September 10, 2025 • 42 mins
The brutal murders of four University of Idaho students in Moscow stunned the college town and launched a nationwide search for answers. Detectives uncovered a crucial piece of DNA evidence at the crime scene. But with the clock ticking, would it be enough to identify the killer and solve one of the most shocking campus crimes in recent history?
America’s Crime Lab is a true crime podcast about how science solves cold cases, missing persons, and other unsolved cases. Hosted by journalist and clinical psychologist Elin Lantz Lesser, and powered by Othram’s forensic DNA lab, the show connects the science to the story, revealing what really happens in the lab and why it matters.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
He just kept saying, Ethan's not here, and I was
like what And that takes a very long time to process.
I still heard the words and it was not registering
inside of my head. What was you know, what really
(00:38):
actually was happening. You worry about things. You worry about
your kids, you know, getting in a car accident or
being roofed in a bar or I mean, you know whatever, right,
this is not one that ever plays out in your head.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
In November of twenty twenty two, the campus of an
Idaho college woke up to a shocking crime. Four young
students had been murdered in their bedrooms. Police had no
suspects and little evidence. That's when law enforcement decided to
try something new and track the killer in real time
(01:28):
using their own DNA. This is America's crime Lab. I'm
Alan Lance Lesser, producer Catherine Vanalosa is here, and Catherine,
the murder of these students at the University of Idaho
has been splashed all over the news, but there's still
(01:48):
so much about this case that hasn't been made public.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And actually, Aileen, I wasn't even sure if we were
going to be able to talk about this case. Authoram
started working on it really early on, but there's been
a gag order, which meant none of the main people
involved in solving this crime could even talk until now.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I get why judges do that, especially in such high
profile cases, but I mean that also can create a
vacuum of information where rumors and conspiracy theories could swirl around.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, and it meant that the people with the real information,
you know, the truth of what was going on in
the investigation, they couldn't set the record straight. But now
they can.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Can you take us back to that November?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So this takes place in Moscow, Idaho, and Moscow borders
the Washington state line. It's basically directly east of Pullman, Washington,
and it's known as a very outdoorsy place, you know,
very picturesque with mountains and hiking trails, and it's home
to the University of Idaho and the campus sits on
(03:00):
the western side of the city. They're about twelve thousand
students and they're known for their football team, which is
called the Vandals, and Alan football games are a huge
part of the social scene. Now, Moscow's pretty much like
any other college town. The neighborhoods that ring the campus
house a lot of the students in apartment buildings and
(03:22):
off campus houses. There's a huge water tower with a
giant yellow eye for Idaho. And across the street from
that is Greek Row and it's actually called New Greek Row.
It's lined with fraternity and sorority houses.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Got it. So I always love a college town, Like
there's nothing like it if you're on a road trip.
I love stopping in those types of places. They just
feel kind of like cozy and safe. You see all
these kids excited for their futures.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And this story starts sort of right here on the
street behind New Greek Row. It's called King Road and
it's lined with long apartment buildings and multi story houses
which are basically full of students. And at night you
can kind of picture the scene like students are roaming
the streets, you know, going from house party to house party,
(04:19):
and it's kind of a hub of nightlife for the campus.
And on King Road there's a funky white house that's
built into a sloped hill. It has three stories and
there's a main entrance on the first floor, but since
the house is built on a hill, there's also an
entrance off the back that leaves directly into the second
(04:40):
floor of the house, and everyone I talked to, so
the house sort of looks like it's been added onto
at different times. Like the layout's a little confusing.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, kind of hodgepodg Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Like the third floor seems like an afterthought, and their
bedrooms on all three floors. The main living areas like
the kitchen, living room or on the second floor.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Interesting, I vaguely remembered that the back door on the
second floor it's maybe like a sliding door or something
like a window sliding door.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, it's a sliding glass door, and that leads into
this kitchen living room area and the front of the
house where there's a main door. There are some parking
spaces and that seems to be where the residents of
the house typically parked, but there's an upper parking lot.
So while the front of the house is definitely much
(05:35):
more visible from the street, the back area you can
see that slider, so it's more private, but it's still
somewhat visible.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Wow, I'm getting a great picture of this in my mind, Catherine.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two, shortly before noon,
a nine to one to one call comes in about
an unresponsive person in this house on King Road. The
police arrive and they find two housemates from this house
standing outside in the cold with a group of friends,
(06:11):
and these two young women are clearly in chock. No
one really understands what's happened. There's a lot of confusion.
The police and EMT arrive, but they don't bring anybody
out on a stretcher. No one is taken to the hospital.
They're confused, which will come to understand why later. They
(06:35):
actually don't even know what's happened.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
People are now looking out their windows and they can
see King Rood filling up with police cars, and everyone
is like, oh my god, what is happening. Kids are
calling each other, texting. Everyone is sort of panicked now
this street and in particular this house, Like they definitely
threw parties and they had gotten noise complaints. So people
(07:02):
are just thinking like, oh, maybe the police are like
responding after last night, maybe some neighbors had called in
about a noise complaint. But the longer that the police
are out front, the more that all of the neighbors
and students in this area are getting worried.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah. I vaguely remember hearing that they had a couple
of recent noise complaints.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They did throw a lot of parties, but it was
maybe not so unusual. Yeah, it was a college house, right,
because I know that there were a lot of stories
and even like news reports and streaming shows saying that
there were a lot of people in the house that
the roommates didn't know. It's hard to know how true
(07:49):
that is, right, Like we all remember going to college
and like somebody has a house party.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It's not like you know every.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Single person there, but usually everyone's related to somebody else, right,
So I don't want to a picture like it was
like Mayhem in any way.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
But the kids in.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
The neighboring apartment buildings and houses now they see police
tape start to go up, and information is like flying around,
like text messages and snapchat and everything else. One of
the first people to arrive on the scene is Ashley Jennings,
(08:25):
and she's a senior deputy prosecutor in the Leta County
Prosecutor's Office. Now, Ashley was home on that Sunday when
her phone rang and it was a call from the
police chief.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
I knew when I looked on at my phone and
it said that it was Chief James Frye, calling that
it was probably something big. I don't typically get a
call in the middle of a Sunday afternoon from the chief,
and we discussed applying for a search warrant to get
into the house. I then went over to the residents.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Gosh, I can just imagine, like, this is not normal
for this community now, both for the kids, the college students,
but also I can imagine for these police officers. They're
usually probably dealing with stuff like noise complaints where it's
just like, oh, can you turn down the music a
little bit or break up this party. But I feel
(09:26):
like if I were in those shoes of one of
those police officers, I would just feel terrified or just
kind of like what what happened?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
And it is a very safe area. I mean, Moscow
hadn't seen a homicide in about seven years, and you're right,
police are mostly responding to like assaults, burglaries, stuff like that,
and a lot of these officers have kids or relatives
at the university. I spoke to Captain Dustin Blaker of
(09:57):
the Moscow Police Department, and at the time his son
was a freshman. I mean, this is an incredibly intertwined community.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
Knowing that my kids could have been potentially one of
the victims and how would I feel and what would
I want done? Gave me the focus that I needed
to continue on every single day, especially when we had nothing.
We had no idea which direction we needed to go next.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So Ashley arrives with a search warrant, and later her boss,
Bill Thompson, who's the prosecutor for the county, he also
arrives and Allen Bill is like this really gentle guy.
