[reporter 1] Four University of Idaho students were found dead
in an off-campus house yesterday morning.
[reporter 2] No suspect. There's nobody in custody right now.
[reporter 3] Classes for University of Idaho students
are canceled for the day. They say they will resume classes…
[Wood] All I know is we are not safe here.
We gotta go as far away from Moscow as possible.
Kids were just piling out of that place as fast as they could get out.
[Berriochoa] I've never felt fear like that in my life.
[Dewitt] I pulled all my guns, hid them around the house.
If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.
[reporter 4] At this point, police have only said
that they do not have anyone in custody.
Driving back home, same things kept playing over in my head.
Why would something like this happen?
[Eckles] What if the person that gets arrested
is actually one of our own?
[Karen] Scott and I were in our own little world of grief.
Not to know whether we should be crying or
screaming, or mad.
Just all those emotions… You don't know…
[inhales sharply] You don't know what to do.
And it was every moment of just being on pins and needles
because you have no idea why they would… [inhales sharply]
…why they would hurt these children.
Why they would hurt… [breathes shakily]
…my child. Like… [cries]
I mean, I don't have enemies in life, so I'm like…
[stammers] …so you're just stretching your imagination
to think of anything at any time, like, "Why? How does this make any sense?"
That somebody could do this outrageous act…
I mean, it…
It's… it's… [stammers]
Something like that is made up and, uh,
it's supposed to be a horror movie or something like that.
This was real life.
[Karen] In the back of your mind, you're like, "Are they stalking us?"
Then every time I heard a sound,
anytime I heard a…
[stammers] …a twig breaking, it absolutely tore the sense of peace…
and security
out of our lives.
[Hunter] Every single night, I'd walk around the house,
and I'd make sure every door is locked, probably three different times,
just because I was so scared to go to bed.
It was just silence
because such a big member of our family just wasn't there anymore.
And we slept, laid in bed, cried.
[Jim] Many, many, many mornings of getting up and…
crying in your coffee.
[Stacy] You know, you're just really questioning how you got to where you were.
How did this happen to our kid?
Somebody that we have spent a lifetime raising.
The phone was ringing.
Our family members were calling.
I mean, just nobody knew what to do.
I mean, you're making plans, and you're…
You know, it happens just so quickly, and, you know, it was insane.
The Moscow Police Department called us every day
and updated us on what they could, which wasn't a lot of information.
And then you have to handle the kids, which is tough.
Hunter Johnson and Emily Alandt showed up, Ethan and Xana's best friends.
Stacy and Jim, they invited us to the cabin, and, honestly, I…
This… The Chapins are unbelievable.
I just got to, like, be with them and, like, escape.
I think I shut off
and tried to push it away as much as possible.
I think that we went to support them and they… Stacy supported us.
[inhales] We just sat.
We just sat and talked through, you know, what had happened.
[Alandt] We started thinking about the day before they were killed.
We started putting our brains together on where everybody was at,
what everyone was doing.
In the morning, there was a get-together, shindig at Xana's house.
Vandal football this Saturday.
Xana was calling me. "Come over, come over, come over."
So I was at Xana's in the morning to pregame.
[Johnson] It was our core friend group, like, it was Ethan, Xana, it was Dylan,
it was Bethany, Maddie, it was Kayla. Everyone who lived there was there.
[Lauteren] The party just lasted all day.
I was really drunk if I'm gonna be honest.
Uh, but I left my phone there
and Dylan and Maddie both took pictures on my phone of themselves,
like, a million of them.
We took pictures outside 'cause we were all dressed up for game day.
That's when they took that picture.
Kaylee texted me with the picture of Maddie on her shoulders,
that picture that everyone in the media has seen,
and just loving this amazing, happy moment.
That weekend, I called Maddie and she put me on FaceTime,
and then I was having a conversation with all of them.
[Lauteren] And then Xana and Ethan left to go to the game.
I think the last thing we said to each other was, "I love you. Bye."
And gave a hug,
and that was the last time I saw them.
[Stacy] Saturday, November 12th, it was a fall formal at Maizie's sorority,
and it was great because our kids were together.
I don't usually invite anybody to formals,
but some of Ethan's friends were going.
