A friend and former roommate of the University of Idaho students who were killed in their home in 2022 has spoken up about the last message she ever sent to her friend Madison Mogen.
Ashlin Couch was worried when she received a campus alert about a suspected homicide on the same street that she used to live on — the street where her friends Madison, 21, and Kaylee Gonclaves, 21, had still lived. "I texted our group of friends and I had said, ‘Has anyone heard from Maddie?'" she told Good Morning America. "I remember my last text message to her was: 'Are you OK?' I feel like right then and there, I kind of just knew that something was wrong."
Ashlin explained to KXLY that she moved into a house on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, with her friends Kaylee and Madison in 2020. She moved out in May 2022, she told the outlet. Xana Kernodle, 20, took over her lease.
Six months later, in November 2022, Kaylee, Madison, Xana, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed in the house, which was demolished in December 2023.
Ashlin told KXLY that after the murders, she struggled to feel safe and couldn't walk to her car in the dark. The fact that she had lived in the house before also crossed her mind.
"It crosses my mind more that, that could have happened while I was there. And, you know, you never know like how long someone is watching your house," she told the outlet.
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She still wishes that she could "give her one last hug. Just to be able to say goodbye," she told GMA.
Bryan Kohberger, 29, has been accused of stabbing the four University of Idaho students. He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. His attorney has claimed that he was not in Moscow at the time of the murders and instead "was out driving in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022; as he often did to hike and run and/or see the moon and stars," as per the New York Post.