He's got a huge white beard. He's almost like disarming
and when he got the call that something had happened
on King Rhad, he was actually on his way to
(11:07):
play at a folk festival.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Folk musician and a prosecutor love that.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And so Ashley enters the house with police through that
main door on the first floor. There's a wreath on
the door and as she enters, she sees two bedrooms
on the ground level and one bedroom clearly is unoccupied.
The other bedroom belongs to one of the roommates, Bethany,
(11:32):
who's standing outside on the street. Ashley goes up the
stairs to the second floor.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
You can tell, you know, students live there. There's you know,
some empty beer cans and you know, stuff like that,
just hanging out on the steps.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
When she gets to the second floor, there's a beer
pong table set up. There's a living room with a couch,
and the kitchen, and then off of the kitchen is
that sliding glass door.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
And it was immediately apparent and worth our note that
there was an exit on that floor. Outside of the kitchen,
there was a sliding glass door and it was open.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Weird, And she says that she's walking through the house,
she's got like a video running in her brain, like
she's trying to literally record everything that she's seeing and
trying to spot out anything that seems unusual. Now on
the second floor, there are also two bedrooms. One belongs
(12:36):
to Dylan, another roommate, and she's also standing outside with Bethany,
and the other bedroom belongs to Xanna Kernoodle and Xana
is twenty. She's got long brown hair. Everyone describes her
as like super down to earth, funny. She's kind of
like a no makeup, more of like a sweatshirt kind
(12:57):
of girl, if.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That gives you a picture totally.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So, Sanna is found lying on the floor of her bedroom, unresponsive,
and she has what looks like are defensive wounds on
her hands.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
It was pretty apparent from looking just out the scene
that there was a fight that occurred there in Sanna's.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Bedroom, defensive wounds against a knife.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Or Detectives determined that she had been attacked with a
fixed blade knife, and the wounds on her hands show
that she probably fought with whomever did this. Along with
(13:47):
Ashley and Bill the prosecutors, there are state crime scene
investigators and Moscow police, including Captain Blaker.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
So there wasn't as much blood throughout the entire house,
so I think what most people would assume. Most of
it was confined to the two bedrooms where the victims
were found. So you know, you had the room where
Ethan and Zana were located at. There was a lot
of blood in that room.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
In the bed.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
In her room they find her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin. Now
Ethan's actually a triplet. His brother and sister are also
students at the school.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh wow, so they must be pretty close if they're
all at the same school, same age.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
They're incredibly bonded. The three siblings, Ethan, Hunter, and Mazie,
they do a lot together. I spoke to Ethan's mom
Stacy and his dad Jim.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
They're a minute apart in birth, but Ethan kind of
was the dominant triplet. Kind of all things went through Ethan.
He had a big personality and a lot of character.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Ethan and his brother Hunter, they're members of the same fraternity,
and Ethan is known in the family as being sort
of like the leader of the trio. He's very charming,
as his family describes him, like whenever he enters a room,
he doesn't demand attention, but it's just everybody is drawn
to him.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I don't know, like a robust personality that just the
energy was there with him kind of.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
And it's walked in.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We always joke it was like Kramer from the old Yeah,
he was great. He was good for any adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
From there, Ashley makes her way up to the third
floor and she says, because of this like funky layout
in the house, it's a little quirky to get up
to the third floor. There are two more bedrooms up there.
One belongs to Kaylee Gonsalva's and Kayleie is very bubbly.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
She's got thick, long hair.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
She's the middle of five siblings and She's known for
pulling pranks on her friends. She once glued her upper
lip to the bottom of her nose and pretended like
she had had a bad experience with lip filler.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
She's just a prankster.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I love that The other bedroom on the third floor
belongs to Matti, Mogan and Maddie. To me, kind of
looks like, I don't know, like a real life princess
from a Disney movie. She's got long blonde hair, a
cute little nose. These two girls have been inseparable since
(16:47):
the sixth grade, and from then on they spent like
every minute together. And when it came time to apply
to college, there was no question these girls were.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Going to go to the same school.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Oh wow, Now Maddie and Kaylee are discovered together. They're
in Mattie's bed. Neither of them are alive.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Where Mattie and Kaylee were there was a lot of
blood in that room. We found some blood droplets coming
out of Maddie and Kaylee's room where they were at.
We found some blood droplets on a wall that was
leading towards Zena and Ethan's room.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Kaylee's dog, she has a golden doodle named Murphy is also.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
In the room alive.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Oh wow, Kaylee shares him with an ex boyfriend. And
in the bed next to Kayleye and Mattie, law enforcement
finds a leather knife sheath, and I.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
Believe it was found kind of underneath Mattie, a little
bit underneath I think the blanket that was on the bed.
We knew that was going to be a key piece
to this investigation, especially where all the injuries that we
saw we knew came from a fixed blade knife.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You know. It's like a holder for a knife, and
it's for a k bar knife, which is a steel
fixed blade knife. And I guess it was originally standard
issue for the military during the Second World War, but
this is a new knife. I mean they still make
it today and the leather holder is stamped with USMC
(18:29):
for the US Marine Corps.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Interesting, this seems like a key piece of evidence.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
They know that this seems like an odd thing to
find in this particular house. You know, they from what
they can tell walking through the house, they're not finding
other objects where it would lead them to believe like, oh, well,
someone's like a serious outdoorsman.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, that is really strange to have a big military
knife like that just sitting around a college house.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeah, and the knife isn't in it, it's just the holder.
So Ashley Jennings and her boss, Bill Thompson, the prosecutor,
they've now walked through the house and police start documenting everything.
They're taking photos, they're dusting for fingerprints, they gather blood samples,
and it seems like whoever did this was very careful
(19:20):
to cover their tracks because honestly, police aren't really finding
any evidence that point to who the killer is except
for this leather knife sheath. I mean, it is a
huge find because so far it is the only thing
they have that.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
Was the only piece of evidence that stood out as
being something unique and that would like we'd lead to
whoever was responsible for the murders. But that's really what
they had at that point. They were starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
And really all they know is that these four students
are dead. But they do not find a murder weapon
and they have no suspects.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
What a nightmare. Honestly, there are four victims here that
it sounds like may have been stabbed to death. I
mean for housemates or friends. It's like, where does this
come from?
Speaker 6 (20:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Also so many I mean not that any one death
is comprehensible, but for young people, I mean, it just
it just seems excessive.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
And completely senseless.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, complete that Maybe that's what I'm trying to say,
completely sentenceless.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, it's a cold November day. Now, there's police tape
all around the house, there's more law enforcement arriving, and
it's almost happening in like a fish bowl, all of
these students. It's such a crowded neighbor and everyone is
(21:01):
watching this unfold and everybody is like, what the heck happened.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
We're going to look at any blood spatter, any blood
patterns that are on the walls, injuries to the victim,
anything that looks out of place that may have been
touched or moved by a potential suspect. We're going to
try and find point of jury to see if you
can pull fingerprints or DNA off of any of those
kind of things, trying to figure maybe course of events,
(21:29):
where did it start, where did it end?
Speaker 4 (21:34):
And there's very little information.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I mean, police aren't doing the best they can, but
they are just as stumped as anybody else.
