A heartbreaking new detail has emerged in the Idaho college murders case. Kaylee Goncalves, one of the four victims, had already moved out of the home where the stabbings happened, but she came back just one day before the attack to visit her best friend.
Kaylee, 21, was about to graduate early and had a job lined up in Austin, Texas, according to her parents, Kristi and Steve Goncalves, who spoke with Dateline. She had recently moved out of the Moscow, Idaho rental house where she lived with her longtime best friend, Madison Mogen, also 21.
“These girls were best friends since sixth grade, like inseparable,” Kristi Goncalves told Dateline. “Maddie had been a huge part of our life.”
Kaylee had just bought a new Range Rover and wanted to show it off to Mogen. She also planned to attend a nearby party that night. “That was the last time that I saw Kaylee,” her mother said.
In the early hours of November 13, Kaylee and Madison were stabbed to death in their off-campus home, along with Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20. Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old criminology doctoral student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania on December 30 and charged with four counts of first-degree murder. He could face the death penalty.
According to court documents, a knife sheath was found near Kaylee and Madison’s bodies. DNA on the sheath’s button allegedly led investigators to Kohberger as a suspect.
The Goncalves family told Dateline they believe their daughter may have played a role in identifying her killer. “I just said, ‘Can you believe that?'” Kristi Goncalves recalled.
“And I said, ‘I hope that maybe a struggle, she pulled it off him, in the struggle or whatever…'”
Steve Goncalves added: “It’s a checkmate type moment. And our girls were a part of it.”
As the case moves toward trial, what other secrets might that night still hold?
