The house where four University of Idaho students were killed last year was scheduled to be demolished Thursday, in an emotional move for the victims' families and a close-knit community shocked and devastated by the brutal stabbings.
The owner of the rental house near the university campus in Moscow, Idaho, donated it to the university earlier this year. It has since been boarded up and closed off by a security fence. Students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were fatally stabbed there in November 2022.
School officials, who announced plans to raze the house in February, consider the demolition an important step toward closure, said university spokesperson Jodi Walker.
“That's an area where there are a lot of students, and a lot of students have to look at it every day and live with it and have let us know how much it will help in the healing process if that house is removed,” she said.
Contractors estimated it would take a few hours to raze the house and then several more hours to remove the rubble, Walker said, adding that weather will also be a factor.
The site will be planted with grass at some point after demolition, Walker said. She said there are no other plans at this time, but the university may look at it again in the future.
Some families of the victims have opposed the demolition and called for the house to be preserved until the man accused of the murders is brought to justice. Bryan Kohberger, a former criminology graduate student at Washington State University in neighboring Pullman, Washington, has been charged with four counts of murder.
A judge entered a not guilty plea on Kohberger's behalf earlier this year.
Prosecutors, who hope to bring Kohberger to trial next summer, told university officials in an email that they do not expect to need the house any further because they were already able to collect measurements needed to create illustrative exhibits for a jury. They added that a jury visit to the site would not be allowed as the current state of the house “is so substantially different” than at the time of the murders.
The Latah County District Attorney's Office declined to comment, citing an Idaho judge's gag order that limits what attorneys in the case can say to the news media.
Kohberger's defense team gained access to the home earlier this month to collect photos, measurements and other documentation. And in October, the FBI met at the house to collect data that could be used to create visual aids for jurors during the upcoming trial.
Kernodle, Mogen and Goncalves lived together in the rental house across the street from campus. Chapin, Kernodle's friend, was visiting there the night of the attack. They were all friends and members of the university Greek system. The killings left many of their classmates and Moscow residents reeling with grief and fear.
Moscow is a rural agricultural and university town of approximately 26,000 residents located in the rolling hills of north-central Idaho, about 80 miles southeast of Spokane, Washington.