Police in Idaho have combed through nearly 20,000 tips and questioned 300 people about the murders of four college students last month — but have still not identified a suspect.
In a Thursday update, Moscow police say they have received over 9,000 emailed tips, 4,575 phone tips and 6,050 digital media submissions regarding the murders of four University of Idaho students. They have also conducted over 300 interviews.
They are now preparing to turn the home where Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, were stabbed back over to a landlord.
But they seem to be no closer to figuring out who killed the college students in their off-campus home on November 13, even as newly released surveillance footage shows two of the victims talking to a man inside a bar just hours before their death.
In the update on Thursday, Moscow Police Chief James Fry said officers will return once again to the students' King Street home as they prepare to turn it back over to the landlord.
'Part of the reason we're doing that is because of the biohazards , as well as the chemicals that were used during the investigation,' he said in a video posted to YouTube. 'So there will be activity over at that residence.'
Authorities do not know how long it will take to clean up the property, but said in a news release it will be 'returned to the property manager when complete.'
The update comes just days after Fry told KREM his investigators are still waiting for crime lab results from evidence collected at the scene.
'We don't want to rush that, we want to ensure that they're taking their time to get all of that right,' the police chief said in an interview Tuesday.
He added: 'Real life and the movies are a lot different. You know, in the movies, they have all [the results] back in an hour.
'We don't get that in real life, so we're going to be patient.'
It remains unclear whether any DNA was retrieved from the scene.
Fry also said during the interview with the local news station that Moscow Police may wait even longer to release the audio of a 911 call the victims' friends made to police when they found one person inside the home 'unresponsive' that morning.
'I think it'll be released when the prosecution believes that we can release that,' he said. 'That may be at trial ... That may be before then.'
Police have previously said that the two surviving roommates of the attack, who slept on the bottom floor of the King Street house, 'summoned friends to the residence because they believed one of the second-floor victims had passed out and was not waking up.
'Multiple people talked with the 911 dispatcher before a Moscow Police officer arrived at the location,' authorities said in a previous statement.
When they arrived at the scene, they said, they found Kernodle and Chapin, who were in a relationship, on the bottom floor, with Mogen and Goncalves sharing a bed on the top floor.
Authorities believe they were all stabbed to death somewhere between 3am to 4am that morning, after enjoying a night out.
Earlier in the night, newly-released surveillance footage shows, Goncalves and Madison Mogen inside the Corner Club bar at 1.32am chatting with an unidentified man — wearing a baseball cap — minutes before they ran to pick up food.
The girls were seen with their backs turned to the surveillance camera inside the bar, which appeared to be filled with a mix of young and older adults.
The leaked surveillance photo was posted by former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer, who has dedicated her Twitter to the Idaho murder mystery.
She said she obtained the photo once it was made public, and posted it online to discourage leaking evidence in the unsolved mystery.
'My point is to discourage leaking evidence by those who control it & have turned it over to LE. Once it has been leaked & wholesale distributed, "The horse done left the barn" as they say,' Coffindaffer wrote.
'All I can do at this point is discourage and explain why it's harmful to a case.'
She explained that the release of evidence can hinder the investigation as multiple outsiders attempt to solve the case themselves.
'As feared, as time goes by, evidence, including video will continue to be leaked,' she said.
'Whether for money or attention or whatever the motive, it is not right and will not help LE in their investigation. Don't we all want this case solved?'
Still, the release of the still frame provides a more detailed timeline of the girls' whereabouts in the hours before they were killed.
Authorities have previously said they were last spotted at a food truck at around 1.40am on November 13, before running to meet their ride home.
They returned to their off-campus house at 1.56am, at around the same time that Kernodle and Chapin returned from a fraternity house.
Their other housemates got back about 45 minutes earlier and were left unharmed in the attack.
Speaking to DailyMail.com in the aftermath, the man who drove them home said the community is now losing faith in the Moscow Police Department to solve the quadruple homicide.
'Most of us have very little faith in the MPD. We can't tell if we are watching qualified investigators who have a handle of the situation or if they are completely at a loss and grasping for straws.'
But Moscow police have denied that inexperienced officers – the lead investigator has only been a cop for two years – are hampering or have already botched the investigation.
No murder weapon has been recovered and no suspects named, but police are still seeking the occupants of a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Electra with unknown license plates caught on CCTV in the area near the time of the killings.
There are now six detectives from MPD, 62 FBI agents, 13 Idaho State Police investigators and 15 uniformed troopers assisting with community patrols and forensic experts working through the painstaking task of processing evidence recovered from the scene.
