Kaylee Goncalves was true crime fan who reported sighting of missing woman to police year before murder (2024)
Slain University of Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves was a true crime follower who reported a possible sighting of a missing woman to police one year before her own grisly death.
Goncalves’ body was found in the same bed as that of her best friend, Madison Mogen, 21. Housemate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were found dead in another room.
In the wake of her murder, the Goncalves family reached out to popular true crime vlogger Olivia Vitale and reminisced about the aspiring elementary school teacher’s passion for true crime.
“I started looking at the case that [Kaylee] was following with you, and then I said, ‘I’m going to reach out because maybe she can help resolve Kaylee’s story,'” devastated father Steve Goncalves told Vitale in an exclusive interview that aired this month.
“[Kaylee] wanted to help other families find this justice.”
In fact, one year before her death, Kaylee Goncalves was briefly involved in another local mystery.
According to a police file obtained by Fox News, Goncalves called the Moscow Police Department on Oct. 5, 2021, to report a possible sighting of missing woman Sharon Archer.
Archer, 62, had been reported as endangered missing from Coeur d’Alene, Kaylee’s hometown, the previous month.
“Kaylee told me the female was starring [sic] at her and her boyfriend when they were in the store and as they checked out [of Walmart],” Sgt. Dustin Blaker wrote in his report of the incident.
Sgt. Blaker noted that Goncalves thought she recognized Archer from a missing person poster, which she forwarded to him.
Although police followed up on the call, they were unable to obtain surveillance footage to spot Archer or her Toyota SUV. Searches of nearby hotels also turned up nothing.
Here’s the latest coverage on the brutal killings of four college friends:
Archer was found dead in her car submerged in Fernan Lake later that month, KREM2 reported.
The interaction was not Goncalves’ last run-in with police: In August 2022, just a few months before the killings, she was captured on bodycam footage at the Moscow home after officers responded to a noise complaint at the address.
Sgt. Blaker subsequently became one of the lead investigators on the Nov. 13 stabbings. Fox News reported that his affidavit was used to support the search warrant for suspect Bryan Kohberger’s apartment and office in Pullman, Wash.
Steve Goncalves said he was surprised to find Kohberger was “a guy that looks like a normal everyday … kid.”
Now in custody in Idaho, Kohberger faces four counts of murder and one of felony burglary. Kohberger has not entered a plea and will return to court in June.
She lived at the King Road house, and was also one of the four victims. Mogen was Kaylee's best friend and like a daughter to the Goncalves'. She and Kaylee met in the 6th grade and the two were inseparable ever since.
Kristi describes for the first time how Kaylee was found. "The side where Kaylee was, was up against the wall. And if you can imagine, Kaylee in an upright sort of position - up in the corner - slumped. I mean she was trapped," she described.
Parents of murdered Idaho student Kaylee Goncalves say she was preparing to move to Texas before slayings. Kaylee Goncalves had lined up a job with an IT firm in Austin and recently moved out of the house where she was killed.
Maddie Mogen — Kaylee's best friend from childhood. Peter Van Sant: Give us a sense of just how close Kaylee and Maddie were in life? Kristi Goncalves: I think that they had a very amazing relationship … the epitome of true best friends from very early. … I mean they were sisters through and through.
A University of Idaho student stabbed to death in her sleep may have called her ex-boyfriend on the night of her murder to rekindle their relationship, her family believes. Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed during a 13 November attack in the small college town of Moscow.
In the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle's boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the girls' off-campus home. Two other roommates survived. Steve and Kristi Goncalves said there was an indication their daughter fought for her life.
The family of 15-year-old Maurnice DeClue identified her as the suspect charged with assaulting Kaylee Gain. They say she was bullied for months before the fight.
"He would have been in a heightened state of arousal and that means he was emotionally aroused or even sexually aroused as he was killing those girls, and I suspect it was both," said retired FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole. That heightened state of arousal is driven by hatred, not anger, she added.
Attorney Shanon Gray helped a pair of Moscow police officers scrape ice from the windshield and brush away snow on the 2016 Range Rover Evoque that Goncalves excitedly purchased days before her slaying.
Prosecutors allege Kohberger snuck into students' house that night and stabbed Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, to death with a knife. Kohberger was a graduate student and a teaching assistant at Washington State University at the time of the killings.
Bryan Kohberger had identified a single target on the night he allegedly murdered four college students in Idaho, a new book has claimed. Murder suspect Kohberger was fixated on Madison Mogen when he entered the off-campus house in Moscow on November 13, 2022, according to journalist Howard Blum.
At the vigil, Goncalves said that his daughter and Mogen were in the same bed when they died. Now, Kaylee's ashes are right next to Mogen's at the Goncalves' house, NewsNation's Brian Entin reports. “These were best friends forever,” Entin said on “Banfield.” Like their daughters, the two families are also close.
In the interview with Van Sant, the Goncalves family provided screenshots of an Instagram account they believe belonged to Kohberger. Those screen shots include what they say is Kohberger's Instagram profile, and a list of people he was following, including Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.
A source familiar with the investigation told PEOPLE that Kohberger had photos of one of the female victims on his phone. They did not specify whether the images were taken by Kohberger or pulled from social media. "He had more than one picture of her," the source said.
Introduction: My name is Nicola Considine CPA, I am a determined, witty, powerful, brainy, open, smiling, proud person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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