Speaker 6 (21:41):
We had four people that were killed, no eyewitnesses, and
we had to start from basically with nothing and try
and figure everything out.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Police start to do initial interviews of the surviving roommates,
who at this point are still standing out in the
cold on the street. They're with Ethan's siblings and a
circle of good friends, and a lot of them are
in shorts. Dylan, one of the roommates, is actually standing
there barefoot.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I just can picture if I were a student at
the school and I got a text from a friend like, oh,
did you hear what happened? And you go out and
you pile around this house. I mean, how scary. You
don't know who did this. They could be someone even
amongst the crowd. Yeah, you know that you don't know
(22:46):
if you're safe, or if this could happen again to
someone you care about, or if maybe someone you know
is in that house. I mean, it just would be terrifying.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, And Prosecutor Bill Thompson says officers are gathering just
as much information as they can.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
They were interviewing friends and family of the victims, just
trying to learn what might have occurred. They were talking
to people who had seen the victims are been with
them the day before and the night before, trying to
recreate their activities. The investigation really was a blank slate
at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And what they learn is that on Saturday, so the
day before, there's a big football game at the university,
and this group of friends gets together at the house
on King Road to pregame basically like party before the game.
And if you follow this case, there's a photo that's
gone viral from that day and it's of the six
friends and they're standing on a porch. Maddie is perched
(23:44):
on Kaylee's shoulders. He then has his arm around Xana,
and the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, are posed
on either end of the circle of friends. This was
taken the day before this whole thing happens.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Isn't it even posted that evening they had posted this happy, warm,
friendly photo. It's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, it's Kaylie who posts the photo and on social media,
her caption is basically like, you know, one lucky girl
to be surrounded by these people every day. And so
Saturday night, Ethan I mentioned as a triplet. His sister
Mazie is in a sorority and she has a formal
(24:30):
at her sworty and she's like, you know, I usually
don't invite a date, but this time her brother Ethan
goes with her.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
That's so sweet.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It just goes to show you how close they are, right,
I love that.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So Mazie's in.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
A black dress, Ethan's wearing a dark suit. They take photos.
They leave the formal around nine, or maybe a little
bit before, and Mazie's pretty tired, so she goes back
to her place and Ethan then heads straight to his
fraternity house. Their brother Hunter is already at the frat
house and there's kind of a party going on, and
(25:09):
also at the frat house is Xana, one of the
roommates from King Rhoad who's Ethan's girlfriend. And Ethan starts
texting Mazie like, come.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
On, come to the frat house.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Everyone misses you here, come hang out, come on, come on,
and Mazie's like, I'm so tired, so she actually just
like ignores his text messages and she goes to bed. Meanwhile,
Kaylee and Maddie decide to skip the frat house and
instead they hit a local bar in Moscow called the
(25:42):
Corner Club. At some point, they leave and they go
to a food truck which is called the Grub truck
and from what I can tell, sort of. By one
forty five, all of the roommates have made their way
back to the house on King Rhad, So Bethany's in
her room on the first floor, Dylan's in her room
on the second floor. The next day, Sunday, Dylan calls
(26:09):
some friends of the group. There's a couple that's really
tight with this group. Their names are Emily and Hunter,
a different Hunter, and Dylan's like, listen, something really weird
happened here last night, and I'm scared. I'm in the
basement with Bethany, were in her bedroom. I've called Sanna
and she's not responding. I'm just I'm really I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Can you come over? When these two friends.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Emily and Hunter get the phone call from Dylan, they
actually don't think anything's wrong. Ashley Jennings from the Prosecutor's
office says, this is actually kind of Dylan's m o
to make phone calls like this to her friends.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She's known amongst her roommates, and she's a self profoused
kind of scaredy cat. She's only nineteen. She's the baby.
She and Bethany are the babies in the household. And
they had a reputation for getting easily scared.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And so when these two friends get a call, they
actually they're just like, oh my god, you know, the
girls are scared again. Let's head over there. So they
go over to King Road with another friend and as
they're walking up the road, they see Bethany and Dylan
standing outside and they're clearly scared. They're actually speechless, and
(27:30):
the friends are asking them like, why are you standing outside?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And they literally have their hands over their mouths and
they're not talking, and oh my god. One of them
is like, we don't know what's going on.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
So they must have seen or heard something, but they're
just so terrified and in shock.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
They're literally terrified.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So Hunter, the friend says, all right, I'm going to
go into the house, and he goes up to the
second floor where he discovers Xana and Ethan's bodies and
it's clear that they are dead. He rushes down the
stairs just as the other two friends, Emily and Josie,
(28:15):
are coming in that ground floor door, and he just
basically like pushes them out of the house and he
yells for someone to call nine one.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
One, So suddenly this has gotten serious, like he's realizing
something really bad has happened.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So Bethany dials nine one one, and she and Dylan
are still confused. They're like, what do I say? And
Hunter says, look, just tell the police there's an unconscious person.
Hunter was maybe trying to protect the group, like maybe
he couldn't bring himself to tell his friends what he
had just seen inside the house.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I can imagine, and they're already in shock, and does
he want to be the one to tell them.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So he's trying to wrap his mind around, like what
did I just see? And I admit when I first
heard about this case and that the nine to one
to one call came in that there was an unconscious person,
I was like, how could somebody not know that they
had just seen someone who was clearly attacked and was
(29:26):
no longer living. I guess it just goes to show
you that, especially with crimes like these are horrible, horrible events,
there's so much misinterpretation or reading into the facts and
placing judgment that is so wrong. But now having learned
(29:52):
really what happened, I think it was truly this young
friend trying to protect the group of friends from the
absolute just horror of what he had.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Just seen in the house.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
You know. And it's also interesting, I have to say,
with cases like these, it's like you can interpret or
read into anything, but also you can read into things
in the opposite ways in that my reaction is always
like I've always wondered, how can you tell that someone
has died unless you actually go up and do like
(30:28):
sort of a mini medical exam. So it's interesting that
I almost have the opposite reaction to you, in the
sense that if I were in that situation, I can't
imagine being like, oh, they're dead when I haven't even
like felt a pulse necessarily or really investigated. But it
sounds like it was pretty clear.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yeah, And you know, Prosecutor Bill Thompson says, Dylan and Bethany,
the roommates, I mean, they didn't go looking around the house.
They were just completely spooked and wanted to.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Get out of there.
Speaker 8 (30:58):
You have to remember, these are very young people, and
we're talking some young folks who are barely nineteen years
old and don't have don't quite have the tools to
process what was going on there. I think many adults
probably wouldn't as well.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Hunter Chapin. Ethan's brother is asleep at the frat house
on that Sunday morning, and he's literally just a few
minutes from the King Road house, and he wakes up
to a friend telling him that something has happened. There
are police over at King Road, and Ethan's brother he
(31:39):
also doesn't think anything of it. I mean, he's like, yeah,
I know that house gets noise complaints all the time,
you know, no big deal.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
But his friend is.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Pretty insistent that he should go over there, and so
he walks over to the house and as he approaches,
he sees the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, with a.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Group of friends.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And they're really upset and they just keep saying Ethan's gone,
and He's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
This is just a devastating story. And I do appreciate
you actually walking me through this because it makes me
feel the pain. And I mean not to the extent
obviously that they were feeling it, but I can imagine
what that would have felt like to hear about your
sibling or your friend, or even imagining Hunter walking in
(32:37):
and like seeing stab wounds and his friend and then
then having to come out and tell people like just
that image and that moment, what absolute horror. And then
to find out your sibling is gone with no explanation.
