I last stood before 1122 King Road in Moscow, Idaho, on December 28, 2023.
Snow was on the ground, yellow police tape on the driveway and a steel mesh fence lined the perimeter of the lot.
On the curb, there was a messy makeshift memorial of frozen, faded stuffed animals, spent candles and wilting fabric flowers.
And there was a shabby, split-level house with grey siding, built into the slope of a hill with a parking lot in front and a thicket of trees behind it: the murder house.
Now, that’s gone.
A mostly empty lot remains. But the memorial that sprang up organically in the fall of 2022 is still there.
I recognize the hand-painted stones and the teddy bears and four little lambs – limp and increasingly tattered, bleached by sun, rain and the freeze of three frigid Idaho winters.
It is hard to escape the feeling that nothing really has changed here.
How could it?
I’ve returned to this spot, more than two and a half years after a quadruple homicide that traumatized this community and horrified the nation, on the eve of the sentencing of Bryan Kohberger, 30.
Kohberger has confessed to brutally stabbing to death four Idaho University students – best friends Kaylee Goncalves and Maddie Mogen, both 21 years old, and couple Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, both 20 – in this shared student house.
There had been talk of building a contemplative garden here. Instead, weeds and wild grasses have grown up through the gravel and asphalt – all that was left behind once a backhoe had cleared the land and compacted the ground.
A yellow chain has taken the place of crime scene tape. Ghoulish tourists have stopped coming and, on a soft summer evening, the once harried neighborhood is dead quiet.
When the University of Idaho decided to demolish the King Road house, some of the victim’s family objected, even though the school seemed to be operating on sound rationale.
For 47 days, this close block of rental properties and fraternity houses had locked its doors, shuttered its windows each night as the killer, who struck on November 13, 2022, remained at large.
If they had hoped for some respite with Kohberger’s arrest on December 29, 2022, they would have been disappointed. By the time the diggers moved in, the house had turned into a macabre attraction.
Cars drove through the neighborhood, slowing down as they passed by the address.
TV journalists reporting the crime did so from this corner of King Road and Queen – the house made a dramatic backdrop to their broadcasts.
True-crime fanatics and online sleuths came here – sometimes traveling hundreds of miles – to livestream their often-outrageous theories, slandering the two surviving roommates with claims that they ‘must’ have been complicit and spreading ill-will with their misinformation.
All the while the house sat there – a brutal reminder of the horror that had happened within its walls – walls out of which I saw blood literally seep.
While the interior of 1122 King Road was subjected to forensic investigation, the grounds went untouched. Beer bottles and soda cans lay discarded on the back deck – the sliding glass door, its lock broken, a chilling reminder of the ease with which Kohberger had slipped in.
On the right corner of the third floor was Maddie Mogen’s room, perhaps the one-true target of Kohberger’s demented obsessions. Through her window, you could see a painted letter ‘M’ on her windowsill and Barbie Pink cowboy boots.
But then plywood was nailed over the windows – and a lone security guard, whose boxy white Kia was parked out front day and night, as hired by the University to patrol the lot.
It was the University of Idaho that made the decision to tear down the house. The institution had taken possession of the property from its owner and, according to University President Scott Green, they had always intended to destroy it.
Speaking at the time of the demolition, Green told me, ‘It is the grim reminder of the heinous act that took place there… it is time for the removal and to allow the collective healing of our community to continue.’
The school postponed the demolition twice – first at the start of 2023’s fall semester, then once more in October, when Kohberger waived his right to a speedy trial.
When the moment finally came, it went ahead over furious opposition from several of the victims’ families.
Kaylee Goncalves’s father Steven was the most vocal, though he wasn’t alone. ‘This is one of the most horrific crimes in the history of Idaho and the University wants to destroy one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the case,’ he said.
Giving voice to his frustration, he described the families’ resistance as ‘like screaming into the void.’
‘Nobody is listening, and everyone wants to tell you how sorry they are for the decision, but the families’ opinion isn’t a priority,’ he added.
Xana Kernodle’s mother Cara Northington added her name to a petition asking that jurors be allowed to visit the scene of the crime.
‘My daughter was murdered in that house, and there is no way they should be destroying any evidence,’ she wrote.
Similar scene visits have taken place in other high-profile trials – on March 1, 2023, jurors in the Alex Murdaugh trial were taken to his South Carolina hunting lodge to see the kennels where he gunned down his younger son, Paul, and wife, Maggie.
In April 2024, Murdaugh was sentenced to life in prison. The prosecution in that trial apparently deciding that a death penalty case would be too complicated and costly.
Of course, we’ll never know how the decision to destroy the King Road might have impacted the state’s case.
Kohberger accepted a plea deal on July 2 in which he pled guilty to all four murders along with one count of felony burglary and in return prosecutors took the death penalty off the table.
When the house was razed, it took barely 90 minutes.
The last of the contents had been removed, lugged out in boxes by investigators, analyzed and then laid in a warehouse for the victims’ parents to pick through their children’s belongings.
A backhoe took its first swing at the building shortly before 6:30am.
It tore into the roof, prying it off as if opening a can. Grabbing great clawfuls, it tossed the fabric of the house aside like matchsticks, kicking up clouds of dust and debris. The structure splintered and imploded amid tremendous noise. Then dumpster trucks rumbled up the small road and left laden with rubble.
Those involved in the demolition had signed NDAs. The debris was taken to a secret location where it was buried in a bid to prevent ‘souvenir’ hunters from claiming sick trophies. By 8.00am, it was all done.
On July 23, Bryan Kohberger will be sentenced to four consecutive life sentences plus ten years.
No doubt, the families of Kaylee, Maddie, Xana and Ethan – as well as the people of Moscow – hope this brings them some degree of closure.
But judging from the state of 1122 King Road, the healing has only just begun.