“There’s someone here. ” That was what I heard Kaylee say from upstairs. Then I thought I heard her crying in the bathroom, and a man’s voice said, “It’s okay. I’m going to help you.
” It wasn’t said in a nice way. It was a voice I had never heard before. Then there was no crying after that. I froze in my bed.
I was terrified. I jumped up and locked my door. Then I saw him through the crack in my door—a male figure dressed in all black, wearing a mask that covered just his forehead, athletic build, a few inches taller than me. He saw me, and I saw him, and he just left.
That night, six students slept in the house at 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho. Only two of us woke up the next morning. It was mid-morning when we realized something was wrong. No one was responding.
My hands were shaking as I called 911. “I need help. Something is happening in our house. We don’t know what.
She’s not waking up. ”
The dispatcher stayed on the line. The first officer on the scene recognized immediately that two of the people inside were already gone. They had been stabbed.
When they searched the rest of the house, they found the other two victims on the third floor in a bedroom. There was a lot of blood. Some of the victims had been stabbed dozens of times. The dead were Xana Kernodle, her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, and Madison Mogen.
They were all 20 and 21 years old. They were the prime of their lives. Kaylee and Maddie grew up together in Coeur d’Alene and had been best friends since they were young. Xana was known for her sense of humor, for doing and saying funny, silly things.
They were typical college students. They didn’t have enemies. They weren’t involved in anything nefarious. They were just happy and connected and full of life.
I couldn’t stop imagining the terror they experienced, especially with the brutality of this crime. And we had no idea who did it. Detectives began working from ground zero. At the scene, on the third floor near Maddie, they found a knife sheath.
It was left behind by the killer. It was immediately recognized as a Ka-Bar knife sheath. The police collected it for fingerprints, DNA, any kind of evidence they could get. They also relied on my account and the other roommate’s account to build a timeline.
Kaylee and Maddie came home from the club around 1:45 a. m. Xana and Ethan had returned home from a party. Everyone went to bed.
Then around 4:00 a. m. , I heard the commotion. I heard the scream, I heard Kaylee say someone was there, I heard the man’s voice say he was going to help her.
But it wasn’t in a nice way. And then I saw him, and he walked past me and left. It wasn’t until the next day that we realized no one was waking up. That’s when we called 911.
The police needed more than our testimony. They needed the cameras. They pulled neighborhood surveillance footage from King Road. They noticed a white vehicle coming and going multiple times.
At first, that wasn’t particularly suspicious. At 3:30 in the morning, there aren’t many vehicles in that area, but who knows? But minutes later, the driver returned. The vehicle was coming in slowly, methodically, with purpose.
This was nearing the time we now know the homicides occurred. The white vehicle was circling the area. That raises your suspicion. Then, just after 4:00 a.
m. , around the time I heard Kaylee crying in the bathroom, the behavior changed. The white vehicle appeared to leave, then made a decision to turn around. Instead of leaving the area, it headed back toward 1122 King Road, as if a decision had been made.
All the residents were back home. For 15 minutes, all was quiet. Then, at 4:20 a. m.
, the vehicle left at a high rate of speed, almost losing control. You could hear screeching tires as it left the area. We knew when we saw this: this is our suspect. Other cameras in the area showed the mystery car had stalked the town for days before.
Video analysis identified the vehicle as a white Hyundai Elantra. But when the driver left Moscow, police lost the trail. There were tens of thousands of white Hyundai Elantras registered in the area. Back on campus, a murderer was walking free.
It was right before Thanksgiving break. A lot of people went home because they didn’t want to be in Moscow. The paranoia and the uncertainty made things scary. Police told the public they could not say there was no threat to the community.
Tips and footage poured in of the victims’ last night alive. Kaylee and Maddie were caught on surveillance cameras in a bar hours before their deaths. They went downtown to get a bite to eat. Nothing about it was suspicious.
Police tracked down and ruled out everyone in the videos. Six weeks went by. The killer was still at large. I was worried.
After a month and a half with no details on the suspect, I was getting worried that someone killed these four and was going to get away with it. It took traditional forensics to provide a breakthrough. The Idaho State Police Lab built a complete DNA profile from the knife sheath and compared it to multiple DNA databases where people can submit their DNA and find out their ancestry. The profile pointed to a particular family in Pullman, Washington.
Looking at that family tree, they found a Washington State University student who owned a white Hyundai Elantra. The make and model matched the vehicle caught on camera near the murder scene. That’s when everything started coming together. The primary suspect’s name was Bryan Kohberger.
When I first saw his picture, I thought, “How was this person involved? Who is this guy? ” There was no evidence linking him to any of the victims. He had no history of violence.
Investigators pulled his only recorded interaction with police—a traffic stop months prior. In that body-camera footage, he wasn’t acting like a normal person. He was asking the officer about lying, about being found out. He asked what would happen if he lied to the police.
It was the way you wouldn’t normally respond when pulled over. It was like he was looking for information about what he could get away with. His historic online posts painted a picture of declining mental health. He had written about depersonalization, delusions of grandeur, having no emotion.
