Parents of a University of Idaho student who was killed along with three others say she had recently left the home where the murders took place in November, but returned to show her close friend her new car and attending a party nearby.
Kristi and Steve Goncalves told Dateline that their daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, was due to graduate college early and got a job at an IT company in Austin, Texas.
Kaylee Goncalves had just moved out of the home she shared with her longtime best friend, 21-year-old Madison “Maddie” Mogen.
“These girls were best friends since sixth grade, like inseparable,” Kristi Goncalves said.
The two had lived together and “were real ultimate best friends,” she said. “Maddie has been a big part of our life.”
Kaylee Goncalves, who had just purchased a new Range Rover, told her parents she wanted to return to Moscow, Idaho, to show it to Maddie and attend a nearby party together.
“That was the last time I saw Kaylee,” her mother said.
On November 13, Kaylee, Mogen and two others were stabbed to death in a house in Moscow’s largely rural university community.
Ethan Chapin, 20, of Conway, Washington, and Xana Kernodle, 20, of Avondale, Arizona, were also killed in the attack.
Police arrested a suspect, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, about seven weeks after the murders. He was charged with four counts of first degree murder and burglary.
Authorities linked Kohberger to the case through male DNA left on a knife sheath at the scene, as well as tracking down Kohberger’s car and cell phone records.
Kohberger, originally from Pennsylvania, was a doctoral student at nearby Washington State University, studying in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
Police did not reveal a motive for the killings or say if or how Kohberger could have known of the victims.
A former criminal justice classmate of Kohberger at DeSales University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master of arts in criminal justice, said she was shocked when she heard the news of the arrest of Kohberger.
“It definitely shocked me,” classmate Madison told Dateline.
Madison, who asked that her last name not be used for fear of harassment, said she remembered the detailed answers Kohberger gave during the criminology course they took together in 2018.
“Each time he raised his hand, he definitely took it upon himself to answer the question, but then gave whatever details he could to help further his point,” she said. “It was always, like, ‘Oh, Bryan answers that question. This is going to keep the whole class busy.'”
She also thought Kohberger would “watch” her and her friends.
“He was staring at us. He definitely had very prominent eyes,” she said. “I always caught him staring at us. He never really tried to ‘talk’ to us.”
Hayden Stinchfield, a junior in WSU’s criminal justice program, had Kohberger as a teaching assistant.
“He wasn’t a super approachable guy,” Stinchfield told Dateline, adding that Kohberger was initially a harsh leveler.
But that suddenly changed.
“At some point he started giving everyone 100 and like really high marks,” he said. “At the end of the semester, no one was thinking about the small deductions from earlier.”
Stinchfield said that in hindsight, he thinks the change in Kohberger’s filing habits “aligns pretty well” with the era of the murders.
Steve and Kristi Goncalves said they were relieved to think and hope their daughter might have helped solve her own death by ripping the knife sheath ultimately used to link Kohberger to the murders.
“Hopefully maybe in a struggle she pulled it off,” Kristi Goncalves said.
“It’s a checkmate type moment,” Steve Goncalves added.
Both said they hoped for a conviction and the death penalty.
“He chose time and time again to end people’s lives and that needs to be reckoned with,” Steve Goncalves said.
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