ID - 4 University of Idaho Students Murdered - Moscow # 13

[Puzzles]

Had a look at the map and it actually paints a very very interesting picture.

Firstly, You can see why LE think this was targeted. There has been some speculation of a stranger killing. If it was someone who was a stranger to the victims I don’t for one moment think it was chance. This isn’t someone who has driven around looking for a victim that evening imho. If you look at King street/Queen street it’s a dead end. There is nothing further on but flats and car parks. It’s not a thoroughfare, either for cars or humans. You have to go out of your way to get to it. If someone was driving around looking for a victim that night I think the police would be more interested in CCTV etc earlier in the evening anyway. But I don’t see anyone looking for a random victim ending up there. That would suggest someone local or someone who had perhaps tracked the victims location by social media. Again I can’t see any way that someone set out that night to find victims and ends up down a fairly obscure side road and/or LE wouldn’t be interested in suspicious individuals or CCTV earlier in the evening if they think the house and victims were attacked purely by chance.

Original post snipped by me:

Thank you, Finders_Keepers, for yet another provocative and insightful post and for all the work you did to make it so.

Having found you on WS, let's keep you here with us.

 

[drmrgrl]

As has been mentioned, the killer could be a hunter. That might explain the knife skills.

JMO

Or a military officer in training. Does U of I have ROTC?

 

[GGbankster]

Yes and the car was parked on Queen Rd out of others purview

How do you know the perp parked in Queens road ? Is it speculation or reported? Just curious cause I been following and it would make sense more if she/he was parked there.

 

[Diogenetic]

On ring doorbells. I live in an urban city with fairly high violent crime and property crime. ring doorbells are wide/angle fisheye types and produce very little usable video for anything at any distance over a few feet. And this crime occurred at nighttime when cameras have lower effective resolution and range. Other cameras that people use, such as standard security cameras, or Arlo type cameras are not so wide angle and produce decent video at moderate distance. So IDing someone would be pretty slim. But they could help with timeline
My guess is productive video would be of vehicles. People in Idaho tend to get around by car.

 

[Ghostwheel]

The data show that sliding glass doors are the most insecure door type you can have.

FWIW, my mom's house has a sliding door where the door slide open to the back of the house. I could lift that one off the tracks from the back yard open or closed. My sliding door slides in the inside and cannot be removed until it is almost completely open from the inside.

Either can be broken with a rock easily. The lock that comes on the door is easily broken on either. A pin in the door keeps them from opening and from lifting it out.

A French door is far easier to break into than the inside sliding door, imo.

 

[GGbankster]

well, now I'm curious. I guess my point was that there could be. a lot of reasons but this is a horrible event and who knows. The fact that they've been cleared by LE is enough for me. Also, it takes a whole lot of something awful to stab 4 people. just not seeing it and as such, I give them the benefit of the doubt.

No, I don’t think roommates were physically involved.

 

[Diogenetic]

Or a military officer in training. Does U of I have ROTC?

The vast majority of persons trained by military are not ROTC. Plenty of people in the region would be veterans, but this idea that they or scary "hunters" would be more likely suspects is not supported.

 

[LAhiker]

Memories came back with thinking about hunters. My Dad hunted. When I was a little girl he'd skin rabbits in the cellar in front of me. He'd give me the rabbit's foot sometimes. Now it sounds weird, but it was what hunting was about and I learned about that young.

When I think of hunting I think of using a gun or a trap, but I don't think of hunting with just a knife. So, I can see hunters cutting up their prey, but couldn't see them stabbing their prey. What am I missing here? To me and JMO, stabbing is different than being a hunter or a butcher.

Aiming for the right places in stabbing quickly, efficiently, and geared for silence is a different skill, IMO. ​

I didn't mean anything bad about hunters (or people who have at one time done hunting). I was just trying to think of people who might have some basic knife skill. Chefs and butchers also have basic knife skills.

That said, I agree that the skills required to kill someone with a knife are different from those involved in skinning or cutting up an animal. As for learning to use a knife as a weapon, I guess one might learn that in a gang or in prison. Are the use of knives as weapons taught in the military?

In this case, I fear that stealth and rage may have augmented any skill the person had.

JMO

 

[kalekona]

He’s not speculating. He states it very matter-of-fact. He says that his daughter, “faught back. She had defensive wounds.”

Not “would have defensive wounds” or “probably had defensive wounds.” He said she “HAD” them.

Defensive wounds would include simply shielding yourself, such as raising your arms to protect your face.

 

[mayhem911]

Hopefully the real investigation is going on nonstop 24 hours a day like web sleuths.

 

[Diogenetic]

FWIW, my mom's house has a sliding door where the door slide open to the back of the house. I could lift that one off the tracks from the back yard open or closed. My sliding door slides in the inside and cannot be removed until it is almost completely open from the inside.

Either can be broken with a rock easily. The lock that comes on the door is easily broken on either. A pin in the door keeps them from opening and from lifting it out.

A French door is far easier to break into than the inside sliding door, imo.

I am sure there are some that are designed to be more secure than others. But in general sliding glass doors are absolutely known and city by police as very insecure. Lots of videos on youtube showing how easily they can be popped - and in total silence.

 

[drmrgrl]

How do you know the perp parked in Queens road ? Is it speculation or reported? Just curious cause I been following and it would make sense more if she/he was parked there.

