Best Friends of University of Idaho Murder Victims Speak Out: What We Saw (Exclusive)

At 3 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, University of Idaho student Hunter Johnson got up and uncharacteristically locked the door to his girlfriend’s off-campus apartment in Moscow.

“That’s something I’ve never done in my life there,” Johnson, 24, tells PEOPLE.

“There was no noise,” he says. “I don’t know why, but something in my soul told me that I should go lock my door.”

As Johnson secured the door, his girlfriend, Emily Alandt, her roommate, Josie Lauteren, and her boyfriend at the time all woke up.

“We hung out in the living room for about 30 minutes before we all went back to bed,” Alandt, 23, tells PEOPLE. 

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Less than an hour later, four of their closest friends, Maddie Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, who were in an off-campus house right down the street at 1122 King Road, were viciously stabbed in one of the most shocking events ever to strike a college campus.

Asked the next morning by Dylan Mortensen, who also lived there, to come check out the house because of strange goings-on the night before, Johnson went over first, followed by Alandt. 

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To his horror, he came upon the slain bodies of Kernodle and Chapin in her second-floor bedroom.

“I was like, ‘What is going on?’” Johnson tells PEOPLE. “’Is this real?’ Then you realize the gravity of what you just walked into. At that moment, you don’t really realize what you walked into until you really look at it and process it.”

News of the gruesome scene he came upon — the quadruple homicide of promising college students who became known as “the Idaho Four” — quickly swept through campus and across the nation, holding the public in thrall. 

Now, for the first time, Johnson, Alandt and others are opening up about what happened the fateful morning in a new Prime Video docuseries premiering July 11, One Night in Idaho: The College Murders, in a book debuting on July 14, The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy, by James Patterson and Vicky Ward, and to PEOPLE in an exclusive cover story in this week’s issue.

The book and docuseries go in-depth into the lives of the carefree college students, and reveal shocking new details about the barbaric slayings that ended their friends’ young lives.

The docuseries and book come a month before the highly anticipated murder trial of suspect Bryan Kohberger, 28, the former Ph.D. criminology candidate at Washington State University, was set to begin.

Arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, on Monday, June 30, Kohberger reportedly accepted a plea deal with prosecutors, which means he will avoid the death penalty, according to a letter sent to victims’ family members, ABC News reports.

Kohberber is expected to plead guilty to four charges of first-degree murder and one count of burglary on Wednesday, July 2, per ABC News.

He will be sentenced to four consecutive life sentences on the murder charges and the maximum penalty of 10 years on the burglary charge, the plea agreement states, according to ABC News.

He is also expected to waive all rights to appeal the verdict, according to the agreement cited by ABC News.

Sometime between 4 a.m. and 4:20 a.m. on November 13, 2022, police said an assailant dressed in black with a ski mask obscuring his face and armed with a fixed-blade combat and hunting knife, slipped into the sliding door of the kitchen at 1122 King Road, crept upstairs and repeatedly stabbed Mogen and her longtime best friend Goncalves.

Kernodle, who got a Door Dash delivery at 4 a.m. and was scrolling on TikTok at 4:12 a.m., according to police, and her boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, also 20, were the assailant’s next victims.

“That was our last day living as kids,” Johnson tells PEOPLE.

“Our innocence was gone,” adds Alandt.

The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy by James Patterson and Vicky Ward is on shelves July 14 and available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.