- In 2022, four University of Idaho students were brutally stabbed to death in their off-campus home.
- Several documentaries have since examined the case.
- The latest is Netflix’s The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare.
With the recent debut of The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare, Netflix has become the latest streamer to release a documentary about the shocking 2022 killings.
The Idaho Murders revisits the case that gripped the country and devastated the small college town of Moscow, Ida., where students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin were murdered in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022. Several weeks later, police arrested Bryan Kohberger, a doctoral student in criminal justice at nearby Washington State University. In July 2025, Kohberger pleaded guilty as part of a deal that spared him the death penalty. He was sentenced to four consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole and an additional 10 years for burglary. Just this week, Kohberger filed a petition seeking to withdraw his guilty plea.
The investigation and its aftermath, including Kohberger’s arrest and conviction, have been the subject of at least four streaming documentaries so far, including Netflix’s new three-part docuseries. Here’s a guide to every documentary about the Idaho College Murders and where you can watch them.
The investigation and its aftermath, including Kohberger’s arrest and conviction, have been the subject of at least four streaming documentaries so far, including Netflix’s new three-part docuseries. Here’s a guide to every documentary about the University of Idaho murders and where you can watch them.
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The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare (Netflix)
Per Netflix, the three-part documentary “definitively chronicles one of the most chilling murder cases in recent memory — honoring four young lives while tracing every step from the night of the killings to the arrest that followed. From director Skye Borgman (Unknown Number: The High School Catfish) and Academy Award–nominated executive producer Joe Berlinger (Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenét Ramsey), the series features unprecedented access to the victims’ families and police footage, peeling back the layers of a case that forever changed the tight-knit college town of Moscow, Idaho.”
Released on July 29, The Idaho Murders features interviews with family and friends of Goncalves, Kernodle, Mogen, and Chapin, as well as police who investigated the case. The doc also incorporates police bodycam and evidentiary footage that was previously sealed, making it the first and thus-far only documentary “that provides a complete picture with full cooperation from law enforcement,” according to executive producer Joe Berlinger.
“We were literally the first documentarians there,” Berlinger explained to Netflix, “and we are the very last to come to market, not because we’re slow. We wanted to tell the complete story.”
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One Night in Idaho: The College Murders (Prime Video)
“On November 13th, 2022 — in the still of the night — four University of Idaho students are brutally stabbed to death in an off-campus house in the quiet college town of Moscow, Idaho,” reads Amazon’s description of One Night in Idaho: The College Murders. “Within the devastated families and the community at large, questions and fear abound. What happened? Who did this, and could the killer be among us? And why these four young adults? The twists and turns of what happens next — an explosion of social media sleuthing, a cross-country manhunt, a dramatic arrest, and a looming trial — have made this crime one of the most high-profile stories of the last decade, capturing the country’s attention, imagination, and paranoia like almost no other case before it.”
Released on July 11, 2025, Prime Video’s four-part documentary was directed by Liz Garbus, the Emmy-winning filmmaker behind What Happened, Miss Simone? (2015) and I’ll Be Gone in the Dark (2020). Like Netflix’s documentary, One Night in Idaho prioritizes the stories of the victims and their families and features interviews only with people who were involved with or impacted by their murders, including the parents of Mogen and Chapin.
Peacock’s documentary “focuses its lens on the pre-trial case against Bryan Kohberger, a young criminology student accused of brutally stabbing to death four University of Idaho coeds. Could Kohberger have been a serial killer in the making, a man who hates women, or is there enough evidence to exonerate him altogether? The documentary features never before seen interviews with Kaylee Goncalves’ brother and friends of the victims.”
As you probably surmised from the description, The Idaho Student Murders focuses more heavily on Kohberger and the evidence against him, though it also features interviews with Goncalves’ brother, Steven, as well as numerous friends of the victims. Released on July 3, 2025, The Idaho Student Murders is a feature-length documentary that runs roughly 90 minutes.
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#Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders (Paramount+)
The outlier among these docs is #CyberSleuths: The Idaho Murders. “This series follows a dynamic group of amateur TikTok detectives, led by #chroniclesofolivia, in their attempt to separate rumor from fact while examining police statements and hunting for digital clues,” reads the official synopsis. “Will they help or hurt the case?”
The three-part Paramount+ docuseries was released on Feb. 6, 2024, roughly 14 months after Kohberger was arrested and nearly a year and a half before he pleaded guilty to the killings. As such, it arrived while the criminal case was still unfolding and before many key pieces of evidence became public.
Unlike the other documentaries, this one focuses on “amateur sleuths,” many of whom were likely inspired or emboldened by Netflix’s Don’t F— With Cats, which examined an unusual case in which online investigators helped identify and track a suspect before his eventual arrest.
There’s plenty of debate over whether true crime as a genre is inherently exploitative. But while Netflix’s and Amazon’s documentaries attempt to center the victims and their families, #CyberSleuths veers in the opposite direction, focusing on attention-seeking social media personalities eager to insert themselves into a devastating case.
