The family of slain Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves have revealed their heartbreak after learning about the terrified texts sent to her phone moments after she had been brutally murdered.
Goncalves, her best friend Madison Mogen, roommate Xana Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death inside the off-campus student home the three women shared with two other roommates in Moscow, Idaho, back on November 13 2022.
Bryan Kohberger, a 30-year-old criminology PhD student, is charged with their murders and is facing the death penalty when his trial gets under way in August.
Gut-wrenching details about the murders have now surfaced in new court filings revealing, for the first time, the panicked texts sent by surviving roommates Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke moments after the slayings, as well as the chaotic 911 call transcript around eight hours later.
In the early hours of November 13, Mortensen came face-to-face with a masked intruder inside the home and made a series of frantic calls and texts to her roommates, according to court documents.
Only Funke answered.
The others were already dead.
Goncalves’s family revealed the pain at seeing these new details in a post on ‘The Goncalves Family’ Facebook page, set up to help gather tips about the case.
The family of slain Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves (pictured) have revealed their heartbreak after learning about the terrified texts sent to her phone moments after she had been brutally murdered
Between 4.22am and 4.24am on the morning of November 13, 2022, survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke exchanged 17 frantic text messages fearing someone was in their house
‘Reading some of the transcripts/documents that have recently been released, has been exceptionally hard,’ the family wrote.
‘We need this to be over. God help us all.’
At around 4am on November 13 2022, Mortensen, whose bedroom was on the second floor was woken by noises in the three-story home and had heard a voice say ‘there’s someone here,’ according to court documents.
She also heard what sounded like whimpering coming from Kernodle’s room and a man’s voice saying: ‘It’s ok, I’m going to help you.’
Mortensen told investigators she had opened her door and peeked outside three times.
The third time, she said she saw a masked man with ‘bushy eyebrows’ and dressed in black walk past her door and head towards the sliding back doors of the home.
In the newly-unsealed court filing, it has been revealed that a terrified Mortensen then called her slain roommates Goncalves, Mogen and Kernodle, as well as Funke between 4.19am and 4.21am – desperately trying to find out what was going on.
The calls were all unanswered.
Dylan Mortensen, Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee’s shoulders) Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Bethany Funke (left to right)
Between 4.22am and 4.24am, Mortensen and Funke then exchanged a series of frantic texts about her sighting of the masked man.
‘No one is answering,’ Mortensen texted Funke.
‘I’m rlly confused rn,’ she wrote in another text.
Mortensen then sent two unanswered texts to Goncalves.
‘Kaylee’
‘What’s going on’
She got no reply.
In a back and forth with Funke, the two young students are seen trying to piece together what was going on inside their home.
‘Ya dude wtf,’ Funke texted Mortensen.
‘Xana was wearing all black,’ she added in another message.
Bryan Kohberger, seen in a mugshot, is set to stand trial in August charged with the brutal murders
Mortensen texted Funke: ‘I’m freaking out rn.’
‘No it’s like ski mask almost,’ she added – in an apparent reference to the man she had seen inside the home.
When Funke responded ‘Stfu’ and then ‘Actually,’ Mortensen added: ‘Like he had soemtbinf [sic] over is for head and little nd mouth.’
‘I’m not kidding o [sic] am so freaked out,’ Mortensen said in another text.
Funke agreed: ‘So am I.’
Mortensen then said her phone was about to die and Funke urged her to run downstairs to her bedroom on the first floor.
‘Come to my room’
‘Run’
‘Down here’
After that text exchange, Mortensen then tried calling Chapin, Goncalves and Kernodle another time.
She also sent a text to Goncalves at 4.32am, saying: ‘Pls answer.’
In a separate court filing, it was revealed that Mortensen did go down to Funke’s room and the two young women ultimately fell asleep.
The student home where the murders took place. Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen came face-to-face with a masked intruder moments after the murders are believed to have taken place
Kaylee Goncalves family arrive for a court hearing in 2023. The family have spoken of their heartbreak at hearing about the messages sent to their daughter moments after she was killed
The following morning, starting at 10.23am, Mortensen then sent texts to their other roommates.
‘Pls answer,’ she texted Goncalves.
‘R u up,’ she texted Mogen.
And to Goncalves: ‘R u up??’
Mortensen then had a text exchange with her father and, at 11.50am, called a neighbor known as ‘EA,’ the documents show.
