Category: Idaho

Saturday night I fell asleep watching a documentary on Prime Video (Closed for Storm, about an abandoned amusement park in New Orleans) and when I woke up about 2 a.m., another documentary was playing. That’s how it is with Prime Video — you watch one documentary, and they’ll queue up another one that plays automatically next. What percentage of their total viewership is from people like me, “sleep-watching” as it were, I don’t know, but it’s larger than zero.

Anyway, when I woke up, the show playing was One Night in Idaho, about the November 2022 murders of University of Idaho students Maddie Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. Last month, Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to four life sentences without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to those murders.

Because of Kohberger’s guilty plea, we didn’t get to hear prosecutors lay out their case in the courtroom, and a lot of mystery still surrounds the motive for the murders. Kohberger was a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, just eight miles west of Moscow, Idaho. Given the proximity of the two university towns, there’s a substantial amount of cross-socialization — WSU kids partying in Moscow, UI kids partying in Pullman. It has been suggested that Kohberger became obsessed with Maddie Mogen after encountering her while she worked a part-time job at a popular restaurant in Moscow. Kaylee Goncalves had told friends in the weeks leading up to the murders that she believed she was being stalked. Mogen and Goncalves were very similar-looking, and it may be that Kohlberger couldn’t tell them apart, if he was watching them from a distance (as evidence indicates).

It has also been suggested that Kohberger was inspired by the so-called “incel” beliefs of 2014 Santa Barbara mass murderer Elliot Rodger, who was a subject Kohberger studied while getting his master’s degree in criminal justice at Desales University in Pennsylvania.

All this I knew before I woke up in the wee hours of Sunday morning to find One Night in Idaho on my TV. The part that I caught was an interview with the parents of Ethan Chapin, horrified that such a ghastly crime could have happened in Moscow, Idaho, and could have taken the life of their son and his roommates. There is no crime problem in Moscow, a town of about 25,000 people, and part of what made this atrocity so shocking was that it occurred in such a seemingly safe place.

Based on the evidence, investigators believe that Mogen and/or Goncalves were Kohberger’s intended targets — he crept into the house and went directly to their room, stabbing them to death in their sleep. The noise apparently woke up Kernodle and Chapin, who encountered Kohberger as he was about to exit the house, and he then stabbed both of them to death to make his escape. And what was the motive?

In a word, evil.

Juliet Ochieng had a rumination on the contrast between the constructive (or creative) work of God and the destructive work of Satan. (Hat-tip: Instapundit.) Juliet (whom we old-time bloggers know as “Baldilocks”) is one of the most sincere Christians you’ll meet, and it was she who, during the Great LGF Blog War of 2009, offered the theory that LGF’s Charles Johnson was demon-possessed. And I certainly can’t rule it out.

What does demonic possession mean? Most people have some kind of horror-movie idea about this, but several years ago, I read An Exorcist Explains the Demonic: The Antics of Satan and His Army of Fallen Angels by Father Gabriele Amorth, who was often called the Vatican’s chief exorcist.  Consider a few of Father Amorth’s observations:

Diabolical obsessions are disturbances or extremely strong hallucinations that the demon imposes, often invincibly, on the mind of the victim. In these cases, the person is no longer a master of his own thoughts. . . . The objects of these hallucinations can be manifested as visions, as voices . . . as monstrous figures, horrifying animals, or devils. In other cases it can be an impulse to commit suicide or to do evil to others and, particularly in the young, it can lead to confusion about one’s gender.

“Diabolical obsessions” — might that category include Kohberger’s ideas about emulating Elliot Rodger, or his apparent stalking of the college girls who were his intended targets in 2022? Wouldn’t rule it out.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8). Good advice.

