After the mysterious slayings of four University of Idaho students over the weekend, police in Moscow, Idaho, initially insisted there was no danger to the community at large—despite the fact that no suspect has been arrested or even identified; nor has a murder weapon been found. On Wednesday, they walked that back. "We know you have questions, and so do we," the police chief told reporters, per NBC News. "We do not have a suspect at this time, and that individual is still out there. We cannot say there is no threat to the community." They do, however, still believe the attack was an "isolated" and "targeted" one, the Spokesman-Review reports. Despite the initial assurance from authorities that there was no imminent threat, students had already started fleeing the campus after their classmates were found dead at an off-campus home.
Victims Ethan Chapin, 20, and girlfriend Xana Kernodle, 20, had been at a party on campus Saturday night. Their friends Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, were out at a bar. They returned to the home where the three women lived together, and where all four were later found dead, sometime after 1:45am; police have said they are believed to have been stabbed to death around 3am or 4am, though a friend did not find their bodies and call police until around noon Sunday. Police found no signs of forced entry into the home. They say two other roommates were likely in the home when the murders took place, but were not injured; police also do not believe anyone was held hostage during the crime. When a reporter referred to the roommates as "witnesses," the police chief said, "I don’t think I ever said they were witnesses. I said they were there.”
Police did not say one way or the other whether the roommates are considered persons of interest, but did say they have cooperated with the investigation. They also did not identify the friend who called 911, but the chief did say, "We don’t know why that call came in at noon and not in the middle of the night." He said the other roommates were home when police arrived on the scene, the Idaho Statesman reports. "We’re not 100% sure if the door was unlocked,” the chief added. “There was no damage to anything, and the door was still open when we got there." There was also nothing missing from the home. The families of the victims have expressed frustration with the lack of information from police to the community and the initial insistence that this was an isolated event: "Anything can be isolated until it's not," says Goncalves' sister. (More University of Idaho stories.)
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