Episode Details

Nearly a year after Ethan Chapin was murdered alongside Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, his parents, Stacy and Jim Chapin, described how their family had tried to survive an unimaginable year of grief without allowing the murders to completely define Ethan’s life. They spoke about the devastating reality of losing one of their triplets, the effect Ethan’s death had on his brother Hunter and sister Maizie, and the deliberate choice they made to focus on the person Ethan had been rather than the brutality of how he died. Stacy and Jim said they had largely stayed away from the constant media cycle surrounding Bryan Kohberger and the criminal case because they believed endlessly consuming developments would only deepen their pain. Instead, they tried to move forward by keeping Ethan present in their daily lives, talking about him openly and finding ways to turn their grief into something positive.

That effort included Stacy’s children’s book, The Boy Who Wore Blue, which was created to capture Ethan’s personality, warmth and love of the color blue while giving younger readers a way to understand loss and remembrance. The family also established the Ethan’s Smile Foundation, which provided scholarships for students from their home community in Skagit County, Washington, and continued supporting the “Ethan’s Smile” tulip project that had been created in his honor. Jim and Stacy said those projects gave them something constructive to build from the devastation and allowed Ethan’s name to become associated with opportunity, generosity and joy rather than only with the Moscow murders. Their message was not that the grief had disappeared, but that they had chosen to carry Ethan forward by emphasizing how he lived instead of allowing his murder to become the final definition of who he was.

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bobbycapucci@protonmail.com