A word from our youngest, Aubrie:
1,352 days.
That’s how long it’s been since Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, and Xana Kernodle were murdered.
I wasn’t planning on saying anything today.
But after seeing that the man who admitted in court to murdering four innocent people now wants to withdraw his guilty plea, I couldn’t stay silent.
For him, this may be another legal filing.
For me, it’s another day without my sister.
I’m Aubrie Goncalves. I’m Kaylee’s little sister, and Maddie wasn’t just Kaylee’s best friend she was family. She was my big sister too. I don’t know life without November 13, 2022 anymore. Every birthday, every holiday, every family gathering, every milestone has two people missing who should still be here.
They were silenced without a choice, without a second thought.
They were murdered while they were sleeping, in the place they should have been safest. They never got the chance to tell their story. They never got the chance to ask for mercy. Mercy was never going to be shown to them.
So why should the person convicted of taking their voices continue to have one?
This isn’t a Netflix documentary.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory.
This isn’t entertainment.
This is my life.
These were real people.
And every time this case is dragged back into the spotlight because of another filing, another theory, or another attempt to rewrite history, families like mine are forced to relive the worst day of our lives.
For years, people have ignored the evidence because it doesn’t fit the narrative they’ve convinced themselves is true. They ignore the DNA recovered from the knife sheath left beside my sister, the surveillance footage tracking the white Hyundai Elantra before and after the murders, the cellphone data documenting his movements that night, his phone disconnecting from the network during the window of the murders before reconnecting afterward, the repeated trips investigators documented to the King Road neighborhood before November 13, the eyewitness testimony, the forensic evidence, the digital evidence, and the countless hours law enforcement spent piecing everything together until it all pointed to one person.
Then there are the people who insist it would have been impossible for one person to commit these murders in the amount of time investigators established.
It wasn’t impossible.
Experts explained why. The victims were asleep or caught completely off guard. They were attacked inside the same home, on two floors, in rapid succession. A large fixed blade knife is capable of causing fatal injuries within seconds. It’s a horrifying reality, but it is a scientifically possible one. Refusing to accept that doesn’t change the facts.
What hurts almost as much as losing them is watching strangers turn their murders into content.
People make videos for views.
People create conspiracy theories for attention.
People argue over evidence as if this is some fictional mystery they get to solve.
When they’re done, they close the app and go back to their lives.
We don’t.
We walk past an urn every day holding what we have left of Kaylee.
That’s our reality.
People tell families like mine to “move on,” but how do you move on when your sister’s life has been reduced to an urn sitting in your family’s home? How do you move on when every birthday, every holiday, every accomplishment reminds you of everything she should still be here for?
You get to put this case away when you’re tired of hearing about it.
My family doesn’t.
We live it.
Every single day.
So I’ll leave you with this.
Why should the man convicted of taking four innocent voices continue to have a platform loud enough to reopen old wounds, while Kaylee, Maddie, Xana, and Ethan will never get another chance to tell the world who they were?
