Idaho murders: Prosecutor reveals why he believes killer Bryan Kohberger left 2 of 6 friends alive

News.com.au

2 days ago

The lead prosecutor on the Idaho murders case believes quadruple killer Bryan Kohberger did see the surviving housemate that saw him but left her alive because he 'was scared'.
Kohberger, now 30, killed four Idaho State University students in their share house in Moscow, Idaho at around 4am on November 13, 2022.
He was sentenced to prison for the rest of his life last month for murdering Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20 and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Two other flatmates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, were unharmed.
Kohberger came to a plea deal that saw him admit to the murders and waive his right to appeal in exchange for not getting the death penalty.
Still many nanswered questions remain about the gruesome case that captivated the world — mainly Kohberger's motive, but also why Ms Mortensen and Ms Funke were left alone.
Especially given Ms Mortensen saw the man, later identified as Kohberger, in their house the night of the murders.
In an interview with local newspaper Idaho Statesman, prosecutor Bill Thompson, who put off retirement to see the case through, said Ms Mortensen's recollection of seeing a man in black with a face mask and bushy eyebrows walking towards the second-floor sliding glass door was consistent over several interviews.
'From what Dylan described, I have a hard time imagining that the killer did not see Dylan,' Mr Thompson told the newspaper.
'At that point, he'd been in the house probably longer than he planned, and he had killed more people than he planned … It wouldn't surprise us that the killer was scared at that point and decided they had to leave, not knowing if law enforcement already had been called.'
Mr Thompson told Idaho Statesman the order of the victims' death is not entirely clear.
It is believed Ms Goncalves or Ms Mogen may have been who Kohberger was targeting because it appears he immediately went to the third floor.
The house had three floors. The top floor was where Ms Goncalves and Ms Mogen lived. Ms Mortensen and Ms Kernodle lived on the second floor, and Ms Funke lived on the first floor in the 'basement'. Mr Chapin was Ms Kernodle's boyfriend.
Ms Mortensen had moved from her room to stay in Ms Funke's room in the basement during the night after seeing a strange man in the house.
Late in the morning, she called Emily Alandt, a friend who lived across the road, and asked her to come check out the house, saying something strange had happened during the night but she didn't know if she was dreaming.
'She was like, 'something weird happened last night, I don't really know if I was dreaming or not but I'm really scared, can you come check out the house?'' Ms Alandt said on Amazon Prime's docuseries One Night in Idaho: The College Murders.
Ms Alandt and two other friends, Josie Lauteren and Hunter Johnson, met Ms Mortensen and Ms Funke outside the house. Mr Johnson went into the house and found bodies, telling them to call 911.
'What if it happens again?': Survivor speaks publicly for first time
An emotional Dylan Mortensen spoke publicly for the first time since the brutal murders at Kohberger's sentencing.
'What happened that night changed everything,' Ms Mortensen said through tears.
She described her friends as 'beautiful, genuine, compassionate people' and did not address Kohberger by name.
'He didn't just take them from the world. He took them from me. My friends. My people who felt like my home. The people I looked up to and adored more than anyone,' the now 21-year-old said. 'He took away my ability to trust the world around me.
'What he did shattered me in places I didn't know could break.
'I was barely 19 when he did this. We had just celebrated my birthday at the end of September. I should have been figuring out who I was. I should have been having the college experience and starting to establish my future. Instead, I was forced to learn how to survive the unimaginable.'
She continued: 'I had to sleep in my mom's bed because I was too terrified to close my eyes. Terrified that if I blinked, someone might be there. I made escape plans everywhere I went. 'If something happens, how do I get out? What can I use to defend myself? And who can help?''
She went on to describe debilitating panic attacks — 'the kind that slam into me like a tsunami out of nowhere'.
'I can't breathe, I can't think, I can't stop shaking,' she said. 'All I can do is scream because the emotional pain and grief is too much to handle. My chest feels like it's caving in.
'Sometimes I drop to the floor with my heart racing, convinced something is very wrong.
'It's far beyond anxiety. It's my body reliving everything over and over again. My nervous system never got the message that it is over, and it won't let me forget what he did to them.'
Ms Mortensen said she is forced to scan every room she enters and flinches at sudden sounds.
'He stole parts of me I may never get back. He took the version of me who didn't constantly ask 'what if it happens again? what if next time I don't survive?''
She referred to Kohberger as 'a hallow vessel, something less than human, a body without empathy, without remorse'.
'He chose destruction. He chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me: my friends, my safety, my identity, my future,' she said.
She said speaking was her way of getting justice for Ms Mogen, Ms Goncalves, Ms Kernodle and Mr Chapin.
'He may have taken so much form me but he will never get to take my voice,' she said. 'He will never take the memories I had with them. He will never erase the love we shared, the laughs we had, or the way they made me feel seen and whole. Those things are mine.'
She said she would go on to live her life while he would stay 'empty, forgotten and powerless'.
'Why did I get to live?'
While fellow surviving housemate Bethany Funke did not speak, a statement was read out on her behalf by friend Emily Alandt.
'I thought that we were going to wake up and go upstairs see them and tell them how they had scared us and they were going to tease us about how we are constantly scaredy cats and make jokes about it as we would go to Taco Bell as always,' Ms Funke said in her statement.
She said she woke up with 'no idea what happened' but it turned out to be her 'worst nightmare'.
'I still carry so much regret and guilt for not knowing what happened and not calling (911) right away even though I understand it wouldn't have changed anything, not even if the paramedics had been right outside the door,' she said.
Kohberger was not arrested until more than a month after the quadruple murder.
In the meantime, strangers online turned on the surviving housemates and their friends.
Ms Funke said she received death threats and attacks online while 'trying to survive emotionally and grieve'. She also noted she was scared that the murderer would come for her next.
She expressed feeling survivor's guilt.
'I hated and still hate that they are gone but for some reason I am still here and I got to live,' she said.
'I still think about this every day: Why me? Why did I get to live and not them? For the longest time, I could not even look at their families without feeling sick with guilt.'
She said she had not slept through a single night in years, constantly waking up in a panic.
'I slept in my parent's room for almost a year. I made them double lock every door, set an alarm, and still check everywhere in the room just in case someone was hiding, and I still check my room every night,' she said.
She said while she is still scared to go out in public, she forces herself to live for her late friends and does everything with them in mind.