Why Idaho Police Aren't Saying Everything They Know About Student Murders

Police in Idaho likely know more about the gruesome slayings of four University of Idaho students than they have revealed, a former police chief told Newsweek.

The students were found dead in their beds in an off-campus rental house in Moscow on November 13. They were housemates Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Kernodle's boyfriend, Ethan Chapin, 20.

More than two weeks on, the Moscow Police Department have said no suspect has been identified and continued to appeal for information.

Police have said they believe the killings were targeted, but have not revealed what led them to that conclusion or which of the students was targeted. "You're going to have to trust us on that at this point, because we're not going to release why we think that," Moscow Police Captain Roger Lanier said at a news conference last week.

Meanwhile, the tiny college town remains on edge as students return after the Thanksgiving break.

John DeCarlo, a professor of criminal justice at the University of New Haven and a former police chief in Branford, Connecticut, said police are likely withholding "a set of facts" they have to protect the integrity of the investigation.

"What they're doing is, they're not letting out all the information that they already know," DeCarlo told Newsweek. "They want to have a set of facts that they have, that the public doesn't know, so that they can run down leads, based on what they do actually know and separate out some of the fluff that they struggle with."

Police have knocked down multiple rumors circulating about the case, and a police spokesman told Newsweek that the department has "only released vetted information that won't hinder the investigation."

It is crucial the investigation is not endangered, DeCarlo said, because leads could go cold and "obviously, a cold case investigation is more difficult."

He said investigators may have obtained some physical evidence of the suspect from the crime scene, which could have been what was used to rule out some individuals.

"They have taken the pains to eliminate certain people who were in the crime scene," he said. "There will be physical evidence that they will use from the crime scene to eliminate other people. They may or may not have evidence of the suspect, they may have DNA already, they may have blood, they may have fingerprints. So, they have not let that out."

DNA evidence or a partial fingerprint, for instance, could allow police to "either include or exclude certain individuals," DeCarlo said.

He also said he believes police, under pressure to provide answers, have done what they can to get information out to the public.

"It has to be balanced," he said. "We don't want a community in abject fear. And at the same time, we don't want to give out elements of a crime that might endanger the capture or identification of a suspect or suspects.

"So to preserve the integrity of a crime like this is vitally important and to assure the community to the point that an agency could assure the community is also very important."

But due to the sheer number of interviews conducted and material collected, DeCarlo believes it could take a while for investigators to sift through it all.

"In a case like this, there might be literally thousands of pieces of evidence that they're looking at," he said.

"It would take literally weeks, and that's how these cases roll out, sometimes it takes literally weeks to months to gain all of the information when something isn't obvious."