Idaho stabbing victims' former roommate recalls the night of killings, final text to friends

Idaho stabbing victims’ ex-roommate shares final text to friends

Four Idaho college students were killed in off-campus home in November 2022
Ashlin Couch lived there until her lease was taken over in May 2022
Couch: I wish I could have given one last hug, been able to say goodbye

Taylor Delandro

Updated: May 8, 2024 / 02:24 PM EDT

The house in Moscow, Idaho, where four University of Idaho students were slain is boarded up.

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(NewsNation) — The former roommate of the University of Idaho students killed in an off-campus house is sharing the last message she sent her friends and how she wishes she could have said goodbye.

“I just wish that I could do at least one more time, is like just give her one last hug, just to be able to say goodbye,” Ashlin Couch said in an interview with KXLY-TV.

Couch lived with Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen in their house on King Road in Moscow until Xana Kernodle took over her lease in May 2022. Goncalves, 22; Mogen, 21; Kernodle, 20; and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death in the home in November 2022.

FILE - Bare spots are seen on Nov. 29, 2022, in the snowy parking lot in front of the home where four University of Idaho students were found dead on Nov. 13, in Moscow, Idaho, after vehicles belonging to the victims and others were towed away earlier in the day. The defense team for a man accused of killing four University of Idaho students has been given access to the off-campus home where the deaths occurred so they can gather photos, measurements and other documentation before the house is demolished later this month. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) — FILE – Bare spots are seen on Nov. 29, 2022, in the snowy parking lot in front of the home where four University of Idaho students were found dead on Nov. 13, in Moscow, Idaho, after vehicles belonging to the victims and others were towed away earlier in the day. The defense team for a man accused of killing four University of Idaho students has been given access to the off-campus home where the deaths occurred so they can gather photos, measurements and other documentation before the house is demolished later this month. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

“It crosses my mind more that that could’ve happened while I was there,” Couch told KXLY.

Couch recalled the moment she received an alert from the university about a suspected homicide near her former residence and texted her friends, asking if anyone had “heard from Maddie?”

“I remember, like my last text message to her was like, ‘Are you OK?’ And I felt it like right then and there, I kind of just knew that something was wrong,” Couch told KXLY.

Couch and her mother founded the Made With Kindness Foundation to honor her friends and created the Maddie Kaylee Scholarship Fund to help support college students while spreading kindness and compassion. Couch said she plans to raise awareness and educate students on social media safety.

“I couldn’t even walk to my car in the dark for months after it happened. You just want to at least feel a little bit safer,” Couch said. “If we can help college students do that and create more awareness of that and just help them feel a little bit safer knowing that something like this had happened, I think is helpful in any way.”

The house where the students were killed was demolished in December, despite objections from the victims’ families.

Police arrested Bryan Kohberger, a Washington State University graduate student, in December 2022. He was later charged with first-degree murder and burglary. A judge entered not guilty pleas in May last year, and no trial date has been set.