And he wasn't going, so I was like, "Okay, you can just be my date."
That was super fun.
[Stacy] As a parent, when your kids are off at college,
you check your Life360 and see if everybody's home
so that you can sleep well.
It just was a feel-good. Like, "I don't have to worry about the kids tonight."
[Maizie] We left at, like, 9:00 and everybody went back to Sigma Chi.
For some reason, I stayed and went to bed.
[phone chimes]
Ethan kept texting me, "Maizie, come hang out."
I went to sleep, so I wasn't responding to any of them.
[phone chimes]
Last one said, "I love you."
Which was also weird because we don't say that to each other.
Yeah.
[Hunter] After Maizie's formal, we had a party at Sigma Chi,
which we call them "lodge party."
-[chattering, laughing] -[dance music playing]
Went up to the party and then, uh, partied for a bit.
[partygoers exclaiming]
[Lauteren] I don't know who was at Sigma Chi because I didn't make it
because I went to bed at 9:00. [chuckles]
I was like, "Oh, there'll be another party."
Like, there's always another party.
Me, Ethan and Xana were in my room in the fraternity,
and then they went back to Xana's house.
[Berriochoa] On the night of November 12th,
I was a sober bro.
I volunteered to be sober that night
so that anybody who needed a ride anywhere could get one.
I was just kind of popping in and out of different locations,
seeing if anybody needed anything.
The last time I saw Xana, she was on her way out of Sigma Chi,
and she was like, "You never come hang out at my place.
You gotta come over more often."
That was one of my biggest regrets.
I never got the chance to just because of the…
the way I took it for granted.
[Alandt] We knew that Kaylee and Maddie were at the Corner Club,
which is pretty much our only bar in Moscow.
We knew that they were coming home late.
Was there anybody random at the Corner Club that we didn't know?
Was anybody targeted at the Sigma Chi party?
We just wanted to know, like, who did this? Like, why did this happen?
[bell tolls]
[Dewitt] I write for the student newspaper for University of Idaho.
A lot of students weren't feeling safe.
And because I'm local,
because I personally knew Xana since elementary school,
I got the sense of the gravity behind the tragedy,
where a lot of news people kind of lose their humanity
around things like this because, you know, it's just another story.
These four people touched so many students
and so many people knew them.
[reporter] This is Northwest Public Broadcasting.
Today we have Lauren Paterson here in the studio
to talk about what has happened in the Moscow homicides case.
-Welcome, Lauren. -[Paterson] Thanks for having me.
I'm one of two reporters for Northwest Public Broadcasting
that covers stories in North Idaho.
I actually had never reported on a crime before
until this happened.
We focus a lot on arts and culture stories or agricultural policy
because the crime rate is low.
As a local, as a Moscow resident, as a University of Idaho alumni,
I wanted to get answers for the community.
Monday morning, all that we knew by that point
was that four people were dead.
I mean, people were panicking. People were really fearful.
[Epperly] I was the reporter on scene for The Spokesman-Review.
I cover a lot of court cases and crime.
My first instinct was to get into town and see the house,
and then to call the police to see what they could tell me.
I get there, there's crime scene tape in front of the house,
other reporters there and we all have questions.
"Who are these students? What happened? How did they die?"
Among us reporters, we were trying to think through all the possibilities.
Who can we call?
Who is gonna give us information?
That first day, Moscow police put out, like, a statement,
but there was very little information.
On Tuesday, I was finally able to get ahold of police
and I started asking some questions,
and they said, "You're gonna have to refer to our statement."
And I said, "So you're not taking questions?"
And he said, "No, we're taking questions."
And I said, "But you're just not answering them."
In larger police departments, you have a public information officer
who's assigned to talk to the press.
In Moscow, nothing like this ever happens,
so they just assigned it to one of the cops.
I'm like, "Look, we gotta know what's going on.
Can I come down? Can I do an interview?"
And he's like, "Oh, we're not doing interviews with the press."
I was shocked. I was like, "How could they not tell us what's going on?"
We were getting such little information that it created this chasm
where rumors and speculation just started to fill the silence
from the police department.
[phones chime]
Students told other students,
and then that filtered in through the town.
People start texting and talking and like, "Oh, my gosh. Did you hear?