 

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Why would Bryan Kohberger kill four college students whom he’d never met? Nancy Grace may have put her finger on the motive:

Was there a possible link between the Idaho student murders suspect Bryan Kohberger and one of his victims? Fox Nation’s “Crime Stories with Nancy Grace” tackles this very question with the former prosecutor’s team of experts.
While forensic evidence seems to be pointing towards Kohberger — the criminology Ph.D. student accused of ambushing a group of University of Idaho undergrads in November and who’s since been charged with quadruple homicide — the case could hit a snag without a connection that indicates motive.
“Finally, have we found the link between Bryan Kohberger and his four murder victims, according to police? Of course the state never has to prove motive, but any jury would wonder why would he target people he had never met — or had he?” crime expert Nancy Grace posited.
“There’s a lot of forensic evidence, but… if you don’t give them a motive or a nexus, you’re going to have a problem come verdict time,” the former prosecutor and Fox Nation host explained.
The ‘Crime Stories’ episode explores how a source who spoke to People Magazine shared that Kohberger sent multiple direct messages (DM’s) to one of the victims through the social media app Instagram, but never received a reply.
Grace shared how DMs are sent and viewed, indicating to Fox Senior Correspondent Laura Ingle that the victim may have not even read or known about the messages from the suspect.
“It has been revealed now that it looks like there was a message coming from somebody that appeared to be Bryan Kohberger,” Ingle noted.
“And if somebody messages me from a post that I make or great report last night or something, I will see it. But if I’m not following that person, it’ll go to this kind of envelope that I forget about,” Ingle went on to explain.
“So sometimes I’ll go, ‘Oh yeah, I need to look at that. You need to accept the messages.’ And they’ll be a long string of random strangers saying things. And sometimes I don’t see it. And then you can either accept that message, you can delete that message. Sometimes they’re creepy messages, as we all know, being on Instagram. So there is a very big chance that she or he, whatever victim was didn’t see those messages because there wasn’t a reply according to the source.”
Grace posed the question about the importance of the phones involved, and how the interactions on social media between the victims and Kohberger could be the missing link for a motive.

Think about this for a minute. If you’re on Instagram, how often do you check your DMs? And if the DM is from someone you don’t follow, you may not even know they’ve DM’ed you. So here is the cute, popular college girl who probably had hundreds of followers, and here is this creepy loner type who has become obsessed with her, sending her DMs that she never answers because she never even sees the messages. In the creepazoid’s mind, he is being cruelly rejected by this girl, but she doesn’t even know he exists! Which is pretty damned scary to me, considering my daughter is a cute, popular college girl who uses Instagram. Like, there could be some creepy stalker loner out there at this very minute, boiling with rage because my daughter hasn’t answered his DMs.

And, in case you’d forgotten: Crazy People Are Dangerous.

 

Details compiled by Heavy.com:

Bryan Kohberger is the suspect and criminology graduate student who is accused in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students, who were killed in Moscow, Idaho. Kohberger, 28, was arrested on December 30, 2022, in Monroe County, Pennsylvania, court records show. His name was first confirmed by WPVI, a Philadelphia news station.
The accused man’s full name is Bryan Christopher Kohberger, according to Monroe County court records in Pennsylvania. . . .
Kohberger is facing extradition to Idaho on murder charges, the WPVI news station reports. Kohberger, an Albrightsville, Pennsylvania native, is a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, not far from Moscow. According to the WSU website, Kohberger is pursuing his Ph.D in criminal justice and criminology. . . .
The deaths were previously ruled homicides, police said.
“These individuals have been identified as Ethan Chapin, 20, Conway, WA; Madison Mogen, 21, Coeur d’Alene, ID; Xana Kernodle, 20, Avondale, AZ ; and Kaylee GonCalves, 21, Rathdrum, ID,” Moscow, Idaho, police wrote in a statement.
The cause of death was homicide by stabbing. . . .
When Kohberger was arrested, he “asked if anyone else was arrested,” [reporter Brian] Entin wrote in a tweet, adding, “I’m told he had a ‘quiet, blank stare.’” . . .
According to the NBC Philadelphia story, which broke on December 30, 2022, Kohberger was “taken into custody near the Pocono Mountains” in connection with the November 13, 2022, Moscow homicides. . . .
Kohberger . . . obtained a master’s degree from DeSales University, according to a commencement document from DeSales, which is located in Center Valley, Pennsylvania. . . .
Kohberger is listed on Meritpages.com as being a graduate of “Northampton Community College, Class of 2018” and “From Albrightsville, PA.” That website says that he made the dean’s list at Northampton, where he was studying “Liberal Arts, Psychology,” according to Meritpages.com.

