The distinctive gray, three-story, six-bedroom house at 1122 King Road was home to five young women enjoying college life.
There, in the heart of Moscow, Idaho, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen hosted lively parties for their friends, played lighthearted pranks and filmed funny TikTok videos impersonating each other.
That was until one horrific night in November 2022 when their happy-go-lucky lives were shattered by a masked killer who broke in and slaughtered Mogen, Goncalves, Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin.
Only two of the roommates survived: the self-described ‘scaredy cats’ of the group, Funke and Mortensen, who were both just 19 at the time.
Mortensen caught a glimpse of the killer on the second floor of the home that night, texting Funke, ‘it’s like a ski mask almost… am so freaked out.’
Neither of the frightened students could have imagined in that moment that Mortensen had just come face-to-face with their friends’ killer – and that she would be the sole person to see the assailant and live to tell the tale.
Within hours, Mortensen and Funke discovered one of their roommates was dead and placed the harrowing 911 call that changed life in the college town forever.
As the only people other than the killer who know what truly happened inside 1122 King Road that night, these two survivors hold the key to solving the now-infamous murders.
The five roommates and friends on the porch of 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho. Pictured left to right: Dylan Mortensen, Xana Kernodle, Bethany Funke, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen
Now, with accused killer Bryan Kohberger finally going on trial this August after more than two years of delays, all eyes will turn to Mortensen and Funke as the star witnesses in the case.
The night everything changed
November 12, 2022, began like any other Saturday for the students.
The five roommates and Chapin had posed for smiling photos together at the house, one of which Goncalves posted to Instagram.
Mogen perched on Goncalves’ shoulders, Chapin placed a caring arm around Kernodle, and Funke and Mortensen huddled close on either side.
‘One lucky girl to be surrounded by these ppl everyday,’ Goncalves wrote in her caption.
It was the last known photo ever taken of the group of friends.
That night, Mogen and Goncalves went to the Corner Club bar and were seen grabbing food from the Grub Truck food truck on their way home. Kernodle and Chapin went to a party at the Sigma Chi fraternity house.
It is not yet clear where Funke and Mortensen spent that Saturday night but, according to court documents, they, Mogen and Goncalves were all back at the students’ home at around 2am on November 13.
According to Mortensen and Funke, the four women gathered in Goncalves’ room and chatted.
Left to right: Dylan Mortensen, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee’s shoulders) Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Bethany Funke. This is the last known photo ever taken of the group of friends before the murders
The student home at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, where the five young women lived
They pondered heading out again to get a late-night snack but ultimately decided to go to bed.
By around 4am, all five roommates and Chapin were home.
It was at this time that Mortensen told investigators she heard strange noises inside the home.
She then heard a voice she believed to be Goncalve’s saying, ‘there’s someone here’.
She also heard what sounded like crying coming from Kernodle’s room and a man’s voice she didn’t recognize saying something to the effect of, ‘It’s okay, I’m going to help you.’
Mortensen peered around her bedroom door on the second floor but didn’t see anything, court documents say.
When she looked out a third time, she claims she saw a man with ‘bushy eyebrows’ dressed in all black and a mask walking past her door in the direction of the back sliding door.
After that terrifying encounter, Mortensen frantically called and texted her four roommates.
Only Funke responded.
Cell phone records, released in court documents, show that between 4.22am and 4.24am, Mortensen and Funke sent a series of panicked texts to each other and their roommates.
Bethany Funke and Madison Mogen pictured together. The haunting 911 call was placed from Funke’s cell phone
‘No one is answering,’ Mortensen texted Funke.
‘What’s going on?’ Mortensen sent to Goncalves.
With all four victims were already dead, the messages and calls to their roommates continued to go unanswered.
Cellphone records show Funke and Mortensen appeared to be desperately trying to piece together what was going on inside their home.
‘Ya dude wtf,’ Funke texted Mortensen.
‘Xana was wearing all black,’ she added in another message, appearing to reference the figure seen inside the home.
Mortensen texted Funke, ‘I’m freaking out rn.’
‘No it’s like ski mask almost,’ she said about the man inside the home.
Panicked, Mortensen ended up fleeing her room and running down to Funke’s room on the first floor.
While she ran, she told investigators she noticed Kernodle lying on the floor of her bedroom – which was also on the second floor.
Mortensen told police she believed her friend must have been drunk.
She and Funke then shut themselves inside the first-floor room.
Over the next eight hours, Mortensen’s cellphone data shows she placed several more texts and calls to her roommates, while also creating, editing and deleting images and videos, and accessing various social media sites including Instagram and Snapchat, court documents show.
On Snapchat, she used the Snap Map function to try to check Chapin and Kernodle’s location.
As well as continuing to message and call their roommates, Mortensen and Funke both also contacted their parents when daylight broke.