What's going on?
What happened?"
[Couch] I had previously lived in the King Road house,
and a lot of people were saying that it was the party house,
that it was just an open-door policy.
People could just walk in and out.
I think that's absolutely not true.
That house was a safe space for us.
People think that it was a drug house, that they got murdered 'cause of drugs.
And I'm like, "What?"
People said they were doing drugs out of there,
like, selling drugs out of there, so it was a drug dealer that came.
Like, we didn't do drugs.
[phone chimes]
[Paterson] I was hearing rumors like,
"Maybe it was someone who was just in town for the game that weekend."
[Berriochoa] There was rumors of a robbery gone wrong.
[Epperly] That Ethan brought drugs to the house, and they'd all overdosed.
[Stacy] At one point, we were like,
"Okay, Maizie and Hunter, be straight with us.
Is there something that you know about your brother
that's gonna come forward here that we don't know that we need to know?"
And they were like, "Nope. No."
They were people we knew.
So we were like, "That's not possible. That's not possible. That's not possible."
[Epperly] Pretty quickly, there were dozens of reporters in Moscow.
I got here on Sunday, the day after the attack,
and there was just local media.
And by Tuesday, there was dozens of people from all over the country.
I mean, there were national media outlets here
before there was even a press conference.
Before we knew anything about how they died.
[reporter] According to residents in Moscow,
some people related to the case have been harassed
and even followed home by national correspondents.
It was like, "Hey, I'm so-and-so from the New York Times.
I'm from CNN. I'm from MSNBC."
I'm just like, "Why are they here?
Why do they care what's going on in Moscow, Idaho?"
It was just a media circus.
Does anyone know where they were during that timeline?
Like, there's still this big chunk where…
Um, as of right now, we've told Moscow PD, Idaho State Police
and the FBI all we know.
Um, but that's all I really wanna talk about right now
'cause I actually have class here in, like, 15 minutes.
[Dewitt] Reporters trying to reach out to friends,
like, a week after their friends or family had died.
[Paterson] And then they started, like, going after the victims' families.
And my phone just kept going off and it was all these weird phone numbers.
And, I mean, there must have been six or eight calls within 15 minutes.
Everybody, you name it.
I mean, there were people that slid into the kids' DMs on their social media.
I probably had 20 calls a day from the top news reporters in the nation.
[Karen] I got out to check the mail,
and I made it halfway across the street,
and two people got out of this car
and they were like, "Ma'am."
They didn't know my name, which was enough of an insult.
They were like, "Ma'am. Ma'am, can we talk about this situation?"
And I just ran to the door.
I'm like, "I don't wanna talk to you."
Just out of control.
We were just rattled, just unnerved.
We were afraid to leave the house.
They wanted to have an interview. They wanted us to be on immediately.
Well, we didn't know anything, I mean…
[stammers] And you really don't wanna talk to anybody.
I mean, I… You can't even make sense of it in your own head.
Why would you try to explain it to-to somebody else?
It's like, "Okay… [chuckles]
…you don't need to use me to get views for your news station."
[chuckles]
I don't know. That whole stuff kind of pissed me off a little bit.
[Karen] I'm a mom.
We have a simple life.
To, all of a sudden, be thrown into the spotlight,
it just felt very much like my quiet, private house
was now the nation's attention.
Terrifying.
The University of Idaho has been shaken up by the deaths of four students.
There's still no suspect in custody and more questions than answers.
[reporter] The lack of official information from police
is leading to a lot of fear on campus.
Parents are calling, angry, wanting some answers.
[Eckles] I've been in higher education for coming on 30 years now.
You never get trained for something like this.
You're never prepared.
But this crime in particular,
the nature of it, really struck at the core horror
of what people think and worry about.
[Bettge] In Moscow, major crime does not happen.
It just doesn't.
The last time Moscow had any kind of a homicide
was seven or eight years prior,
so our police plan for talking with the public
about major crimes was woefully deficient.
We had no plan.
For the first three days,
it was the mayor trying to talk with the news media
about what went on.
I feel very badly for the victims and everybody else who's a friend
and associate with those people.
This is stuff that shouldn't happen,
especially in a small, quiet town like Moscow is.