UPDATE: The fact that Kohberger was attending grad school at Washington State University, just eight miles from the University of Idaho campus where the four students were murder in November, is certainly intriguing. Some had also previously suggested that the Idaho murders were the work of a serial killer, tying them to unsolved stabbings in Silverton, Oregon, and Washougal, Washington.

Bryan Kohberger's criminal complaint shows he was arrested in Pennsylvania on an active arrest warrant for murder in the first degree, issued through the Moscow Police Department and Latah County Prosecutor's Office. He awaits extradition to Idaho.#MoscowHomicides @IdahoNews6 pic.twitter.com/ecsbAivFkQ

— Karen Lehr (@KarenLehr) December 30, 2022

UPDATE II: Well, the police in Idaho held a press conference, but because the suspect has not yet been arraigned, they couldn’t divulge anything about the case except (a) they haven’t found the murder weapon yet and (b) a white Hyundai Elantra, matching the description of a vehicle seen near the murder scene at the time of the crime, was seized at Kohberger’s Pennsylvania residence. So we don’t know how the cops broke the case, or what evidence they have against Kohberger, and won’t learn more until after the suspect is extradited to Idaho and gets arraigned, at which time we’ll see the affidavit.

UPDATE III: More background on the suspect:

A relative told The New York Post Kohberger is ‘OCD’ about his eating habits and forced his family to buy new pots that had never been used to cook meat. 
‘It was above and beyond being vegan. His aunt and uncle had to buy new pots and pans because he would not eat from anything that had ever had meat cooked in them. He seemed very OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder)’ the woman said. …
Law enforcement sources told CNN that his DNA was discovered at the scene of the crime – with officers managing to track down who owned the car seen in the area of the slayings.
However, Kohberger has no prior arrests, according to public records, so it is unclear how officials got hold of his DNA.
Authorities then discovered that he had left the area and traveled to Pennsylvania, where an FBI surveillance team had been tracking the 6ft tall man.
He was kept under surveillance, with the FBI watching him for four days, while investigators from Moscow Police and Idaho State Police worked to get an arrest warrant. . . .
Nick Mcloughlin, who was friends with Kohberger [in high school] told the Daily Beast he was ‘stunned’ to see his old acquaintance arrested.
Mcloughlin said Kohberger was ‘down to Earth,’ when he graduated junior year. But at the start of senior year, Kohberger returned ‘thinner than a rail,’ had turned ‘aggressive’ and taken up boxing.
Recalling how their friendship soured, Mcloughlin added: ‘He always wanted to fight somebody, he was bullying people. We started cutting him off from our friend group because he was 100 percent a different person.’
[Mcloughlin] said he has ‘no idea’ what prompted the sudden change. . . .

The murderer is a vegan? Round up all the vegans! Lock them away! No one is safe from the violence of these killer vegan maniacs!

 

My brother Kirby has been following the unsolved murder of the four university students in Idaho, and a few days ago, he said to me, “This is a maniac. This is one sick m****rf***er, somebody who’s obsessed with horror movies, like Friday the 13th.” Almost from the beginning, when this case first started making national headlines, Kirby has believed that this was not the perpetrator’s first murder.

Why should you pay attention to my brother’s hunches? Because he’s got an uncanny record of accuracy about such things. Do you remember the 2002 D.C. sniper case? Kirby solved that before the FBI did.