With still no response from any of the four victims, at around 11.50am., the surviving roommates contacted two friends and asked them to come over to the house.
Just before midday, Mortensen, Funke and a man named H.J. made their way up to the second story where they saw Kernodle’s body on the floor.
A distressing 911 call was placed from Funke’s cell phone.
‘Hi, something is happening, something happened in our house. We don’t know what. We have…’ a panicked voice begins.
The students are heard crying and breathing heavily as they pass the phone around, telling the dispatcher one of their friends is ‘passed out’ and ‘not waking up.’
‘Oh and they saw some man in their house last night,’ one of the callers says.
Officers arrived on the scene to find a bloodbath.
Mogen and Goncalves, best friends who had been inseparable since sixth grade, had been stabbed to death in Mogen’s bed on the third floor.
Kernodle and Chapin, a young couple who had been friends before they started dating around a year earlier, were found dead in Kernodle’s room on the second floor.
From sole survivors to star witnesses
The two survivors were very quickly ruled out as suspects in the murders but still faced relentless suspicion and rumors on social media prior to Kohberger’s arrest.
In the spring of 2023, Mortensen testified before the grand jury which returned an indictment against Kohberger.
Dylan Mortensen and Kaylee Goncalves in a social media post not long before the murders
A ‘Good Vibes’ sign hangs in the kitchen of the student home at 1122 King Road in November 2022
With his trial finally about to get underway, both Mortensen and Funke are expected to be star witnesses for the prosecution.
As Judge Steven Hippler pointed out in a recent court order, Mortensen ‘is the only eyewitness to the intruder responsible for the homicides’.
While she was unable to identify Kohberger as the assailant when shown his photo – with the perpetrator wearing a mask covering his face – Mortensen was able to describe the little features and characteristics she could see.
She described the man as 5′ 10″ or taller, not very muscular but athletically built and with bushy eyebrows. It’s a description that could align with the suspect, while a selfie captured by Kohberger mere hours after the murders has been entered as evidence of his eyebrows at the time.
Mortensen also drew a scrawling sketch of what looks like a balaclava to show the type of mask she saw the intruder wearing that night. Prosecutors allege Kohberger bought a black balaclava from Dick’s Sporting Goods in the lead up to the murders.
But, as a key witness in the case, the defense has already tried to cast doubts on Mortensen’s credibility and reliability – pointing to her statements where she admitted she was drunk and in a ‘dream-like state’ when she saw the masked killer.
The defense has also attacked her description of the intruder having ‘bushy eyebrows,’ arguing that she had drawings of people with prominent eyes and eyebrows plastered on her bedroom walls.
As a result, Kohberger’s team wanted the judge to block the term ‘bushy eyebrows’ from being used to describe who she saw inside the home.
Bryan Kohberger is going on trial in August charged with the murders of the four students
Dylan Mortensen drew this sketch of the mask she saw a man wearing inside the home
The judge denied the defense’s request saying that Mortensen’s description is ‘highly relevant’ and that her account was ‘remarkably consistent throughout all five [police] interviews and her grand jury testimony.’
In court documents, the defense has also pointed to the eight-hour delay between the sighting of the masked intruder at around 4am and the 911 call just before midday, and the fact that the two survivors did not flee the home despite fearing there was an intruder.
‘Neither of them left the house. Neither of them called friends, family or law enforcement for help,’ the defense wrote in one court document.
While Goncalves’ family has publicly said the timing of the call would have made no difference to any of the victims’ chances of survival, the two young women have continued to face online attacks and questions over this time lapse.
Statements made by the defense in court documents indicate that Kohberger’s team may be preparing to grill the survivors about this and the reliability of their accounts as key witnesses under cross-examination.
Funke’s hotly-anticipated testimony comes after Kohberger’s defense issued her with a subpoena to appear at a preliminary hearing in Idaho in June 2023, claiming she had information that could be ‘exculpatory to the defendant’.
An attorney for Funke fought back against the request, arguing the claim of exculpatory information was ‘without support’.
The two sides later reached an agreement that she would be interviewed by Kohberger’s defense at her home in Nevada.
It is not clear what information was gleaned from that meeting, or if it could be used in the defense’s case.
Survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke exchanged frantic text messages after the masked man was seen inside the home
In addition to testimony straight from the two surviving witnesses, the panicked texts between Mortensen and Funke and the harrowing 911 call are also expected to be crucial evidence presented to the jury at trial.
For the past two-and-a-half years, the two survivors of that fateful night have kept a low profile.
The young women got matching tattoos in honor of their slain friends and both transferred to different universities.
They have not spoken out publicly since losing their friends in the most brutal way.
But now, as they find themselves at the heart of one of the trials of the century, the world will soon hear their stories in full.
