A roommate who survived the murders of four University of Idaho students in 2022 heard confessed killer Bryan Kohberger refer to victim Kaylee Goncalves by name that night, newly unsealed documents reveal.
Dylan Mortensen told police she had opened her door after being awakened to hear a male voice say, “It’s okay Kaylee, I’m here for you,” along with crying, Idaho State Police (ISP) Trooper Jeffory Talbot wrote in his report summarizing a briefing he’d gotten from Moscow Police Department Sgt. Dustin Blaker.
Blaker and MPD Detective Victoria Gooch interviewed Mortensen together the morning the bodies were discovered.
The documents, obtained by People, were among a raft of previously sealed information that has been released since Kohberger last month admitted to fatally stabbing Goncalves and best friend Madison Mogen, both 21, as well as 20-year-old Xana Kernodle and boyfriend Ethan Chapin, who was staying over that night.
Kohberger is serving four life sentences, having struck a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
Initially Mortensen, the only roommate to catch a glimpse of Kohberger, said she also heard Goncalves running down the stairs, seeking to escape, then “heard a male voice, which she stated she had never heard before, say, ‘It’s okay, I’m going to help you,’ ” Talbot wrote in the report. She “believed the unidentified male was in the bathroom and with the person who was crying. She believes it was Kaylee who was the one crying.”
As more details emerged, Mortensen said later that it must have been Kernodle, not Goncalves, who’d been crying and racing down the stairs. But she held fast to what she’d heard the killer say.
Kaylee Goncalves
Instagram Kaylee Goncalves. (Instagram)
“She advised she knows what she heard, especially about hearing who she believed was Kaylee crying and the male voice telling her he was there for her,” Gooch wrote in her report.
Authorities had said early on that Kohberger had been following the three women on social media and messaged one of them multiple times over Instagram in the weeks before the slayings. Goncalves had said she felt as if she were being watched, but Moscow police found no evidence to support the claim.
Goncalves’ father, Steven Goncalves, blasted the decision to keep the revelation under wraps.
“The only thing more disturbing than the murder of your child is hearing that the killer called out her name while committing this heinous act — and then discovering the prosecutor deliberately hid this fact from the families,” he told TMZ. “Kaylee knew she was being hunted — yet no one in that town lifted a finger to stop it.”
With News Wire Services
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