After it was made public that “profilers” believed the sniper was a white male, Kirby called me when I was working at The Washington Times to tell me the profilers were wrong: “Stacy, it’s got to be a black guy.” His explanation was that some of the shootings were in predominantly black neighborhoods. How could a white guy be going in and out of neighborhoods like that without attracting attention? I passed this idea along to my coworkers, who scoffed that “Stacy’s truck driver brother” knew more about the case than the geniuses at FBI headquarters, but of course, Kirby was right. So, yeah, pay attention.

Four young people stabbed to death in their sleep near the campus of the University of Idaho — everything about it is mysterious. Four days after the killings, the local police chief said the FBI had joined the case and “currently we have 25-plus investigators working this case.” That number has since grown, and by last Sunday, “more than 100 investigators, officers and support staff” were working to process the tips that were being received at a special phone number set up for that purpose.

Why is the FBI so interested in this case? Kirby points out that if, as some have suggested, the murderer was a disgruntled ex-boyfriend of one of the slain girls, such a merely local crime would not attract this much FBI involvement. What do we know about the killings? Six people were in the residence at the time of the murders, sometime after 3 a.m. on Nov. 13, and the four victims were on the second and third floors. Police say there was no sign of forced entry. So somebody managed to get into this house in the pre-dawn hours of a Sunday morning without waking anyone, stab four people to death and leave behind two others, apparently in the basement, who slept through the whole thing.

Nearly two weeks later, police still haven’t identified a suspect, so it seems that this knife-wielding killer must have been very careful in his plan to commit this crime and get away with it. This doesn’t seem to be some sudden act of impulsive rage, but rather an act that was methodically planned. And then we come back to Kirby’s belief that this quadruple homicide wasn’t the killer’s first crime:

The grieving mother of a 26-year-old man murdered in Oregon last year says she has been given “hope” that the case will finally be solved after police revealed they are exploring a potential link to the murders of four University of Idaho students in Moscow.
Myra Juetten told The Independent on Thursday that finding out who killed her son Travis Juetten in a brutal stabbing attack in his home in Silverton, Oregon – and also catching the killer of the slain students in Idaho – would be “the best Christmas present ever”.
“I want answers for all five of them,” she said of the victims.
“If law enforcement can work together and solve both cases that would be the best Christmas present ever.”
Back on 13 August 2021, Travis, 26, and his wife Jamilyn Juetten, 24, were woken at around 3am when a masked assailant broke into their home, entered their bedroom and stabbed them both multiple times with a knife.
Travis tried to fight off the attacker but was stabbed to death. Ms Juetten was stabbed 19 times but miraculously survived, the Marion County Sheriff’s Office said at the time.
Despite Travis’ family putting up a $50,000 reward for information leading to the killer, 15 months on, the case remains unsolved.
This week, similarities were drawn between the knife attack on the young couple and the 13 November stabbing murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, 400 miles away in Moscow.

Wait just a minute here — what day of the week was Aug. 13, 2021? It was a Friday. Just a coincidence, perhaps, but then you see that the Idaho victims were also killed on the 13th, and while it may be a bit of a stretch to connect these crimes, which happened 400 miles and 15 months apart, investigators don’t seem to have any other leads, so maybe this is more than a coincidence. Because one of the Oregon victims survived the attack, we know that the killer wore a mask, but they don’t say what kind of mask. Was it a hockey mask? Like Jason in Friday the 13th?

Could there be a third murder connected to this case?

As investigators skipped Thanksgiving celebrations to continue their search for a suspect in the unsolved slaying of four University of Idaho students, a third unsolved stabbing in the Pacific Northwest has resurfaced with eerie similarities. . . .
[Thursday] morning, the Idaho Tribune reported that a third nearby attack shared similar characteristics.
Sandra Ladd, 71, was found dead in her home in Washougal, Washington, on June 14, 2020, according to Oregon Crime Stoppers. Her death was ruled a homicide after the medical examiner found multiple stab wounds in her torso, Washougal police said at the time.
The two attacks [on Ladd and the Juettens] happened 14 months apart but within 70 miles of one another. The locations are roughly a five-hour drive west of Moscow, Idaho.
University of Idaho students Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were stabbed to death in their sleep on Nov. 13, 2022 between 3 and 4 a.m. in a rental house just off campus, according to police.
Like the attack on the Juettens, the incident happened between 3 and 4 a.m. on the 13th of the month.

