The college student who came face-to-face with the person suspected of killing her friends as they exited the students' off-campus home in the city of Moscow is still struggling with survivor's guilt, says her former stepmother.
One of the two roommates who survived the brutal massacre that left four University of Idaho students dead one year ago today is no longer enrolled at the state college.
In an interview with the New York Post, the former stepmother of the roommate who came face-to-face with the person suspected of killing her friends as they exited the students' off-campus home in the city of Moscow says that the 21-year-old is still struggling with survivor's guilt.
“There’s a lot of guilt because, you know, if someone says, ‘Oh, well, [she] was so lucky,’ you know, you don’t want to take on that luck — because all of the children deserved luck. They all deserved to be spared from that,” said the survivor's former stepmother.
That roommate has been in hiding ever since the killings, and faced an onslaught of criticism from online commentators and citizen sleuths who question her actions on the night of the murders.
“You never really think about online backlash and trolls until you deal with it, and it’s just a really hurtful thing,” said her former stepmother. “I challenge anyone to be in a position where they wake up to four of their roommates gone and, you know, not even realizing it."
She then added: “People have to understand that these children are very young ... You know, they’re just young kids, and it’s just a really traumatizing thing. I just think that people need to have compassion."
The former stepmother believes that more details will come to light during the trial that help explain the actions of the two surviving roommates in the hours after the murders.
She also said that the survivor transferred schools this year but did not say what institution she now attends.
There has been much scrutiny regarding the actions of the two surviving roommates, and law enforcement did little to help matters when they suddenly changed the narrative about what happened on the night of the killings shortly after the arrest of suspect Bryan Kohberger.
Police initially said that the two women who survived had been asleep, a claim that was published in the daily updates that were handed out to the public and press prior to the arrest of Kohberger.
That statement changed, though, on Dec. 30, when Corporal Bret Payne of the Moscow Police Department (MPD) wrote in a probable cause affidavit seeking an arrest warrant for Kohberger that one of the women who survived the Nov. 13 massacre saw someone that night.
“D.M. stated she opened her door for the third time after she heard the crying and saw a figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person's mouth and nose walking towards her," says the affidavit.
That is a different account than what the MPD included in the daily reports it released on the investigation into the University of Idaho murders.
The MPD update released to the press and public on Nov. 20 reads: “Detectives believe that on November 12th, the two surviving roommates had also been out in the Moscow community, separately, but returned home by 1 a.m. on November 13th. The two did not wake up until later that morning.”
Ten days later, Payne stated in his affidavit that one of the surviving roommates was not only awake but possibly an eyewitness in the case.
“D.M. described the figure as 5' I0" or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows. The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase,’” says the probable cause affidavit.
“The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male. D.M. did not state that she recognized the male. This leads investigators to believe that the murderer left the scene.”
Police claim they were not called to the home until just before noon that day, almost eight hours after the murders.
Kohberger, 28, is currently behind bars at the Latah County Detention Center. He is not due back in court until June. A public defender assigned to Kohberger's case after his arrest in Pennsylvania said that his client is innocent of the charges that have been filed against him.
The judge presiding over the case entered a plea of not guilty on Kohberger's behalf back in May.
