Idaho State Police pull Moscow murder scene photos hours after release
The Idaho State Police released thousands of new crime scene photos this week from the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students — only to take them down hours later.
Bryan Kohberger, 31, was sentenced in July after pleading guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21; junior Xana Kernodle, 20; and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20.
Kohberger entered an off-campus home the women shared in Moscow in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022, and stabbed the victims to death with a large knife.
Since his sentencing, Idaho State Police have released five batches of documents and images to the public in 2025.
On Tuesday morning, ISP made a sixth volume of records public, and that included nearly 2,800 images taken by law enforcement. Many of the photos were graphic and included blood on floors, walls and sheets.
The agency removed the photos from its website Tuesday night. Idaho State Police spokesperson Aaron Snell told the Idaho Statesman that the pictures were “temporarily removed for further review” after “questions were raised.” Snell said officials wanted “to ensure the appropriate balance between privacy concerns and public transparency.”
The review might have been triggered by members of the public pointing out that in at least one of the photos, a small portion of a victim’s body was visible.
The photos will be reissued soon, according to Snell.
Families upset over photo releases
Snell said the agency understands “concerns about the nature of the images,” but decided to release them after receiving “a large volume of public records requests seeking the photographs.”
The Goncalveses wrote on their family Facebook page that by the time officials notified them of the newest release, the photos were already posted and public.
“Murder isn’t entertainment and crime scene photos aren’t content,” The Goncalves Family Page said. “In addition, we know so many of you armchair detectives will turn this into your show (profits) zooming into things, ‘analyzing blood splatter,’ suggesting that things ‘don’t add up’ yada yada yada. It’s disrespectful and gross.”
Snell said Idaho State Police “redacted the photographs in accordance with the Idaho Public Records Act and applicable case law.”
Despite the need for a second review, Snell also said that ISP followed Second Judicial District Judge Megan Marshall’s October ruling that the city of Moscow must redact photos depicting “any portion of the bodies of the decedents or the blood immediately surrounding them.”
That redaction requirement was won after the four victims’ families took the issue to court. Marshall ruled that the public’s legal right to know meant the government could still release the photos, but not without reviewing and redacting certain scenes and images.
“There is little to be gained by the public in seeing the decedents’ bodies, the blood-soaked sheets, blood spatter or other death scene depictions,” Marshall said in her written opinion. “Whereas the dissemination of these images across the internet and in public spheres where plaintiffs may come upon them by happenstance, as has already occurred, causing them extreme emotional distress is an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”
The Idaho Statesman has chosen not to request or release these photos.