Idaho
Former roommate of University of Idaho murder victims reveals final message to friend
Featured Image Credit: KXLY
A former roommate of the University of Idaho students who were murdered in their college house has shared the last text she sent to one of the victims.
The house
Ashlin Couch moved in to the off-campus house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho in 2020, joining Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves as they settled in to student life.
Couch ultimately moved out in May 2022, with no idea that just a few months later her former roommates and two other students would be killed in the place she’d called home.
The murder
Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were identified alongside Mogen and Goncalves as the victims of the murder that took place in November 2022, when they were found dead in their upstairs bedrooms after a night out.
Kernodle and Chapin were found dead in the same room that Couch had lived in just six months earlier.
Couch herself had graduated by that time, but she kept in touch with her former roommates and was made aware that there was something wrong when she got a text from the University of Idaho alerting her to a suspected homicide.
The student house has since been demolished. (KXLY/ABC News)
The final text
After receiving the message, Couch sent a message in a group chat with her former roommates, asking if anyone had ‘heard from Maddie?’
In an interview with Good Morning America, she recalled one final message she sent to Mogan.
“And I remember, like my last text message to her was like, are you OK?” she said. “And, I feel like right then and there, I kind of just knew that something was wrong.”
Looking back, Couch expressed her wish that she’d had the chance to say a proper goodbye to her roommates.
“That’s one thing that I just wish that I could do at least one more time,” she said. “Like, you know, just give her one last hug. Just to be able to say goodbye.”
“It crosses my mind more that that could’ve happened while I was there,” Couch added. “And, you know, you never know, like how long someone is watching your house.”
Ashlin Couch moved out just a few months before the murders. (KXLY/ABC News)
The arrest
The month after the murders, police arrested Washington State University graduate student Bryan Kohberger and charged him with first-degree murder and burglary.
However, the impacts of the murders stayed with Couch for long after Kohberger was arrested.
“I couldn’t even walk to my car in the dark for months after it happened, like you just want to at least feel a little bit safer,” she recalled.
In May 2023, a judge entered a plea of not guilty for Kohberger, whose lawyers have claimed he was 40 minutes away when the murders took place. He is currently in jail awaiting trial.
Police arrested Bryan Kohberger in relation to the killings. (Ted S. Warren-Pool/Getty Images)
The tribute
In honor of her friends who lost their lives, Couch has started the Made with Kindness Foundation, which helps to raise awareness and educate students on how to protect themselves at home.
Noting that the actions of others are out of our control, Couch said: “Horrible people are going to do what they’re going to do. It’s not anything that they could have done. They absolutely did nothing wrong.”
Topics: Crime, True crime, US News
Idaho
Idaho’s Most Unusual Listing: A Pair of Medieval Castles Complete With a Dungeon and Drawbridge
Idaho is not a place that’s often associated with Medieval castles, but a pair have just hit the market for $6.25 million.
The imposing stone structures have towers, turrets, ramparts, arrow-slit windows and even a drawbridge, and might just be the most authentic-looking castles this side of the Atlantic.
“Who expects to see a castle like this in Idaho?” said listing agent Brenda Burk of Coldwell Banker Schneidmiller Realty, who brought the property to the market last week. They are, she said, “extremely unusual.”
MORE: Late PBS Anchor Jim Lehrer’s Historic Washington, D.C., Home Lists for $5 Million
Schweitzer Castle and Château de Melusine, as they’re known, stand within Schweitzer Mountain Resort in the Selkirk Mountains and overlook the nearby mountain resort town of Sandpoint. They take in panoramic views of Lake Pend Oreille, Idaho’s largest lake.
The pair of ski-in/ski-out homes each have three bedrooms, two bathrooms and three stories, Burk explained. They are “so authentic,” she said. “Every single stone was handlaid.”
Schweitzer Castle, she said, wasn’t built for “functionality,” but has been modernized and adapted and now has everything a 21st-century residence requires, along with a dungeon, which for some buyers may also be a requisite.
MORE: Arizona’s Most Expensive House—With an Indoor Go-Kart Track and Shooting Range—Sells for a Record $40.2 Million
The chateau, meanwhile, has a hot tub room with mountain views, as well as a garage.
The property is being sold furnished, and will come complete with the hand-carved statues, armor, mounted swords, stained-glass windows and a host of antiques dating to the 15th and 16th centuries.
The owner, an antique collector who couldn’t be reached for comment, “is always looking for that hidden jewel and he found that here,” Burk said.
The next custodian is likely to stem from a varied pool of buyers, Burk said, that would include “the trophy-home buyer, someone who can say ‘I own a castle.’”
The property could also appeal to someone looking for a vacation home, or a multi-generational estate, and beyond that “there’s the dreamers,” she said. “We definitely try to market to people who like Medieval history or maybe do Renaissance fairs.”
The seller “really wants it to go to someone with the same passion.”
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