True crime junkies flock to Idaho murder house where four students were killed
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The house where four University of Idaho students were murdered has become a gruesome tourist attraction as true crime addicts flock to the quaint town.
Visitors stop by constantly to get a peek at the house in Moscow, Idaho, where Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, both 21, her roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were murdered on November 13.
On Sunday morning, Amanda Padgett and her daughter drove by the house in their truck, loaded with luggage. They were driving to her home in Spokane, Washington, after spending the weekend in Moscow for a Christmas celebration for her softball team.
They had been listening to true crime podcasts about the grisly stabbings and reading about it in the news.
The Idaho home where four students were murdered has become an attraction, and one woman says she visited after hearing about the case on a podcast.
“We’re just curious,” he said from behind the wheel of his car. “It’s shocking,” she said of the crime. “It’s just more real to see for yourself.”
But no one knows what will happen to the off-campus house in the cold case. Will it be demolished and rebuilt? Become a monument to co-eds? Or cleaned up and re-rented next semester?
The two men listed as the most recent owners of the property, Scott Perky and Daniel Estey, are keeping quiet. Repeated attempts to contact the owners were unsuccessful, and Estey told a neighbor not to speak if reporters approached him.
Investigators hired a private security company to guard the home at 1122 King Road, and police tape surrounds the perimeter of the property.
The party lights still shine at night outside the third floor room where two of the students lost their lives to a vicious assassin.
Madison Mogen, 21, top left, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, bottom left, Ethan Chapin, 20, center, and Xana Kernodle, 20, right, were killed in their off-campus college home on November 13.
The Moscow Police Department, along with the FBI, continue their ongoing investigation into the deaths of four University of Idaho students.
Idaho murder home co-owners Dan Estey (left) and Scott Perky, who live in Colorado, now have to decide whether to demolish it, convert it into a memorial, or clean it up and rent it out again.
The house is the remaining physical manifestation of the quadruple stabbing and has begun to attract true crime buffs with a morbid fascination and belief that they can solve crime.
Padgett’s daughter, whom he preferred not to name, wanted to see the house.
“My daughter wanted to see it because she’s in high school and will be in college next year,” Padgett said.
“I wonder if he’s a Ted Bundy guy or a student,” he said, pondering various theories.
Padgett touched on the challenges landlords have in renting the property in the future.
“I wouldn’t want my daughter anywhere near this place,” she said.
Investigators have hired a private security company to monitor the house, and police tape surrounds the perimeter of the property.
“We’re just curious,” said a visitor from behind the wheel of his car. It is shocking. It’s more real to see it yourself’
No one knows what will happen to the off-campus home in the cold case, as the owners are keeping quiet.
Police have finished their forensic investigation of the crime scene, taking blood, hair and fingerprint samples, taking photographs and bagging other items that could contain a fragment of DNA leading to the killer.
The belongings of the four students have been boxed up and taken out of the house.
The students were stabbed to death in the early hours of November 13 in an unsolved case that has gripped the country, putting pressure on local police to solve the crime.
The investigation, which involved not only the local police department but also 48 FBI agents and 28 members of the Idaho State Police, has been slow.
The only clue shared with the public is a white Hyundai Elantra, built between 2011 and 2013, that was seen in the area at the time of the murders. Detectives are searching for the driver and any passengers they believe may have crucial information about the gruesome crime.
And as true crime thrives in the popular imagination, its fans have begun flocking to sites across the country that stand out for only one thing: the violent atrocities that have occurred behind their walls.
The Salt Lake City home of serial killer Ted Bundy from 1974 to 1975 has become a tourist attraction.
And the Morbid Tourism website is devoted to places like the Moscow home.
“Articles, podcasts and images, while highly valuable, cannot foster the same connection as location,” according to Jewls Krueger, who runs the website. ‘If understanding this life and this world is the goal, then location is the conduit.’
She said that walking to these places in real life honors the dead.
Krueger’s website allows crime lovers to search for locations where mass murders, kidnappings, and shootings have occurred.
She says on her website that she started it in honor of Courtney Sconce, a 12-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in Rancho Cordova, California, in 2000.
A Morbid Tourism website is dedicated to places like the Moscow home.
The bodies of Kaylee and Madison were found on the top floor of the house. Ethan and Xana were found in a room on the second floor. Survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke slept on the first floor
Krueger, who was 11 when the crime occurred, said people dedicated the street corner where Sconce was last seen as ‘Courtney’s Corner’.
I think about that corner a lot. Although I no longer live in Rancho Cordova, whenever I’m in town I make an effort to drive to Courtney’s Corner. Usually there’s still a candle or ribbon left behind by someone who still remembers what happened, but the piles of teddy bears are long gone.
‘It makes me wonder, do people remember what happened here? People who moved into the neighborhood long after the news stopped airing, do you know Courtney?
she writes on her website. “They should, Courtney deserves to be remembered and people should know her corner.”
Other places in Idaho that can be found on the Morbid Tourism website include Ruby Ridge, where doomsday preparer Randy Weaver and his family had a fatal confrontation with federal police.
Also featured is the Coeur D’Alene home of the Wolf Lodge Murders, where three members of a family were murdered by serial sex offender Joseph Duncan III, who also kidnapped an 8-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy from the home. . .
The boy was also eventually killed.
The Wolf Lodge property was purchased by the state of Idaho for wetland preservation and the house was demolished.
The police have stacked all the personal items they no longer need as evidence and brought them to a U-Haul driven by the police chief himself.
Authorities say DNA may have been present at the scene on different surfaces, and forensic teams are now working to analyze any samples through state and local databases.
In Villisca, Iowa, two and a half hours north of Kansas City, a two-story house has become a mecca for lovers of crime and paranormal activity. It was there that JB Moore, his wife and six of his children were axed to death in their beds on June 10, 1912. The crime remains unsolved 110 years later.
The home’s owners have turned it into a tourist attraction and it is now listed on the Iowa Register of Historic Places. For $428 a night, six people can sleep in the home in their sleeping bags.
“I don’t know why people come,” said Martha Linn, the home’s owner. “If they were just weird people with tattoos and piercings, it would be one thing, but it’s not. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, students. I have a lot of nurses that have come. There’s a social studies course in Nebraska that studies crime and then comes to stay.
In Fall River, Massachusetts, the house where Lizzie Borden hacked her parents to death in 1892 is now a bed and breakfast.
Padgett, who had just stopped by to see the house where the crime took place, said he hoped the Moscow house would become a memorial, not a tourist destination.
‘Eww,’ she said. ‘That seems a bit tacky.’