I don't know how I got to be the point guy for the media,
but that's part of the mayor's job, I suppose,
even when you don't have any information to relay.
Mayor, how do you know this was an isolated incident?
[Bettge] The police have been doing their work.
They believe this was a singular, targeted incident.
And no one else is in any jeopardy.
[anchor] How do they know that?
Because there's a killer of these four individuals
who is out there somewhere, correct?
[Bettge] Yeah.
[reporter] We are two full days after this horrific incident
just off campus and still no news conference from the police.
I don't think any of these people are being malicious.
They've never had to deal with anything like this in their lives.
And, you know, I don't know how you could be prepared
in such a small town for this level of crime
and for this level of attention.
It's been three days.
Get me off the stage.
Put a badge behind a microphone, please.
My name is Chief James Fry with the Moscow Police Department.
I'm gonna be reading from my notes today
'cause I want the information you receive to be extremely accurate.
We know you have questions, and so do we.
The Moscow Police Department would like to extend our condolences
to all family members, friends,
the University of Idaho and the Moscow community.
Um, I probably should have been standing here a day or so ago,
but I'm here now, we're gonna continue to be here.
We're gonna continue to give you the information we can.
Um, we care about this community. I care about this community.
The facts of the case that we know right now.
We know that these homicides occurred in the early morning hours
of Sunday, November 13th, inside the residence on King Road.
The four were stabbed with a knife,
but no weapon has been located at this time.
The Moscow police confirmed that these were homicides,
and the manner of death was stabbing.
And a stabbing is a very intimate crime,
so there's something especially egregious and sinister about the way this was done.
[Karen] I got a phone call from the officer,
and he said, "Well, the only thing that we know thus far
that we can tell you, is that it was with a sharp object."
[cries]
Which, of course, you know what that means.
I'm like… [breathes shakily] "So you're saying…
You're saying they were stabbed?"
[Wood] I paint this picture of what I thought,
what I feel like that morning looked like inside that house.
And it's unfortunate, because every time I close my eyes, I see that image.
I see the blood dripping outside of the house.
That's just engraved in my brain.
It's overwhelming to have that kind of imagery in your mind.
It's just so horrible to think about and especially in that way.
And how much I know that they suffered.
That really hurt.
You know, it's like… [stammers] …what the hell is this psychopath?
You know, to do that.
There's still a-a person out there
who committed four horrible, horrible crimes.
So I think we got to go back to, um, th-there is a threat out there still.
Possibly. We don't know.
We don't believe it's gonna be to anybody else.
But we all have to be, um, aware of our surroundings
and make sure that we're watching out for each other.
I'm going to open it up to some questions, um, that I'm sure you have,
and we'll do the best we can to, uh, answer those for you.
I'm Emma Epperly with The Spokesman-Review.
-Hi. -Hi.
Um, so there were other, uh, roommates who lived at that… at that residence.
Um, were the roommates home at the time of the attack?
[Fry] There was other people home at that time.
But we're not just focusing just on them.
We're focusing on everybody that, uh,
may be coming and going from that residence.
[Epperly] So, since they were home, was it a hostage situation?
No, it was not.
Just a follow-up on what she asked.
So you have surviving witnesses
to an incident at 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning
and the 911 call didn't come until noon?
I don't think I ever said that they were witnesses.
I said they were there.
We don't know why that call came in at noon.
That's why we're investigating everything still
to try to pull all the pieces together.
And are you able to tell whether the same weapon was used on all four victims?
[Fry] You know, the autopsy will confirm that
and, hopefully, collect some evidence for us.
That's what you do, um,
the autopsies, is to try to be thorough and try to gather more.
So, um, we'll leave that.
That-That-That would probably be something that would come out later.
Thank you again for coming.
That's going to be all the questions we take at this time.
We want to reassure the, uh, community, that, um, the Moscow Police Department
and everybody working on this will do everything we can to solve this.
Thank you.
[reporter] We're just getting some breaking news
in the case of those four college students who were murdered in Idaho.
The autopsy report was just released
and reveals that the killer likely used the same large knife
to attack all four students.
CBS spoke with the coroner,
who says the nature of the crime seems personal.
There was a lot of blood. It was a very sad scene.
