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The boyfriend of slain University of Idaho student Madison Mogen broke his silence on Friday – weeks after four victims were brutally murdered in a quadruple homicide that remains unsolved.
Jake Schriger, who knew all four students, spoke out at a vigil on Friday that was held in Post Falls, the hometown of one of the other victims, 20-year-old Xana Kernodle.
Schriger’s girlfriend Madison, 21, her close friend Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were all stabbed to death in the off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho on November 13.
‘None of these people deserved this,’ Schriger said at the service in front of the victims’ loved ones at Real Life Ministries.
Schriger, who had been dating Mogen for about a year, talked about how their friendship developed into more and about their first date at The Breakfast Club in Moscow.
‘She was the first person I talked to every morning and the last person I talked to before bed,’ Schriger said. ‘She was the person that I loved most.’
Three weeks after the grizzly murders, few answers have come out and authorities have yet to name a suspect or even a person of interest in the case.
Jake Schriger, boyfriend of slain University of Idaho student Madison Mogen, broke his silence on Friday, weeks after the four victims were brutally murdered in their off-campus house
Survivors Dylan Mortensen (left) and Bethany Funke (right), and victims Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee’s shoulders), Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle
Several vigils have been held for the four slain students, with the most recent being in Post Falls on Friday, where family and friends took turns sharing memories of their loved ones.
‘Maddie was my best friend,’ Schriger said. ‘I was lucky enough to be able to explore life with Maddie for about two years.’
In a previous interview with the New York Post, Schriger’s mother Stacy said she had been expecting Maddie to travel home with him for Thanksgiving.
‘Her and Jake were like peanut butter and jelly,’ she said. ‘We were expecting her for Thanksgiving. Whenever we talked on the phone, she always said I love you.’
Madison Mogen’s father, Ben Mogen, spoke on Friday, and talked about the friendship between his daughter and Kaylee Goncalves.
‘She was the world to us,’ he said. ‘They were both in love with life and exploring. When they met, they were inseparable from the sixth grade on. They were true sisters, and our families grew bigger and better from that.’
Xana Kernodle’s sister, Jazzmin, said losing Xana was the hardest thing she’s ever had to go through.
‘Losing her is the hardest thing I ever have to go through and has left me heartbroken,’ she said.
‘I know she loved living in her house in Moscow with her friends. I hear so many stories of her and her roommates and made me so happy to know she had such great friendships.’
Schriger, who had been dating Mogen for about a year, talked how their friendship developed into more and about their first date at The Breakfast Club in Moscow
‘They were like peanut butter and jelly’: Madison and Jake had been dating for a year and were due to visit his family for Thanksgiving
Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan, who was also killed, was honored by others since his family could not be at the vigil.
‘Me and Ethan became best friends over the last year and a half we spent at the U of I,’ Ethan’s friend Hunter Johnson said.
‘And since we became such good friends. I feel honored and privileged to even be able to share who he was to everyone here.’
Steven and Kristi Goncalves, parents of Kaylee Goncalves, who have been vocal about their frustrations with the police department involving the investigation, were also at the vigil.
Her mother spoke about Kaylee and Madison being the best of friends, more like sisters.
‘They were sisters, she was one of ours,’ Kristi said. ‘We are just heartbroken, and we know it, it just going to take time for everybody to heal, if that’s possible. I just pray that it is.’
Kaylee, Madison, their roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed to death on November 13, likely while they were sleeping.
Kaylee and Madison were sleeping on the third floor, and Xana and Ethan were on the second floor. Cops said the killer entered the house through a sliding glass door on the second floor, which was level with the backyard.
Two other roommates were in the house but were unharmed and unaware the attack occurred. They were sleeping on the first floor.
Real Life Ministries hosted a vigil for Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, in Post Falls, Idaho on Friday
A flyer seeking information about the killings of the four University of Idaho students
Kaylee’s father previously told NewsNation’s Brian Entin that Kaylee’s injuries were worse than the other kids’, but he didn’t go into detail.