I mean, it's just and this is just the beginning.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And now Hunter, Ethan's brother, he needs to call his parents.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I was in the grocery store and I was talking
to a friend in the produce department. It's funny how
those details are very clear. And my phone. You know,
you have certain ways that you communicate with your kids.
A phone call with my daughter Maisie is never We
always text or snapchat or whatever. And you know, she
(33:28):
was calling me, which I thought was weird. But I
declined the first one because you know, it's Sunday at
noon and whatever. And then it rang back a couple times.
Then I thought, oh, I said, you know, I'm sorry,
I need to take this call, assuming you know, obviously
something's up. And it was Hunter calling from her phone,
and he just kept saying Ethan's not here, and I
(33:53):
couldn't under It did not occur to me that you know,
what had happened. He just kept saying he's not here,
and I kept telling him, well, then go get him.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I mean I literally was like, then go get him, Get.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
In the car, get a uber, go go get him.
And then he would say, no, you don't understand. Ethan
and Zanna aren't here anymore. And I'm like, well, go
get them. At this point, I had abandoned my shopping
cart and was walking out the front door on my
phone because I still had not registered what had happened.
(34:27):
But I was starting to feel a little I'm not
sure what you're telling me here, you know, and I
don't know where in the course of that, but he
just said finally, he goes He never used the words,
and he still will not, but he said, Mom, you
don't understand they are no longer here on this berth,
on this planet.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And I was like.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
What, And that takes a very long time to process.
I'm not I still heard the words, and it was
not registering inside of my head. What was you know,
what really actually was happening? You know, you have no details,
you you know, do you worry about your kids, you know,
(35:09):
getting in a car accident or I mean, you know whatever, Right,
so you just go through this process of elimination in
your head and you just.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And so it was actually became real when I had
to call Jim and tell him. And that is when
it hit that I'm really saying something that I never
you never think is gonna.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
Never.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Never you worry about things, you worry about your kids.
This is not one that ever plays out in your head.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
They had just been to the campus the week before
for parents' weekend, and Ethan Hunter and Mazie were like
settled into their sophomore year. They were super happy. Stacy
says on the drive home from parents weekend, she and
her husband Jim actually like high fived each other, like
(36:14):
we did it, like our kids are launched. We have
been successful parents, done our jobs. And a week later
it all comes crashing down. I mean, their worlds are
totally shattered. And Jim and Stacy jump into their car
and they drive to Moscow.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I remember seeing the sign on the road out in
the middle of nowhere that was like Pullman is still
ninety miles away, and I thought to myself, Mike, God,
I don't know if we're going to make it. It
was terrible.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
It was terrible. What do you talk about? I mean,
I mean you just kind of look at one another disbelieve.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, it is a tremendous loss and I believe that
the first thing that I told Maisie and Hunter when
they got in the car was I do not know
what the hell has just happened to our family, But
this thing isn't going to sink us.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I in a way, I just have no words. That
is the worst kind of thing to have happened. But
I also think it's an example of how traumatic situations
can feel, and how so often it's even like how
(37:32):
you get the news also affects your experience of it.
I mean, I can just imagine that feeling of confusion
and chaos intermixed with the pain. It's like, is this
even real?
Speaker 9 (37:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Meanwhile, the police asked the roommates, along with Ethan's siblings
and the friends who had entered the house that morning,
to go to the police station. Detectives are also reviewing
the evidence that they've collected.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
So the very first object that we knew that we
needed to get to the state lab as fast as
we could was a knife sheaf that was located in
Maddie's bedroom. We believe very strongly at that point in
time that it was brought in by the person who
committed these murders, and we needed to see if we
could find either any blood on it that come back
(38:22):
to somebody not related to the victims or any of
the victims itself, or if we could find any DNA
or anything like that on it. So that was sent
to the lab almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, with four such violent stabbings and it sounds like
Xana fought whoever attacked her, I just hope that there's
a lot of potential DNA evidence.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Yeah, the lab actually gets some incredible evidence.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
And they got a single source DNA profile. They said
it was the cleanest sample that you could find. It
was almost like you putting your finger on something and
then instantly doing a swab of it pulling the DNA
off of it.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I should mention that it can take a while to
develop a DNA profile, but in this case Ailan, the
Idaho State Crime Lab is working as fast as they
can and they develop a profile of the attacker in
just a few days. Captain Blaker says detectives got a
call on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It's just a week
(39:22):
after the murders in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
So the state Lab ran a through Totis with no hits.
So we knew that whoever did this was either somebody
who had never been charged with a felony or for
whatever purposes, never had to have their DNA put into
the system. So that made everything harder, knowing that we
had to figure out another way to be able to
try and figure out who this is.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Next time America's crime Lab. I was so frantic that
morning and scared death not knowing what had happened. I
was scared that the person who did this would come
for me next.
Speaker 9 (40:11):
What can I use to defend myself?
Speaker 6 (40:13):
Who can help?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
The media had gotten all of our contact information. Our
phones were ringing NonStop, Our kids' phones were ringing NonStop.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Social media made it so much worse. I was getting
flooded with tetritz.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
Then I was extremely nervous that I was going to
do something to screw the whole thing up.
Speaker 8 (40:30):
They were struggling to identify a direction, a person of interest.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
We tested ex boyfriends. You named that we were testing
anybody we could that would provide us with a DNA swab.
Speaker 9 (40:41):
David and I got a phone call and they asked
if we were willing to work a high profile case
in real time, And so he got off the phone
and I said why wouldn't we work this case?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
At the time, I had no idea who she was.
You know, she just hugged me and she basically said,
you don't need to worry about this case. And I
had to say to her, what did you just say
to me? I mean, I here's this stranger hugging me
and I'm crying, and you know, She's like, you don't
you don't have to worry.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa and
Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadikadour
and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina Norville
and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson,
(41:47):
Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank, and the
entire team at Authrum. I'm Alan Lance Lesser.
Speaker 7 (41:55):
Thanks for listening. Po
He just kept saying, Ethan's not here, and I was
like what And that takes a very long time to process.
I still heard the words and it was not registering
inside of my head. What was you know, what really
(00:38):
actually was happening. You worry about things. You worry about
your kids, you know, getting in a car accident or
being roofed in a bar or I mean, you know whatever, right,
this is not one that ever plays out in your head.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
In November of twenty twenty two, the campus of an
Idaho college woke up to a shocking crime. Four young
students had been murdered in their bedrooms. Police had no
suspects and little evidence. That's when law enforcement decided to
try something new and track the killer in real time
(01:28):
using their own DNA. This is America's crime Lab. I'm
Alan Lance Lesser, producer Catherine Vanalosa is here, and Catherine,
the murder of these students at the University of Idaho
has been splashed all over the news, but there's still
(01:48):
so much about this case that hasn't been made public.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
And actually, Aileen, I wasn't even sure if we were
going to be able to talk about this case. Authoram
started working on it really early on, but there's been
a gag order, which meant none of the main people
involved in solving this crime could even talk until now.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
I get why judges do that, especially in such high
profile cases, but I mean that also can create a
vacuum of information where rumors and conspiracy theories could swirl around.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yeah, and it meant that the people with the real information,
you know, the truth of what was going on in
the investigation, they couldn't set the record straight. But now
they can.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
Can you take us back to that November?