Minutes later, a 911 call was placed from Funke’s cellphone.
The distressing transcript of the 911 call, also released for the first time, shows that the call was made after an individual known as ‘HJ’ had found Kernodle’s body inside the home.
In the call, the callers describe the 20-year-old as being passed out and not waking up.
‘Hi, something is happening. Something happened in our house. We don’t know what. We have…’ the call begins.
The dispatcher is told that Kernodle is ‘passed out’, ‘was drunk last night,’ is ‘not waking up.’
When asked if she is breathing, the dispatcher is told ‘no.’
Kernodle is not mentioned by name and there is no mention of the other three victims, suggesting that they have not yet been found. There is also no mention of the bloody, violent scene.
The callers also mention Mortensen’s sighting of a man inside the home hours earlier.
‘Oh and they saw some man in their house last night,’ one voice says.
Bryan Kohberger’s defense also wants the terms ‘murder’, ‘psychopath’ and ‘sociopath’ also banned from the trial
The call is disjointed as the phone is passed between EA, HJ, Funke and Mortensen during the ordeal.
Throughout the call, the dispatcher hears constant ‘heaving, breathing and crying,’ the court document states.
Towards the end of the call, a different voice – believed to be an officer – says: ‘I think we have a homicide.’
The release of these new details comes as both the prosecution and the defense continues to file a flurry of court filings in the case ahead of the trial this summer.
In one of the latest filings, Kohberger’s defense is asking the judge to block any evidence referencing ‘bushy eyebrows’ and to block Mortensen from using those words to identify Kohberger when she testifies at trial.
‘Although she has never identified Mr. Kohberger, testimony by D.M. from the witness stand, describing bushy eyebrows while Mr. Kohberger sits as the accused at trial, will be as damning as her pointing to him and saying, “he is the man that did this,”‘ the defense argues.
According to Kohberger’s defense, there are some inconsistencies in Mortensen’s description of the masked intruder and ‘the description provided by D.M. is unreliable and should be excluded’ from the courtroom.
The accused killer’s team is also asking the court to ban the terms ‘murder,’ ‘psychopath’ and ‘sociopath,’ saying they would be ‘unfairly prejudicial’ to the accused killer.
Kohberger was ultimately tied to the murders through a brown leather knife sheath found close to Mogen’s body at the scene.
According to prosecutors, touch DNA found on the sheath belongs to Kohberger and was traced to him using Investigative Genetic Genealogy.
Kohberger’s team has tried unsuccessfully to have the IGG evidence tossed from the trial.
Ethan Chapin was staying at his girlfriend Xana Kernodle’s (together on left) home on the night of the murders. Best friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen (together on right) were found stabbed to death in the same bed
The off-campus student home at 1122 King Road where the murders that shocked America took place
The defense also pointed to blood from two unknown men also found at the King Road home – one on the handrail between the first and second floor, and the second on a glove found outside. The DNA does not match Kohberger and has not been identified.
In a new bombshell filing this week, the defense also revealed for the first time that DNA from three individuals had been found under Mogen’s fingernails.
It is not clear who the three individuals are that the DNA belongs to, however it is statistically assumed that Mogen was one of the three individuals.
The defense indicates that the comparison to Kohberger’s DNA was inconclusive.
Additional testing since carried out by the defense has now excluded Kohberger as the source of the DNA, his attorneys say.
Kohberger’s team is also continuing to fight to get the death penalty off the table in the case – with their latest argument being that the accused killer has autism and that his diagnosis ‘exposes him to the unacceptable risk’ that a jury will convict him of murder and sentence him to death.
Goncalves’ family has long publicly called for the death penalty and her father is now pushing for Kohberger to face the firing squad if convicted of the shocking murders of his daughter and her friends.
Kohberger stayed silent at his arraignment, leading the judge to enter a not guilty plea on his behalf.
He has so far offered up a vague alibi for the night of the murders claiming he was driving around at night looking at the stars.
No witnesses can corroborate where he was, his attorney Anne Taylor admitted in a court filing.
As well as the DNA found on the knife sheath, prosecutors say Kohberger was also tied to the murders through his white Elantra – matching the car seen leaving the crime scene at the time of the murders – and cellphone records placing him in the vicinity of the home.
Kohberger is next due in court in April.
