The search for who fatally stabbed four Univ. of Idaho students last month includes examining an enormous amount of biological and digital evidence. Victims' families and the public are growing impatient, but the crime-scene analysis could take months.
A break could come at any moment, from a confession or the thousands of tips submitted to police. But in the absence of a sudden development, investigators are relying on forensic techniques to tackle a case, in a time-consuming process that appears unusually complex, according to a half-dozen experts in crime-scene analysis and evidence gathering.
“You can’t assume each drop of blood is from the same person,” said David Carter, a professor of criminal justice at Michigan State University and former Kansas City, Missouri, police officer who specializes in homicide investigations and intelligence. “You have to sample them all and analyze them all to see if they belong to victims or a suspect. It’s very time intensive. They’re trying to find hairs, footprints from shoes, fingerprints — anything like that.
Moscow police have said they recognize how frustrating the lack of news can be for the families and the public, but do not want to jeopardize the case. Many basic details have not been released, including the exact location of each victim, the order in which they were killed and the extent of each of their wounds. Police have also not publicly theorized how the killer entered and exited the home, but say there were no signs of forced entry or property damage. Investigators also said none of the victims were sexually assaulted. The weapon is believed to have been a fixed-blade knife.
The department declined to say how long the process of examining evidence would take or answer other questions about the investigation. Steven Goncalves, Kaylee’s father, said in an interview last week that the lack of information released by the police has made him fear the investigation will lose momentum.
Investigators “try to identify the blood drops that don’t fit the larger pattern,” said Greg Hampikian, a DNA expert at Boise State University and the executive director of the Idaho Innocence Project. “That could be either from dripping from a knife or a hand as the person’s walking away or from an injury to the assailant.”
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