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Police investigating the killings of four University of Idaho students are combing through thousands of pieces of evidence and searching for a "missing link" that will lead them to the killer or killers, according to experts.
More than three weeks after Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were found dead in an off-campus rental house, police in Moscow, Idaho, have not named a suspect or made any arrests.
Investigators have at least 113 pieces of physical evidence and about 4,000 photos of the crime scene, according to the police department. Investigators are also looking at thousands of tips sent in by the public, including 1,084 digital media submissions that have been submitted through an FBI form.
"Any one of those tips can be the missing link," said John Miller, CNN's chief law enforcement analyst and a former deputy commissioner of intelligence and counterterrorism for the New York Police Department.
"It can either be the connective tissue to a lead you already had but were missing a piece, or it can become the brand-new lead that solves the case," he said.
Police have released relatively few details about the investigation, and experts have explained why it is important that the police don't reveal everything they know at this point.
"Only vetted information that does not hinder the investigation will be released to the public," the Moscow police have repeatedly stated in press releases.
Investigators are "tapping into every possible avenue" to solve the case, Robert McDonald, a criminal justice lecturer at the University of New Haven and a former Secret Service agent, told Newsweek. "There's nobody that wants to solve this any more than the people who are investigating this case."
McDonald said those investigating the case are "curious, they're ruthless, they're looking for that one piece of evidence that's going to solve this piece of the puzzle and bring us to the truth as to what happened in this case."
As police continue conducting interviews and receiving tips, at some point "there will be an ability to line up some of the pieces that will send these investigators in the direction that they need to get," he said.
"For some reason, we may just not have found that yet. But there is going to be a couple of nuggets of information that are going to be put together in a quote-unquote war room somewhere...and at some point, this will all come together," McDonald said.
The families of the victims, the Moscow community and the public all want answers now, but McDonald said law enforcement authorities are "taking a very measured approach to put this investigation together and make sure that nothing goes wrong."
"We'd all like justice to move a little quicker," he said. "But I think there's been a decision made by the powers that be here that slow and meticulous is the way that this has to be handled."
About the writer
Khaleda Rahman is Newsweek's National Correspondent based in London, UK. Her focus is reporting on education and national news. Khaleda ... Read more