[interviewer] Were the deceased all in
in close proximity to each other,
or were they in different
rooms?
Um, I don't know that I can discuss that.
[Johnson] We're like, do we know the person?
This would cause a lot of stress for us if it… we did know the person.
[Alandt] We started monitoring social media.
We put all of our knowledge together to try to figure out who did it and why.
And then someone sent me the Grub Truck video.
[reporter] If you've ever been out on Moscow's Main Street
past 10:00 on any given night,
you've probably seen this yellow truck.
[Alandt] Grub Truck is the only food source open in Moscow
past, I think, midnight.
They live feed everything,
and you can watch the live feed just if you're bored.
-Hello? -[Goncalves] Hi.
I think I would like the, um…
[Paterson] And people found this little segment
where Maddie and Kaylee were ordering
in the early morning hours of November 13th.
[Alandt] In the video, you can see Kaylee and Maddie ordered their food.
[Epperly] There are quite a few people kind of milling around,
and there's a man in a hoodie that's kind of behind them,
also seems to be waiting for food.
[Paterson] The girls take their food and they leave,
and he's seen on camera kind of going in the same direction.
[Maizie] I just remember watching that video and being like,
"That guy looks really suspicious."
[Paterson] And then this footage goes viral.
[reporter] The county prosecutor and police
say they're combing through the video,
trying to identify people with whom they may have come in contact.
There were thousands of posts on TikTok and Twitter.
[cyber sleuth 1] One of the first people that caught my attention
is the guy in the food truck video with the hoodie.
I do think it could have been the food truck guy.
At the food truck, Maddie at some point says, "F you" to him.
[cyber sleuth 2] You can tell these girls,
they didn't want nothing to do with this guy.
[Alandt] We're, like, we know who that is.
That's a familiar face.
Why is he being so sus?
He was part of Greek life at University of Idaho.
[Lauteren] My boyfriend knew him.
We were like, "Oh, could he have done it?"
Like… Like, going through, like, what we know about him.
I remember calling the police and being, like,
"I'm giving this information to use if you need it."
And then the case really spread in the true crime community.
People were able to find his identity pretty quickly
and started naming him publicly.
This guy had been bumping into Kaylee in public a lot.
Allegedly, he actually knew the girls.
There's video surveillance showing Maddie and Kaylee in the Corner Club bar
the night that they were murdered.
You can see the hoodie guy standing near the girls.
[Paterson] Facebook groups are popping up. Reddit groups are popping up.
TikTokers.
People are just going nuts trying to "solve" this crime
while the police are doing the investigation.
[cyber sleuth 3] The fraternity where Xana and Madison were members of.
[Eckles] The nonprofessional journalists.
They're not media, they're just lookie-loos
trying to gather information to tell a story
that they think is relevant for them.
There was, like, YouTubers,
like, sleuths that would, like, go through the entire case.
[cyber sleuth 4] How long would it take to get those records?
[Dewitt] They threw ethics out the window.
They, like, dressed up as students
and went into the dorms to try and find information.
[cyber sleuth 5] See this?
[Lauteren] They got ahold of so many pictures and videos on social media.
We all posted our lives together.
Pictures hanging out, pictures at that house.
There's usually not that many pictures of a crime scene on social media.
[cyber sleuth 6] So here's the living room and we're gonna go into Xana's bedroom.
[Maizie] I was pretty bad about it.
I was on my TikTok for, like, hours every day.
Like, looking at everything.
There is only one spot in that backyard that is dark enough
that somebody could have gotten into.
And the spot was that window that's missing the screen
and had the cinder block underneath it.
[Maizie] That was crazy.
I think I was still in, like, denial,
but, like, seeing everything all over social media.
[stammers] That was… that was hard.
[Alandt] There was one particular guy,
he started making YouTube videos and he started showing up places.
Who is that guy?
Who's gonna answer the door?
[Eckles] We had students going into hiding
as a result of that incessant hounding from these horrible people
that were just trying to do it for their own gain and benefit.
I'm here.
They have the E-X,
a lot of people are saying it's symbolism with Ethan and Xana.
Sigma Chi.
There was rumors about one of the Sigma Chis could have done it,
like, followed them home from the Sigma Chi party
that was happening that night.
