"... that she thought was her friend playing with her dog. Then she heard someone crying, and a man saying something like, 'It’s OK, I’m going to help you.' When the roommate peered out of her room just after 4 a.m., she later told investigators, she stood in 'frozen shock'... Authorities have yet to detail a motive in the killings, nor has there been any explanation for why the two surviving roommates, who are also students at the University of Idaho, did not call 911 until shortly before noon the next day...."
"All four victims, as well as the two surviving roommates, were back at the home before 2 a.m. The new documents suggest that [victim Xana] Kernodle was awake around the time of the killings, receiving a DoorDash delivery around 4 a.m. and apparently using the TikTok app on her phone 12 minutes later. Police said the murders likely happened before 4:25 a.m. In addition to hearing the crying and the man’s voice, the roommate on the second floor also heard one of her roommates say something like, 'There’s someone here,' around 4 a.m. At roughly the same time, a security camera from a nearby home picked up distorted audio of a whimpering sound and a loud thud. A dog could be heard barking several times...."
ADDED: When I first wrote this post — a few minutes ago — I mistook "Kernodle" as the name of the surviving roommate who is discussed at length but not named. Given what she heard, why didn't she call the police much sooner? Another way to look at that is: Why didn't the killing of 4 persons make much more noise, noise that obviously required calling the police (and/or escaping from the house)?
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My thought was that possibly the surviving roommate thought she was having a nightmare.
None of it makes sense.
People do all sorts of hardball things when under extreme stress or threat of death. Mothers smother their babies to stop them from crying if a hostile army is approaching. Captives develop Stockholm Syndrome (Patty Hearst as kidnapped by the SLA and then joining in bank robberies). When a ship sinks, it's "every many for himself."
The brain goes into cutthroat survival mode to survive. IMO this is pretty much what happened to the DC establishment upon the arrival of Trump.
Why didn't the killing of 4 persons make much more noise, noise that obviously required calling the police (and/or escaping from the house)?
We need to know more about the specific wounds — knife killings are not as instantaneous as a well-aimed gunshot, but I imagine it’s hard to scream if your throat’s been cut in your sleep.
Nathan Leopold dropped his eyeglasses near where he and Loeb disposed of the body of Bobby Franks. This guy left behind his knife sheath. If you’re not going to clean up after yourself, maybe you shouldn’t commit the murder. But this murder does resemble the Bobby Franks murder in that it seems to have been a thrill killing.
When I first wrote this post — a few minutes ago — I mistook "Kernodle" as the name of the surviving roommate who is discussed at length but not named. Given what she heard, why didn't she call the police much sooner? Another way to look at that is: Why didn't the killing of 4 persons make much more noise, noise that obviously required calling the police (and/or escaping from the house)?
Either human behavior is unpredictable or something about humanity has changed, at least in the United States. I would have expected the reaction to stolen elections, erasing borders, politically motivated selective prosecution, etc etc to have been different as well. I guess we have Add ‘reaction to mass murder in your home’ to the list.
My Idaho grad nephew has no specific insight other than the confirmation it was a ‘party house’ with people coming and going at all hours. If you experienced that in your college days it isn’t difficult to understand how the lack of reaction could have happened…
I find the details even more bizarre than the initial murders leaving two surviving roommates. From what I've read, the killer seen by the surviving roommate was wearing a face mask. It is a college campus and people probably still do that there, even in Idaho.
I think the whole thing is a great lesson for young people. Don't live the kind of lifestyle where roommates can't be sure unknown men wandering around at 4am aren't just the hook ups of other roommates.
@rehajm
This. Party centrals by definition are laissez-faire about everything. Boys. Girls. Doordash. Serial killers. Crying. Screaming. Moaning. Waking up at 11:45am.
The criminal justice grad student didn’t know his cell phone is a tracking device? Glad he got caught.
The “Creighton” murderer bought chicken wings after he killed his last two victims. He had his cell phone with him.
Althouse said...
Another way to look at that is: Why didn't the killing of 4 persons make much more noise, noise that obviously required calling the police (and/or escaping from the house)?
Earbuds? In The Terminator, a girl with headphones makes a sandwich in the kitchen while the Terminator kills her boyfriend in the bedroom.
A combination of terror and denial. She was scared witless and will probably never know a sound night's sleep in her life.....Some years back,iirc, there was a mass murder in a restaurant. One of the employees took shelter in a dishwasher and stayed there for over a day.
