Former roommate of Idaho murder victims breaks silence for the first time, reveals his final message to friends

A former roommate of murdered University of Idaho students has broken her silence for the first time, revealing the moment she realized her friends were dead and the last message she sent them.

Ashlin Couch told KXLY she moved into the condemned off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, in 2020 with her friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen.

She moved out in May 2022 and Xana Kernodle took over the lease.

Six months later, in the early hours of November 13, 2022, Goncalves, 21, Mogen, 21, Kernodle, 20, and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death inside the student house.

Two other roommates were in the house at the time but were not injured. One of the survivors, Dylan Mortensen, came face to face with the masked killer, dressed head to toe in black and with bushy eyebrows, as he left the house after the killings, according to the prosecutor’s statement.

In an emotional interview, Ms. Couch recalled the moment she received an alert that continues to haunt her.

It was a message from the University of Idaho, alerting her to a suspected murder on King Road, the address she had left a few months earlier.

She said she sent one last message to Mogen, asking: “Are you OK?”

“I remember getting a second alert, I think. I was driving home and I texted our group of friends, and I just said, ‘Has anyone heard from Maddie?’ And I remember my last text was, ‘Are you okay?’” she said.

“And at that moment I felt something was wrong.”

She later learned what had happened to her friends.

Six weeks later, Bryan Kohberger, a criminology doctoral student at the nearby University of Washington, was arrested at the family home in Pennsylvania and charged with the murders. He is accused of breaking into the house and stabbing the four students to death with a large military-style knife.

Today, more than a year later, Ms. Couch is still traumatized by what happened in what was once her bedroom — and by the idea that she could have been there when it happened.

“I often think that this could have happened while I was there,” she said. “And you know, you never know how long someone is watching your house.”

For months after the murders, she said she was afraid to walk to her car in the dark.

Today, she works to raise awareness and educate students about social media safety.

“I couldn’t even walk to my car in the dark for months after this happened,” she said. “You just want to feel a little bit safer. And if we can help students do that and make them more aware of this and help them feel a little bit safer knowing that something like this happened, I think it’s going to be helpful in any way.”

Couch said she also wanted to honor her friends. As co-founder of the Made With Kindness Foundation, she helped create the Maddie Kaylee Scholarship Fund to help support the lives of students while spreading kindness and compassion.

“I want to spread a message and start something, help people, do something more with this life that we are grateful to still be able to live,” she explained. “I just wish I could give him one last hug so I could say goodbye.”

In May 2023, Mr. Kohberger declined to enter a plea in the case, prompting a judge to enter a not guilty plea.

Idaho prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty against Mr. Kohberger.

In March, the Idaho Supreme Court denied Mr. Kohberger’s request to have his grand jury indictment thrown out.

A trial date has not been set.