Quadruple murder survivor says public harassment has been 'cruel'

One of the former roommates of the four University of Idaho students killed in their home in 2022 is fighting to keep her face blurred in investigative footage that will be released to the public, citing extensive harassment she’s faced since the murders.

Dylan Mortensen urged Latah County Judge Megan Marshall to reconsider her recent decision to order the city of Moscow and its police department to release records connected to the case to EWU Media, according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY. The media company filed a petition in February alleging city officials improperly withheld and redacted the records.

Family members of two of the murdered students joined the case to oppose the company’s petition. In October, Marshall ruled that city officials had failed to meet their burden to prove that the records were exempt from disclosure under the state’s public records law and must release them.

Mortensen then stepped in, arguing that the public can hear her statements to law enforcement in the trove of records that have already been released. She said she has faced years of “hateful messages and threats,” which forced her family to move nine times, and releasing the unredacted footage would open her up to more harassment.

“I am not asking for the interviews or body-camera recordings to be withheld from the public, nor am I asking for information about the investigation to be hidden,” Mortensen wrote in an Oct. 29 affidavit. “I am asking the Court to consider what additional information is actually gained by removing the blurring from my face.”

Mortensen was inside the off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, the night Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were murdered in November 2022. In 2025, Bryan Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders in a controversial plea deal which allowed him to avoid the death penalty and instead be handed four life sentences without the possibility of parole and a 10-year sentence for burglary.

At the sentencing, Mortensen tearfully described “the panic attacks, the hypervigilance and the exhaustion” she’s suffered in the wake of the murders. “He may have shattered parts of me, but I’m still putting myself back together, piece by piece,” she said.

Kohberger admitted in court to committing the murders willfully and with premeditation, but he’s now working to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he was "convinced to falsely confess,” according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY.

The killings, for which investigators have revealed no motive, shocked the quiet college town and the nation, became the subject of multiple documentaries and drew widespread attention from true crime fans. Mortensen said in her affidavit that her life “has changed in ways I never could have imagined” since the crime.

She said she’s had to take steps to prevent being recognized, including avoiding being in pictures and using a different name at work, when she introduces herself and for package deliveries. Despite her efforts, she wrote, she has been recognized in multiple public places.

“I worry that making additional footage of my face available would make it even easier for strangers to identify me in everyday situations,” she wrote. “The harassment I have experienced online is another major reason I am concerned about my safety. Since November 2022, I have received numerous unsolicited messages from strangers accusing me of participating in my friends’ murders, blaming me for their deaths, and making cruel statements about what they believe should happen to me.”