I guess the perp never watched "Body Heat." You can learn a lot from the movies.
[Ned is getting the arson set-up from Teddy]
Teddy Lewis: Hey now, I want to ask you something. Are you listening to me, asshole? Because, I like you. I got a serious question for you: What the fuck are you doing? This is not shit for you to be messin' with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius - and you ain't no genius. You remember who told me that?
[Ned nods, "yes"]
The roommate may have been drunk or high at the time and dismissed her own perception. The killings must have been quiet, because none of the four victims seems to have been alerted while it all was happening.
I've always assumed that the killer spared two of the housemates because he didn't know they were there, but if the roommate's account is correct, he walked right past her and left her alive. Maybe that's a reason to doubt that her recollection is accurate.
Two of the victims were a couple; it's hard to imagine how they both could have been stabbed without an alarm being raised. The woman in that couple is the one who got DoorDash at 4 am, so she was alert then. Perhaps the boyfriend was passed out and didn't wake up when the girlfriend was murdered.
Come to think of it, the other two were also both found in a room together. Again, they must have been killed quietly so as not to alarm the other, or else they were too drunk to react.
Apparently the first reaction by the surviving roommates was to call friends (and not police), out of concern that one of the victims had passed out and wasn't waking up. Descriptions of the scene, though, say the walls were spattered in blood. Did the roommates not notice this when they were calling their friends? If so, is that another reason not to trust their perceptions?
One final thought: I'm legit impressed that Moscow, Idaho has street food at 2 am and delivery at 4.
It boggles the mind this "witness" didn't call police upon seeing a masked stranger walking the hall after she had heard troubling noises in the house around 4am. She had zero concern but locked her bedroom door and went back to bed. They find an "unconscious" body at noon the next day and have no idea the person was dead for hours??? Come on man! Morons don't know to lock house doors at night, or that a masked intruder in your home in the wee hours is cause for calling 911. Ridiculous
Dave, I read that the perp turned his cell phone off (or airplane mode) as he left Pullman and didn't turn it back on until he returned. But his car was in security camera footage and he had left his cell phone on during his earlier reconnaissance trips to Moscow.
"My Idaho grad nephew has no specific insight other than the confirmation it was a ‘party house’ with people coming and going at all hours. If you experienced that in your college days it isn’t difficult to understand how the lack of reaction could have happened…"
I live near campus and have worked on campus, and I have heard women screaming so many times, as if that's part of having fun. Children do that too. I've asked myself many times, why do they need to scream? The men don't do it. It's something women and children do — not all women and children, but enough to make me ignore screams!
.. did not call 911 until shortly before noon the next day...."
My guess is they didn't wake up until shortly before noon. That's how drinking til 4am IS
how long did it take Senator Teddy Kennedy, to notify the police about Mary Jo Kopechne?
I suppose there are more than one kind of scream. But that which comes from someone struggling against being stabbed--there were defensive wounds---likely can be distinguished from that of a person who's been caught in hide-and-seek.
You don't need the example of Xander Vento to know that when everybody's watching, nobody's watching and, maybe, you ought to wander over there. Just in case.
It being a party house would be a reasonable explanation. Thanks, rehajm!
"I live near campus and have worked on campus, and I have heard women screaming so many times, as if that's part of having fun. Children do that too. I've asked myself many times, why do they need to scream? The men don't do it. It's something women and children do — not all women and children, but enough to make me ignore screams!"
Did college-age women scream just as much in the 60s as they do now, or is this behavior another manifestation of how young people are delaying growing up until well into their 20s and beyond? In old movies (the closest thing we have to a time machine), you don't really see this kind of childlike behavior out of young women unless the character is under age 16. If the character is 20-24, she's a full-fledged dame being portrayed quite convincingly by the likes of a Lauren Bacall, Veronica Lake, or Ida Lupino.
I guess growing up in a very abusive family has made me much more cognizant of personal safety concerns in adulthood. "Normal" people seem quite oblivious to external threats and frequently exhibit a serious lack of situational awareness leading to these types of outcomes. Yes I agree the blood curdling "screaming of women and children during fun" in my own high end suburban neighborhood is disturbing to me, and I used to pay attention to make sure they were okay. Now I don't pay any attention because I finally accepted that it is just low class behavior by people who constantly play the "look at me card". Normal people need to understand that the world is a dangerous place, filled with evil and selfish people. Catching the attention of others is dangerous in our world today. Too many mentally ill people walking around looking normal. Lock your damn doors and load your weapons. Its getting really ugly out there, and ugly is coming to a house near you.