And I think people had targeted me specifically
because I did have a lot of, kind of, public information out there
on social media, my Facebook and my TikTok.
It came like a freight train out of nowhere.
My Facebook inbox was full of just the worst,
most heinous things I have ever read.
People said I had conspired to commit this murder from high school.
Somebody had sent a photo of my house,
the cars that we drove, the places of employment of my parents.
Now people know my address and saying I have something to do with it.
I was once again fearing for my life, but for a completely different reason.
Um, we're talking the Idaho Four case.
We're talking about potential mystery man that was, um, at the house twice.
Youtubers found out we got a lot of noise complaints at Xana's house.
So there was a police video of Hunter Johnson going to the door.
He has some zip ties around his… his wrist.
What do you guys think?
A lot of people have just suggested it's like a drinking game.
If you guys know who this gentleman is? Please hit us up.
[Johnson] Wrist tie guy.
That was my name there for a little bit.
We play a game called Champagne and Shackles.
You zip tie together until each of you finished your champagne ultimately.
[Johnson] That's how it all began.
[cyber sleuth 1] Sources are claiming that Ethan Chapin's best friend,
who was there and preventing the other friends from entering the room.
He checked Ethan's pulse and he was the one to call 911.
[Alandt] There was a lot of people commenting on social media,
just, like, "I know what you did." Like, "We're gonna come find you."
[cyber sleuth 2] Found some stuff about H.J. And then this Emily girl.
"Ooh, these friends. Conspiracy." Blah, blah, blah.
And it's got, like, 5 million likes. And we were getting death threats daily.
It felt like a movie.
People were thinking that we were murderers.
[Alandt] I-I've always tried to be a tough kid. Super tough.
Um, and I think in the moment,
uh, I-I battled with a little bit of anxiety and depression,
which I've never had before.
I had some panic attacks, and I think that it's because I…
I… I didn't let any of my emotions out, ever.
And I think my body was just doing it for me.
[Johnson] I lost a best friend.
People thought I killed him.
That was really depressing for me.
That I would even do that to any of those people that I was friends with,
I thought was pretty sad, but…
We were just also so scared still.
And then we were getting people that were like, "We will find you."
And it's like, fuck, you probably will.
Like… [chuckles] …you know, like, this is gonna be a problem.
[Johnson] It wasn't only us.
Dylan and Bethany were getting blamed for everything.
Dylan and Bethany were completely slandered on the internet.
You mean to tell me that Dylan,
she didn't hear someone walking up and down those stairs?
It really is bizarre that they just slept through this.
[Alandt] Dylan and Bethany's gotten a lot of hate.
Attacked online brutally,
and they don't deserve it at all.
I just don't think people should be saying anything when they don't know
'cause they weren't there and they didn't do anything.
There's so many people out there that start a theory
with close relationships.
That's an easy way to go about any theory is to find who they're close to.
And people always suspect the boyfriend.
[Karen] Maddie had a boyfriend, Jake.
Jake would come to the house.
And he was talking about how his social media was being attacked.
He was actively being harassed online as the suspect.
[Scott] I-I felt bad.
That poor kid.
And he came over to our house and he'd stay there because he felt safer,
in case anybody, you know, wanted to try to pull something.
Jake was not in Moscow the night that it happened.
He was in Boise.
So, any of those rumors that he was involved were ridiculous.
[Karen] It was happening to Kaylee's boyfriend, Jack, as well.
He was being stalked. Reporters outside of his house.
It was just… it was ridiculous.
It was hard to read things or hear things about Jack
because obviously we know who he is.
And that was obviously not the case in any way possible.
Um, I think it was also hard because when it came to Kaylee,
like, she thought the best of Jack.
Like, she looked at Jack and just knew how great of a person he was.
And so I think to think about her hearing these things was super hard.
We were all scared that we were being stalked,
even if we didn't realize we were, by social media sleuths.
People trying to get any bit of information
that they could create a story out of.
Good afternoon.
I want to address several areas of speculation, conjecture,
and, uh, misinformation that has circulated on,
uh, social media platforms and otherwise.
We do not believe the following individuals are involved in this crime.
The two surviving roommates,
a male seen at the Grub Truck food vendor downtown,
specifically wearing a white hoodie.