Had anyone previously connected Ladd’s murder in Washington State to the Juetten case in Oregon? Probably not, but then these four students were killed in Idaho, 400 miles away, and suddenly the coincidence — knife-wielding attacker, early-morning hours, 13th of the month — was maybe not so coincidental. And if indeed these crimes are connected, isn’t it apparent that the killer is very methodical in his planning? He first struck in Washington State, then moved across state lines to Oregon, which would reduce the likelihood of investigators making a connection between the two crimes, and then struck 400 miles away in Idaho. If he is deliberately choosing the 13th as the date of his attacks, then he must have spent some days or weeks ahead of time, scouting out his intended victims. All of this, of course, is contingent on the “if” factor; we don’t actually know that these crimes are all connected.

Notice that all three of these crimes occurred after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020. Did the killer find himself stuck at home — school canceled, or workplace shut down — and start binge-watching horror movies and serial-killer documentaries? Three or four months into his forced isolation, he decides to emulate one of his “heroes” by stabbing an old lady to death. He gets away with it, and more than a year later, decides it’s time to do it again. Gets away with that one, another year goes by, and he relocates to Idaho — new job? new school? — where he strikes again. All of these crimes happen on the 13th of the month, and if they are actually connected, the choice of a specific date (combined with the fact that the killer keeps getting away with it) suggests an intelligent perpetrator, capable of planning and organizing.

Of course, this is all just speculation. Unless and until the police apprehend a suspect, we don’t actually know that the Idaho murders are connected to these other cases. However, I cannot help but remark that these developments in the investigation tend to confirm Kirby’s hunch.

They didn’t send all those FBI agents out there for no reason, y’know.

 

Sunday afternoon, police got a call about an “unconscious person” at a residence near the University of Idaho campus in Moscow, Idaho. It was soon reported that four people had been killed, but police wouldn’t say how they’d been killed or what the motive might be. Murders are very rare in the town of 26,000 permanent residents, and now here were four murder victims at once — two university seniors, seniors Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves, both 21, junior Xana Kernodle, 20, and freshman Ethan Chapin, 20. Then on Tuesday, the local coroner let slip that the victims had all been stabbed to death, Police then said an “edged weapon” had been used in what they called a “targeted attack.” The owner of a local hardware store said police asked him if his store sold military-style Ka-Bar knives (made famous in the Rambo movies), which suggests they have some idea such a weapon was used in the murders.

Furthermore — and this is what’s freaking people out — police say that while (a) they don’t have a suspect in custody, (b) they don’t believe there is a threat to the community. Right. You’ve got a mass murderer at large, but don’t worry — there’s no “imminent danger.”

It seems obvious to me that police know a lot about the case they’re not saying publicly. Discussing the case with my brother Kirby, who’s pretty good with this kind of stuff, he thinks maybe the cops actually have their eyes on a main suspect, but are trying to get enough evidence or testimony to qualify as probable cause for a search warrant. This would explain why they believe there’s no “immient danger” to anyone else, because if police have a suspect under surveillance, and know why he did this “targeted” killing, then they also have reason to believe that the suspect isn’t just going around killing people at random.

All things considered, I’d expect police to announce an arrest within two or three days because (a) there can’t be many people who could possibly have a motive for such a “targeted” attack, (b) you don’t stab four people to death without leaving behind a lot of evidence, and (c) there’s got to be surveillance video somewhere showing somebody escaping the scene of the crime. Still, at this point, it seems very mysterious.

Stay tuned . . .