Newly released body camera footage revealed the harrowing moments an officer responded to the University of Idaho murder scene after the survivors called 911.
The video showed the perspective of the officer as he walked through 1122 King Road, where Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death in the middle of the night. The off-campus house looked like a typical college home, with beer cans on the stairs and a beer pong table near Kernodle’s second-floor room.
The officer went outside and told the roommates and friends helplessly waiting in the driveway, “Nobody’s allowed to leave for now.” He then went to his vehicle to retrieve crime scene tape for the house as the students watched.
The officer then pulled aside Dylan Mortensen, one of the two surviving roommates huddled outside the house after they called 911 midday on Nov. 13, 2022.
Mortensen, wrapped in a blanket over her pajamas, stood in the street, telling the officer through tears that late at night she heard Goncalves and her dog head up to Goncalves’ bedroom on the third floor.
“That’s when I’m pretty sure [Goncalves] said, ‘Someone’s here.’ And she screamed and just ran downstairs,” to the second floor, Mortensen said.
“I heard some guy say that, ‘You’re gonna be OK, I’m going to help you,'” Mortensen recounted to the officer, through tears. Investigators have since told ABC News they believe it was Kernodle who uttered the words “somebody’s here” and ran downstairs.
Mortensen told the officer she called Goncalves’ name, and then she jumped up and locked her door “because I was so scared.”
Mortensen said she heard crying in the bathroom and assumed it was Goncalves.
Mortensen said she again called Goncalves’ name but didn’t hear an answer.
Mortensen said she opened the door for “a second — and I saw this guy, and he was not insanely tall, but he was wearing all black and, like, this mask covering his forehead and his mouth.”
“He didn’t say anything to me,” Mortensen said. “I just shut my door ’cause I didn’t know what to do. I think he went out the sliding door in the kitchen that goes out to the back door.”
She said she then ran to the room of the other surviving roommate, Bethany Funke, on the ground floor.
“For a second, I stopped and saw Xana passed out, and I thought she was just maybe sleeping or something,” she said.
“We just locked the door, we didn’t think anything of it. We’re like, ‘Nothing happens in Moscow,’ so we just tried to go to bed,” Mortensen said.
In the morning, Mortensen said none of their four housemates were up.
“We called all of them, they were not waking up,” Mortensen said.
That’s when Mortensen and Funke called their friends, Emily Alandt and Hunter Johnson, to come over, she told the officer. Johnson was the first to go inside the house — and realizing what happened, he rushed the girls trailing him out of the home and told them to call 911, he told ABC News earlier this year.
Mortensen, who did not know the fate of her roommates at the time, outlined for the officer the names and ages of each student who lived in the house and where each of their rooms were located.
“Then there’s Maddie Mogen and Kaylee up top. I don’t know where they’re at, though,” she said.
Mortensen told investigators that she was not completely clear about what happened that night and was “trying to determine what was real” and “has been working through it to try to remember what happened,” court documents said.
The now-admitted killer Bryan Kohberger was arrested in December 2022.
Last month, Kohberger was given four life sentences plus 10 years after pleading guilty to all charges. A motive is not known, according to authorities. Kohberger declined to speak on his own behalf at sentencing.
