MOSCOW, Idaho — University of Idaho students sensed renewal of the everyday campus experience Wednesday with the start of spring classes, enjoying overdue greetings, embraces and conversations with classmates almost two months after the North Idaho community became the talk of the nation.
Heavy foot traffic returned to the state’s namesake university for the first time since November, when the stabbing deaths of four U of I undergraduates at an off-campus home upended the 9,300-person student body’s usual movements. Many attendees were back shuttling between academic buildings, traversing the morning’s slick pathways, for the first time since Thanksgiving break, after some chose to finish the fall semester from home in the wake of the killings.
Several students said the arrest of a suspect — Bryan Kohberger, a Washington State University Ph.D. student living just over the state line in Pullman — put their minds at ease ahead of the new semester. Kohberger, 28, is charged with four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of seniors Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21; junior Xana Kerndole, 20; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20.
Maverick March, 19, a freshman transfer student, told the Idaho Statesman that he feels safer knowing police have someone in custody. He returned to Moscow after spending winter break back home in Washington state’s Tri-Cities area, he said.
“It’s a good feeling. It’s reassuring,” March said Wednesday morning, heading back from a computer science class to his undergraduate dorm. “I hope they have the right guy. It definitely feels better knowing that they found someone rather than someone just being out there.”
Throughout campus, private security vehicles positioned themselves in well-traveled areas and roved the streets as part of the university’s pledge to maintain a stepped-up presence for students’ arrival. The Idaho State Police no longer has troopers dedicated to the campus but still makes the rounds when in the area, on top of patrols by the Moscow Police Department’s campus division, Moscow Police Capt. Anthony Dahlinger told the Statesman by email.
Kenzi Hansen, 18, a transfer from the University of Montana who grew up about a half-hour from Moscow, told the Statesman that she worries about how to broach the topic of the homicides, if it comes up with her classmates. She said it’s a touchy subject, especially for those who may have had ties to the four victims, and she doesn’t want to rub anyone the wrong way.
While Hansen has refrained from saying much about the case herself, she said, that didn’t stop the chatter from her peers during the first day of the semester. As students filed into Hansen’s animal husbandry class and took their seats, Hansen said, she overheard a few discussing Kohberger’s arrest.
“I feel like it’s something we’re going to be talking about for a long time,” Hansen said. “Just because this community has never experienced anything like that. We’ve never had anything happen like this before. I think we’re all just trying to adjust to it and figure out how to now get on with our daily lives.”
Washington State, located about 9 miles away, started its spring classes Monday. Kohberger was one of 34 students in the criminal justice and criminology department’s graduate program.
Despite the ongoing national attention on Moscow as Kohberger moves through the legal process, gone Wednesday from most school buildings were the fliers posted across the campus and elsewhere in the small college town seeking help from the public with any tips and leads that may help investigators.
A university spokesperson referred a request for comment from school administration about the first day of classes back to a pair of emails that U of I President Scott Green sent to students and university staff last month.
Green’s Dec. 30 memo shared news of the arrest in the King Road homicides, a sudden relief for the community that spent several weeks anxiously awaiting updates in the investigation and wondering if police, who kept a tight grip on information, had any meaningful leads.
“While we cannot bring back Maddie, Kaylee, Xana and Ethan, we can thoughtfully and purposefully carry their legacy forward in the work we do,” Green said. “The next few months will be tough on their friends and families as the legal system begins the process of publicly prosecuting these crimes to bring justice.”
Students reconnect while legal process plays out
Discussion of new class schedules and syllabuses, and the excitement of students learning their friends were in the same course, filled the plaza between the Student Union Building and campus library Wednesday morning. The university’s initial plan to increase its number of virtual courses to ensure those who did not wish to return in person while the investigation appeared without much progress seemed a distant memory.
Additional signs of the campus’s typical college activities included members of the Chrisman Battalion U.S. Army ROTC dressed in their camouflage uniforms, and members of the Vandals athletics teams, criss-crossing to and from class and other campus obligations. A U of I representative gave a prospective student and her parents a guided tour through a maze of students headed to class.
Helen, 21, a senior landscape architecture major from the Coeur d’Alene area, who declined to provide her last name, acknowledged that Kohberger’s arrest has helped lift a weight off students as they start classes. She complimented police, while noting the dearth of details for nearly seven weeks left many with concerns about returning to Moscow.
“I had issues with the lack of information, but it ended up being a good thing,” she told the Statesman, en route to her on-campus work study. She said she didn’t know the victims, but a friend grew up with some of them, she said, attending some of their birthdays in Kootenai County.
“It was really tough for her, and we provided a lot of support,” she said. “She’s glad they found (a suspect).”
Also this week, the university’s Sigma Chi fraternity, where Chapin was a member, posted a video on Instagram of move-in day into their Greek house located less than a 600-foot walk from the King Road home where he was killed.
“We are happy to be back,” the post read. “Looking forward to a semester full of good times and growth,” with the hashtag #livelifelikeethan
In the university’s four-story student union, students used their cellphones to look up their courses combined with directional signage to navigate to their new classrooms. Several others laughed and caught up with friends in the lunch line for chicken sandwiches or burritos on the first-floor food court.
Lauren Jamison, 20, a junior from Santa Barbara County, California, sat at a table between classes and chatted with James Stone, a fisheries major. They talked about lengthy road trips they each took back to Moscow. Jamison told the Statesman it was her first time making the drive through the Lake Tahoe area alone without her parents, after finishing last semester virtually from Southern California following the Thanksgiving break.
“I’m sure my mom was happy I stayed at home,” Jamison said, adding that she’d have returned to campus this semester regardless of the status of the police investigation into the students’ deaths.
Meanwhile, Stone, who is from northeastern Pennsylvania, described facing inclement weather during his 37-hour trek over four days to ensure he had his car back in North Idaho, so he can stay in the area for a summer internship.
“It was great,” Stone told Jamison, of the trip.
Stone’s hometown is one county over from where Kohberger grew up in eastern Pennsylvania. His route was likely a reverse trip to the one Kohberger made in his white Hyundai Elantra from Pullman back to Monroe County in mid-December with his father. Police have since seized the vehicle and allege it was the one seen in surveillance footage from Nov. 13 in the vicinity of the King Road home in Moscow.
From shock of killings to relief of arrest
Kohberger was taken into custody almost two weeks ago, and brought to Idaho after he waived extradition. On Jan. 4, he was flown in a Pennsylvania police plane to Pullman before being escorted to the Latah County Jail in Moscow by several police cruisers and SUVs flashing blue and red lights.
That night, dozens of media and community members gathered in the dark outside the jail to bear witness to Kohberger’s arrival. Nikia Newton, 26, and her boyfriend, Chase Thompson, 24, were among the Moscow residents on hand.
Newton graduated from Washington State in May 2021, while Thompson graduated from U of I last month. The couple live together in a rental home in the same neighborhood as the house where the four students were killed. Newton told the Statesman that she was dismayed to learn the suspect was attending the same college she once had.
“I was just shocked. I was expecting it to be someone who came in from out of town, especially since it was a (football) game weekend,” Newton said of the Nov. 13 incident. “And initially, it was really scary because we live so close to where it happened.”
Thompson said Newton, who works in Pullman, had been having a hard time sleeping for many weeks following the killings. They said they both feel relieved knowing police have a suspect in custody, and plan to continue watching the case play out.
“In general, a lot of people around town are relieved and more willing to go out and resume their normal lives, compared with before,” Thompson said. “It’s not going to be back to normal for a while, but it’s a little bit better.”