It demonstrated a real disturbed adolescent and a bit of a cry for help. He had a master’s degree and was working on a PhD in criminology. He had even applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department but didn’t get it. But it was his online purchase history that stopped detectives in their tracks.
He had bought a Ka-Bar knife and sheath that matched the one recovered from the murder scene. His phone also offered up his exact location the morning after the murders. At the same time first responders were discovering the bodies, Bryan Kohberger was caught on camera 35 miles south of Moscow, shopping for groceries at a Costco in Clarkston, Washington. He walked around relatively nonchalant, drinking a bottle of water, not appearing nervous or shaken up at all.
It didn’t point to a lot of emotional attachment to what he had just done. It spoke to an internal belief that he was going to get away with it. After six weeks, officers finally had enough video and forensic evidence for an arrest. The SWAT team entered his home in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, and took him into custody very quickly.
I felt a wave of relief. But Bryan Kohberger decided not to cooperate with law enforcement. Police searched his home and found the white Hyundai Elantra in the garage. The car’s GPS data tied him to the murder scene.
He had traveled to Moscow on several occasions, but after the homicides, that completely changed. He never came back to Moscow. A cheek swab for DNA provided the final proof. The results showed one-to-one, unequivocally, that his DNA was the DNA on the knife sheath found at 1122 King Road.
Law enforcement prepared for trial. But at the last minute, Bryan Kohberger struck a deal with prosecutors. To avoid the death penalty, he pleaded guilty. To watch him come into the courtroom and state that he was guilty, that he murdered these four innocent souls, was shocking.
The judge handed down four life sentences, one for each life he took. He will die in prison. I want Xana, Ethan, Kaylee, and Maddie to be remembered for the bright, beautiful young people they were. They were loving, friendly people.
Xana was always kind to just about everyone. They didn’t do anything wrong other than being themselves. It’s tragically sad that simply by being happy and connected and having a good social network and friendships, that made them the target of someone’s own internal struggle. It’s very easy to miss domestic violence when the victim is a man, because men don’t open up as much as women.
Louis thought it was embarrassing. There’s this big bravado. On Christmas Day 2024, in the small village of Norton Canes in the West Midlands, England, our family’s world ended. My husband’s phone rang just before 5:00 in the morning.
He answered it, and all I could hear was, “He’s dead. ”
I got to my mom and dad’s house, and it was all cordoned off. There were police cars everywhere. The policeman approached me and informed me that Lewis had passed.
I dropped to my knees on the floor and I just screamed. I tried to call my mom, but they were in Africa, and the call just bounced. So I called my dad. He answered, and I was just screaming.
Things like this don’t happen to us. It’s anybody’s worst nightmare. I went home and just as I walked through my front door, my son was waking up at the top of the stairs. He just wanted to come to me and open his presents from Santa.
But my whole world had ended at that point. I composed myself as much as I could. We tried to get through the day as normally as we could because I couldn’t tell my child it was Christmas Day. Police found my brother, 31-year-old Lewis Price, with a fatal 12-centimeter wound to his chest.
There was nothing they could have done for him. They found the knife they believed was used to kill him at the scene and took it into evidence. The mystery of who killed Lewis didn’t last long. Police received a phone call from a man saying his stepdaughter had confessed to stabbing her ex-partner.
Lewis’s ex, Kirsty Callis, a 33-year-old woman, was arrested. She and Lewis had a child together. When I heard the police say there was a history of domestic violence, I started questioning: “Is this reactive abuse, or is it completely the opposite? Is she the violent aggressor?
”
Lewis was the heart of our family. He was the joker. He was loveable. He adored fishing and was constantly on the bank fishing with my dad.
We were a close-knit family. Even after all the children grew up and moved out, Lewis kept a caravan in my parents’ yard. The caravan was his safe place. He could sit in his caravan, play on his game, smoke his cigarettes.
That was his space. It belonged to him. But outside of that safe space, he struggled and found it hard to ask for help. Even from a young age, he always had a mask on.
He wouldn’t ever tell us the major things that were going on in his life. He kept all that private. He believed a man shouldn’t cry. A man shouldn’t feel emotional.
My wedding day was probably the most emotional we had ever been with each other. Lewis’s relationship with Kirsty began in 2020. They seemed happy. Lewis seemed like he was doing good for himself.
He got a new job. We thought he had finally met someone that was going to be good for him. When Kirsty fell pregnant, he was absolutely over the moon. But then things started to go wrong.
He wasn’t his cheeky self. Five or six months into the relationship, things started to change. Often when we were out fishing, Lewis would say she had done this, she had taken his money, or she had been drunk. That’s when the picture started to unfold of what she was actually like.
There were a lot of arguments, a lot of jealousy, a lot of accusations. The arguing turned to fighting. Things were being thrown. Things were being smashed.
Lewis called the police once, struggling to breathe because she threw something at his back. He showed them bruises on his neck, saying she had tried to strangle him. He said she had cut him with knives in the past. The police are used to men on the scene being the perpetrator.
