In early July, much to the surprise of the true-crime fans who had been avidly following the story, Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders of four college students in Moscow, Idaho, a case that has captivated and disturbed the public since it took place in November 2022. The Kohberger trial was scheduled to begin in August, and the former criminology grad student faced the possibility of the death penalty, possibly by firing squad. The plea deal he took—objected to by some victims’ family members—left Kohberger with four consecutive life sentences, in exchange for his admission of guilt and waiving the right to appeal.
Among the many people confounded by this news were surely those involved with promoting a new book by James Patterson and Vicky Ward, The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy, and a four-episode Amazon Prime Video documentary based on the book, One Night in Idaho: The College Murders, both of which come out this week. This book and show, presumably timed to hit the wave of interest that would have coincided with Kohberger’s trial, join a preexisting small shelf of books on the so-called Idaho student murders, as well as reams of videos posted on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, and copious text blocks of commentary on Reddit.
All of this content has been fundamentally narratively unsatisfying, because nobody knows exactly why Kohberger did what he has now pleaded guilty to doing. The victims, University of Idaho students Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison (“Maddie”) Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves, were stabbed to death in their off-campus house in the wee hours of Nov. 13. The evidence against Kohberger—DNA found on a knife sheath left at the scene; video footage of a car similar to his Hyundai Elantra circling the scene of the crime; purchase history showing he’d bought a knife like the one used in the crime; and a lack of credible alibi—seemed likely to net the prosecution a win in court.
However, despite the abundance of analysis and speculation surrounding the case, what has always been missing was a concrete connection between Kohberger, a Pennsylvania native and alienated graduate student about to lose his TA-ship in the criminology department at nearby Washington State University at the time of the murders, and the four happy, beautiful twentysomethings sleeping off a night of partying at 1122 King Rd. that night. The various books on these murders all conclude on the same open-ended note: “We’ll find out more at the trial.” Now, barring any sudden revelations, open-ended is likely the most we’re going to get.
The college towns of Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, the latter where Kohberger lived, are only 15 minutes apart, across state lines, but the experiences that Kohberger and the victims were having at school couldn’t have been more different. Patterson and Ward’s book and the Prime series based on it each draw a contrast between these two ways of being young in the United States in 2022. On the one hand, you had the four undergrads’ life in Moscow: an endless party, yes, but the tales of collegiate bacchanalia gain depth thanks to interviewees’ memories of the warm love between Chapin and Kernodle and of the longtime friendship of Mogen and Goncalves. On the other hand, you had the darker story of Kohberger’s addictions, health problems, and constant difficulty forming attachments, whether to friends or to romantic partners.
Culture war lurks underneath the surface here, as it does everywhere in the 2020s. The four students—avid participants in campus Greek life, living in a historically safe small Western town—get depicted in most media, including this book and show, as ideal young Americans, under threat by an outsider with dark ideas. The killing took place in an off-campus house, home to six residents so trusting of the world that they might leave their doors open and assume that any young stranger who entered was there because they’d been invited to party. People describe college campuses as “bubbles,” but Moscow’s bubble, people who lived there describe, was stronger than most. Some interviewees in the Prime series note that they couldn’t believe that these murders had happened, because they didn’t live on “the East Coast”—they remember locals feeling relieved when they found out that at least the person responsible was not from Idaho.
Patterson and Ward, in their book, advance an argument around motive that draws on this contrast between two ways of being young: the security of deep normalcy versus the dangerous outsider who might have delighted in popping the illusion. Their argument is that Bryan Kohberger should be understood as an incel killer. Kohberger had studied the crimes of mass murderer Elliot Rodger, patron saint of misogynistic terrorists, in a criminology class in undergrad. Drawing on interviews with acquaintances, Patterson and Ward write that at the time leading up to the murders, Kohberger, like Rodger, is “a virgin who hates women,” who “copes with loneliness by immersing himself in video games” and “goes for night drives … visits the gun range … goes to a local bar and tries to pick up women.” Inhabiting Kohberger’s subjectivity, Patterson and Ward imagine how he might have felt when he found out that a childhood friend had died of a drug overdose—maybe, they write, he would have thought about how Elliot Rodger reached a “tipping point” in “the loss of his best friend.” They explain Kohberger’s aggressive behavior toward women in his graduate cohort and in the classes that he taught at WSU with reference to “incel” terminology, writing that “according to incel lore, Beckys” like the women in Kohberger’s classes “need to be put in their place.”
