Idaho Murders Update: Unnamed 'Best Friend' Found Victims' Bodies, Called 911

The "best friend" of Ethan Chapin, one of the four University of Idaho students Bryan Kohberger is accused of killing, found his pal stabbed to death in bed and called 911.

Unnamed sources with knowledge of the investigation told NewsNation that the best friend, whose name was not disclosed by the news outlet, found the dead bodies of Chapin and his girlfriend Xana Kernodle hours after they were killed and checked their pulse before calling 911.

Chapin and Kernodle, both 20, were stabbed to death in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, along with friends Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, at their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho.

Chapin's best friend reportedly urged the victims' surviving roommates, Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke, to call 911. The unidentified best friend then used Mortensen's phone to call the police almost eight hours after the murders took place, NewsNation reported.

International Business Times could not independently verify the claims made in the report.

The new claims supported Reddit posts reportedly made by Chapin's sister-in-law that Mortensen had called a friend to come over to the off-campus home because she was "scared from what she had heard in the night," the Daily Mail reported.

Chapin's sister-in-law reportedly claimed that Mortensen called all of her housemates "after the crying and screaming stopped, and no one answered."

Mortensen and Funke were ruled out as suspects by Moscow police. But investigators are puzzled about why it took so long for the survivors to report the killings to police.

Experts suggested that Mortensen may have passed out or been "scared to death" after she came face-to-face with the killer on the night of the murders.

"She was scared. She was scared to death, and rightly so," said Shanon Gray, a lawyer for murder victim Kaylee Goncalves' family, the New York Post reported.

According to a police affidavit, Mortensen told Moscow police that she saw an unknown "figure clad in black clothing and a mask" walk past her, toward the home's back exit, just after 4 a.m. that day.

"Mortensen described the figure as 5′ 10″ or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past [her] as she stood in a 'frozen shock phase,'" the affidavit read. "The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. Mortensen locked herself in her room after seeing the male."

Mortensen reportedly thought that the sounds of her four housemates being slaughtered were just of them partying.

Despite questions about Mortensen's actions after the killings, her testimony may have helped investigators pin Kohberger as the main suspect.

The "bushy eyebrows" description of the killer provided by Mortensen matched the appearance of Kohberger in a picture that was pulled by lead investigator Brett Payne from the Motor Vehicles Record System.

Kohberger, a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary.

Kohberger is detained at Latah County Jail in Idaho while awaiting his upcoming court appearance on June 26.