He fumed over the weekend that detectives are allowing the case to go ‘cold’ and that while they may not appreciate his continued interaction with the media, it’s necessary to find his daughter’s killer.
‘I’ll cut to the chase – their means of death don’t match,’ Goncalves told Lawrence Jones Cross Country on Saturday. He has said that Kaylee and Mogen were sleeping in the same bed when the attack occurred.
‘Their points of damage don’t match,’ he added. ‘I’m just going to say it. It wasn’t leaked to me. I earned that. I paid for that funeral… I sent my daughter to college. She came back in a box, and I can speak on that.’
Last week, Kaylee’s mother, Kristi Goncalves, told News Nation that she believes police cleared some individuals ‘very fast.’
The grieving parents have said they support their law enforcement, but are frustrated to wake up each day without any answers.
In a statement on Saturday, the Moscow Police Department said it had received thousands of tips, but that ‘at this time, no suspect has been identified.’
‘We just have no information as a family. And it’s tough, day after day after day,’ Kristi Goncalves told ‘Lawrence Jones’ on Saturday.
‘I mean, every day you just wake up and think, ‘Today’s the day we’re going to hear something,’ and you see these, ‘Oh, there’s a break in the case,’ and it’ll just be something stupid.’
Kaylee and Madison were found on the top floor of the Moscow, Idaho home. College lovers Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were found in a second-floor bedroom while survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were sleeping on the first floor
Police in Idaho say they still have no viable suspects in the massacre of four University of Idaho students in their home last month, while the two roommates who survived the attack have spoken out in gut-wrenching statements.
Local cops and Moscow Police Chief James Fry have faced sharp criticism in recent days, including from the families of the victims, over the lack of apparent progress in the case.
Kaylee’s parents have said that she believes the cops cleared some people too quickly.
‘I just feel like there have been a couple of individuals that were cleared very fast that maybe should not have been,’ Kristi Goncalves told NewsNation last week, adding that she does not ‘know anything about those individuals,’ but she thinks police may have cleared them too soon into their investigation. It’s unclear if she was referring to anyone in particular.
‘I just know they were people that definitely should have been looked at,’ she said.
Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, were murdered while sleeping on the top floor
Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were found dead on the second floor
Autopsies determined the four students were stabbed to death, likely with a fixed-blade knife, and investigators checked with local stores to see if any had sold military-style knives recently.
Speaking to Fox and Friends, Goncalves said it took little more than basic logic to understand that his daughter and her friend might have been targeted.
‘I’m not a professional, so I want to specify that, but they’ve said the entry point was the slider or the window. It was the middle floor. So, to me, he doesn’t have to go upstairs,’ he said. ‘His entry and exit are available without having to go upstairs or downstairs.
‘Looks like he probably may have not gone downstairs. We don’t know that for sure, but he obviously went upstairs. So I’m using logic that he chose to go up there when he didn’t have to.’
‘So, I’m just putting the dots together. As far as the investigators, they’re very tight-lipped, and they’re keeping everything close to their vest, and I understand that, and I’m probably not the right person to share all these things with,’ he said.
Cops have said some of the victims had defensive wounds, but it remains unclear who or how many. Goncalves said on Saturday that Kaylee and Madison appeared to have died in different ways.
Steven Goncalves, Kaylee’s exasperated father, is now turning to private investigators to help him solve his daughter’s murder
Police in Idaho continue to work at the crime scene, but are yet to produce any strong leads
Detectives previously revealed they were not sure if the slain University of Idaho students were targeted by the killer, contradicting Chief James Fry who previously insisted they were.
‘We believe they’re targeted because we take a totality of all the circumstances we’re looking at,’ Fry had told reporters on November 20, a week after the murders.
The statement was recently echoed by Latah County prosecutor Bill Thompson.
But the department filed a correction, stating: ‘Detectives do not currently know if the residence or any occupants were specifically targeted but continue to investigate.’
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