The 'killer' sounds like another example of a credentialed moron.
Leave your DNA-infested knife sheath at the scene along with a footprint while driving your own car?
Really? Really?
Jeez...death penalty for stupidity alone...
Kudos to the police that none of these details leaked while they were being trashed for not producing results.
Oddly enough. I agree with Readering.(blech! spit. spit.)
May the good people of Idaho vote to remove this waste of oxygen from the planet.
ehajm said...
My Idaho grad nephew has no specific insight other than the confirmation it was a ‘party house’ with people coming and going at all hours. If you experienced that in your college days it isn’t difficult to understand how the lack of reaction could have happened…
I agree and agree that the alive kids woke up at noon. I lived in a fraternity house but it was the 1950s and Sororities were locked up after 10PM. No coed dorms and few students sleeping together. Times have changed a lot.
Blogger Readering said...
Kudos to the police that none of these details leaked while they were being trashed for not producing results.
Agreed. Long ago, I dated girls at that campus. It was a great place.
The 'killer' sounds like another example of a credentialed moron. Leave your DNA-infested knife sheath at the scene along with a footprint while driving your own car? Really? Really? Jeez...death penalty for stupidity alone...
Professors need to murder in states/jurisdictions where lefties give and receive favored status in the justice system. He’s history in Idaho…unless there’s a pardon from DC…
My assumption is that the roommate who saw the killer was just not seen in turn by the killer. How can that be? Was the killer lost in a reverie of post-massacre bloodlust, causing him to fail to notice the person he was walking towards? I afmit it sounds strange, but no stranger than committing a horrific multiple murder, maybe.
The timeline seems odd too…
Apparently the barking dog was in the building and barking wasn’t heard until 4:17. I can’t imagine the attacks had begun before that, and yet the assailant stabs four people on two different floors and then his car is seen speeding away by 4:20?
"Did college-age women scream just as much in the 60s as they do now, or is this behavior another manifestation of how young people are delaying growing up until well into their 20s and beyond?"
I recall knocking on a strange dormitory door in response to such a scream c. 1980.
I live in a town with a rapidly growing college. One consequence of the college's growth is that investors have been buying up single-family homes and converting them into rentals aimed at students. There are a few in my formerly quiet, family-oriented neighborhood, and the noises that can come out of them at any hour can be shocking if you haven't been been exposed to college drinking culture. (Yes, I've called the police on multiple occasions.)
When I first heard the details of the murders back in November, I immediately thought "party house." To be fair, though, even if it wasn't a "party house," it's not hard to imagine a college kid ignoring a lot of activity while living in a house filled with unrelated students, especially at 4 AM on a Sunday morning after a night on the town. While in grad school, I lived directly across the street from a major hospital emergency room in a rough neighborhood, and it was amazing how quickly the sirens and general mayhem became background noise.
Is "roommates" really the right word? Six people in one big room? Or were some of the victims roommates with some of the survivors? Or were they just housemates?
While it's been a while, the roommates (house mates) comings and goings at all hours tends to become background noise. As far as the 'calling before noon'...the story states that one was up at 4am (as in, has not gone to sleep, yet) so a before-noon call is early.
Suffice to say, I'm not seeing anything too odd in the report(s).
People who encounter things like the witness did often have really strange reactions that often don't make sense to other people. You don't expect it, but that's the reality.
It's also typical of "normal" people who encounter violence and other such "unusual" events to process it as "Oh, I must be dreaming..." I've known guys who were cops and soldiers whose initial reactions to their first experiences in firefights were "Oh, this isn't really happening, this is a movie..."
I would say that it's not entirely impossible that the witness got up, saw what she did, processed that as a part of her night of partying and didn't really accept or believe it was real until she woke up. It's also possible that she was spared because she was up and awake, and that's not something the killer was ready to deal with; his other victims were apparently asleep when he attacked them.
There's a lot of weirdness here, but there always is with this stuff. People don't do the things they do in the movies and TV in real life; do not expect the behaviors you will see in actual real-world events to be demonstrated for you in entertainment.
