The house on King Road: A look at the Moscow home where four U of I students were killed

(Idaho Statesman) — At 1122 King Road in Moscow sits a gray six-bedroom, three-bathroom house that continues to be the source of significant national attention.

Known as a student rental, the home’s most recent tenants were a group of six University of Idaho undergraduates who signed a 12-month lease that began on June 5, according to the property management firm that oversees the home.

Three of the student renters would not live to see the end of their lease.

The tenants were Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Bethany Funke and Dylan Mortensen, as well as an unnamed sixth person on the lease.

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In the early morning hours of Sunday, Nov. 13, Mogen, Goncalves, Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the house. Police found two bodies on the second floor and two bodies on the third floor, but have not released which victims were discovered where.

Mortensen and Funke were on the first floor of the home and went unharmed. Police have said they were not involved in the killings.

Nearly six weeks have passed, and law enforcement still has not named a suspect in the quadruple homicide.

The Idaho Statesman used photos from rental listings and documents submitted by former owners to the city of Moscow to explore the layout of the King Road house. Depictions of the floors are approximations created by the Statesman based on that information.

Just north of the home is the university’s new Greek Row, where many fraternity and sorority activities take place. That proximity meant the area was particularly popular among those involved in U of I Greek life.

About 1,600 students are members of the school’s fraternities and sororities. That total represents 23% of the roughly 7,000 undergraduate students enrolled in fall 2022 at the Moscow campus, according to university spokespeople.

Goncalves was a member of the Alpha Phi sorority, while Mogen and Kernodle were members of Pi Beta Phi. Funke is a member of Pi Phi as well, and identified Mogen as her “big sister” in a letter she wrote that was read at a Dec. 2 memorial. Mortensen also appears in multiple photos reviewed by the Statesman, including with Funke, on the sorority’s Facebook page, wearing clothing with Pi Phi insignia.

Many renters in the area around King Road were overflow from the nearby fraternities and sororities, said Merida McClanahan, supervisor at Team Idaho Real Estate & Property Management.

“we have a lot of university students as our tenants and we’ve got quite a few of the properties down there on King Road,” McClanahan told the Statesman in a phone interview. “It’s a tight-knit community. They’re on the back side of campus right across the street from Greek Row, and those kids cycle in and out.”

The listed owner of the King Road property didn’t return email and phone messages from the Statesman.

David Janssen, 32, a former U of I graduate student who said he’s a five-year tenant of an apartment complex adjacent to the rental home, confirmed that fraternity and sorority members appear to dominate the tightly packed neighborhood.

The surrounding Greek life environment contributed to what those familiar with the neighborhood, including Janssen, described in interviews with the Statesman as a loud party culture in the conjoined dead-end streets of King and Queen roads.

“This has always been a party place since I’ve lived here — always,” said Sean Hundley, 34, a nearly lifelong Moscow resident, and maintenance person for the adjacent apartment complex.

The tenants of the King Road house had received three noise complaints for loud music since August, according to a Statesman review of Moscow police reports. Two came on the same night in early September from separate neighbors in two single-family homes, each about a quarter-mile away, on the street located above the valley where the King Road house sits.

Goncalves received a warning from police for the first noise complaint in August. Mogen and Kernodle each received law enforcement warnings from the two complaints in September, according to the police reports.

In recently released Moscow police body-cam footage posted on YouTube, officers were shown trying to track down a resident of the home after the first of the September noise complaints.

“I guarantee you they’re associated with a sorority,” Moscow Police Sgt. Dustin Blaker said in the footage, to a male student who didn’t live at the home. “As many of them are living here, it’s an off-campus sorority house.”

The King Road home’s six bedrooms had at one time been rented as separate apartments, according to McClanahan, with the property management firm.

“Primarily for the last 12 years, it has been rented as one unit as a single-family home,” McClanahan said.

The house originally had two floors, but an owner requested to add the lowest floor in 2000, according to Moscow city permits. Built into a hillside, the house has one exterior door on each floor.

The home is 3,120 square feet, according to Zillow. The Latah County Assessor’s Office assessed its value at $343,848 in August.

The first floor

All of the tenants except the sixth unnamed person on the lease, who police said had moved out before the start of the school year, were home at the time of the Nov. 13 attack. The five housemates, along with Chapin, were all back at the King Road house by 1:56 a.m., police said. Call records made by Mogen and Goncalves indicated the attack happened sometime after they placed a phone call at 2:52 a.m., according to The New York Times.

The roommates on the first floor, Mortensen and Funke, likely were asleep until later that morning, according to police.

Attempts by the Statesman to reach Funke and Mortensen have been unsuccessful.

At 11:58 a.m., a 911 call was made from inside the house on one of the surviving roommates’ cellphones, according to police. The roommates summoned friends to the house because they believed one of the victims on the second floor had passed out and was not waking up. Multiple people spoke with the 911 dispatcher before officers arrived, police said.

Authorities have declined to release the 911 recording, citing an ongoing investigation.

On social media, many have expressed disbelief that Mortensen and Funke would not have woken up during the killings. However, former first-floor tenant Ryan Augusta told Fox News that he typically “heard nothing” from the second and third floors when he lived there in 2019. Reached by the Statesman, Augusta said he stood by his prior statement.

City records and photos from online rental listings indicate the first floor has two bedrooms that open into a shared hallway. The hallway also leads to a bathroom and a stairway that goes to the second floor.

A door between the bedrooms opens to the property’s driveway.

The second floor

The second floor of the home includes a living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. This floor can be accessed from the outside through a sliding glass door between the porch and the kitchen.

This floor has two separate staircases, one that leads to the first floor and one to the third floor.

Kernodle lived on the second floor, her mother, Cara Northington, said in an interview this month with NewsNation. Chapin’s mother, Stacy Chapin, previously confirmed to the Statesman that her son spent the night at his girlfriend’s house.

The third floor

The third floor of the home includes a bathroom and two bedrooms — one of which has a balcony with a sliding glass door. This floor can be accessed only by the staircase from the second floor.

Goncalves’ father, Steve Goncalves, said his daughter and Mogen lived on the third floor, according to Fox News. He said he believes that the two women, close friends since childhood, both slept in Mogen’s room the night of the killings.

Two items — a pair of pink boots frequently worn by Mogen in social media photos and a decorative letter M— could be seen in the window of bedroom E following the homicides. Goncalves posted social media videos from bedroom F.

Goncalves had a dog named Murphy who was home at the time of the attack, police said. Officers found the dog in a room where the crimes were not committed, but do not know where he was at the time of the killings, according to a news release. Police found no evidence on the dog, they said.