They’re used to men lying and weaponizing the situation as another form of control. When an actual male victim is in front of them, it can be difficult to see them. Lewis was a real victim. Many, many times we said, “Get out of it.
It’s not good for you. ” But his reply was always the same: “I love her. ” Our relationship was so volatile at that point. It was getting worse.
One thing that often happens in relationships involving domestic violence is a shift in severity over time. It starts with small acts of aggression, small controlling behaviors, being a bit jealous, restricting who you get to see. And it escalates. The single biggest predictor of it escalating to intimate partner homicide is strangulation.
When Lewis showed the police the marks on his neck and said she tried to strangle him, that should have been seen as a real moment of urgency. She was already on an escalating path to murder. Lewis moved in with our parents. Kirsty was charged with bodily harm and strangulation.
She was released on bail with the condition she not contact Lewis, but she ignored the court order. She used their daughter to get Lewis back and start talking to him again. The relationship was still on and off by Christmas, as it always had been. No matter how much you asked him not to go back, he always did.
He had a daughter with her. It was the only way he was going to see his daughter. I saw Lewis Christmas Eve. I popped into my mom and dad’s just to see what his plans were for Christmas.
Christmas morning came, and everything just changed. Detectives spent Christmas Day reviewing the home surveillance footage. They examined Kirsty’s claim of self-defense. What they saw on video changed everything.
At 3:00 a. m. , the security footage showed Kirsty arriving at my parents’ house. Less than a minute later, the camera at the back of the house showed her stalking Lewis with a knife.
Lewis stumbled out of view toward the conservatory, where he collapsed and died. Police reconstructed what happened that day with the help of phone records and eyewitnesses. On Christmas Eve, Kirsty had spent the day in a couple of pubs with a male friend. The friend said she was drunk.
They went back to his house. She had taken cocaine, and they had sex. At around 1:30 in the morning on Christmas Day, a female friend sent Kirsty a screenshot of a dating profile that belonged to Lewis. Kirsty’s demeanor changed.
She booked a taxi. Her phone records show that she called Lewis 45 times between 2:15 a. m. and 2:44 a.
m. Then she called her mother to say that whatever happened tomorrow, she loved her. Another taxi driver took Kirsty to my parents’ house. When the taxi pulled up, she told him she would be back in a couple of minutes.
She had a key and used it to enter the property. She went straight upstairs expecting to find him in bed with another woman. But he wasn’t up there. He was in his safe place, in the caravan or nearby.
Around 30 seconds after she entered, the taxi driver reported hearing a scream from a male that sounded scared. We saw his last moments quite literally on the footage. He was being stalked and chased around the garden like an animal, like a piece of prey. He was constantly backing away from her.
But she had already done the damage. He was already dying. As soon as she saw him, she stabbed him. She made a plan and executed it.
She went right for the heart. A few moments later, he was gone. She had to step over Lewis lying dying on the floor to get out of the house. She put the knife on the breakfast bar and left through the front door.
She came back to the taxi after about two minutes and asked the driver to take her to her parents’ home. The driver noted that she appeared anxious and sweaty. Once she arrived at her parents’ home, she admitted what she had done, and her stepfather called the police. Kirsty’s claim of self-defense collapsed very quickly.
The video painted a very different picture. Police compared the knife used to kill Lewis with those found at my parents’ home, but they didn’t match. When they examined knives at Kirsty’s home, they did match, indicating she brought the knife with her. The footage showed no signs of aggression from Lewis.
It showed Kirsty pursuing him. Lewis’s injuries were inconsistent with him being any threat. At the time Louis was fatally stabbed, he was deemed to be at very high risk of domestic abuse by Staffordshire police. Kirsty had tried to portray herself as a victim, calling police numerous times to report that he had hurt her, only to later say it wasn’t true.
The trial showed the true nature of their relationship: Lewis was a victim of Kirsty. I believe in my heart that Lewis was done. Everything she tried to antagonize him with wasn’t working. He wasn’t rising to her arguing anymore.
I think she was realizing that Lewis was literally ready to leave and never return, and she couldn’t have that. She couldn’t have him. So no one else ever would. And she made sure of that.
Kirsty Callis was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 25 years. No sentence will ever be enough. It will never bring Lewis back. We were just happy she got the maximum.
If one man hears this and realizes that it’s okay to reach out, that you can get help, that you don’t have to live through it, then it will be worth it. That’s what I wish someone would have done for Lewis. Maybe then he would have spoken up sooner. Maybe he would have still been here.
Anyone who knew Lewis saw him the same way. A cheeky lad with a heart of gold. I loved him. I really do.
We remember him every single minute of the day. People say time heals, but it doesn’t. Not at all. With Lewis gone, we’ve lost the heartbeat of the family.
We’ve lost the laughs. The drama. I miss the chats on the bank.
That’s my biggest personal loss: the giggles on the riverbank when we were fishing.
