The previously unknown former housemate of the King’s Road home in Moscow, where four University of Idaho students were murdered in late 2022, has spoken out publicly in her efforts to contribute to the lasting legacy of her friends.
Ashlin Couch, a winter 2021 graduate and sorority sister of two of the stabbing victims, said she chose to speak out for the first time to honor the lives lost and to raise awareness among students their safety on social media platforms.
Couch’s mother, Angela Navejas, gave an interview to the Coeur d’Alene/Post Falls Press earlier this year. But she did not disclose at the time that her daughter had previously been a roommate at the off-campus house on King Road.
Couch said in a new TV interview that she might as well have been among those killed in the Moscow house in November 2022.
“It occurs to me more that that could have happened while I was there, and you know, you never know how long someone is watching your house,” Couch said in her interview with KXLY-TV in Spokane.
The four victims were U of I seniors Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle and freshman Ethan Chapin, both 20. The three women lived in the house with two other roommates who were physically unharmed in the attack, and Chapin was staying a night with Kernodle, who was his girlfriend.
Bryan Kohberger, 29, an Eastern Pennsylvania man who was then a graduate student at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, is accused of killing the four students. He was arrested in North Idaho nearly seven weeks after the killings and is awaiting trial on four counts of first-degree murder.
Kohberger moved to Pullman in June 2022 to pursue a doctoral program in criminal justice and criminology, according to a court filing from his appointed public defender. From the time Kohberger arrived in Pullman until the day of the murders, police allege in an affidavit of probable cause that he made at least fourteen visits to the cell tower coverage area in front of the King Road House — including twice on the day of the death of the students. .
Couch was the sixth person to still have a lease at the King Road House. But she moved in May 2022 and Kernodle took her place, she told the TV station. Couch was a member of the Pi Beta Phi sorority with Mogen and Kernodle, and the other two housemates. Goncalves was a member of the campus Alpha Phi sorority.
“It’s such an exciting time in your life because you’re moving and you’re basically in a house by yourself,” she said in the interview. “… We were all so close.”
It is unclear which room in the six-bedroom, three-bathroom home that Couch occupied when she lived there as of 2020. Attempts by the Idaho Statesman to reach Couch and Navejas on Wednesday was not a success.
The U of I, which took ownership of the King Road estate in February 2023, demolished the house in late December.
Text to Mogen: ‘Are you okay?’
On November 13, 2022, the day of the murders, Couch told the Spokane TV station that she remembered receiving an alert on her cell phone about the incident and contacted Mogen.
“I was driving home and I was texting our group of friends, and I just said, ‘Has anyone heard from Maddie?’ Couch said as emotion formed on her face. “I remember my last text message to her said, ‘Are you okay?’ and I feel like at that moment I just knew something was wrong.
Police arrived at the King Road house around noon that day and found the four students dead with multiple wounds from an edged weapon. Next to Mogen’s body was a leather sheath for a combat-style knife, the affidavit said.
Couch said she had a hard time after hearing about the sudden deaths of her friends. According to her LinkedIn profile, she now lives and works in Southern California.
“I mean, I couldn’t even walk to my car in the dark for months after it happened,” Couch told the TV station.
Now, Couch and her mother have created a nonprofit, the Made With Kindness Foundation, to raise money for outreach and a national scholarship fund. Couch said she wants to make sure her former housemates are remembered in a positive light, rather than the way their lives were taken.
“I want to do more,” she said. “I want to spread a message and start something, help people, just do something more with this life that we are grateful to still be living.”
As part of that effort, they are hosting the “Make It Pink” Gala in honor of Mogen and Goncalves on June 15 at The Club at Prairie Falls in Post Falls. Prices for admission to the dinner and silent auction range from $100 for a single ticket to $5,000 for a title sponsorship.
More than seventeen months after their deaths, Couch still mourns the loss of her close friends. She told the TV station that she had hoped for a chance to see them one last time.
“That’s one thing I’d like to do again,” Couch said, “just give her one last hug to say goodbye.”
Kohberger will appear in court again next week for two hearings. No date has yet been set for his murder trial.