In my humble opinion

 

[JaimeInLA]

Defensive wounds would include simply shielding yourself, such as raising your arms to protect your face.

Yes, I am aware. Any way you define it, her dad said she had defensive wounds. He got that from the police. That was not speculation. That is important to me, because it means she woke up.

She is the only victim, that we know of, who has these wounds, so she may have been the only one who woke up before or during the attack.

 

[drmrgrl]

The vast majority of persons trained by military are not ROTC. Plenty of people in the region would be veterans, but this idea that they or scary "hunters" would be more likely suspects is not supported.

Thank you for the clarification, I just remember LE saying military type knife…

 

[Sillybilly]

Screengrab from the Johnny Law podcast linked earlier ..

Upper level roof, lower right corner, looks like a wet spot with a few dabs of snow in it, and there seems to be some disturbance of snow line where the eavestrough joins the roof. Am wondering if someone sat up there waiting for the victims to come home. (I actually had a friend whose ex was stalking her and he hung out on the roof.) Perp could have come from the wooded area off Queen Rd and that might avoid security cams.

Probably over-thinking, but what I don't see in that picture is snow on the railing directly outside those upper bedroom windows.

 

[The Observer]

One of Chapin's frat brothers...

I've pondered this too given you can see the girls rental from the Sigma Chi frat house. Some pics on their social media accounts you can see the whole front of the girl's house clearly from Sigma Chi windows.

 

[MrEosMan]

Sifting through the limited information authorities have made available, I can think of one possible scenario that fits the pieces together:

Given the home's basic layout as it appears in photos, coupled with the suggestion that the two people and the dog were unharmed on the ground floor, seemingly unawakened by the victim's screams (assuming they were asleep when attacked) and that the crime WAS the the the the targetted attack against one person...

I wonder if the assailant(s) has/have a military background given the methodical nature of the crime. Perhaps entering on the second floor, and entering the room where the first murder occurred thinking the intended target would be located there and would be alone. It would seem likely that to prevent others from being awakened, the killer would have cut the first victim's throat while covering their mouth or possibly placed a pillow over their head, and then immediately turned their attention to the second victim in the room (whether previously aware of their presence or not) and quickly attacked them in a way that would have prevented alerting others in the house. It could be possible that given how similar two of the victims appeared, the killer realized the intended target was not in the room on the second floor, and proceeded to the third floor where a similar type of attack occurred, resulting in the third and fourth murders.

It certainly seems the killer was familiar with the layout and floorplan of the home, as well as where the victims would likely be located. I find it very strange that a single person without military training could get into the house, murder four people in two separate rooms on two separate floors, with two other people and a dog present on the ground floor without alerting the dog, or without the first victim (s) reacting in a manner that would alarm the other people in the house before going to a different room on a different floor to kill the remaining victims.

Maybe the killer had been in the home multiple times before.

I wonder if theany of the victims have a tumultuous past or history with a member(s) of the University's ROTC Program?

 

[NuttMegg]

he is 100% speculating. there is no evidence whatsoever that this daughter fought back. Defensive wounds are not fighting back anymore than getting shot in hand putting up your hand as someone tries to shoot you is "fighting back."

A cut on the forearm during an attack is a defensive wound. It doesn't mean you "you fought back" it more likely means you reflexively brought up your hand and it got stabbed as you did.

Maybe it's comforting to interpret it his way. Just like you are doing, interpreting it your way, but then he has the insight of having spoken with the police while none of us have.

 

[Sister Golden Hair]

Almost 2 weeks have now gone by since the horrific murders.

With the police essentially ruling out a serial killer, and have cleared several key individuals, where does that leave us?

What are your best current theories on what happened?

when did they rule out serial killer? link please.

 

[drmrgrl]

Sifting through the limited information authorities have made available, I can think of one possible scenario that fits the pieces together:

Given the home's basic layout as it appears in photos, coupled with the suggestion that the two people and the dog were unharmed on the ground floor, seemingly unawakened by the victim's screams (assuming they were asleep when attacked) and that the crime WAS the the the the targetted attack against one person...

I wonder if the assailant(s) has/have a military background given the methodical nature of the crime. Perhaps entering on the second floor, and entering the room where the first murder occurred thinking the intended target would be located there and would be alone. It would seem likely that to prevent others from being awakened, the killer would have cut the first victim's throat while covering their mouth or possibly placed a pillow over their head, and then immediately turned their attention to the second victim in the room (whether previously aware of their presence or not) and quickly attacked them in a way that would have prevented alerting others in the house. It could be possible that given how similar two of the victims appeared, the killer realized the intended target was not in the room on the second floor, and proceeded to the third floor where a similar type of attack occurred, resulting in the third and fourth murders.

It certainly seems the killer was familiar with the layout and floorplan of the home, as well as where the victims would likely be located. I find it very strange that a single person without military training could get into the house, murder four people in two separate rooms on two separate floors, with two other people and a dog present on the ground floor without alerting the dog, or without the first victim (s) reacting in a manner that would alarm the other people in the house before going to a different room on a different floor to kill the remaining victims.

Maybe the killer had been in the home multiple times before.

I wonder if theany of the victims have a tumultuous past or history with a member(s) of the University's ROTC Program?

Didn’t drmrgrl just ask about that?