Cops investigating the quadruple student murders in Moscow, Idaho, have been offered counseling as the investigation moves into its seventh week with police yet to name a suspect or motive and under intense pressure to resolve the case, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Childhood friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen, both 21, their roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, also 20, were killed where they slept on the second and third stories of the rented house the girls shared with two other students.
Locked in their rooms on the first floor, it was one of these two survivors who placed the 911 call at 11.58am November 13 because they were unable to wake one of the victims and feared she may have passed out.
Speaking earlier this month, Moscow Police Department Chief James Fry admitted that the brutality of the slaughter they discovered – the first homicides in the small Idaho university town in seven years – has impacted deeply on all those tasked with investigating it.
There are no leads and no suspects in the murders of four University of Idaho students six weeks after the brutal slayings
Students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, both 21, their roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed on November 13
Chief Fry broke down in tears as he told Fox News: ‘I’m a dad with daughters. It’s tough. We’re human. We don’t go to these and just turn it on. It affects us. But we have a job to do and we’re going to continue to do that job, going to continue to push forward.’
Fry’s visible emotion offered a glimpse into the toll of dealing with such a gruesome crime and a scene unlike any his relatively inexperienced force has ever witnessed. The lead investigator, Brett Payne, is a 32-year-old army veteran with just two years of policing under his belt.
Now, DailyMail.com has learned, counseling services have been ‘activated and offered’ to officers, all of whom are working throughout the holidays in a bid to solve the crime that has gripped the nation.
Moscow Police Department spokesman Captain Anthony Dahlinger told DailyMail.com: ‘From the point of view of taking care of our officers, we have activated [counseling] resources for anyone who needs them, and our priority is to keep our force healthy as we work until we get this investigation to its conclusion.’
He added: ‘Morale is high, and we’re all committed to seeing this investigation through to the end – it being the holidays is kind of moot. We’re just focused on that goal.’
Last week DailyMail.com heard from the private taxi driver who drove Goncalves and Mogen home, delivering them unwittingly not to safety but to their deaths.
Officers investigating the case have now been offered counseling as pressure intensifies to find a suspect and motive
The strain showed on the face of Idaho State Trooper Brandalyn Crapo as she stood on guard during a November 30 vigil for the slain students
Moscow Police Department Chief James Fry admitted that the brutality of the slaughter they discovered has impacted deeply on all those tasked with investigating it
Scott Green, President of the University of Idaho, was visibly shaken at a press conference after the murders last month
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he expressed little faith in Moscow Police Department’s abilities and said: ‘It’s not lost on me that my job was to get them home safe and this time it didn’t really make a difference.
‘Those kids deserve justice, and it feels to this community like the police aren’t even trying. Which is 100% related to how they’re communicating with the community and people are scared.’
The driver told how he had picked the girls up around 1.45am and recalled that they were ‘super excited’ about the pasta dish they had just picked up from the Grub Truck food stand.
He said: ‘Most of us here have very little faith in Moscow Police Department. We can’t tell if we are watching qualified investigators who have a handle on the situation or if they are completely at a loss and grasping for straws.’
Moscow Police Department is being assisted by 62 FBI agents and 28 Indiana State Police officers.
DailyMail.com has learned the FBI has brought in two criminal profilers in a bid to gain some understanding of who might have committed the brutal killings.
Kaylee and Madison were found on the top floor of the Moscow, Idaho home. College lovers Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle were found in a second-floor bedroom while survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were sleeping on the first floor
But police have yet to recover the murder weapon, name any suspect or give any hint of what might lie behind the brutality.
And they have issued mixed messages regarding whether they believe the attacks were targeted or random. They initially suggested that one of the students was the target before backtracking and suggesting that the house rather than any individual victim may have been the killer’s focus.
Meanwhile, experts and web-sleuths have offered a host of unverified theories: that the killer was an incel driven by a hatred of women, that they were the ‘stalker’ of whom Goncalves had allegedly complained, or that it was the same killer who attacked a couple in Marion County, Oregon, last year leaving Travis Juetten, 26, dead and his wife Jamilyn, 24, seriously injured.
But there is little to no information coming from the official investigation other than lines of enquiry that have been shut down and people eliminated.
These include the private car hire driver, the two surviving roommates, a male seen in the Grub Truck surveillance video, the male ‘Jack’ whom Goncalves and Mogen called numerous times during the early morning hours of November 13 and the sixth person on the lease who moved out before the school year started.