Some of the biggest questions about the University of Idaho murders have never been fully answered. But now that Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty and has been sentenced, at least the prosecution can speak out — and give their theories, based on more info than anyone else has had.
One question? Why didn’t Kohberger kill everyone in the house? But more precisely, why didn’t he kill Dylan Mortensen?
OK, so based on the evidence, it seems Kohberger entered the house shortly after 4 a.m. and went straight upstairs to Maddie Mogen‘s room. He brutally killed her and her bestie Kaylee Goncalves, who was sleeping the bed with her.
Related: The Horrible Theory Behind Why Kohberger Disfigured Kaylee
Next it’s believed he ran into Xana Kernodle in the hallway. She was awake, having ordered some late night DoorDash. He fought with and killed her in her room, then killed her sleeping boyfriend Ethan Chapin. The sequence of events makes sense.
But then he’s seen by another roommate. Dylan Mortensen told police she came out of her room and saw a man in a black mask, with “bushy eyebrows.” She ducked back into her room out of fear, texting final roommate Bethany Funke. But unlike Xana, the killer didn’t follow her, didn’t kill her. Wasn’t he worried she would call the cops? We know she didn’t, not for another eight hours. But wouldn’t a killer have expected that? Instead, it seems Bryan slipped out of the sliding door instead.
So the question remains… why did he spare Dylan?
In an interview with The Idaho Statesman, prosecutor Bill Thompson admitted they had the same question:
“From what Dylan described, I have a hard time imagining that the killer did not see Dylan.”
Yeah, if she got a good look at his eyebrows, he had to have seen her. So why didn’t he kill her? Thompson thinks it came down to fear:
“At that point, he’d been in the house probably longer than he planned, and he had killed more people than he planned. It wouldn’t surprise us that the killer was scared at that point and decided they had to leave, not knowing if law enforcement already had been called.”
Ah, see, it’s not that he wasn’t worried she would call the cops. No one could have guessed she and Bethany wouldn’t call the cops until noon. Thompson says the prosecution was satisfied the killer would have assumed Dylan already called the cops. She would have had time. So he was scared — and fled rather than spend the time it would have taken to kill her.
Fear is a powerful motivator. This makes sense to us.
There’s been a theory floating around that the arrival of the DoorDash scared Bryan as well. But Thompson didn’t mention it, so we have to assume that’s purely speculation. If the DoorDash driver did see the killer, that isn’t part of the official story.
Dylan may have been spared, but she’s serving her own kind of life sentence. In her victim impact statement during Kohberger’s sentencing hearing, she gave the world an insight into the PTSD this kind of horror produces:
“I couldn’t be alone. I had to sleep in my mom’s bed because I was too terrified to close my eyes. Terrified that if I blinked, someone might be there. I made escape plans everywhere I went. ‘If something happens, how do I get out?’ ‘What can I use to defend myself?’ ‘Who can help?’
And then there were the panic attacks. The kind that slam into me like a tsunami out of nowhere. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. I can’t stop shaking. All I can do is scream. Because the emotional pain and the grief is too much to handle. On my chest it feels like it’s caving in. Sometimes I dropped to the floor with my heart racing, convinced something is very wrong. It’s far beyond anxiety. It’s my body reliving everything over and over again. My nervous system never got the message that it is over, and it won’t let me forget what he did to them.”
So awful. We’re glad Kohberger didn’t try to claim a fifth victim that night… But it sounds like in many ways he did. And many more by the sounds of the other loved ones’ statements. No one was really spared here.
[Image via Dateline/Monroe County Correctional Facility/Maddie Mogen/Instagram.]
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