2024-04-30
The prolific nonfiction author returns with the story behind the 2022 slayings of four University of Idaho students.
Blum, author of Night of the Assassins, Dark Invasion, and other bestselling books, characterizes Moscow, Idaho, as a “quaint” and “churchy” town that also happened to be home to a university known for being “the best party school in the state.” Beneath the pleasant exterior, a disturbing history—which included drug trafficking, brutal murders, and allegations of pedophilia and sexual assault against respected members of a local church—quietly lurked. Blum reveals how the stabbing deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin on November 13, 2022, revealed, in their shocking senselessness, Moscow’s unacknowledged dark side. The police investigation ultimately yielded a suspect, a troubled criminology doctorate student named Bryan Kohberger, and circumstantial evidence pointed to Kohberger’s guilt. However, there were no significant connections between the indicted killer and any of the victims, which has since led to multiple postponements of the trial: “And so now after all the tedious, exasperating delays, whenever it finally does take place, it will be a footnote to the larger, ineluctable events….Besides, what will the trial reveal? The dialectics of the courtroom would inevitably prevail and opposing teams of experts will be summoned to go at one another.” Blum suggests that a second tragedy—the effect the murders have had on victims’ families—exists alongside the actual murders themselves. In their frustration with the criminal system and desire for justice, Goncalves’ parents and siblings offered support for death penalty legislation that would permit death by a firing squad, effectively making them victims of a “raging, all-consuming anger” that would mark them for life. Blum capably maintains the suspense and thoughtfully probes into the motives of key players in this intriguing yet profoundly unsettling story.
A compelling true-crime book.
