home around 3 a. m.
, wearing nitrile gloves and putting garbage bags into his neighbor’s cans. When the FBI collected the garbage, they hit a statistical jackpot. They found a sample of DNA from Bryan’s father, and when compared to the DNA from the knife sheath, it pointed to Bryan as the source with over 99. 9 percent certainty.
The DNA, phone data, and CCTV evidence were enough for an arrest warrant. On December 29, 2022, Troopers used flash-bang grenades to quickly stun and capture Bryan Kohberger in his kitchen. By morning, Chief Fry was finally telling the community the words they’d been aching to hear: a suspect is under arrest.
Chapter 8: The long wait for answers
After Kohberger’s arrest, a blame game started. Washington State University was, of course, shocked. Phones lit up in the criminology building. The professors who taught the suspect were forced to wonder: how did a room full of people trained to spot red flags miss a killer in their own ranks?
It happened in Pennsylvania, too, where former classmates scrolled through old emails and realized the quiet “Ghost” was now a headline suspect. As those who knew him struggled to reconcile their memories with the monstrous allegations, Bryan Kohberger was processed and placed in a cell at the Latah County jail in Idaho. The small, under-capacity lockup suddenly became the center of a national story. This was when things slowed down. The indictment didn’t take place until May 2023, and getting a date to start the trial proved to be a frustrating legal chess match that lasted throughout the spring and summer of 2024. Kohberger’s lawyer kept pleading for more time in order to review the mountain of digital evidence that the prosecutors had accumulated.
She pressed for the genetic genealogy playbook behind the DNA lead, questioned traffic-camera gaps, and argued workload and timing at every turn. Hearing after hearing ended with little progress to speak of. If nothing else, Kohberger’s defense team was succeeding in simply buying him more time. All signs were pointing to a start date for the trial no sooner than the summer of 2025. And there was always another question looming over the trial: would it take place in Moscow? Could the small college town handle such an event?
In September 2024, that question got a definitive answer. No. The venue was shifted to Boise. But the families were happy about one thing: the move came with a new judge who immediately arrived with a stricter clock and a warning to keep theatrics out of his courtroom. For the first time in months, the families felt like the tide was moving their way. But questions persisted.
Would DNA from the sheath be enough to anchor a verdict? A lot of the supporting evidence was circumstantial. The defense was clearly gearing up to challenge collection methods, chain of custody, and present alternative theories. The stage was being set, but for four devastated families, the outcome was anything but certain.
Final summary
In this Blink to The Idaho Four by James Patterson and Vicky Ward, you’ve learned how the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students became a case that gripped the nation from day one. Given the innocence of the victims and the seeming randomness of the violence, it led to rampant speculation and intense pressure for answers. Armed with a single critical clue – a knife sheath left behind at the crime scene – investigators were able to link the brutal attack to a criminology PhD student at Washington State University: Bryan Kohberger. Kohberger’s life leading up to the killings reveals someone with a history of drug addiction and breaking and entering homes.
It also reveals an isolated, lonely, and angry man who was likely influenced by the mass murders committed by Elliot Rodger, who is considered a “saint” by the incel community. Okay, that’s it for this Blink. We hope you enjoyed it. If you can, please take the time to leave us a rating – we always appreciate your feedback. See you in the next Blink.
About the Author
James Patterson is one of the world’s most prolific and widely-read authors, best known for the Alex Cross, Women’s Murder Club, and Michael Bennett series. His books have sold hundreds of millions of copies and hold multiple Guinness World Records for number one bestsellers. Beyond writing, he’s a major literacy advocate, funding scholarships and school libraries across the US.
Vicky Ward is a New York Times-bestselling investigative journalist, author, and podcaster whose reporting focuses on power, money, and corruption. A former CNN senior reporter and longtime magazine editor-at-large, she’s written books including Kushner, Inc. and The Liar’s Ball. She also hosts and produces documentary projects and serves as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford.