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MOSCOW, Idaho — Demolition began Thursday on the house where four University of Idaho students were killed last year, marking an emotional step for the victims' families and a close-knit community that was shocked and devastated by the brutal stabbings.
The sounds of construction equipment pierced the early morning air as an excavator started tearing down the front part of the house. The former walls formed a large pile of crushed and smashed wood on the ground as debris was picked up and loaded into a dump truck.
The owner of the rental home near the university campus in Moscow, Idaho, donated it to the university earlier this year. It has since been boarded up and blocked off by a security fence. Students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves were fatally stabbed there in November 2022.
School officials, who in February announced plans to raze the house, view the demolition as a key step toward finding closure, university spokeswoman Jodi Walker said.
Contractors estimated that it would take a few hours for the house to be razed and several more after that to clear the site of debris, Walker said.
The site will be planted with grass at some point after the demolition, Walker said. She said there are no other plans for it as of now but the university may revisit that in the future.
Some of the victims' families have opposed the demolition, calling for the house to be preserved until after the man accused of the slayings has been tried. Bryan Kohberger, a former criminology graduate student at Washington State University, has been charged with four counts of murder.
A judge entered a not-guilty plea on Kohberger's behalf earlier this year.
Prosecutors, who hope to try Kohberger next summer, told university officials in an email that they don't anticipate needing the house any further, as they were already able to gather measurements necessary for creating illustrative exhibits for a jury. They added that a jury visit to the site wouldn't be authorized given that the current condition of the house "is so substantially different" than at the time of the killings.
The Latah County prosecuting attorney's office declined to comment, citing a gag order from an Idaho judge that restricts what lawyers in the case can say to the news media.
Kohberger's defense team was given access to the home earlier this month to gather photos, measurements and other documentation. And in October, the FBI gathered at the house to collect data that could be used to create visual aids for jurors at the upcoming trial.
Here's a look at what happened to other homes synonymous with killings that took place there.
10050 Cielo Drive
In 1969, five people, including the actress Sharon Tate, were murdered at 10050 Cielo Drive in what was perhaps the most notorious of the murders carried out by the cult led by Charles Manson.
The Beverly Hills, California, home was demolished in 1994, and a new one — a sprawling nine-bedroom, 18-bathroom mansion — was built and completed in 1996. It received a new address.
The mansion was put on the market in January 2022 for $85 million, but the asking price has repeatedly dropped over the last 23 months. The sellers are now asking $49.5 million, according to the real estate agent's listing, which makes no mention of the property's dark history.
John Wayne Gacy's home
The serial killer John Wayne Gacy killed at least 33 people, and the remains of more than two dozen of them were found underneath his house near Chicago by investigators following his arrest in December 1978, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Gacy's home was demolished months later, in April 1979, the Tribune reported at the time. It was a relief to neighbors, including one who told the newspaper, "I'll be glad when every bit of it's gone."
The lot was empty for almost a decade, until a new home was erected on the site beginning in June 1988, per the Tribune. Like the Cielo Drive house, the new home also was given a new address.
The home of Fred and Rose West
Fred and Rose West abducted, sexually abused and killed a series of girls and young women — two of their daughters among them — between the 1960s and 1980s in England. Fred West, accused of 12 murders, died by suicide before he could stand trial, while Rose West was convicted on 10 counts of murder in November 1995 and sentenced to life in prison.
When the case broke open in the 1990s, investigators found the remains of many of their victims at their house at 25 Cromwell Street in the city of Gloucester, including in the garden, the basement and the bathroom.
The home, dubbed a "house of horrors," was torn down in 1996. A public walkway has since been built in its place.
Alex Murdaugh's hunting estate
Before it became known as the site where Alex Murdaugh murdered his wife, Maggie, and grown son Paul, the 1,700-acre Islandton, South Carolina, property known as Moselle was the family's hunting estate – including a house, a cabin and dog kennels where the killings occurred.
During the now-disgraced attorney's trial earlier this year, jurors visited the estate to help them better understand the crime scene and the prosecution and defense arguments.
Unlike the other crimes' sites, however, Moselle is still standing.
The estate went up for sale several months after the killings, according to CNN affiliate WJCL, and many items from the home were auctioned off soon after Murdaugh's conviction. He has filed an appeal, which is on hold while his defense attorneys pursue a motion for a new trial.
The home was sold for $2.6 million, another affiliate, WCIV, reported in March.
Contributing: Cindy Von Quednow, Veronica Miracle and Jeffrey Kopp