Speaker 3 (02:39):
So this takes place in Moscow, Idaho, and Moscow borders
the Washington state line. It's basically directly east of Pullman, Washington,
and it's known as a very outdoorsy place, you know,
very picturesque with mountains and hiking trails, and it's home
to the University of Idaho and the campus sits on
(03:00):
the western side of the city. They're about twelve thousand
students and they're known for their football team, which is
called the Vandals, and Alan football games are a huge
part of the social scene. Now, Moscow's pretty much like
any other college town. The neighborhoods that ring the campus
house a lot of the students in apartment buildings and
(03:22):
off campus houses. There's a huge water tower with a
giant yellow eye for Idaho. And across the street from
that is Greek Row and it's actually called New Greek Row.
It's lined with fraternity and sorority houses.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Got it. So I always love a college town, Like
there's nothing like it if you're on a road trip.
I love stopping in those types of places. They just
feel kind of like cozy and safe. You see all
these kids excited for their futures.
Speaker 3 (03:59):
And this story starts sort of right here on the
street behind New Greek Row. It's called King Road and
it's lined with long apartment buildings and multi story houses
which are basically full of students. And at night you
can kind of picture the scene like students are roaming
the streets, you know, going from house party to house party,
(04:19):
and it's kind of a hub of nightlife for the campus.
And on King Road there's a funky white house that's
built into a sloped hill. It has three stories and
there's a main entrance on the first floor, but since
the house is built on a hill, there's also an
entrance off the back that leaves directly into the second
(04:40):
floor of the house, and everyone I talked to, so
the house sort of looks like it's been added onto
at different times. Like the layout's a little confusing.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Yeah, kind of hodgepodg Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
Like the third floor seems like an afterthought, and their
bedrooms on all three floors. The main living areas like
the kitchen, living room or on the second floor.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Interesting, I vaguely remembered that the back door on the
second floor it's maybe like a sliding door or something
like a window sliding door.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Yeah, it's a sliding glass door, and that leads into
this kitchen living room area and the front of the
house where there's a main door. There are some parking
spaces and that seems to be where the residents of
the house typically parked, but there's an upper parking lot.
So while the front of the house is definitely much
(05:35):
more visible from the street, the back area you can
see that slider, so it's more private, but it's still
somewhat visible.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Wow, I'm getting a great picture of this in my mind, Catherine.
Speaker 3 (05:49):
And on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two, shortly before noon,
a nine to one to one call comes in about
an unresponsive person in this house on King Road. The
police arrive and they find two housemates from this house
standing outside in the cold with a group of friends,
(06:11):
and these two young women are clearly in chock. No
one really understands what's happened. There's a lot of confusion.
The police and EMT arrive, but they don't bring anybody
out on a stretcher. No one is taken to the hospital.
They're confused, which will come to understand why later. They
(06:35):
actually don't even know what's happened.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
People are now looking out their windows and they can
see King Rood filling up with police cars, and everyone
is like, oh my god, what is happening. Kids are
calling each other, texting. Everyone is sort of panicked now
this street and in particular this house, Like they definitely
threw parties and they had gotten noise complaints. So people
(07:02):
are just thinking like, oh, maybe the police are like
responding after last night, maybe some neighbors had called in
about a noise complaint. But the longer that the police
are out front, the more that all of the neighbors
and students in this area are getting worried.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
Yeah. I vaguely remember hearing that they had a couple
of recent noise complaints.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
They did throw a lot of parties, but it was
maybe not so unusual. Yeah, it was a college house, right,
because I know that there were a lot of stories
and even like news reports and streaming shows saying that
there were a lot of people in the house that
the roommates didn't know. It's hard to know how true
(07:49):
that is, right, Like we all remember going to college
and like somebody has a house party.
Speaker 4 (07:52):
It's not like you know every.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Single person there, but usually everyone's related to somebody else, right,
So I don't want to a picture like it was
like Mayhem in any way.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
But the kids in.
Speaker 3 (08:04):
The neighboring apartment buildings and houses now they see police
tape start to go up, and information is like flying around,
like text messages and snapchat and everything else. One of
the first people to arrive on the scene is Ashley Jennings,
(08:25):
and she's a senior deputy prosecutor in the Leta County
Prosecutor's Office. Now, Ashley was home on that Sunday when
her phone rang and it was a call from the
police chief.
Speaker 5 (08:38):
I knew when I looked on at my phone and
it said that it was Chief James Frye, calling that
it was probably something big. I don't typically get a
call in the middle of a Sunday afternoon from the chief,
and we discussed applying for a search warrant to get
into the house. I then went over to the residents.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Gosh, I can just imagine, like, this is not normal
for this community now, both for the kids, the college students,
but also I can imagine for these police officers. They're
usually probably dealing with stuff like noise complaints where it's
just like, oh, can you turn down the music a
little bit or break up this party. But I feel
(09:26):
like if I were in those shoes of one of
those police officers, I would just feel terrified or just
kind of like what what happened?
Speaker 3 (09:37):
And it is a very safe area. I mean, Moscow
hadn't seen a homicide in about seven years, and you're right,
police are mostly responding to like assaults, burglaries, stuff like that,
and a lot of these officers have kids or relatives
at the university. I spoke to Captain Dustin Blaker of
(09:57):
the Moscow Police Department, and at the time his son
was a freshman. I mean, this is an incredibly intertwined community.
Speaker 6 (10:06):
Knowing that my kids could have been potentially one of
the victims and how would I feel and what would
I want done? Gave me the focus that I needed
to continue on every single day, especially when we had nothing.
We had no idea which direction we needed to go next.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
So Ashley arrives with a search warrant, and later her boss,
Bill Thompson, who's the prosecutor for the county, he also
arrives and Allen Bill is like this really gentle guy.
He's got a huge white beard. He's almost like disarming
and when he got the call that something had happened
on King Rhad, he was actually on his way to
(11:07):
play at a folk festival.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Folk musician and a prosecutor love that.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
And so Ashley enters the house with police through that
main door on the first floor. There's a wreath on
the door and as she enters, she sees two bedrooms
on the ground level and one bedroom clearly is unoccupied.
The other bedroom belongs to one of the roommates, Bethany,
(11:32):
who's standing outside on the street. Ashley goes up the
stairs to the second floor.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
You can tell, you know, students live there. There's you know,
some empty beer cans and you know, stuff like that,
just hanging out on the steps.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
When she gets to the second floor, there's a beer
pong table set up. There's a living room with a couch,
and the kitchen, and then off of the kitchen is
that sliding glass door.
Speaker 5 (12:03):
And it was immediately apparent and worth our note that
there was an exit on that floor. Outside of the kitchen,
there was a sliding glass door and it was open.
Speaker 3 (12:15):
Weird, And she says that she's walking through the house,
she's got like a video running in her brain, like
she's trying to literally record everything that she's seeing and
trying to spot out anything that seems unusual. Now on
the second floor, there are also two bedrooms. One belongs
(12:36):
to Dylan, another roommate, and she's also standing outside with Bethany,
and the other bedroom belongs to Xanna Kernoodle and Xana
is twenty. She's got long brown hair. Everyone describes her
as like super down to earth, funny. She's kind of
like a no makeup, more of like a sweatshirt kind
(12:57):
of girl, if.
