Was Maddie Mogen Really Bryan Kohberger’s Target All Along? Netflix’s Documentary Reignites the Question

The question that has haunted this case from the beginning is a simple one that nobody has been able to answer with certainty. Moscow Police Chief Anthony Dahlinger has said plainly, “Ultimately we never have been able to answer that question that everybody wants answered: ‘Why?’ We don’t know, ‘Why these four?’ We don’t know, ‘Why this house?'” Now, with Netflix pulling back the curtain on new evidence, that question is burning all over again.

‘The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare,’ a three-episode docuseries that premiered on July 29, was released just days after Bryan Kohberger filed a petition in an Idaho court to rescind his guilty plea, claiming innocence and requesting a trial. The timing has reignited public curiosity about the most disturbing thread running through this entire tragedy: whether Madison “Maddie” Mogen was the intended target from the start.

The Digital Trail Linking Kohberger to Maddie Mogen

Long before any documentary cameras rolled, the victims’ families were already piecing together a chilling picture. The Goncalves family provided screenshots of an Instagram account they believe belonged to Kohberger, showing a list of people he was following that included Maddie Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves.

Kristi Goncalves stated that when cross-referencing the accounts of all four victims, it appeared the Kohberger account had interacted directly with Maddie’s Instagram. “You would go to Maddie’s Instagram account and look at her pictures, and he liked them,” Kristi said. “Bryan’s name was under a lot of Maddie’s pictures.”

The Goncalves family has spent considerable time trying to substantiate this theory on their own. However, that theory has never been confirmed by law enforcement, and according to investigators, there was no confirmed personal relationship between Kohberger and any of the four victims. The digital connection, compelling as it seemed, remained unverified.

Sources familiar with the investigation previously told Dateline that Mogen was believed to be the focus of Kohberger’s attack, partly based on the route the killer is believed to have taken through the three-story student house. That route, and what it implied about intent, became a central point of fascination for investigators and true crime followers alike.

The Mad Greek Restaurant Theory

Perhaps no theory in this case has generated more debate than the possible connection through a local Moscow restaurant. Both Mogen and Kernodle worked as waitresses at the Mad Greek, a Moscow restaurant known to serve vegan options. By the time Kohberger had moved to nearby Pullman, Washington, he had been a vegan for years. The overlap seemed too specific to dismiss.

“There’s been a lot of speculation that Bryan Kohberger possibly could have met Maddie or Xana or happened upon them at that restaurant,” one analyst noted.

“The prosecution might say that Bryan Kohberger became obsessed with Maddie at the Mad Greek and maybe even Xana. We just don’t know.” The theory offered an explanation for how a doctoral student from an adjacent university could have first laid eyes on the women who later became victims.

However, the story is disputed. The owner of Mad Greek, Jackie Fischer, stated on Facebook that a report claiming Kohberger visited the restaurant twice and ordered vegan pizza was “completely fabricated information,” calling on media to “do their due diligence before running a story.” The restaurant-connection theory remains unconfirmed, a reminder of just how much of this case lives in the gray zone between speculation and fact.

What the Netflix Documentary Actually Reveals

Director Skye Borgman says ‘The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare’ contains details “nobody’s seen,” with a trove of police bodycam footage and documents that only became publicly available after Kohberger pleaded guilty in July 2025 and a gag order was lifted. The series was produced by Joe Berlinger, who described it as the only documentary on the subject built with full cooperation from law enforcement.

The documentary includes police interview footage of survivor Dylan Mortensen, who described hearing Goncalves scream and run into a bathroom early on the morning of November 13, 2022, followed by an unfamiliar man’s voice saying, “You’re gonna be OK. I’m gonna help you.” That detail, now available to the public for the first time, adds a sickening layer to what investigators had previously described.

The series also features testimony from Moscow Police Chief Anthony Dahlinger, who characterized the crime scene as beyond the comprehension of local officers and remarked that many, including himself, pursued professional assistance afterward. Borgman, reflecting on the psychological profile the series tries to assemble, noted that Kohberger “seemed to struggle with his relationships with women,” and raised the question of whether he was connected to the incel movement, adding, “It seems to me that there was a hatred of women there.”

Was Maddie the Primary Target, and Will We Ever Know?

At the plea hearing in July 2025, Latah County Prosecutor Bill Thompson revealed that on the morning of the murders, Kohberger entered the King Road home and went straight to Mogen’s bedroom, where he found Mogen and Goncalves sharing a bed, and killed both women, leaving a knife sheath behind that bore his DNA. Kohberger was then either “coming down the stairs or leaving” when he encountered Kernodle and killed her and Chapin, who was staying in her room. The details suggest that Mogen or Goncalves were the initial target of the violence.

Prosecutor Bill Thompson also said on the 48 Hours podcast that it was likely Kohberger had been in the victims’ home prior to the killings, and that his phone records showed he had been in the neighborhood numerous times before the murders. The premeditation implied by those visits makes the question of targeting feel less like speculation and more like something that should have been answered in a courtroom.

Because Kohberger pleaded guilty a month before the case was set to go to trial, the question of why he targeted these four students was never formally addressed. Families interviewed in the documentary have mixed feelings about the plea deal and had been anticipating a trial. As director Skye Borgman put it, “If there had been some ask of the perpetrator to — in exchange for this plea deal — give some information as to the why, I think it would have helped the families a lot. They’re angry.”

Kohberger is currently incarcerated at Idaho Maximum Security Institution in a restrictive housing unit where he is confined to his cell 23 hours a day, and has reportedly filed a request to be transferred due to safety complaints. The families of Maddie, Kaylee, Xana, and Ethan are left with grief and incomplete answers, while ‘The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare’ invites the rest of the world to sit with those same unresolved questions. Now that you’ve watched the docuseries or followed the case from the beginning, do you believe Maddie was Kohberger’s intended target, and does the Netflix documentary bring us any closer to understanding why?