Nearly two and a half years after the shocking murders that stunned the University of Idaho community, Ethan Chapin’s sister is opening up about the last moments she shared with her brother. In a new Amazon Prime docuseries One Night in Idaho The College Murders, Mazie Chapin reveals the final text Ethan ever sent her—and it’s one that now haunts her.
Mazie, who is Ethan’s triplet sister, had her sorority formal the night before the murders. She didn’t have a date, so she asked Ethan to go with her since some of his friends were already planning to attend. “I don’t usually invite anyone to formals, but some of Ethan’s friends were going, and he wasn’t going,” she explains in the series. “So, I was like, ‘OK, you can just be my date.’ It was super fun.”
They left the event around 9 p.m., and while many students continued the night at the fraternity house, Mazie decided to call it an early night. “For some reason, I stayed and went to bed,” she says. Ethan, meanwhile, kept texting her asking her to come hang out. The final message he sent read, “I love you,” something Mazie says was completely out of character for them. “We don’t say that to each other,” she says quietly in the series.
By the next morning, everything had changed. Ethan was found stabbed to death alongside his girlfriend, Xana Kernodle, and her two roommates, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, in their off-campus home on King Road in Moscow, Idaho. They were all between 20 and 21 years old. The attack happened around 4 a.m. on Sunday, November 13, 2022.
Fast-forward to July 1 of this year, and the man accused of the brutal killings, Bryan Kohberger, officially confessed as part of a plea deal that spared him the death penalty. The 30-year-old admitted that he broke into the house with the intent to murder the four students, and that he planned the entire thing.
Ethan’s mother, Stacy Chapin, was in court the next day, July 2, as Kohberger pleaded guilty in person. What she witnessed disturbed her. “It was cold and calculated and weirdly, like an automated phone message,” she told TODAY. “I mean, it was just like you expected some, I don’t know, remorse, emotion, something. And there was zero.”
The families of the victims had different reactions to the plea deal. The Goncalves family voiced frustration and opposition to the agreement, while the Chapin and Mogen families decided to support it. Still, they all said the deal came unexpectedly.
Jim Chapin, Ethan’s father, expressed relief that the legal chapter is finally ending. “If I could physically do a handstand, I’d probably do one, because I am so ready,” he said in the TODAY interview. “I’m ready for my kids to move on. I’m ready for us to move on. I mean, it’s been almost two-and-a-half years, and it’s, just, it’s over.”
Stacy admitted their initial reaction was more vengeful. “An eye for an eye,” she said. But after lengthy conversations with prosecutors, they accepted the deal. “He gets put away, and there’s no appeal system to it. And there were so many kids, including our own, that had been subpoenaed that no longer have this hanging over their heads.”
Kohberger is set to receive four consecutive life sentences without parole, plus an additional 10 years. He waived all rights to appeal or seek a sentence reduction.