Speaker 2 (12:58):
That gives you a picture totally.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So, Sanna is found lying on the floor of her bedroom, unresponsive,
and she has what looks like are defensive wounds on
her hands.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
It was pretty apparent from looking just out the scene
that there was a fight that occurred there in Sanna's.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Bedroom, defensive wounds against a knife.
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Or Detectives determined that she had been attacked with a
fixed blade knife, and the wounds on her hands show
that she probably fought with whomever did this. Along with
(13:47):
Ashley and Bill the prosecutors, there are state crime scene
investigators and Moscow police, including Captain Blaker.
Speaker 6 (13:55):
So there wasn't as much blood throughout the entire house,
so I think what most people would assume. Most of
it was confined to the two bedrooms where the victims
were found. So you know, you had the room where
Ethan and Zana were located at. There was a lot
of blood in that room.
Speaker 4 (14:15):
In the bed.
Speaker 3 (14:17):
In her room they find her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin. Now
Ethan's actually a triplet. His brother and sister are also
students at the school.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Oh wow, so they must be pretty close if they're
all at the same school, same age.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
They're incredibly bonded. The three siblings, Ethan, Hunter, and Mazie,
they do a lot together. I spoke to Ethan's mom
Stacy and his dad Jim.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
They're a minute apart in birth, but Ethan kind of
was the dominant triplet. Kind of all things went through Ethan.
He had a big personality and a lot of character.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Ethan and his brother Hunter, they're members of the same fraternity,
and Ethan is known in the family as being sort
of like the leader of the trio. He's very charming,
as his family describes him, like whenever he enters a room,
he doesn't demand attention, but it's just everybody is drawn
to him.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I don't know, like a robust personality that just the
energy was there with him kind of.
Speaker 6 (15:30):
And it's walked in.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
We always joke it was like Kramer from the old Yeah,
he was great. He was good for any adventure.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
From there, Ashley makes her way up to the third
floor and she says, because of this like funky layout
in the house, it's a little quirky to get up
to the third floor. There are two more bedrooms up there.
One belongs to Kaylee Gonsalva's and Kayleie is very bubbly.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
She's got thick, long hair.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
She's the middle of five siblings and She's known for
pulling pranks on her friends. She once glued her upper
lip to the bottom of her nose and pretended like
she had had a bad experience with lip filler.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
She's just a prankster.
Speaker 3 (16:25):
I love that The other bedroom on the third floor
belongs to Matti, Mogan and Maddie. To me, kind of
looks like, I don't know, like a real life princess
from a Disney movie. She's got long blonde hair, a
cute little nose. These two girls have been inseparable since
(16:47):
the sixth grade, and from then on they spent like
every minute together. And when it came time to apply
to college, there was no question these girls were.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Going to go to the same school.
Speaker 3 (16:57):
Oh wow, Now Maddie and Kaylee are discovered together. They're
in Mattie's bed. Neither of them are alive.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
Where Mattie and Kaylee were there was a lot of
blood in that room. We found some blood droplets coming
out of Maddie and Kaylee's room where they were at.
We found some blood droplets on a wall that was
leading towards Zena and Ethan's room.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Kaylee's dog, she has a golden doodle named Murphy is also.
Speaker 4 (17:32):
In the room alive.
Speaker 3 (17:35):
Oh wow, Kaylee shares him with an ex boyfriend. And
in the bed next to Kayleye and Mattie, law enforcement
finds a leather knife sheath, and I.
Speaker 6 (17:50):
Believe it was found kind of underneath Mattie, a little
bit underneath I think the blanket that was on the bed.
We knew that was going to be a key piece
to this investigation, especially where all the injuries that we
saw we knew came from a fixed blade knife.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
You know. It's like a holder for a knife, and
it's for a k bar knife, which is a steel
fixed blade knife. And I guess it was originally standard
issue for the military during the Second World War, but
this is a new knife. I mean they still make
it today and the leather holder is stamped with USMC
(18:29):
for the US Marine Corps.
Speaker 7 (18:32):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Interesting, this seems like a key piece of evidence.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
They know that this seems like an odd thing to
find in this particular house. You know, they from what
they can tell walking through the house, they're not finding
other objects where it would lead them to believe like, oh, well,
someone's like a serious outdoorsman.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Yeah, that is really strange to have a big military
knife like that just sitting around a college house.
Speaker 3 (18:58):
Yeah, and the knife isn't in it, it's just the holder.
So Ashley Jennings and her boss, Bill Thompson, the prosecutor,
they've now walked through the house and police start documenting everything.
They're taking photos, they're dusting for fingerprints, they gather blood samples,
and it seems like whoever did this was very careful
(19:20):
to cover their tracks because honestly, police aren't really finding
any evidence that point to who the killer is except
for this leather knife sheath. I mean, it is a
huge find because so far it is the only thing
they have that.
Speaker 8 (19:37):
Was the only piece of evidence that stood out as
being something unique and that would like we'd lead to
whoever was responsible for the murders. But that's really what
they had at that point. They were starting from scratch.
Speaker 3 (19:51):
And really all they know is that these four students
are dead. But they do not find a murder weapon
and they have no suspects.
Speaker 2 (20:03):
What a nightmare. Honestly, there are four victims here that
it sounds like may have been stabbed to death. I
mean for housemates or friends. It's like, where does this
come from?
Speaker 6 (20:21):
Why?
Speaker 2 (20:22):
Also so many I mean not that any one death
is comprehensible, but for young people, I mean, it just
it just seems excessive.
Speaker 4 (20:32):
And completely senseless.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Yeah, complete that Maybe that's what I'm trying to say,
completely sentenceless.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Yeah, it's a cold November day. Now, there's police tape
all around the house, there's more law enforcement arriving, and
it's almost happening in like a fish bowl, all of
these students. It's such a crowded neighbor and everyone is
(21:01):
watching this unfold and everybody is like, what the heck happened.
Speaker 6 (21:08):
We're going to look at any blood spatter, any blood
patterns that are on the walls, injuries to the victim,
anything that looks out of place that may have been
touched or moved by a potential suspect. We're going to
try and find point of jury to see if you
can pull fingerprints or DNA off of any of those
kind of things, trying to figure maybe course of events,
(21:29):
where did it start, where did it end?
Speaker 4 (21:34):
And there's very little information.
Speaker 3 (21:35):
I mean, police aren't doing the best they can, but
they are just as stumped as anybody else.
Speaker 6 (21:41):
We had four people that were killed, no eyewitnesses, and
we had to start from basically with nothing and try
and figure everything out.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Police start to do initial interviews of the surviving roommates,
who at this point are still standing out in the
cold on the street. They're with Ethan's siblings and a
circle of good friends, and a lot of them are
in shorts. Dylan, one of the roommates, is actually standing
there barefoot.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
I just can picture if I were a student at
the school and I got a text from a friend like, oh,
did you hear what happened? And you go out and
you pile around this house. I mean, how scary. You
don't know who did this. They could be someone even
amongst the crowd. Yeah, you know that you don't know
(22:46):
if you're safe, or if this could happen again to
someone you care about, or if maybe someone you know
is in that house. I mean, it just would be terrifying.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Yeah, And Prosecutor Bill Thompson says officers are gathering just
as much information as they can.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
They were interviewing friends and family of the victims, just
trying to learn what might have occurred. They were talking
to people who had seen the victims are been with
them the day before and the night before, trying to
recreate their activities. The investigation really was a blank slate
at this point.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
And what they learn is that on Saturday, so the
day before, there's a big football game at the university,
and this group of friends gets together at the house
on King Road to pregame basically like party before the game.
