Demolition Day

1122 King Road, Moscow, Idaho is No More

1122 Kings Road boarded up. Photo by author.

It sat there grotesquely in the midst of the daily hubbub of college life, sticking out on the rise of a slope like a fat middle finger on the hand of a school bully.

Given the elevation, it was hard to go about campus and escape its demonic glare. You could see it from the lower field. You could see it from the Sigma Chi fraternity house and the other frat houses speckled along Nez Perce Drive, the road, named after the local Native American tribe, that winds its away across the college past the residences to the golf course and then the Kibbie Dome. Some of the students pointed out that, unfortunately, you could see it even from some of the classrooms.

1122 King Road, Moscow, Idaho. A one-time regular student house that morphed, overnight, into a house of horrors. In the pre-dawn hours of November 13, 2022, four of its six occupants — Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin — were brutally murdered. Tall poppies felled before they’d even properly bloomed. Locals still don’t know why.

Every day the house stood since, has felt like a day too long to those in its shade. There are some degrees of evil of which it’s unbearable to be reminded. The boarded-up windows, 24-7 security and the police tape around the house did little to soften the nightmare of what had happened there.

Arguably, these new barriers even stirred the imagination. In the minds-eye neighbors revisited once-transparent windows through which they regularly saw the six occupants in the fall of 2022: Maddie, Kaylee, Xana, Ethan, and the younger ones, Dylan and Bethany, going about their typical college lives. And on many an evening, you could have seen the noisy parties in the living room, and the students sporadically opening the sliding doors to stand on the deck and catch a quick blast of cold as a respite from the sweaty din indoors.

Their story is what you’ll read in the forthcoming book co-written by James Patterson and myself.

But today needed marking here on this page. It’s a symbolic day. One the tight-knit community of Moscow, town and gown, has longed for: Demolition crews appeared before dawn this morning and started razing the house. A marker of evil is permanently erased.

View of the house from campus. Photo by author.

It’s a start. But there’s a long way still to go before real healing can begin.

And the families of Kaylee Goncalves and Xana Kernodle have said they are deeply concerned that obliterating the house is a hindrance, not a help, obfuscating evidence a jury might need to see.

There’s still no trial date.

However, with a nod — one hopes — to gaining closure, prosecutors have asked the judge for it to take place during the six weeks when both the university and the high schools are in recess this summer.

One prays they get that timeframe.

Meanwhile, the clock ticks on and winter deepens in Moscow.

Summer cannot come soon enough.