(NewsNation) — Students from the University of Idaho are opening up about what happened when four of their fellow students were stabbed and killed in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho.
University of Idaho student Hunter Johnson, along with his girlfriend, Emily Alandt, and several others, will be featured in a new Prime Video docuseries titled “One Night in Idaho: The College Murders,” premiering on July 11.
They will also be featured in an upcoming James Patterson and Vicky Ward book called “The Idaho Four: An American Tragedy,” which is set to release July 14. Ahead of these releases, Hunter and Alandt spoke with People about their experience.
‘Something in my soul told me that I should go lock my door’: Idaho student
Johnson said that he got up to lock the door to his girlfriend’s off-campus apartment in Moscow on the night of the killings. The 24-year-old revealed to People, “That’s something I’ve never done in my life there. There was no noise. I don’t know why, but something in my soul told me that I should go lock my door.”
This woke up the rest of the people in the home, including Johnson’s girlfriend. “We hung out in the living room for about 30 minutes before we all went back to bed,” 23-year-old Alandt told People.
An hour later, Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed in their off-campus home right down the street. That morning, Dylan Mortensen asked Johnson to come over and check out that same house and was followed by Alandt.
That’s when Johnson allegedly found Kernodle and Chapin in the second-floor bedroom, dead. “I was like, ‘What is going on? Is this real?’ Then you realize the gravity of what you just walked into. At that moment, you don’t really realize what you walked into until you really look at it and process it,” the student explained.
Johnson told People, “That was our last day living as kids,” with Alandt adding, “Our innocence was gone.”
Officers investigate a homicide at an apartment complex south of the University of Idaho campus on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. Four people were found dead on King Road near the campus, according to a city of Moscow news release issued Sunday afternoon. (Zach Wilkinson/Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP) 
Officers investigate a homicide at an apartment complex south of the University of Idaho campus on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022. Four people were found dead on King Road near the campus, according to a city of Moscow news release issued Sunday afternoon. (Zach Wilkinson/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP) 
Candles and flowers are left at a make-shift memorial honoring four slain University of Idaho students outside the Mad Greek restaurant in downtown Moscow, Idaho, on Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022. Police discovered the bodies of the four students at home near campus on Sunday, Nov. 13, 2022, and said the killer or killers used a knife or bladed weapon in the targeted attack. Two of the victims, 21-year-old Madison Mogen and 20-year-old Xana Kernodle, were servers at Mad Greek. (AP Photo/Nicholas K. Geranios) 
Boise State University students, along with people who knew the four University of Idaho students who were found killed in Moscow, Idaho, days earlier, pay their respects at a vigil held in front of a statue on the Boise State campus, Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022, in Boise, Idaho. Autopsies performed on the four students who were found dead inside a rental house near campus showed that all four were stabbed to death, the Latah County coroner said. (Sarah A. Miller/Idaho Statesman via AP) 
FILE – Bare spots are seen on Nov. 29, 2022, in the snowy parking lot in front of the home where four University of Idaho students were found dead on Nov. 13, in Moscow, Idaho, after vehicles belonging to the victims and others were towed away earlier in the day. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File) 
Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for his arraignment hearing in Latah County District Court, Monday, May 22, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. Kohberger is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022. (Zach Wilkinson/The Moscow-Pullman Daily News via AP) 
MOSCOW, IDAHO – JUNE 27: Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom for a hearing at the Latah County Courthouse on June 27, 2023 in Moscow, Idaho. Kohberger is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022. (Photo by August Frank-Pool/Getty Images) 
Heavy equipment is used to demolish the house where four University of Idaho students were killed in 2022 on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. Students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were fatally stabbed there in November 2022. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) 
Heavy equipment is used to demolish the house where four University of Idaho students were killed in 2022 on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. Students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were fatally stabbed there in November 2022. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren) 
FILE – Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of fatally stabbing four University of Idaho students, is escorted into court for a hearing in Latah County District Court, Sept. 13, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool, File) 
Objects left for a makeshift memorial sit at the site of a quadruple murder on January 3, 2023 in Moscow, Idaho. A suspect has been arrested for the murders of the four University of Idaho students. (Photo by David Ryder/Getty Images)
Book, docuseries will reveal new details about their friends’ deaths
The book and docuseries will explore the lives of the college students and reveal new details about their friends’ deaths.
They were both set to be released about one month before the start of Bryan Kohberger‘s trial, but he has since accepted a plea deal, NewsNation has learned, pleading guilty to committing the murders and to a burglary charge.
Kohberger is the 28-year-old former Ph.D. criminology student at Washington State University charged with killing the four University of Idaho students in November 2022. His plea deal, effectively avoiding the death penalty, made furious the family of one of the victims, Kaylee Goncalves.
Kohberger was arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, six weeks after the murders took place. He was charged with four counts of first-degree murder, to which he originally pleaded not guilty.
Police said that the suspect who committed the crime was dressed in black and had a ski mask on.
The suspect also had a fixed-blade combat and hunting knife, and came into the house through the kitchen sliding door. They then allegedly stabbed Mogen and Goncalves repeatedly before killing Kernodle and Chapin.
Kohberger has been in jail while awaiting trial, which was set to start on August 11. If he had been convicted, prosecutors were seeking the death penalty.