The book also includes a fictionalized chapter based on speculations around motive that Kohberger’s fellow grad students at WSU shared with Patterson and Ward. Kohberger, who was vegan (another blue-state trait!), might, they hypothesize, have visited a Moscow restaurant called the Mad Greek, where Kernodle and Mogen were servers and where vegan pizza could be purchased. “As soon as he walks inside,” Ward and Patterson write with the present-tense flair characteristic of a thriller novel, “he notices the blond waitress. With her long hair and sphinxlike blue eyes, she would definitely be marked as a Stacy by the incels. She’s the epitome of the women who turned down Elliot Rodger,” they write of Mogen, going so far as to note that Rodger had a childhood friend named Maddy who started to ignore him after they grew up, and who featured in his writing as a target of his bitterness. Cellphone records, the Moscow police say, put Kohberger around the victims’ house 12 times between August and November of that year. Patterson and Ward write: “The theory among Maddie’s friends is that she rejected him. So he watched. Waiting.”
Should we lend credence to this theory? Maybe, maybe not! Again: These hypotheses will likely remain just that, now that Kohberger has pleaded guilty. The Prime documentary series, despite being based on the book, largely shies away from this kind of speculation. It’s a much quieter treatment, striking a mournful tone, focusing on the victims and their families and friends. (“I think he’s a loser that shouldn’t get talked about at all,” says a young interviewee, one of the friend group and girlfriend to the poor kid who was the first to walk into the crime scene the morning after. “I think the only true story should be about their lives.”) This approach is effective, building toward moments in the fourth episode that are deeply moving. One of Chapin’s friends describes how he now opens up every packet of Taco Bell sauce before starting to eat, so he won’t have to pause, just the way Ethan did it. Maddie Mogen’s mother shows off her daughter’s cutoff IDAHO sweatshirt in her childhood bedroom, pointing out that the sleeves are still rolled up, the way Maddie had them.
The doc producers pull out a theme from the terrible aftermath: The existence of social media amplified everything about the awful experience of being related to someone who died in this way. One Night in Idaho makes copious use of the many social-media photos and videos left behind by the victims, who were heavy posters of their social lives. In an interview, Chapin’s sister, Maizie, cries as she describes vanishing into TikTok, looking at true-crime accounts, for “hours a day” following the murder. “I think I was still in denial,” she says of this time. Meanwhile, the admins of a true-crime Facebook page covering the murders describe dealing with a guy, display name “Pappa Rodger,” who made creepy posts about the crime (“I feel like blood ran down a few places but it has been suppressed. … The kitchen was dripping blood but they won’t admit it”) and whose avatar bore a weird resemblance to Bryan Kohberger. Many of the young friends of the group who are interviewed say they now have their social-media accounts set to private. In a way, whether it’s fair or not, this story is a cautionary tale: Don’t show too many people your joy.
Neither book nor show contains direct testimony from one of the two surviving roommates from the King Road house, Dylan Mortensen, who has been under a gag order since the day of the crime. Early that morning, Mortensen heard activity in the home, left her room, glimpsed the killer as he was leaving, joined the other surviving roommate in her room, convinced herself her anxiety was uncalled-for, and slept off and on. The two waited eight hours to call their other friends, who came to the house in the morning, discovered the four bodies, and called the police.
Mortensen has been the object of much speculation, including after the news of the plea came down, when Redditors (possibly harboring what online true-crimers would call “Proberger” tendencies—those who believe in Kohberger’s innocence) asked, again, how it could possibly be that the survivors had waited so long to call. “I know everyone responds differently to danger and the brain can block out traumatic sights; I’m not blaming them at all—I just find the entire situation odd,” one wrote.
Mortensen’s story has stuck in my mind too, but not because I blame her. (Come on, now.) This eight-hour period between her glimpse of the intruder and her phone call is incredibly poignant. In its existence, you see the sheen of invulnerability inherent to being young; living in an American college-town bubble, in a red state proud of its lack of “big city” problems, cranks that feeling up to 10. Those were Dylan Mortensen’s last eight hours of peace. If we never get to know how she feels about that, fine. As Ethan Chapin’s mother, Stacy, a graceful, wise presence as an interviewee in the One Night in Idaho series, says, explaining why she didn’t plan to attend the trial: “It is what it is. We cannot change the outcome on this. We cannot bring Ethan back.”