Odds are, the witness may have processed the whole thing as a bad dream, and went back to bed. You live in a "party house" with wild-ass roommates, and you're going to become inured to the weird. Friend of mine lived in a place like that, and he slept through what amounted to a house party/riot that resulted in the cops coming in and arresting everyone. He lived in the basement, never heard a thing, and when he got up to get breakfast the next morning, when he went upstairs there was police tape and a guard on the house that was waiting for the crime scene people to show up to process the place. The cop on duty was like "Where the hell did you come from...?", and all he could do was tell him he'd been asleep downstairs with his headphones on. His roommates were not the brightest lights on the tree.
There was a time within living memory when the mask alone would've been cause enough for a 911 call.
Patience is a virtue that often comes in handy. Like the attack on Paul Pelosi, the facts about this crime are not known yet. And the reliability of the details in the media accounts is questionable. All that is known for sure is that murders were committed and a perp has been arrested and charged. So stayed tuned and suspend judgment.
"Why didn't the killing of 4 persons make much more noise?"
The girl in the room above mine in my freshman dorm was murdered. Only a few feet from me as the termite chews. Neither I nor anyone else heard a thing. Surprising but true.
Another exceptionally horrific crime. If this guy is convicted, I hope his own life is extinguished as a result. Meanwhile, here in Portland a few nights ago, a 25-year-old, drug infested man chewed part of the face of a 78-year-old man at a transit station. Other people were around but did not intervene. We need to invoke involuntary commitments.
The "burden" of evidence selected in a class-disordered culture.
Prof. Althouse, 8:33:
“and I have heard women screaming so many times, as if that’s part of having fun.”
Oh, that brings back a memory. I was in my office, trying to work. Group of students in the common area outside got louder and louder. Then a young woman’s voice, much higher and louder that what preceded it: “Somebody help me!!
I bolted, yanked the door open, ran out - and a group of students were standing there wearing idiotic smiles. Then they looked puzzled: What was a prof doing there?
I cursed them all out, very loudly and sincerely, and finished by telling the young woman that the next time she screamed for help, she’d better [gerund] well mean it. I’m not proud of losing it like that, but I was absolutely livid: You do not want to train people to ignore cries for help!
Dave Begley said...
" I guess the perp never watched "Body Heat." You can learn a lot from the movies.
[Ned is getting the arson set-up from Teddy]
Teddy Lewis: Hey now, I want to ask you something. Are you listening to me, asshole? Because, I like you. I got a serious question for you: What the fuck are you doing? This is not shit for you to be messin' with. Are you ready to hear something? I want you to see if this sounds familiar: any time you try a decent crime, you got fifty ways you're gonna fuck up. If you think of twenty-five of them, then you're a genius - and you ain't no genius. You remember who told me that?
[Ned nods, "yes"]"
I knew if I was patient Begely would finally post something worth reading.
"My assumption is that the roommate who saw the killer was just not seen in turn by the killer."
People do strange things under stress. In Cornelius Ryan's book about D-Day, a troop of paratroopers were walking along a hedge at night and came across a troop of German soldiers walking on the other side.
They saw each other, but quietly kept walking, not saying a word, until they were out of sight.
J
Apparently, teaching about the boy who cried wolf isn't done any longer? Learning it for yourself is expensive.
I was a pot-head in my first couple of years in college. I can absolutely understand waking up in a party home, seeing a strange person, hearing suspicious noises, noticing things that should have been red flags, shrugging my shoulders, and going back to sleep. (Not saying this witness was under the influence, but it wouldn't surprise me.)
Also, as someone said above, kudos to the police for all their work, despite the appearance of being incompetent. It's like something out of Columbo.
Judith, in the Bible, beheaded drunk General Holofernes in a tent with his guards posted outside. They thought he was having fun. She left with his head in a bag and told them he was sleeping.
I knew if I was patient Begely would finally post something worth reading.
I thought that if I read enough of his comments that I would see Mutaman make a smart one. Nope. Still waiting.
Michael K said...
"I knew if I was patient Begely would finally post something worth reading.
I thought that if I read enough of his comments that I would see Mutaman make a smart one. Nope. Still waiting."
Very imaginative Sparky.
You're like Melania lifting her speech from Michelle Obama. Copy/paste.
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