Should a notorious crime scene be demolished before trial?

In the house where four University of Idaho students were murdered last year, the windows are covered with plywood sheets. There is a temporary fence around the yard. Security guards, stationed in a blue trailer, keep watch 24 hours a day.

And yet, for a university trying to erase the remnants of a tragedy that cast a haunting shadow over the past academic year, the house on a hill near campus remains uncomfortably conspicuous — visible from nearby fraternity houses and sought after as a photo spot by real — crime buffs from all over the country. University officials hope to demolish it before a new batch of students arrive in August.

But the plan has upset some relatives of the four murdered students, who fear the house could be vital to the prosecution of the accused killer, and to a jury’s insight into how the four students lived in the bedrooms. on the second and second floors could have been butchered. third floor without alerting two other roommates in the house. They have urged the university to postpone the demolition.

“The best thing for the case is for us to be careful and protect what the jury may want to deal with,” Steve Goncalves, the father of one of the victims, Kaylee Goncalves, said of the university’s announcement.

The parents of Ethan Chapin, another of the victims, said the situation was difficult and there were no easy answers. On the one hand, they agree with Mr. Goncalves that demolishing the house this summer “feels very early,” said Stacy, Mr. Chapin’s mother. But she noted that their two other children — they were triplets — are still students at the University of Idaho, and one of them has a room that faces the house, which is a constant reminder.

“Our kids have to walk past that house every day,” Ms Chapin said. “The children, they need to heal. The university must heal. And the community.”

The Idaho home joins a growing number of infamous properties across the country whose fate has become the subject of complex legal and ethical debates as communities try to decide what, if anything, should stay after a mass murder.

In Newtown, Connecticut, the Sandy Hook Elementary School building was razed and rebuilt after the 2012 mass shooting that killed 26 people. In Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers last year, the school district has similar plans to demolish the school and build a new one.

Other communities have left such crime scenes intact. The large hunting estate in South Carolina where Alex Murdaugh’s wife and youngest son were murdered in 2021 was sold for $3.9 million just weeks after Mr. Murdaugh, a prominent attorney, was convicted of their murder. Students in Santa Fe, Texas, returned to the high school within weeks where a gunman killed 10 people in 2018.

And while some residents called for the movie theater in Aurora, Colo., where a mass shooting occurred in 2012, to be demolished, it was renamed, remodeled and reopened within six months.

The Idaho case isn’t the only one in which some have argued for the crime scene to be left open to jurors. The classroom building in Parkland, Florida, where a gunman killed 17 students and staff five years ago, is still standing, fenced off from where students attend classes in adjacent buildings. Jurors visited the abandoned building during the gunman’s sentencing trial last year, working their way past broken glass, bullet-holed walls and floors still stained with blood.

Following last week’s acquittal of a school employee who did not confront the shooter — the latest criminal case to stem from the shootings — school officials said they now intend to proceed with the demolition. But first the authorities began allowing relatives of victims to walk the corridors of the building for the first time since the shooting this week, if they wanted to.

Jurors this year visited Murdaugh’s crime scene in Islandton, SC, during Mr. Murdaugh’s trial. They walked around the area where the victims were shot, including a barn and feeding room, for about an hour. Similarly, when novelist Michael Peterson went on trial in 2003, charged with murdering his wife, jurors were given the opportunity to examine the stairwell where she died in their home. The house remains, although it has been sold several times since Mr. Peterson’s trial, including to a man who describes himself as a “psychic medium.”

Four students were killed in the Idaho stabbing on November 13: Mrs. Goncalves, 21; Madison May, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Mr. Chapin, 20. Their bodies went undiscovered for hours and a suspect went unidentified for weeks. Investigators finally arrested Bryan Kohberger, a Ph.D. criminology student at nearby Washington State University.

Jodi Walker, a university spokeswoman, said the house, in the middle of a student neighborhood, is a constant reminder of what happened there. She said officials also considered the needs of all students and staff on campus when they made the decision to demolish the structure.

“This is another step toward healing,” she said. “It’s definitely a balancing act.”

The lawyer of Mr. Kohberger, Anne Taylor, told campus officials in April that she had “no objection” to the plan, according to an email. Prosecutor Bill Thompson told the university he also had no objection, as authorities believed it would not be necessary for a trial.

“The site has been significantly altered from its condition at the time of the murders, including the removal of relevant property and furnishings, the removal of some structural items such as wallboards and flooring, and has been subject to extensive chemical applications that pose a potential hazard to health,” said Mr. Thompson wrote in a separate email. “These are some of the reasons why we concluded that a ‘jury’s opinion’ would not be appropriate.”

Last week, trucks stopped at the home to begin removing the former residents’ belongings, a process that could take several weeks. Demolition would begin soon after.

But some relatives of the victims say that with the trial not scheduled until October, it is too early to destroy the scene of the murders.

Shanon Gray, an attorney representing the Goncalves family, said jurors may need to see the home to understand how noise traveled through the building and how a killer could move through the home’s unusual six-bedroom layout.

He argued that the university was in a hurry to demolish it because it wanted to put the tragedy behind it before fully coping with it.

“It’s for the University of Idaho, trying to tell everyone to hurry up and forget this ever happened,” he said.

Members of Ms Mogen’s family and Ms Kernodle’s family also want the home to be preserved until the criminal case is resolved, Mr Gray said.

The landlord of the house where the murders took place donated the house to the university, leaving its fate in the hands of the school board. Public ownership can make it easier to demolish homes with a bad history, but privately owned homes often end up with the same fate. The Illinois home where many of John Wayne Gacy’s victims were found was razed and a new one built; in Wisconsin, the apartment building where Jeffrey Dahmer committed a series of gruesome murders was also demolished. The lot is empty today.

University of Idaho officials have not submitted a plan for how the Moscow property will be used after the house is razed.

Neighbors are largely silent on the fate of the home, which sits in a cul-de-sac south of campus close to several other residences.

Vanessa Lopez, 25, lives near the house and sees it every day. She said the property had become something of a tourist attraction, which she found disrespectful, and a constant reminder of the horrors that took place in what had always been a quiet town.

Ms Lopez said the wishes of the victims’ families should come first, but she would like the house gone. “Now that it’s still there, it just brings back the memories,” she said.

For Mr. Goncalves, the house has a very personal meaning, both as a place where his daughter lived many of the best moments of her life and as a symbol of how he believes the community failed to keep her and her friends safe . But the most pressing issue now, he said, is preserving it to ensure accountability for the killings. Tearing down the house, he said, will not make the nightmare that happened there go away.

“It’s just going to be a crazy hole in the ground,” he said. “Is that somehow better?”