Full text messages sent between the two surviving roommates during the Idaho student killings have now been made public.
As Bryan Kohberger was attacking their friends inside the Moscow, Idaho, rental home, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were sending panicked messages to each other without understanding the full horror unfolding around them.
Kohberger, 31, is now serving four consecutive life sentences after pleading guilty to the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen. The four University of Idaho students were fatally stabbed in the early hours of November 13, 2022, at their off-campus house. He was sentenced on July 23, 2025, and has since filed a petition to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming he was manipulated by his legal team and proclaiming his innocence.
Court records released by The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office show that, between 4:22am and 4:24am, Mortensen and Funke exchanged a series of alarmed texts while the attack was taking place.
Text exchange in full:
DM to BF: “No one is answering”
DM to BF: “I’m rlly confused rn.”
DM to Kaylee Goncalves: “Kaylee”
DM to Kaylee Goncalves: “What’s going on”
BF to DM: “Ya dude wtf”
BF to DM: “Xana was wearing all black”
DM to BF: “I’m freaking out rn”
DM to BF: “No it’s like ski mask almost”
BF to DM: “Stfu”
BF to DM: “Actually”
DM to BF: “Like he had soemtbinf over is for head and little nd mouth”
DM to BF: “BF I’m not kidding o am so freaked out”
BF to DM: “So am I”
DM to BF: “My phone is going to die f***”
BF to DM: “Come to my room”
BF to DM: “Run”
BF to DM: “Down here”
Those messages were sent around eight hours before 911 was finally contacted, a gap that has drawn sustained public attention. Even so, investigators have never alleged that either of the surviving roommates committed any crime.
The two students stayed inside the house for hours, not realizing that their four friends had been killed. At the July 2025 sentencing hearing, both survivors provided emotional impact statements about the trauma they have endured since the killings. Mortensen appeared in court and tearfully described how Kohberger “shattered” her, while Funke, who declined to appear in person, had a friend read her statement in which she expressed guilt for not calling 911 right away.
Just before midday, other friends were asked to come to the property. At 11:58am, a 911 call was placed reporting an ‘unconscious person’.
When officers from Moscow Police arrived shortly afterward, they found all four victims dead inside the home.
Several documentaries examining the case, including a new three-part Netflix series titled “The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare” released on July 29, 2025, have looked at how trauma can affect decision-making. Specialists featured in those programs say people in terrifying, disorientating situations may freeze, hide, or struggle to understand what they are seeing and hearing.
Kohberger has still not explained why he carried out the killings. However, a number of people connected to coverage of the case have pointed to what they described as a ‘hatred for women’, including documentary director Skye Borgman.
“The fact that was the house that he chose. This was a house that had five women living in it. The night that the murders happened, Xana Kernodle’s boyfriend, Chapin, was over, but really, this was a house full of women, and it seems quite clear that he targeted it,” she said, speaking with Fox News Digital.
Key moments in the case
Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, spend the evening at Chapin’s fraternity, Sigma Chi. At the same time, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Madison Mogen, 21, go to the Corner Club sports bar.
1.45am – Kernodle and Chapin return to the King Road home.
1.56am – Goncalves and Mogen get back to the house.
2.44am – CCTV captures Kohberger’s Hyundai sedan at Washington State University. A short time later, the vehicle is seen again heading toward the route linking Pullman, Washington, and Moscow, Idaho.
4am – Investigators believe Bryan Kohberger enters the property.
4.17am – A security camera picks up the sound of a dog barking, voices and what appears to be a thud. Around this period, Dylan Mortensen is awakened and hears a male voice say: “It’s OK, Kaylee, I’m here for you.” She later reports hearing crying and seeing a masked man inside the house.
4.19am – Mortensen tries calling Kernodle, Goncalves and Mogen, but no one answers. She then begins messaging Bethany Funke, saying she is ‘freaking out’ after seeing a man in a ‘ski mask’. Mortensen then goes to Funke’s room, where the two lock themselves in.
11.58am – Mortensen contacts her friend Emily Alandt, who comes to the house with her boyfriend, Hunter Johnson. Johnson finds the bodies of Chapin and Kernodle and calls 911.
Preliminary autopsy findings indicate that all four victims were attacked with a large knife.
Police later say they want to speak to anyone connected to a white 2011-13 Hyundai Elantra.
Kohberger is eventually arrested in Pennsylvania and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and burglary. Investigators later say DNA found on a knife sheath connected him to the scene, while car and phone data helped track his movements.
At his arraignment, Kohberger declines to enter a plea, leading the judge to submit a not guilty plea on his behalf.
Prosecutors then confirm that they intend to pursue the death penalty.
The King Road house where the killings took place is demolished on December 28, 2023, as the community tries to move forward. The demolition came after victims’ families had urged the university to preserve the property as evidence, though the university ultimately proceeded with the razing.
Kohberger’s defence later argues in court filings that phone mast evidence places him miles from Moscow, Idaho, at the time of the murders.
His legal team also says he shows traits associated with autism spectrum disorder and argues that executing him would be unconstitutional.
Just weeks before the trial is due to start in August 2025, Kohberger changes course and pleads guilty to burglary and four counts of first-degree murder on July 2, 2025. Under the plea deal, the death penalty is taken off the table.
He is sentenced on July 23, 2025, to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole, along with an additional 10 years for burglary, by Judge Steven Hippler. Kohberger declines to speak during sentencing and shows no reaction to the victims’ family members who deliver emotional impact statements directly to him.
In August 2026, more than one year after pleading guilty and accepting the terms that require him to waive all appeals, Kohberger files a handwritten petition from the Idaho Maximum Security Penitentiary claiming he is innocent. In the petition and in statements to The New York Times, he alleges that his attorneys manipulated him into accepting the plea deal through “false promises” and threats, including claims about poor conditions on death row. He maintains he was “convinced to falsely confess” and proclaims his “absolute claim of innocence,” but legal experts note that the appeal waiver in his plea agreement may prevent him from successfully challenging his conviction in court.