Welcome to the news.
At 10, police are removing some of
the belongings still inside the home
in Moscow where 4 University of Idaho
students were killed last month.
Police are returning the belongings
to the victims families this week.
Those families, as we know,
still do not have answers on who murder
their children. Moscow police still
believe this was a targeted attack,
but haven't said if the target was
the house or the victims inside.
They also don't have a suspect or
a person of interest named Abby.
Davis spoke with the FBI professor
earlier today about why police
hold on to information. Like this?
Keep it close to their vest. Abby.
Brendan Morgan Samuel Newton's been a
criminal law professor at UCI for four years.
He's worked on several high profile cases.
Newton says murder cases take
time and that patience is key.
It's been more than three weeks
since Ethan Chapin, Zanaki Knodel,
Madison Morgan and Kaylee Gonzalvez
were stabbed to death in a home just
off EU of I campus. On Wednesday,
police will return some of the
victims belongings to their families.
They've asked for the some
of those things. Back.
In a pre recorded video from
the Moscow Police Department,
chief James Fry said they worked with
the families to get items that are no
longer needed in the investigation.
It's time for us to.
Get those things back to really
mean something to those families,
and hopefully to help with
some of their healing. But
for many, healing feels far away,
with no suspect or person
of interest identified.
You have a criminal law
Professor Samuel Newton.
Patience is an important word,
says murder cases take time
if the police are so hasty to kind of.
Get a result that the public is
clamoring for. Give us a suspect.
They may if and if they charge the wrong
person who ends up getting convicted.
What that does is creates 2 injustices.
We want them to make sure that they
have all the evidence they they
need in order to ensure a conviction
because many people don't have that patience.
Some fill the void with rumors,
speculation and even misinformation.
People are well meaning, well-intentioned,
but they are flooding the police.
Information now to the police,
any any tip could potentially be a
break in the case and so they have
to look at everything, he says.
It can be overwhelming.
It becomes maybe finding the
needle in the haystack as opposed
to if they were conducting a
normal criminal investigation.
Police don't want to release any
sort of information that could
potentially hinder the investigation.
Could you explain to people why
police are being so tight lipped?
Let's just imagine that the
police know who their suspect is.
They don't necessarily want
to tip off their suspect and
say we we know who you are,
we've gathered this amount
of evidence against you.
Because if that person knows
how strong the case is,
they may be gone, they may be out
of there. The worst case scenario,
they just don't know and they don't want to.
Also tip off a potential suspect
or the person who did it that they
have no clue and that can embolden,
that can embolden the real killer or killers
to know that that police have no ideas.
For these reasons, Newton says it's
necessary police don't release
certain info to the public.
Expecting and use it.
Use it to leverage.
They'll look, look how Kate,
how look how strong this
case is against you,
and then the person feels the
weight of that and confesses.
When the killer is brought into custody
at Newton says under Idaho law,
they could face the death
penalty or life in prison.
Brian and Morgan without parole.
Alright, Abby, thank you.
As you guys heard an Abby story.
She used a sound bite from the
police chief up in Moscow.
That sound bite was from a YouTube
video about a minute and a half long
that they posted earlier today.
This is the first time we've seen
Moscow PD Post a YouTube video
with sort of a canned response.
We weren't able to ask any questions,
right. These taped and
delivered kind of interviews,
we don't commonly use them because of
that because our job is to ask questions.
And so we don't want to be a conduit for
any sort of controlled messaging out there.
We do this when it comes to
politicians and businesses and such,
but we kind of take these on
a case by case basis as well
because this situation is unique.
We're only getting so much
information coming out of there.
And so we're going to kind of take these.
They're supposed to be releasing,
you know, many, not many,
but they're going to release these as
needed and we're going to take them on
a case by case basis based on relevance
and whether or not they have any value.
Yeah, sort of a new medium
that they're using.
And it's important to note this did
come with a press release as well.
That press release sent out today
came after a press release.
Sent yesterday and as we've been
reporting throughout this case, you know,
there wasn't a lot of information
initially off the bat from Moscow police.
Idaho State Police stepped in with
the Public Information Officer team.
They've now been putting out press
releases and Facebook posts every day,
pretty consistently.
Not every day, but but pretty often.
They also held a couple press conferences.
But I was told last week when we were
up in Moscow that they aren't going
to hold those press conferences very
frequently because they didn't have
any significant updates to give.
So they had some pushback
on those. They'll be communicative
when they can. Exactly. Alright.