Sister of Bryan Kohberger victim reveals heartbreaking final text from brother before Idaho murder

Daily Mail​

09-07-2025

The grieving sister of one of Bryan Kohberger's victims has spoken out for the first time to reveal the heartbreaking final text message from her murdered brother - a message she received after he was already dead.
Maizie Chapin told Prime Video how Ethan Chapin had sent a string of texts begging her to come to join him at a party on the University of Idaho campus just hours before he was killed.
'The last one said 'I love you' which was also weird because we don't say that to each other,' she said, choking up with emotion.
But Maizie had fallen asleep and never saw the messages until the next morning.
By the time she read her brother's texts, he was dead - stabbed to death alongside his girlfriend Xana Kernodle and their two friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen in a brutal murder that shocked the nation.
Chapin's triplet siblings Maizie and Hunter Chapin broke their silence about their final hours with their brother and the devastating moment they learned of his murder in Prime Video's upcoming four-part docuseries 'One Night in Idaho: The College Murders'.
The series, airing July 11, comes just days after Kohberger finally pleaded guilty to murdering the four University of Idaho students in an off-campus student home in Moscow, Idaho, in the early hours of November 13, 2022.
After two years of protesting his innocence, the 30-year-old criminology PhD student confessed last week to the murders as part of a plea deal to save himself from the death penalty.
His motive for the murders still remains a mystery.
Maizie Chapin broke her silence to reveal the final text her brother sent to her before he was murdered by Bryan Kohberger
Ethan Chapin and his girlfriend Xana Kernodle (pictured together in summer 2022) were murdered by Bryan Kohberger
In the new series, Maizie and Hunter revealed that, as triplets, the three siblings had always been very close and they decided to all attend the University of Idaho together, where they became part of the same friendship group.
On the night of November 12, 2022, Chapin had gone as his sister's date to a fall formal at her sorority.
'It was super fun,' Maizie recalled.
When the formal ended at around 9pm, Chapin went on to a party at the Sigma Chi house - the fraternity he was part of - but Maizie didn't go.
'For some reason I stayed and went to bed,' Maizie said.
While at the party, Maizie revealed that Chapin kept texting her, urging her to come and join him, Kernodle and their other friends at the party.
'Ethan kept texting me. Maizie come hang out,' she said.
'Plz come hang out,' one message read.
'We all want you here,' another text added, followed by 'U good dog?' and 'Helloooooo?!!!!!'
'I went to sleep so I wasn't responding to any of them,' Maizie recalled.
Chapin sent a final text message to his sister that also went unanswered. It read: 'Love you.'
Maizie, Ethan, Stacy, Jim and Hunter Chapin pictured together at Priest Lake in northern Idaho in July 2022
Maizie choked up as she recalled seeing the text message the next morning.
Following the party, Chapin and Kernodle had returned to 1122 King Road across a field from the frat house.
Kernodle, Goncalves, Mogen and two other roommates - Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke - all lived together at the three-story property.
Chapin also 'basically lived at the King Road house with Xana,' Hunter said in the series.
At around 4am on November 13, Kohberger broke into the house with a plan to kill.
Once inside, he went straight up to Mogen's room on the third floor where he found Mogen and her best friend Goncalves sleeping in the same bed, prosecutor Bill Thompson revealed in court last week.
He stabbed both of them to death.
On his way back downstairs or on leaving the property, he encountered Kernodle on the second floor, who was still awake and had just received a DoorDash food order.
He fatally attacked her with the knife and then also murdered Chapin who was sleeping in her bed.
Bryan Kohberger finally pleaded guilty last week to murdering the four University of Idaho students
Left to right: Dylan Mortensen, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee's shoulders) Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Bethany Funke
He then left through the back sliding door on the second story of the property, passing Mortensen who had been woken by the noise and had peeked round her bedroom door.
Mortensen and Funke were the only survivors.
Terrified after seeing a masked man inside the home, Mortensen and Funke desperately tried to call and text their friends but got no response.
