"A Final 'I Love You': The Painful Goodbye in the Idaho College Murders"
I still can’t wrap my head around the horror that unfolded in Moscow, Idaho, that night. It’s one of those tragedies that feels too painful to even be real. But it happened—and it happened to four vibrant, young college students who had their whole lives ahead of them. One of them was Ethan Chapin, just 20 years old. His sister, Maizie, recently revealed the last message he ever sent her—“I love you.” That’s not something they said to each other often, and she called it “weird” in hindsight. That simple, loving text now carries the weight of finality that no sibling should ever have to live with.
On November 13, 2022, Ethan, his girlfriend Xana Kernodle, and their friends Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were all brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus home. It was a senseless act of violence that shook the entire country. And after over two years of silence, mystery, and grief, their killer—Bryan Kohberger—finally confessed. No trial, no jury. Just a written and spoken admission of guilt and a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
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For Ethan’s parents, Stacy and Jim Chapin, that courtroom scene was chilling. Stacy said it was “cold and calculated,” like listening to an automated phone message. No emotion. No remorse. Just a cold-blooded killer reading his lines. And even though the plea deal means he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of appeal, it still leaves so many questions unanswered—especially “why?”
The Chapins chose to support the plea, not because they didn’t want justice, but because they were ready for closure. They were ready for Ethan’s siblings, Maizie and Hunter, to be able to move on without subpoenas or courtrooms hanging over them. They had already endured enough. And in a bittersweet victory, both Maizie and Hunter have graduated college with honors. That resilience, as Jim put it, is shocking. They truly went from the bottom to the top.
But the pain is still very real. Maizie and Hunter now tell people they’re twins, not triplets. Not because they want to forget Ethan, but because answering “Where’s Ethan?” over and over again is just too painful. It’s those little things—things you’d never think of—that remind the Chapin family every single day of the hole left in their lives.
They’ll never forget Ethan. They’ll never stop loving him. And they’ll never stop living with that last “I love you.” It wasn’t just a text. It was a goodbye.
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