The father of one of the college students killed in the 2022 quadruple slayings in Idaho is reacting to newly released text messages and audio of a 911 call connected to the case.
“It’s torture,” Steve Goncalves, whose 21-year-old daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, was killed at a rented house in Moscow, Idaho, on Nov. 13, 2022, said in an interview with NBC News.
Three other University of Idaho students were also found stabbed to death: Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
In the audio from the four-minute 911 call, obtained by NBC News on March 14, the victims’ two surviving roommates can be heard panicking.
“Hi, something is happening, something happened in our house, we don’t know what!” one female caller can be heard saying.
“One of the roommates who’s passed out and she was drunk last night and she’s not waking up!” another female caller says. “Oh, and they saw some man in their house last night.”
Goncalves told NBC News it was difficult listening to the call.
“There’s just a lot of pain. There was a lot of horror in those girls’ voice, the breathing,” he said.
At the same time, Goncalves said the call brought some clarity to what happened.
“There was a relief of knowing that it was a horrible event but we were truly getting the truth,” he said.
He said he and his wife, Kristi, were given a heads-up about the 911 call before it was released publicly.
“My wife still hasn’t listened to it. She may never, and that’s OK,” he said.
He described the painful process of gradually learning more about their daughter’s death over the past few years.
“It’s like a slow torture where just a little comes out, a little more comes out,” he said. “My wife describes it — as soon as she starts feeling like she could swim and she could start getting her breath, it’s like somebody just grabs her and rips her back underneath the water again, and she has to start all over.”
“A crime like this is never going to be fair,” he added.
Bryan Kohberger, a former doctoral student at Washington State University, was arrested in December 2022 in connection with the slayings and was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. A judge entered a not guilty plea on Kohberger’s behalf in 2023.
Prosecutors are arguing the 911 call, as well as texts between the surviving roommates released earlier this month, should be included as evidence in Kohberger’s upcoming trial.
His trial is set to begin in Ada County, Idaho, on Aug. 11 and could last until November, according to District Court Judge Steven Hippler.
Late last year, Hippler ruled that Kohberger may be punished with the death penalty if convicted.
Prosecutors said in a new filing that the defense plans to argue that key evidence in the case could have been planted by another perpetrator to frame Kohberger.
In his recent interview with NBC News, Goncalves shared his reaction to this argument.
“That’s the excuse or the defense that somebody uses as the very last possible scenario,” he said. “It’s the least believable of all of them.”