And, currently, there are no suspects in custody
and we have not located a weapon.
[Epperly] You know, they're not addressing every rumor,
but they're clearing suspects publicly.
And the community, in part because of the speculation online,
was grateful that police were clearing these people
who were being targeted or doxxed online.
So many people close to this dropped out of school,
deleted social media, quit their jobs
because they were getting so harassed by the onslaught of attention and sleuthing.
It's so terrible and people don't understand that what they do online
has real-life consequences for the people involved in this.
[Epperly] There was some frustration that all police were saying is,
"This is who didn't do it."
Uh, but weren't providing many details on their investigation
or what was actually happening.
[reporter 1] Do you guys have any idea if the killer's still within the community
in terms of their physical location?
I can't say if the person's here.
I can't say what community the person's in.
[reporter 2] Did you look in Washington at all, I guess, for…
We're looking everywhere.
[reporter 3] How does one individual kill four people at night
and not wake up the other two roommates?
I cannot disclose, um, any of that information.
I don't even know that information at this point in time.
And that's why we're continuing to investigate.
[reporter 4] You've said that this was a targeted attack.
Why not tell the public who was targeted
to alleviate some of the fears out there in the community?
[Lanier] Well, first and foremost,
we don't want to put our investigation in jeopardy by releasing what we have.
Uh, we've told the public very clearly from the beginning
that we believe it was a targeted attack.
Uh, I mean, to be honest, you're gonna have to trust us on that at this point
because we're not going to release why we think that.
[Eckles] After Thanksgiving break, we had a lot of family members saying,
"You should just cancel the semester. I want my student home."
[Lauteren] My parents, they didn't necessarily want me
to come back immediately,
so I just decided to do that semester at home
'cause it seemed like the better option.
[Eckles] We had talked about trying to mourn as a community.
And so we coordinated a vigil on November 30th.
But there were folks fearful of going out.
I mean, how do you reassure someone things are going to be okay
when someone's out there walking around that committed this horrific crime?
♪ Let the life I've lived speak for me ♪
♪ Speak for me ♪
[Scott] We didn't attend the vigil.
We just didn't want to go down there with… be around that many people.
[choir vocalizing]
[Eckles] From a safety standpoint, Chief Fry was worried, understandably so,
that the individual that had done this
might look to take steps and do something else.
[Paterson] When you walked in, security was really tight.
They had cops at every entrance.
Rumors were flying, "Oh, he's gonna bring a gun.
Whoever did this is going to come to the vigil and maybe stir things up."
[Eckles] We had easily 30 ununiformed officers
just to kind of blend in with the crowd.
They were like, "Yeah, we need an FBI agent to follow you."
And she did not leave eyesight with me.
[Eckles] We don't know how long this investigation will take,
and we don't know the why behind this horrific act.
But what we do know is we will all go through this together.
[Stacy] My name is Stacy Chapin.
I'm Ethan's mom.
[chuckles]
The circumstances that bring us here tonight, they're terrible.
The hardest part:
We cannot change the outcome.
The most important message that we have for you and your families
is to make sure that you spend as much time as possible with those people
because time is precious, and it's something you can't get back.
[Eckles] So we're gonna have a moment of silence.
Turn on your electronic candles if you have them.
[Jim] You don't know where that person was.
He could be anywhere, right?
[Eckles] Xana Kernodle.
[bell dings]
Ethan Chapin.
[bell dings]
Kaylee Goncalves.
[bell dings]
Madison Mogen.
[bell dings]
[reporter] A lot of students are left wondering.
The killer is still out there, but were they at the vigil,
standing alongside other students here tonight?
[Paterson] A lot of locals at that point were saying,
"I'm really worried this case is gonna go cold."
[cyber sleuth] This case has got me so confused.
The police has ruled out everybody.
The roommates, the food truck guy.
They literally have no suspects.
They don't have the murder weapon. We need answers now.
[sirens wailing]
[Stacy] It was late,
and it was interesting that the phone was ringing at that point at night.
I picked up her phone and I go, "Oh, you need to come hear this."
[Karen] It was after eleven o'clock.
I was already in bed.
And the officer said,
"Don't tell anyone, but we have the suspect in custody." r this."