Dad of Idaho College Murder Victim Says He ‘Thought About’ Going to Her House on Night She Was Killed

The father of Xana Kernodle — one of the four University of Idaho students who were brutally murdered in November 2022 — said he almost went over to her house on the night she was killed.

Jeff Kernodle was nearby at a Washington State University football game in Pullman, Washington, with his daughter Jazzmin Kernodle when he considered driving to see Xana in Moscow, Idaho.

“The night of the 12th and the 13th, I was at the WSU game with Jazzmin,” Jeff said in the second episode of the Netflix docuseries, The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, which was released on Wednesday, July 29.

“I was thinking, ‘You know what, I should give Xana a call. Maybe I’ll just go over and stay at her house tonight,'” he continued. “And I kind of thought about it, and I drank quite a bit that night. And I go, ‘You know what, Xana probably would get mad if I drove over there,’ so I didn’t go, but I could have gone, and things would have been different.”

“Maybe they would have had a chance, you know?” he questioned. “Some of them.”

In the early morning hours of November 13, 2022, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus Moscow apartment by Bryan Kohberger.

Dealing with the tragedy “is like everybody’s worst nightmare,” Jeff said in the doc.

As Globe previously reported, Kohberger — who admitted to brutally murdering the four students — told the New York Times earlier this week that he has filed a petition to withdraw his guilty plea.

Kohberger, 31, said in a written statement provided via his family that he is innocent. “Justice was not served,” he said, adding that “unanswered questions seem to multiply with each piece of discovery unsealed, and the public demands the truth.”

“Circumnavigated by a broken plea, the trial never provided the public the clarity conducive to closure, and justice shall remain abjectly miscarried unless that plea is withdrawn,” he added. “I hereby declare my intention to enter a not guilty plea, and welcome the State the opportunity to prove their case at trial, as well as to, again, file for the death penalty.”

Kohberger — who is behind bars at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution — is currently serving four life sentences without parole.