And if you follow this case, there's a photo that's
gone viral from that day and it's of the six
friends and they're standing on a porch. Maddie is perched
(23:44):
on Kaylee's shoulders. He then has his arm around Xana,
and the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, are posed
on either end of the circle of friends. This was
taken the day before this whole thing happens.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Isn't it even posted that evening they had posted this happy, warm,
friendly photo. It's just heartbreaking.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
Yeah, it's Kaylie who posts the photo and on social media,
her caption is basically like, you know, one lucky girl
to be surrounded by these people every day. And so
Saturday night, Ethan I mentioned as a triplet. His sister
Mazie is in a sorority and she has a formal
(24:30):
at her sworty and she's like, you know, I usually
don't invite a date, but this time her brother Ethan
goes with her.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
That's so sweet.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
It just goes to show you how close they are, right,
I love that.
Speaker 4 (24:45):
So Mazie's in.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
A black dress, Ethan's wearing a dark suit. They take photos.
They leave the formal around nine, or maybe a little
bit before, and Mazie's pretty tired, so she goes back
to her place and Ethan then heads straight to his
fraternity house. Their brother Hunter is already at the frat
house and there's kind of a party going on, and
(25:09):
also at the frat house is Xana, one of the
roommates from King Rhoad who's Ethan's girlfriend. And Ethan starts
texting Mazie like, come.
Speaker 4 (25:20):
On, come to the frat house.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Everyone misses you here, come hang out, come on, come on,
and Mazie's like, I'm so tired, so she actually just
like ignores his text messages and she goes to bed. Meanwhile,
Kaylee and Maddie decide to skip the frat house and
instead they hit a local bar in Moscow called the
(25:42):
Corner Club. At some point, they leave and they go
to a food truck which is called the Grub truck
and from what I can tell, sort of. By one
forty five, all of the roommates have made their way
back to the house on King Rhad, So Bethany's in
her room on the first floor, Dylan's in her room
on the second floor. The next day, Sunday, Dylan calls
(26:09):
some friends of the group. There's a couple that's really
tight with this group. Their names are Emily and Hunter,
a different Hunter, and Dylan's like, listen, something really weird
happened here last night, and I'm scared. I'm in the
basement with Bethany, were in her bedroom. I've called Sanna
and she's not responding. I'm just I'm really I'm scared.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
Can you come over? When these two friends.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
Emily and Hunter get the phone call from Dylan, they
actually don't think anything's wrong. Ashley Jennings from the Prosecutor's
office says, this is actually kind of Dylan's m o
to make phone calls like this to her friends.
Speaker 5 (26:48):
She's known amongst her roommates, and she's a self profoused
kind of scaredy cat. She's only nineteen. She's the baby.
She and Bethany are the babies in the household. And
they had a reputation for getting easily scared.
Speaker 3 (27:05):
And so when these two friends get a call, they
actually they're just like, oh my god, you know, the
girls are scared again. Let's head over there. So they
go over to King Road with another friend and as
they're walking up the road, they see Bethany and Dylan
standing outside and they're clearly scared. They're actually speechless, and
(27:30):
the friends are asking them like, why are you standing outside?
Speaker 4 (27:33):
What's going on?
Speaker 3 (27:34):
And they literally have their hands over their mouths and
they're not talking, and oh my god. One of them
is like, we don't know what's going on.
Speaker 6 (27:44):
WHOA.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
So they must have seen or heard something, but they're
just so terrified and in shock.
Speaker 4 (27:50):
They're literally terrified.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
So Hunter, the friend says, all right, I'm going to
go into the house, and he goes up to the
second floor where he discovers Xana and Ethan's bodies and
it's clear that they are dead. He rushes down the
stairs just as the other two friends, Emily and Josie,
(28:15):
are coming in that ground floor door, and he just
basically like pushes them out of the house and he
yells for someone to call nine one.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
One, So suddenly this has gotten serious, like he's realizing
something really bad has happened.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
So Bethany dials nine one one, and she and Dylan
are still confused. They're like, what do I say? And
Hunter says, look, just tell the police there's an unconscious person.
Hunter was maybe trying to protect the group, like maybe
he couldn't bring himself to tell his friends what he
had just seen inside the house.
Speaker 2 (28:54):
I can imagine, and they're already in shock, and does
he want to be the one to tell them.
Speaker 3 (29:02):
So he's trying to wrap his mind around, like what
did I just see? And I admit when I first
heard about this case and that the nine to one
to one call came in that there was an unconscious person,
I was like, how could somebody not know that they
had just seen someone who was clearly attacked and was
(29:26):
no longer living. I guess it just goes to show
you that, especially with crimes like these are horrible, horrible events,
there's so much misinterpretation or reading into the facts and
placing judgment that is so wrong. But now having learned
(29:52):
really what happened, I think it was truly this young
friend trying to protect the group of friends from the
absolute just horror of what he had.
Speaker 4 (30:03):
Just seen in the house.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
You know. And it's also interesting, I have to say,
with cases like these, it's like you can interpret or
read into anything, but also you can read into things
in the opposite ways in that my reaction is always
like I've always wondered, how can you tell that someone
has died unless you actually go up and do like
(30:28):
sort of a mini medical exam. So it's interesting that
I almost have the opposite reaction to you, in the
sense that if I were in that situation, I can't
imagine being like, oh, they're dead when I haven't even
like felt a pulse necessarily or really investigated. But it
sounds like it was pretty clear.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
Yeah, And you know, Prosecutor Bill Thompson says, Dylan and Bethany,
the roommates, I mean, they didn't go looking around the house.
They were just completely spooked and wanted to.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Get out of there.
Speaker 8 (30:58):
You have to remember, these are very young people, and
we're talking some young folks who are barely nineteen years
old and don't have don't quite have the tools to
process what was going on there. I think many adults
probably wouldn't as well.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
Hunter Chapin. Ethan's brother is asleep at the frat house
on that Sunday morning, and he's literally just a few
minutes from the King Road house, and he wakes up
to a friend telling him that something has happened. There
are police over at King Road, and Ethan's brother he
(31:39):
also doesn't think anything of it. I mean, he's like, yeah,
I know that house gets noise complaints all the time,
you know, no big deal.
Speaker 4 (31:48):
But his friend is.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
Pretty insistent that he should go over there, and so
he walks over to the house and as he approaches,
he sees the two surviving roommates, Dylan and Bethany, with a.
Speaker 4 (32:01):
Group of friends.
