The home where four University of Idaho students were murdered has become a gruesome tourist attraction as true crime junkies flock to the quaint town.
Visitors keep dropping by to catch a glimpse of the home in Moscow, Idaho, where Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, both 21, her roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed on November 13 .
On Sunday morning, Amanda Padgett and her daughter rolled past the house in their station wagon, laden with the family luggage. They were on their way home to Spokane, Washington after spending the weekend in Moscow to attend a Christmas party for their softball team.
They had heard true crime podcasts about the grisly stabbings and read about it on the news.
“We’re just curious,” she said from behind the wheel of her car. “It’s shocking,” she said of the crime. “It’s just more real to see it for yourself.”
But no one knows what will become of the off-campus house in the unsolved case. Will it be demolished and rebuilt? Transformed into a memorial to the students? Or cleaned up and rented again next semester?
The Idaho home where four students were murdered has become an attraction. One woman said she visited after hearing about the case on a podcast
Madison Mogen, 21, top left, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, bottom left, Ethan Chapin, 20, center, and Xana Kernodle, 20, right, were murdered Nov. 13 at their college home off campus
The Moscow Police Department, together with the FBI, are continuing the ongoing investigation into the deaths of four University of Idaho students
Co-owners of the Idaho murder home, Dan Estey (left) and Scott Perky, who both live in Colorado, must now decide whether to demolish it, turn it into a memorial, or clear out and rent it out again
The two men recorded as the last owners of the property, Scott Perky and Daniel Estey, remain the mother. Repeated attempts to reach the owners were unsuccessful, and Estey told a neighbor not to speak if approached by journalists.
A private security firm has been hired by investigators to keep an eye on the home at 1122 King Road, and police tape surrounds the perimeter of the property.
At night, party lights still shine outside the third floor room where two of the students died at the hands of a vicious killer.
Police have completed their forensic investigation of the crime scene, taking blood, hair and fingerprint samples, taking photographs and bagging other items that may contain a piece of DNA leading to the killer. The four students’ belongings were packed up and removed from the house.
The students were stabbed to death in the early hours of November 13 in an unsolved case that has gripped the country and pressured local police to solve the crime.
The investigation, which involved not only the local police department but also 48 FBI agents and 28 Idaho State Police personnel, moved slowly.
The only lead shared with the public is a white Hyundai Elantra, built between 2011 and 2013, that was seen in the area at the time of the killings. Detectives are looking for the driver and all passengers who they say have important information about the gruesome crime.
But the house is the remaining physical manifestation of the quadruple stabbing and has begun to attract true criminals with a morbid fascination and belief that they can solve the crime.
A private security firm has been hired by investigators to keep an eye on the home, and police tape surrounds the perimeter of the property
“We’re just curious,” said one visitor behind the wheel of her car. ‘It is shocking. It’s just more real to see for yourself.
No one knows what will become of the off-campus home in the unsolved case, as the owners remain mom
Padgett’s daughter, whose name she preferred not to give, wanted to see the house.
“My daughter wanted to see it because she’s in high school and she’s going to college next year,” Padgett said.
“I’m wondering if it’s a Ted Bundy guy or a student,” she said, pondering several theories.
Padgett addressed the challenges owners face in renting out the property in the future.
“I don’t want my daughter around here,” Padgett said.
As true crime thrives in the popular imagination, its fans flock to places across the country notable for just one thing – the violent atrocities that happened behind their walls.
The 1974-1975 Salt Lake City home of serial killer Ted Bundy has become a tourist attraction.
The Morbid Tourism website is dedicated to places like the Moscow House.
“Articles, podcasts and images, while valuable, cannot possibly create the same connection as location,” said Jewls Krueger, who runs the site. “If the goal is to understand this life and this world, then the place is the channel.”
She said that in real life, trekking to these places honors the dead.
Criminals can use Krueger’s website to look up the locations of mass murders, kidnappings, and shootings.
She said on her website that she started the site in honor of Courtney Sconce, a 12-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in Rancho Cordova, California.
Places like the Moscow House have a Morbid Tourism website dedicated to them
Kaylee and Madison’s bodies were found on the top floor of the house. Ethan and Xana were found in a bedroom on the second floor. Survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke slept on the first floor
Krueger, who was 11 at the time of the crime, said people dedicated the street corner where Sconce was last seen as “Courtney’s Corner”.
“I often think of this corner. Although I no longer live in Rancho Cordova, I make an effort to drive by Courtney’s Corner whenever I’m in town. There’s usually a candle or ribbon left by someone who still remembers what happened, but the piles of teddy bears are long gone.
“I wonder, do people remember what happened here? People who moved into the neighborhood long after the news stopped airing, do they know about Courtney?” she wrote on her website. “They should – Courtney deserves to be remembered and people should know about her corner.”
Other Idaho locations that can be found on Morbid Tourism’s website include Ruby Ridge, where doomsday prepper Randy Weaver and his family had a fatal standoff with federal police, and the home of Coeur D’Alene of the Wolf Lodge Murders , where three family members were killed by serial sex offender Joseph Duncan III, who also kidnapped an 8-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy from the home.
The boy was eventually killed too.
The Wolfe Lodge property was purchased by the State of Idaho for wetland conservation and the house was demolished.
Police piled up all of the personal items they no longer need as evidence and carried them into a U-Haul driven by the police chief himself
Authorities say DNA may have been present on various surfaces at the crime scene, and forensic teams are now working to run all samples through state and local databases
In Villisca, Iowa, two and a half hours north of Kansas City, a two-story home has become a mecca for crime buffs and fans of paranormal activities. It was there that JB Moore, his wife and six children were murdered with an ax in their beds on June 10, 1912. The crime is still unsolved 110 years later.
The home’s owners turned it into a tourist attraction and it is now listed on the Iowa Register of Historic Places. For $428 a night, six people can sleep indoors in their sleeping bags.
“I don’t know why people come,” said Martha Linn, who owns the house. “If it was just weird people with tattoos and piercings that would be one thing, but it’s not. They are doctors, lawyers, teachers, students. I have some nurses who came. There’s a social studies degree in Nebraska that studies crime and then comes to stay.’
In Fall River, Massachusetts, the home where Lizzie Borden killed her parents with an ax in 1892 is now a bed and breakfast.
Padgett, who just drove by to see the home where the crime took place, said she hoped the Moscow home would be turned into a memorial rather than a tourist destination.
“Eh,” she said. “That seems kind of vulgar.”