Tag: idaho

Former assistant FBI director says he believes Idaho killer suspect has killed before

Former assistant FBI Director Chris Swecker said Tuesday the man charged with murdering four Idaho college students has probably killed before.

“I hate to say this because it sounds so grim, but I don’t think this is the first time he’s ever killed,” Swecker said about accused killer Bryan Kohberger on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “I think the FBI is probably scouring the area around Pennsylvania where he spent a lot of time.”

The 28-year-old Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ house in eastern Pennsylvania and charged with first-degree murder in connection with the Nov. 13 deaths of four University of Idaho students: Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. 

He was at the time of the killings pursing a doctorate degree in criminology and forensics at Washington State University. 

Kohberger’s family released a statement this weekend asking for the legal process to play out. 

“We have fully cooperated with law enforcement agencies in an attempt to seek the truth and promote his presumption of innocence rather than judge unknown facts and make erroneous assumptions,” the statement read. 

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Idaho murders: Suspect Bryan Christopher Kohberger arrested in killings of 4 university students

Authorities have arrested a suspect in the Nov. 13 murders of four University of Idaho students, officials announced.

Bryan Christopher Kohberger, 28, was taken into custody by local police and the FBI at 1:30 a.m. in eastern Pennsylvania on a warrant charging him with four counts of murder and burglary for the deaths of Ethan Chapin, 20; Xana Kernodle, 20; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; and Madison Mogen, 21.

The PhD student, who is studying criminal justice, appeared before a judge Friday in Monroe County Court. 

The suspect is a graduate student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. Pullman is a 15-minute drive from the rental home where the four students were stabbed to death.

A white Hyundai Elantra was removed from the home where the suspect was arrested, law enforcement officials told NBC News.

The suspect appears to have beeen taken into custody  at his parents’ gated community of Indian Mountain Lake in Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, court and public records show.

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Online Sleuths Notice Figures Walking in Background of Video Taken Near Idaho Crime Scene

Eagle-eyed online observers noticed a detail that authorities may have missed in previously dismissed bodycam video, showing cops stopping suspected underage drinkers on the morning of the Idaho student murders. 

Multiple shadowy figures can be seen walking in the background of the footage, which was shot at around 3 a.m. on November 13, merely a 10th of a mile from the home where four University of Idaho students were murdered.

The students who were stopped by the officers were uninvolved in the crime, and investigators have said that the footage was of no evidentiary value to investigators, police have said. 

Online sleuths, however, have noticed several people walking in the vicinity of two houses down from the off-campus home where Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Ethan Chapin, 20; and his girlfriend Xana Kernodle, 20, were stabbed to death between 3 and 4 a.m. The bodycam clip is stamped at 3:12 a.m.

Local law enforcement and the FBI did not confirm if they had identified or interviewed the people captured walking in the videos, Fox News said. The news outlet made several inquiries about the images, but did not receive a response. 

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Idaho Police Warn of ‘Criminal Charges’ for Web Sleuths Engaged in ‘Harassing’ Amid ‘Misinformation’

Police urged the internet’s true crime community to tone things down Friday, nearly four weeks after the unsolved slayings of four University of Idaho students captured national attention.

“Investigators have been monitoring online activity related to this ongoing and active case and are aware of the large amount of rumors and misinformation being shared as well as harassing and threatening behavior toward potentially involved parties,” Moscow police said in a statement Friday afternoon.

They did not identify the “potentially involved parties.”

Police say Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, were killed in a rental house on King Road just steps off campus between 3 and 4 a.m. on Nov. 13.

Closing in on a month later, police have not publicly named any suspects or persons of interest – and they released few details before Wednesday, when they asked the public for help finding the occupant or occupants of a white 2011 to 2013 Hyundai Elantra seen near the victims’ home around the time of the slayings.

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Constitutional ban on legal cannabis advances in Idaho

As legal marijuana becomes a reality in every corner of the U.S., Idaho is putting up a fight.

State lawmakers on Friday moved forward with a proposed constitutional amendment that would bar the legalization of marijuana in Idaho in an attempt to keep the growing nationwide acceptance of the drug from seeping across its borders.

Idaho is one of only three states without some sort of policy allowing residents to possess products with even low amounts of THC, the psychoactive chemical in marijuana. Residents can cross the state border in nearly every direction and find themselves in a place where marijuana can be bought for recreational or medicinal purposes. Support for medicinal marijuana use is growing among some residents — with legalization activists trying to get an initiative on the state ballot in 2022.

It’s made some lawmakers in the deep-red state nervous, particularly after voters in the neighboring state of Oregon decriminalized the personal possession of drugs like heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine last November.

The joint resolution to ban all psychoactive drugs not already legal in Idaho won approval along a 6-2 party-line vote in the Senate State Affairs Committee. The list of substances would change for drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

But the primary target over the two days of testimony on Monday and Friday was marijuana as Idaho finds itself surrounded by states that have legalized cannabis.

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