In the early hours of a Sunday morning in November 2022, a quiet off-campus street in Moscow, Idaho, became the scene of a crime that would grip the nation. Four University of Idaho students—Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin—were fatally stabbed in their shared home on King Road.
Now, for the first time, a close friend of the victims is sharing his account of the traumatic morning, detailing the moment he made the grisly discovery that ended one chapter of his life and began another defined by loss.
Hunter Johnson, then 21, recalls an unusual and compelling urge in the hours before the crime was known. Around 3 a.m., while at his girlfriend Emily Alandt’s apartment near the victims’ home, he felt an instinct he describes as subconscious.
“I got up and locked the door,” Johnson said. “It was completely silent out, nothing was wrong. But something deep down told me I had to do it. I’d never done that before.”
He and Alandt, along with her roommate, briefly gathered in the living room, unsettled but unaware that less than an hour later and just down the street, an attack was unfolding that would claim the lives of four of their friends.
The following morning, a call for help came from the house on King Road. Another roommate, who had been home during the incident, reached out, concerned about strange noises from the night before. Johnson and Alandt went to check.
Johnson was the first to enter. What he found on the second floor would be seared into his memory: the bodies of Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle.
“Your mind can’t immediately accept it,” he recounted. “You ask, ‘Is this real?’ Then the weight of it crashes down. You’re standing in a nightmare.”
Reflecting on the profound personal impact, Alandt noted, “Our innocence was gone that day.” Johnson added, “It was the last day we lived as kids.”
In the aftermath, 29-year-old Bryan Kohberger was arrested and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. His trial, a highly anticipated proceeding, is scheduled to begin with jury selection later this summer, following a judge’s recent denial of a defense request for a delay.
The upcoming legal proceedings promise to revisit the details of a case that shattered the peace of a university community, a tragedy forever remembered by those who were closest to the victims on that devastating November night.
