What Will Happen to the Idaho Home Where 4 College Students Were Murdered?
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The nondescript, gray house where four Idaho college students were slain less than two months ago remains vacant, except for a steady progression of law enforcement personnel going in and out of the active crime scene. It’s a ghastly reminder of an unthinkable tragedy that happened in a college town on the Idaho-Washington state border.
While police apprehended a suspect last week, the motive for the grisly murders is unknown. And the future of the three-story rental house in the college town of Moscow, where the victims were presumed sleeping when they were butchered, remains uncertain.
The owner “does not have any plans at this point” for the six-bedroom, three-bedroom rental, says Merida McClanahan of Team Idaho Real Estate and Property Management. Her company is the property manager for the home. The house is still “in the hands” of law enforcement, she says.
The manager of the LLC that owns the property, 1122 King, did not immediately return requests for comment from Realtor.com®.
University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death on the second and third floors of their office-campus rental in the early hours of Nov. 13. All except for Chapin, Kernodle’s boyfriend, lived in the house, which they shared with two other female roommates who lived on the first floor.
Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, a doctoral student in the criminal justice and criminology department at nearby Washington State University, was arrested last Friday. His school is less than a 10-minute drive from the University of Idaho.
A professional cleaning crew had begun removing biohazardous materials and forensics chemicals from the house last Friday, but their work was halted after Kohberger was arrested, according to the Idaho Statesman. The chemicals were used by law enforcement during evidence processing.
“Once remediation is done, then the homeowners insurance [company] will do their walk-through and inspection on it,” says property manager McClanahan. Then the owner can decide what to do with the property. “There is no timeline for any of this.”
What happens to murder homes?
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In notorious tragedies like this, homes can be renovated or altered to make it harder for true-crime fans to identify the properties; they can be sold or rented out; or, in rare cases, they are bulldozed and turned into memorials or left vacant.
The latter is what happened to serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer‘s Milwaukee apartment building, which was razed and is now an empty lot.
“This is pretty hideous,” says Randall Bell, CEO of Landmark Research Group, a company that specializes in the analysis of real estate properties following disasters and crimes. He emphasizes that anytime you have an extreme crime involving young adults or children “it really amplifies the negative emotions.”
Typically, properties like this rent out or sell at a steep discount—anywhere from 10% to 25% off the market value depending on the details of the atrocity.
However, the stigma isn’t quite as severe for rental properties.
Tenants tend to be less attached to the real estate than a buyer or owner as they’re typically not sinking their life savings into these homes and often won’t be there as long as homeowners.
As for who would want to live in a home where a quadruple homicide occurred, “my dad used to say you can sell or rent anything—at least at the right price,” says Bell. “You cut the price, and people tolerate a lot of things when they’re getting a good deal.”
Are the discounts worth living in an infamous home?
The price cuts might not be worth the hassle. Whoever moves into the house next will likely have to deal with unwanted attention from looky-loos and true-crime fanatics.
Bell had a client whose home was rumored to have a mafia “kill room” where someone was believed to have been murdered. The owners were plagued by people trying to break into the house in the middle of the night. Their garage was burned down by intruders who broke in, drew a pentagram on the floor, and lit candles, which were believed to be the cause of the fire.
“They are attracted to the macabre and to sites of tragedy and Satan worship,” says Bell.
However, after enough time has passed, people’s memories fade and the tragedies become local lore. The attention often, but not always, dims depending on how gruesome the crime was and how many people were involved.
The home’s location in a college town might also help to speed the process along.
“There’s a turnover,” says Bell. “The college students come and go, and it flushes the system a little bit.”
The house is ‘creaky and old’
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The Moscow home, built in 1959 on a hillside, was renovated in 2019 and a new kitchen, two new bathrooms, and new flooring were installed, according to the listing. There were entrances on the first and second floors.
The house was last listed for rent on Realtor.com for $2,495 a month in February 2020. The listing boasted a “perfect floor plan” with two bedrooms and a bathroom on each of the three floors, with a top-floor deck and a new patio. The kitchen and living room were on the second floor. The home also offered parking and laundry. Utilities and internet service had been included in the rent.
Three of the murdered students were among the six who signed a lease beginning on June 5 to live in the house, according to the Idaho Statesman. The two roommates who lived on the first floor were unharmed, and the sixth person on the lease was not living in the home at the time of the murders.
One of the surviving roommates told law enforcement that around the time of the murders, she thought she heard crying in one of the victim’s rooms, according to a newly released affidavit. She opened her bedroom door and heard a man’s voice say something like, “It’s OK, I’m going to help you.” It’s unclear if the other surviving roommate slept through the incident.
She later opened the door again and saw a man dressed in black with a mask covering his mouth and nose walk past her, toward one of the exit doors on the second floor. She returned to her room and locked the door.
“The house is creaky and old. When you walked up the stairs, everybody knew,” says Cole Alteneder. The University of Idaho graduate rented a room on the second floor of the home during the 2020–21 school year. “You could definitely hear people chatting in the different rooms through the ventilation system.”
Ryan Augusta, who lived in the house in 2019, told Fox News that he couldn’t hear anything that was happening on the second and third floors from his room on the first floor of the home. The exception was when his roommate had turned up the volume on the TV on the second floor.
The house is located in a prime location near the university and just south of the school’s new Greek Row of sorority and fraternity houses.
“The neighborhood is loud. It’s definitely a party area,” says Alteneder. Many of the homes in the area are carved up into rentals with some becoming overflow housing for students who don’t live in their Greek houses. “The neighborhood was nicknamed ‘Fratlantis.”
The home was purchased by an LLC in early 2009 for $150,938, according to property records. As of Thursday, it had more than tripled in value as it was estimated to be worth between $477,000 and $498,000 as of Jan. 5, according to Realtor.com.
However, the valuations did not factor in the murders and the reluctance many prospective renters and buyers are likely to have about living in a house where four college students were slaughtered.
“It’s creepy. It’s unsettling,” Alteneder says. He is now a real estate agent at Keller Williams Portland Premiere in Wilsonville, OR. “It was really nerve-wracking at first because I still had friends living in Moscow, and I was worried about them.”
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