Bryan Kohberger identified at least one of his victims by name before knifing four University of Idaho students in their beds, according to surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen.
Kohberger — who is serving four life sentences behind bars — admitted to slaying Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle on Nov. 13, 2022 in their off-campus house in Moscow.
Two newly unsealed documents state that Mortensen told officials she heard the killer say Kaylee Goncalves’ name during the heinous attack.
Trooper Jeffory Talbot of the Idaho State Police wrote in his report that after arriving at the Moscow residence where the stabbings took place, Sgt. Dustin Blaker of the Moscow Police Department gave him a rundown of the details investigators had compiled earlier that day.
“Sometime in the early morning hours, [Mortensen] was awoken and opened her room door [redacted] and heard a male say, ‘It’s okay Kaylee, I’m here for you,’ and crying,” Talbot wrote in his summary of the briefing he received from Sgt. Blaker, obtained by People.
Mortensen, for her part, believed she heard Goncalves, 21, beeline for the stairs while trying to escape from Kohberger before she heard him speak.
“She then heard a male voice, which she stated she had never heard before, say ‘It’s okay, I’m going to help you.’ [Mortensen] believed the unidentified male was in the bathroom and with the person who was crying. She believes it was Kaylee who was the one crying,” the official report read, which summarized Mortensen’s first interview following the chilling murders.
Mortensen went on to tweak her story that day after learning more details about what had happened.
She believed it was “probably” Kernodle who was crying at the time, though “at the moment of hearing the crying, she stated she believed it was Kaylee who was crying,” she said, per the documents.
She speculated that Kernodle was likely the person she heard attempting to flee the killer, and admitted to being in shock over the horrific ordeal.
Still, Mortensen, who was left unharmed despite encountering Kohberger as he fled the scene through the rental property’s sliding door, told police she was certain that the killer said Goncalves’ name out loud.
“She advised she knows what she heard, especially about hearing who she believed was Kaylee crying and the male voice telling her he was there for her,” Det. Victoria M. Gooch wrote in a report filed after Mortensen’s first interview.
Goncalves endured “more than 20 stab wounds,” alongside blunt-force trauma, authorities revealed in recently released police documents.
Elsewhere, Mortensen struggled to identify Kohberger as the man she saw on the night of the fatal stabbings.
Mortensen shared with authorities that she had noticed an intruder with “bushy eyebrows” on the night of the attack on 1122 King Road in Moscow, who had told her that he was “here to help.”
“From people releasing Bryan Kohberger’s name, I know it’s him, but I don’t know,” the surviving roommate said after his arrest, according to the unsealed interview.
After seeing a picture of Kohberger in an Det. Joe Lake, Motensen added, “Nothing came back to me at all. I feel like if I saw that my mind would be like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s him, but … I just don’t remember at all.’”
Mortensen attended Kohberger’s sentencing in court last month, where the killer was ordered to serve four life terms behind bars.
“He is a hollow vessel. Something less than human. A body without empathy or remorse,” she said through the tears. “He chose destruction, he chose evil. He feels nothing. He tried to take everything from me.”
Weeks before the trial, Kohberger copped a plea deal weeks which allowed him to avoid facing the death penalty.
After his sentencing, Kohberger was transferred from jail to a prison where his fellow inmates have been psychologically tormenting him by yelling into the vents that lead to his cell at all hours of the day.
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