The Killing
The house at 1122 King Road is tucked away on a dead-end street about a five-minute walk from the fraternity houses that line one edge of campus, with cars packed tightly into driveways and students often walking to and from class along snowy pathways.
The three-story house was a place where friends often socialized and posed for smiling pictures, social media posts from earlier this year show. But for the past three weeks, it has sat empty, marked off by police tape and guarded day and night by a police officer.
The slain students’ possessions remain behind: a pair of pink cowboy boots just inside a third-floor window, a neon sign on a wall that reads “good vibes,” a couch collecting snow on the back patio.
Killed in the early-morning attack were Kaylee Goncalves, 21, who was planning to graduate in the winter and move to Austin, Texas; Madison Mogen, 21, who loved concerts and had worked from a young age to help support herself; Xana Kernodle, 20, a marketing major who had begun to blossom while living away from home; and Ethan Chapin, 20, Ms. Kernodle’s boyfriend and a triplet who seemed to be always smiling or telling a joke. The three women lived in the home, and Mr. Chapin was visiting his girlfriend.
On Saturday, Nov. 12, Mr. Chapin and Ms. Kernodle spent the evening at a fraternity party while Ms. Goncalves and Ms. Mogen went to a sports bar in town. They all returned shortly before 2 a.m., and phone records show that a series of calls were soon placed from Ms. Goncalves’s phone to her former longtime boyfriend, Jack DuCoeur, who is also a student at the university, her older sister said.