Speaker 3 (32:03):
And they're really upset and they just keep saying Ethan's gone,
and He's like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 2 (32:15):
This is just a devastating story. And I do appreciate
you actually walking me through this because it makes me
feel the pain. And I mean not to the extent
obviously that they were feeling it, but I can imagine
what that would have felt like to hear about your
sibling or your friend, or even imagining Hunter walking in
(32:37):
and like seeing stab wounds and his friend and then
then having to come out and tell people like just
that image and that moment, what absolute horror. And then
to find out your sibling is gone with no explanation.
I mean, it's just and this is just the beginning.
Speaker 3 (32:58):
And now Hunter, Ethan's brother, he needs to call his parents.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
I was in the grocery store and I was talking
to a friend in the produce department. It's funny how
those details are very clear. And my phone. You know,
you have certain ways that you communicate with your kids.
A phone call with my daughter Maisie is never We
always text or snapchat or whatever. And you know, she
(33:28):
was calling me, which I thought was weird. But I
declined the first one because you know, it's Sunday at
noon and whatever. And then it rang back a couple times.
Then I thought, oh, I said, you know, I'm sorry,
I need to take this call, assuming you know, obviously
something's up. And it was Hunter calling from her phone,
and he just kept saying Ethan's not here, and I
(33:53):
couldn't under It did not occur to me that you know,
what had happened. He just kept saying he's not here,
and I kept telling him, well, then go get him.
Speaker 4 (34:03):
I mean I literally was like, then go get him, Get.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
In the car, get a uber, go go get him.
And then he would say, no, you don't understand. Ethan
and Zanna aren't here anymore. And I'm like, well, go
get them. At this point, I had abandoned my shopping
cart and was walking out the front door on my
phone because I still had not registered what had happened.
(34:27):
But I was starting to feel a little I'm not
sure what you're telling me here, you know, and I
don't know where in the course of that, but he
just said finally, he goes He never used the words,
and he still will not, but he said, Mom, you
don't understand they are no longer here on this berth,
on this planet.
Speaker 2 (34:46):
And I was like.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
What, And that takes a very long time to process.
I'm not I still heard the words, and it was
not registering inside of my head. What was you know,
what really actually was happening? You know, you have no details,
you you know, do you worry about your kids, you know,
(35:09):
getting in a car accident or I mean, you know whatever, Right,
so you just go through this process of elimination in
your head and you just.
Speaker 4 (35:20):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (35:21):
And so it was actually became real when I had
to call Jim and tell him. And that is when
it hit that I'm really saying something that I never
you never think is gonna.
Speaker 6 (35:39):
Never.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Never you worry about things, you worry about your kids.
This is not one that ever plays out in your head.
Speaker 3 (35:51):
They had just been to the campus the week before
for parents' weekend, and Ethan Hunter and Mazie were like
settled into their sophomore year. They were super happy. Stacy
says on the drive home from parents weekend, she and
her husband Jim actually like high fived each other, like
(36:14):
we did it, like our kids are launched. We have
been successful parents, done our jobs. And a week later
it all comes crashing down. I mean, their worlds are
totally shattered. And Jim and Stacy jump into their car
and they drive to Moscow.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
I remember seeing the sign on the road out in
the middle of nowhere that was like Pullman is still
ninety miles away, and I thought to myself, Mike, God,
I don't know if we're going to make it. It
was terrible.
Speaker 4 (36:49):
It was terrible. What do you talk about? I mean,
I mean you just kind of look at one another disbelieve.
Speaker 1 (36:56):
Yeah, it is a tremendous loss and I believe that
the first thing that I told Maisie and Hunter when
they got in the car was I do not know
what the hell has just happened to our family, But
this thing isn't going to sink us.
Speaker 2 (37:11):
I in a way, I just have no words. That
is the worst kind of thing to have happened. But
I also think it's an example of how traumatic situations
can feel, and how so often it's even like how
(37:32):
you get the news also affects your experience of it.
I mean, I can just imagine that feeling of confusion
and chaos intermixed with the pain. It's like, is this
even real?
Speaker 9 (37:45):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Meanwhile, the police asked the roommates, along with Ethan's siblings
and the friends who had entered the house that morning,
to go to the police station. Detectives are also reviewing
the evidence that they've collected.
Speaker 6 (38:00):
So the very first object that we knew that we
needed to get to the state lab as fast as
we could was a knife sheaf that was located in
Maddie's bedroom. We believe very strongly at that point in
time that it was brought in by the person who
committed these murders, and we needed to see if we
could find either any blood on it that come back
(38:22):
to somebody not related to the victims or any of
the victims itself, or if we could find any DNA
or anything like that on it. So that was sent
to the lab almost immediately.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, with four such violent stabbings and it sounds like
Xana fought whoever attacked her, I just hope that there's
a lot of potential DNA evidence.
Speaker 3 (38:44):
Yeah, the lab actually gets some incredible evidence.
Speaker 6 (38:47):
And they got a single source DNA profile. They said
it was the cleanest sample that you could find. It
was almost like you putting your finger on something and
then instantly doing a swab of it pulling the DNA
off of it.
Speaker 3 (39:02):
I should mention that it can take a while to
develop a DNA profile, but in this case Ailan, the
Idaho State Crime Lab is working as fast as they
can and they develop a profile of the attacker in
just a few days. Captain Blaker says detectives got a
call on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. It's just a week
(39:22):
after the murders in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 6 (39:27):
So the state Lab ran a through Totis with no hits.
So we knew that whoever did this was either somebody
who had never been charged with a felony or for
whatever purposes, never had to have their DNA put into
the system. So that made everything harder, knowing that we
had to figure out another way to be able to
try and figure out who this is.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Next time America's crime Lab. I was so frantic that
morning and scared death not knowing what had happened. I
was scared that the person who did this would come
for me next.
Speaker 9 (40:11):
What can I use to defend myself?
Speaker 6 (40:13):
Who can help?
Speaker 1 (40:14):
The media had gotten all of our contact information. Our
phones were ringing NonStop, Our kids' phones were ringing NonStop.
Speaker 2 (40:22):
Social media made it so much worse. I was getting
flooded with tetritz.
Speaker 6 (40:26):
Then I was extremely nervous that I was going to
do something to screw the whole thing up.
Speaker 8 (40:30):
They were struggling to identify a direction, a person of interest.
Speaker 6 (40:34):
We tested ex boyfriends. You named that we were testing
anybody we could that would provide us with a DNA swab.
Speaker 9 (40:41):
David and I got a phone call and they asked
if we were willing to work a high profile case
in real time, And so he got off the phone
and I said why wouldn't we work this case?
Speaker 1 (40:55):
At the time, I had no idea who she was.
You know, she just hugged me and she basically said,
you don't need to worry about this case. And I
had to say to her, what did you just say
to me? I mean, I here's this stranger hugging me
and I'm crying, and you know, She's like, you don't
you don't have to worry.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
America's Crime Lab is produced by Rococo Punch for Kaleidoscope.
Erica Lance is our story editor, and sound design is
by David Woji. Our producing team is Catherine Fedalosa and
Jessica Albert. Our executive producers are Kate Osborne, Mangesh Hadikadour
and David and Kristin Middleman and from iHeart Katrina Norville
and Ali Perry. Special thanks to Connell Byrne, Will Pearson,
(41:47):
Carrie Lieberman, Nikki Etoor, Nathan Etowski, John Burbank, and the
entire team at Authrum. I'm Alan Lance Lesser.
Speaker 7 (41:55):
Thanks for listening. Po
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