Quadruple student homicide mystery in Idaho

It was 11:58 on Sunday, November 13 when 911 received a call from students at 1122 King Road in Moscow, a town in the middle of the hills of Idaho, a rural state in the American Northwest. On the spot the carabinieri discover four bodies: two on the first floor, two on the second. The bodies of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, both 21, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, each 20 and a pair, are stabbed with stab wounds. No trace of a sex crime was found, but some of the victims had defense wounds.

According to the first elements of the investigation, these quiet students were killed in their sleep, without waking up the other two roommates in this three-story white house with small windows. The time of the crime? Between 2:52, the time of last calls logged on Kaylee Goncalves’ phone, and late morning distress call. Everyone had partied the night before, one regular student on Saturday night.

The father of Kaylee Goncalves, one of the victims, said on Sunday December 11 that the bodies bore large gaping wounds which he said were clearly the work of a sadist, reports the BBC.

A hundred investigators from the local police, the state and the FBI are quickly mobilized. They collect 113 seals, 4000 photographs and more than 5000 clues. But “at present there are no known suspects, no arrests or any weapons found,” the police summarized on its website. On Monday, December 12, Roger Lanier of the Moscow police said an “army of analysts” were watching surveillance video from across the city uploaded by residents and business owners. “As you can imagine, there are hours and hours and hours of video, so it takes a long time.”

The list of people cleared of any suspicion is longer: the two surviving housemates; a hooded man seen near Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen buying food from a “food truck” as they left a cafe, around 1:30am; the one who led them to the cursed house; the friends called in the morning by the surviving roommates; a man who would have followed Kaylee several months earlier.

The news is stoking fear on the University of Idaho campus. Many students have taken refuge with their parents, continuing their studies at a distance, away from a snow-covered city where police patrols and security around schools have increased. Anxiety fueled by a speech from the authorities as fluctuating as it is stingy with information.

It is a “crime of passion”, declared the mayor of Moscow in the aftermath of the murders, before going back on his words. The next day, the police reassured them that there was “no danger”, the attack was “isolated and targeted”, then backed down, being more evasive. On Saturday, four weeks later, he still urged the audience to “move as a group.”

And then, the investigators are careful not to make some details public: where exactly were the victims found? What are their plagues? What traces, fingerprints, DNA samples were collected? What is the content of the first request for help? These unanswered questions sparked an online gossip.

On one branch of the giant Reddit forum, thousands of trainee investigators develop all sorts of speculations, dissect the video surveillance images in their own way and even go to the scene. He is the hooded man next to the two girls near the food truck, the gait is suspicious, some argue, even if the police have removed him from the suspect list. He’s a serial killer, a professional, that’s for sure, others argue. Pools are asking for funds to help a family recruit a private investigator.

And what about this white Hyundai that is still wanted by the police and was seen near the house on the day of the murders? On a Facebook group of over 75,000 members dedicated to the case, an Internet user linked it to a theft a few days earlier and called the police, 996 comments rained down. Faced with the influx of calls relating to this car, the authorities had to resort to a federal call center. Police now devote most of their press releases to denying outlandish claims