Ultimately, Mortensen ran down to Funke's room on the first floor where they both stayed until daylight.
Around eight hours later, when they still couldn't get in touch with the four victims, they called their friends Hunter Johnson, Emily Alandt and Josie Lauteren over to check the home.
Hunter Johnson discovered the bodies of his best friend Chapin and Kernodle inside her room on the second floor and a distressing 911 call was made.
In the series, Hunter Chapin spoke out about the devastating moment he learned about his sibling's murder.
It was around midday when he said he was woken by one of his Sigma Chi frat brothers 'shaking me' and saying there was police over at the King Road home.
The Chapin triplets were very close and went to the same college, where they were part of the same friendship group (pictured)
The murders struck fear into the small close-knit college town of Moscow, Idaho (pictured)
At first, he thought nothing of it.
'Okay, that's probably normal. There's more noise complaints there than anywhere else on campus,' he recalled thinking.
But when he walked over to the home and saw several of their friends outside, he knew something terrible had happened.
'So I was walking over to the King Road house and I saw a group of people sitting on the ground and it's all the people that I have been hanging out with,' he said.
'And they all just had this look on their face when I walked up like the world had ended.'
His friends struggled to break the news to him that they had found his brother dead.
'I'm like 'what the hell's going on. Like where's Ethan?' And they're like 'Ethan's not here anymore,'' he said.
Hunter remembered asking: 'What do you mean Ethan's not here anymore? Like where did he go?'
Hunter Chapin spoke of the moment that his friends told him his brother had been murdered
Ethan Chapin's parents Jim and Stacy Chapin speak out in the series about their son's murder
When they told him 'your brother's dead,' he said he thought it 'can't be true.'
At that moment, he said Hunter Johnson told him: 'I think Xana and Ethan were murdered last night.'
'I didn't even know how to respond to it as it's just so unreal that someone I had spent almost every minute of my life with… I just don't know,' he said, breaking down mid-sentence.
Hunter recalled having to then break the devastating news to his family members.
First, he called Maizie - telling her to immediately get someone to drop her off at the home.
'I just knew,' she said, remembering the gut feeling she had as she made her way to the property.
When he called his mom Stacy Chapin, she was at the grocery store.
In the series, she recalled her son repeatedly telling her 'Ethan's not here' and 'Ethan and Xana are not here' as he couldn't bring himself to say the words that he was dead.
'They're not on this earth anymore,' she said he told her.
The family of Ethan Chapin attending the change of plea hearing on July 2 to show their support for the plea deal
Stacy remembered abandoning her shopping cart and just leaving the store, calling her husband Jim and they raced to Moscow.
Another six weeks passed before Kohberger was arrested at his parents' home in the Poconos region of Pennsylvania - where he had returned for the holidays.
During that time, he finished out his semester at Washington State University where he had embarked on a PhD in criminology.
He also meticulously scrubbed his Pullman, Washington, apartment and his car - the white Hyundai Elantra he had driven to and from the crime scene - clean of evidence.
Investigators tracked him down, however, after he left a KaBar leather knife sheath next to Mogen's body at the scene.
Through Investigative Genetic Genealogy, the FBI managed to trace DNA on the sheath to Kohberger.
Officers then posed as sanitation workers to collect trash from the Kohberger's family home, finding a Q-tip to be a match for the father of the killer.
Five days after Christmas, the Kohberger home was raided and he was taken into custody.
Kohberger, 30, murdered Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in a brutal knife attack
Now, under the terms of the plea deal, Kohberger will be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole and will also never have a chance to appeal his conviction or sentence.
The plea deal divided the victims' families with the Chapin and Mogen families supporting it and the Goncalves and Kernodle families opposing it.
For the Chapins, the hearing on July 2 where Kohberger changed his plea marked the first time they attended one of his court appearances - as a show of support for the agreement.
Now, the families of the victims will be given the opportunity to deliver impact statements at his sentencing hearing on July 23.