The Idaho Four: How a PhD Student Became a Quadruple Murderer
10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories
Joe
4.9 • 638 Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2025
⏱️ 13 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
You know how some stories stick with you long after you've heard them? This is one of those stories. Four college students in Moscow, Idaho, were living their normal, messy, beautiful young adult lives when everything changed in one night. Xana, Ethan, Maddie, and Kaylee weren't famous before November 2022, but they should be remembered for who they actually were: real people with inside jokes, weekend plans, and futures that got stolen from them.
What makes this case particularly hard to process isn't the violence itself, but how utterly preventable it all was. Bryan Kohberger was a PhD student in criminology who thought he could commit the perfect crime. He was wrong about that, obviously, but he was devastatingly effective at destroying lives. The evidence trail he left behind reads like a masterclass in how not to get away with murder, yet somehow that doesn't make any of this feel less senseless.
We'll walk through what actually happened that night on King Road, the investigation that followed, and why Kohberger suddenly changed his plea to guilty after years of maintaining his innocence. But more than anything, we'll talk about who these four people really were before they became headlines. Because Kaylee's sister said something at his sentencing that I can't stop thinking about, and it perfectly captures why this story matters beyond the true crime aspect.
Sometimes the most ordinary evil does the most extraordinary damage. This is one of those times.
#IdahoMurders #BryanKohberger #UniversityofIdaho #TrueCrime #IdahoFour #KingRoad #MoscowIdaho
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Four college students in Moscow, Idaho, thought they were going home to sleep off a typical Saturday night. |
| 0:06.7 | Instead, November 12, 2022 became the night their lives ended at the hands of a criminology PhD student who believed he could get away with murder. |
| 0:16.4 | Brian Kohlberger spent years claiming he was innocent before suddenly pleading guilty in 2025. |
| 0:22.4 | Today, we're covering the whole story, from the investigation that caught him to why he |
| 0:26.8 | finally confessed. But before we get into any of that, let's talk about who Zana, Ethan, |
| 0:32.2 | Maddie, and Kaylee really were. |
| 1:00.0 | Thank you. really were. I'm November 2020 started like any other month at Moscow, Idaho. |
| 1:03.4 | You know the type of college town where everyone knows everyone, |
| 1:06.6 | where the biggest drama usually involves who's dating who |
| 1:09.4 | or which fraternity threw the |
| 1:11.3 | best party last weekend. Then came a phone call to the police department that changed everything. |
| 1:17.3 | At 1122, King Road, four University of Idaho students had been murdered in their sleep. |
| 1:24.0 | Let's talk about who these people actually were, because they deserve better than becoming a true crime statistic. |
| 1:30.9 | Zana Kurnodl was 20 years old and had that rare combination of being both academically driven and socially connected. |
| 1:38.3 | She was studying marketing at the university while maintaining her spot on the gymnastics team and working part-time at a local restaurant. |
| 1:45.6 | Her Pi Beta Phi sisters knew her as someone who could balance a full course load, |
| 1:50.0 | athletic commitments, and still show up for friends when they needed her. |
| 1:54.0 | Her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, was also 20 and represented everything you'd expect from an Idaho |
| 1:59.7 | outdoor enthusiast. |
| 2:01.4 | The eldest of triplets, he'd come to Moscow to study recreation, sport, and tourism management |
| 2:06.8 | after spending summers working at local resorts. |
| 2:10.1 | He was a Sigma Chi brother who genuinely preferred being on the water or hitting the slopes over |
... |
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