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Moscow, Idaho

I t’s over a hundred degrees when Jim and Stacy Chapin arrive on the UI campus.

Jim is reluctant to go, but Stacy insists. “Damn it, I’m going to get my kid’s stuff.”

Dean Blaine Eckles has thought long and hard about how to make the hideous experience as easy as possible for all the parents. He’s got bottled water and nitrile gloves on hand. He and a team have staged and divided the campus building to mirror the rooms of the King Road house.

“We had old desks, and we brought in tables and staged it kind of like a garage sale,” Eckles said. “We didn’t want them to have to worry about opening boxes and being surprised.”

Eckles has deliberately made sure that the families all come on separate days. And he has security in place just in case.

The Chapins walk through a room labeled KITCHEN to see if there’s anything of Ethan’s in there, then they go into a room marked FOUR , which contains the belongings of Xana and Ethan.

Some of Ethan’s stuff is spattered with blood.

It’s upsetting to see it. Unsurprisingly, given the heat, the building smells rank.

“It was hell. I will not lie, it was hell,” Stacy said later.

But she takes what she needs. She’ll put the furniture in the storage unit she and Jim have kept in Moscow.

And she brings the clothes back with her to Priest Lake, where she washes them and puts them away in the basement, beside Ethan’s ashes.

They don’t need to overthink it now. But one day, she knows, when they are ready, Maizie, Hunter, and she and Jim will want to choose some pieces of Ethan’s life to hold on to.

Going through Ethan’s stuff is only one part of today’s bittersweet experience.

Ahead of the trial—slated for October, just two months away—the court released 1122 King Road, meaning both the defense and the prosecution teams have no further use for it in terms of evidence.

Soon after the murders, the owner gave the house to the university, leaving it up to UI to decide its fate. In February, the school announced the house would be torn down.

The Chapins are fervently in favor of the house being demolished as soon as possible.

Hunter can see it from his bedroom window at Sig Chi; so too can so many of Xana and Ethan’s close friends, like Josie and Ava.

Stacy and Jim believe no one needs to dwell on the horrific events of November 13, and the house is a horrible reminder.

“It needs to go,” Stacy said, a position reflecting their larger, laissez-faire view of the unfolding judicial process.

They don’t want to spend a second thinking about Kohberger or a trial or any of the legal process beyond what they glean from Bill Thompson, whose staff phones regularly to update them.

Over coffee in La Conner one morning in March, as they watched the sun rise and, like every day, wiped away their tears, Stacy and Jim came to the decision that it was time to look forward, not back.

“Why would I want to waste my time looking at him?” Stacy said, referring to Kohberger. She has—for now, at least—no intention of showing up at any of the hearings or in the future at his trial. “Nothing is bringing Ethan back.”

Out of devastation, the Chapins want to create something positive. To Stacy, that’s The Boy Who Wore Blue, a children’s book she wrote about Ethan with illustrations by Lana Lee. In June, she and Jim travel to New York, and she appears on the Today show.

The book’s profits will go to the couple’s nonprofit foundation, Ethan’s Smile—also a new variety of tulip Skagit County farmers have named in Ethan’s honor. The foundation plans to award scholarships to high schoolers applying to college.

While the Chapins have no interest in the judicial process or the efficacy of the system, Steve Goncalves is on a mission. He asks journalists and local sources in the FBI to help him with research, and on the Goncalves family Facebook page he refers to himself as a “private investigator.”

From the data Steve receives, he becomes increasingly sure that Maddie was the target. As far as Steve can see, Kohberger liked Maddie’s photos on social media. He liked Kaylee’s too, but always in joint photos with Maddie.

He wants to figure out how Kohberger appeared to know the layout of the King Road house before entering it on November 13, so he strenuously objects in July when the university announces its plans to demolish the 1122 King Road house quickly.

“Technology changes so fast,” he said. “So you never know if they discover some new scan or some kind of new phone technology or whatever and they want to go back in there and retrace steps.” (He has a point.

Months down the road, there will be back-and-forth between prosecutors and Kohberger’s defense debating the accuracy of the model of the house to be used at trial.)

Shanon Gray puts out a statement from the Goncalveses to that effect and says the Kernodles and the Mogens are united on this point.

Dean Eckles understands their frustration over the house, but his hands are tied.

University administrators are worried that the house is not safe—investigators tore out pieces of walls and floors, and there are wires hanging out.

And it’s costing the school around six hundred dollars a day to pay for security. It’s a liability.

Because of the Goncalves family’s public opposition to the demolition, Eckles is concerned that there might be some sort of disruption when they arrive on campus to pick up Kaylee’s belongings in August.

“I absolutely worried [that Shanon Gray] was going to get media there and try to make this a big deal,” Eckles said later.

But the Goncalves family comes quietly, without Gray and without drama. They take their time looking through Kaylee’s things.

Eckles feels for them. “I felt I had a really good relationship with [them] for the most part,” he said. In person, he senses they are just decent people trying to grieve the loss of their daughter and advocate for her in the best way they know how.

By the end of August, all four victims’ families have gone through the stuff. The Kernodles do it remotely.

Steve Goncalves is bracing for the worst. But out of the blue, the university announces that the demolition is postponed.

This is not entirely due to the pressure from the Goncalves family.

It’s because of something that will come to frustrate Steve even more than the planned demolition of 1122 King Road.

It’s because the trial date has been changed.