Home of Slain University of Idaho Students Being Demolished

Demolition has begun on the house where four University of Idaho students were killed in 2022.

The Moscow, Idaho, home where University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves were killed is being demolished.AP Photo/Ted S. WarrenStudents Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen, and Kaylee Goncalves were fatally stabbed in the home in November 2022.

The rental house stood near the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, Idaho, a rural farming community and college town of about 26,000 nestled in the rolling hills of north-central Idaho southeast of Spokane, Washington. The house owner donated the property to the university in 2023.

School officials announced plans to raze the house in February 2023. But the King Road home was subsequently boarded up and blocked off by a security fence, allowing investigators to continue onsite documentation in November 2023.

“That is an area that is dense with students, and many students have to look at it and live with it every day and have expressed to us how much it will help with the healing process to have that house removed,” said university spokesperson Jodi Walker in a statement.

Walker says the site will be planted with grass at some point after the demolition. She said there are no other plans for the property, but the university may revisit that in the future.

Some of the victims' families have opposed the demolition, calling for the house to be preserved until after the man accused of the slayings has been tried.

Bryan Kohberger, a former criminology graduate student at Washington State University in neighboring Pullman, Washington, was charged with four counts of murder. A judge entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger's behalf earlier in 2023.