Idaho student murders update: State police won’t reveal why slain students were targeted to protect investigation

Aaron Snell, with Idaho State Police, told Fox News Digital on Saturday that information about the targeted murders is being handled with caution so as to not jeopardize the investigation, which has entered its second week with no arrests or major developments.

“And so if we just provide information to the public, I just don’t think that that’s going to be a wise choice,” he said.

Two weeks into the investigation, no arrests have been made and no suspects named.

Moscow police have ruled out several people as suspects in the grisly murders.

They have said that the two surviving housemates who were in the home at the time of the killings and the other friends who were in the home when the 911 call was made are not considered suspects at this time.

A man who was caught on camera with Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a food truck in the downtown area before they headed home and the private party who gave Mogen and Goncalves a ride home from the food truck have also been ruled out.

Goncalves’ former long-term boyfriend, with whom she shares a dog, is also not linked to the crime, police said.

It could have been anyone, in any US college town, on any Saturday night. That’s how typical the murdered students’ behaviour was in Moscow, Idaho, just hours before they were brutally stabbed to death, The Independent’s Sheila Flynn reports.

She writes: “The University of Idaho campus had been busy that day, a sea of gold and silver as the Vandals prepared for a home game against the UC Davis Aggies in the 16,000-seat Kibbie Dome.

“It was 28 degrees at kickoff – the weather was listed as a daunting “ice fog” – but happy, loyal fans turned out; the Vandals’ 44-26 loss was disappointing but did not deter the students from preparing to hit the town.

“Among them were five girls living in a three-bedroom rental home on King Road, just over a mile from the stadium and only two blocks from the edge of campus.”

Hours later, three of them and a fellow student were killed inside the home.

The Independent’s Sheila Flynn reports from on the ground in Moscow:

“There have been numerous media inquiries about a 1999 double stabbing in Pullman, Washington, and the 2021 double stabbing (with one death) in Salem, Oregon,” the statement read.

“While these cases share similarities … there does not appear to be any evidence to support the cases are related.”

This week, similarities were drawn between the knife attack on Juetten and his wife, who survived the violence, and the 13 November quadruple murders that took place at the victims’ off-campus rental home located 400 miles away in Moscow.

The Independent’s Andrea Blanco has the story:

As tributes continue to pour in for Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, and Madison Mogen more than ten days after they were stabbed to death, their roommate has chosen to immortalize their legacy on her skin, The Sun reports.

On Tuesday, the survivor posted a picture of her ink featuring angel wings and the victims’ initials — MKXE — on VSCO. The wings are reminiscent of a tattoo Mogen also had on the back of her arm.

The Independent has chosen not to name the woman to avoid undue speculation. Authorities have reiterated that the two surviving roommates are not considered suspects in the brutal stabbings and are not necessarily witnesses of the crime.

On Wednesday, authorities gave a press conference with virtually no updates, but pointed out that more than 1,000 tips have been received and 190 interviews have been conducted.

Moscow Police said that thousands of pictures were taken of the crime scene and DNA was also collected. Captain Roger Lanier said that the department believes the attack was targeted but won’t release information as to why they think so.

“You’re going to have to trust on that at this point because we are not going to release why we think that,” he said.

The FBI, Idaho State Police and Moscow Police Department have allocated $1m to the case and have assigned more than 130 officers and agents and a few behavioural analysts to work on it.

Parents are ordering deadbolts, teens are asking for guns and the streets are empty in Moscow, locals tell The Independent’s Sheila Flynn.

Sheila writes: “Moscow Lock Shop can’t keep up with the demand for deadbolts.”

A student estimated that about 50 per cent of the student body left campus before the Thanksgiving break, while a local tattoo shop owner told The Independent that he is offering to check people’s homes before they close their doors for the night.

Read Sheila’s full coverage of the case that has stumped police and left locals desperate for answers:

While the public and grieving families have grown frustrated over the lack of information being released and the conspiracy theories fueled by internet sleuths, respectively, a retired NYPD sergeant told Fox that Moscow Police have revealed plenty.

“Investigators have given out too much information,” Joseph Giacalone, a 20-year police veteran and professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice told the network.

Mr Giacalone went on to criticise Latah County Coroner Cathy Mabbutt, who appeared in several interviews with media outlets across the nation and divulged what Mr Giacalone described as speculation.

The Independent’s Andrea Blanco has the story:

Jeremy Reagan, a third-year law student who lives near the scene of the murders that shocked the university town of Moscow last week, told Fox News that the victims would often host self-contained gatherings and added that people went in and out of the house “pretty frequently.”

“There were parties that were kind of loud,” Mr Reagan said.

“As I would take my dog in and out to go to the bathroom [and] I would see people in the windows almost every night, probably four or five nights a week … it was kind of a party house but then again this whole neighbourhood is a party neighbourhood.”

After University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen were brutally murdered, their loved ones have tried to navigate grieve amid rampant rumours about the circumstances surrounding the killings.

“All the noise out there is really harming the families,” a friend of Kristi and Steve Goncalves, Kaylee’s parents, told The Independent. “And it’s taking the police down trails that are not real and taking them away from the ones that are.”

Police have issued similar pleas updating their social media posts repeatedly to address specific inaccuracies circulating.

They shot down reports that the skinning of a nearby pet dog was related to the murders; then they said a report of a man waiting in a woman’s car was “unfounded.”

The Independent’s Sheila Flynn has the story: