Murder In Moscow: The Moscow Murders And The 48 Hour Rule

0:00Welcome back to the program. The first 48 hours of a homicide investigation are usually pretty critical. However, if a case isn't solved in the first 48 hours, that doesn't mean it's going to go cold. Now for me, I think the most important part is the evidence, right? How long the evidence is sitting there before the police get a look at that evidence because things can deteriorate, things can walk away. A lot of things can happen to the crime scene. So I think that's the most crucial part of these investigations, not so much the first 48 hours and finding the killer, right? I don't think that's logical for the most part. Now of course, sometimes it is there's a lot of evidence or there's a witness, something like that. But in the case that we have here, there's no way that it's going to be solved that quickly 48 hours or whatever, if there's no ties that bind. And if the police don't have any quality DNA or any quality test results from the lab

1:05and up until this point, they haven't had those. Now they're starting to get those in, but up until this point, they haven't had those. So if you don't have all of that stuff, it's very difficult to try and, you know, the movie case forward because you're working on basically speculation and what you see in the crime scene, but collecting that evidence that gets sent off and the period between the time the police arrived and the time that the person died and the time that evidence was collected, that's the crucial hours for me. So today we have an article from news nation. And in this article, they're talking about how it doesn't mean that the case is going to be cold, if it's not solved in 48 hours, because there is a lot of talk about that, right? A lot of people are nervous or scared that the case isn't going to be solved. Now I'm certainly not there yet, not by a long shot, but I understand why people have some concerns.

2:06This article was authored by Andrew Dorn headline amid Idaho case, many killings aren't solved in 48 hours. There's a general rule of thumb when it comes to homicide investigations. The longer the case goes without an arrest, the less likely it is to be solved. Now that's a fact. However 48 hours, that's a bit of a stretch. This is often thought of as the 48 hour rule or the first 48, as the popular A&E show is named. It's based on the idea that the first two days are the most crucial in an investigation, maybe not in the overall investigation, but the collection of evidence. That's the most crucial part. And when you don't have a pure crime scene and uncontaminated crime scene, it's very difficult for you to collect that evidence that you're going to need as an investigator to build this proper roadmap to lead you to the killer.

3:11After the first two days, competing resources, competing interests, perishable evidence, alibis, all of these things become increasingly problematic. Said Michael, aren't field a criminologist and co-director of the murder accountability project, a nonprofit that focuses on unsolved murders. And it's a pretty cool website, a cool resource to check out. Obviously if you're listening to this podcast, you're into true crime. So if you haven't checked out the murder accountability project, that's certainly something you might want to click on. The 48 hour adage will come as no comfort to those in Moscow, Idaho, where nearly three weeks ago, four University of Idaho students were found stabbed to death in an off-campus home. Authorities have yet to identify a suspect or find a murder weapon in the case, but that doesn't mean it's gone cold. And I said this earlier, I don't want people to think that it's a cold case because there's no arrest yet. These things take time.

4:12And while we all want things to come to a conclusion quickly and we all want the person to be held responsible, it's going to take some time without there being that direct witness or a direct line to the person who did this, they have to go through all of these steps. Although data can be difficult to trace, multiple analyses have found that most homicide investigations don't lead to an arrest in the first 48 hours. Well, a lot of that has to do with the fact that there's not a lot of resources to go around in a most homicide cases, right? Big cities if they're if they're turning a lot of homicides, they're not going to be able to solve these homicides in 48 hours for the most part. Unless again, you have that direct witness or something. A Washington Post report from 2018 examined 8,000 homicide arrests across 25 major cities and discovered that only 30% of cases hadn't arrest in the first two days.

5:14About two thirds of the arrests were made within one month after the incident. So we're not at the month mark yet, but we're steadily creeping. And honestly, there's no way to sugarcoat the fact that the investigators are certainly working against the clock. But for cases that remained unsolved after one year, just 5% ultimately led to an arrest, the post determined a separate 2021 murder analysis in the New York Times found that the amount of time it takes to clear a murder varies widely from city to city. Of course it does. The quality of policing, how good your homicide division is, how much resources you have, how much help they have as far as logistically. There's a lot that goes into it and these bigger cities that might have more resources or these richer counties with more money, well they're going to have a better shot to turn over some of these homicides and clear some of these cases. Just two of the 13 police agencies studied cleared more than half of their murder cases

6:16within the first 48 hours. The Times found. At the higher end, police in Louisville, Kentucky, solved 62% of homicides in the first 48 hours. Pretty damn good. Honestly, whereas authorities in St. Louis, Baltimore and Chicago cleared murder cases in the first two days less than 25% of the time and they have a heavier load, right? If you're working in Chicago, my guess is you're catching a ton of bodies if you're working in homicide. Have you taken a look at the news lately, what Chicago looks like on a weekend? So yeah, they're going to have a tougher time, you know, turn in these cases and closing out these homicides in a short period of time. Much of the discrepancy can be explained by the sheer number of homicides and less the amount of resources available for each case. So that shouldn't come into play here, right? Let's make that very clear. They have more resources right now in Moscow than they know what to do with. You have federal agencies, you have a million dollar grant given to you by the governor,

7:18you have the FBI there with all of their resources. So there's no excuse about resources. The more resources, the more detectives that are available to work a case, be it a murder or a non fatal shooting, the more likely you are to find that really important evidence said Jeff, Jeff Asher, the co-founder of A H data, Littix who authored the New York Times report. And that just common sense, the more hands on deck, the better chance you have it find in the person responsible. So they have all hands on deck here. And I'm certainly not questioning that, not in the least. My biggest issue is what happened in that time frame from when these kids were murdered to the time that those bodies were found by the police. With local, state and federal law enforcement investigating, the importance of significant resources bodes well for a case like University of Idaho killings. There are other factors working in law enforcement's favor, the size of the town and the

8:21manner of the killings. Yeah, I guess you could say that the manner of the killings for sure up close and personal, using a knife, possibility of DNA being sprayed everywhere. Absolutely. But the town being small, well, I guess that would work in the in the favor of these investigators if it's somebody who's local in a small community like Moscow, aren't feel says the pool of potential suspects is more stable than a large urban area. Yeah, that also means they go through that pool quicker. And now remember, we're already three weeks into this. Do you think the local population, the local pool of suspects has not been absolutely looked at and went over with a fine tooth comb? Those are the low hanging fruit. Those are the people that have to be looked at first. Greenberg finance and both experts agreed, stabbing as opposed to gun related homicide are more likely to result in DNA evidence, either on a murder weapon or left by the perpetrator at the scene. That investigators can use to identify a suspect.

9:26But if the perpetrator isn't in the system and you run that DNA, it's going to come back but you're not going to have a hit or a match. But cases near college campuses also present unique challenges. Social circles are vast and ever changing. And schedules tend to be more irregular than someone working a nine to five job and living situations can be fluid. I'll play devil's advocate here and say this. Because those social circles might be so vast and all of that jazz, that's fine and well. But all of those social circles are localized. It's not like these kids were up in Seattle partying. They were all hanging out in Moscow, maybe in Pullman or something like that, but for the most part, the social circles shouldn't be far away and they should have been the first people investigated, especially considering all of the resources that are available to this investigation. You've got four different people who were socially active, engaging with dozens, if not hundreds of people virtually said, aren't field, their routines become very difficult for police

10:30to nail down. And there's no doubt there's a little bit of that going on. The police are, you know, they're up against it. But I would think that them being in sororities and a fraternity would make it easier to pin down their social circles at the very least eliminate people from who might have done it. Aren't field said he suspects there is physical evidence at the scene, but that the offender may not be in the DNA data bank, which would mean investigators have nothing to compare it to. And they said that's more common than many people realize that's a fact. That's definitely a fact and the DNA is only as good as what they can run it against. Now they can file that DNA so that if they do catch a suspect, they can run his DNA against what they have filed. But if they just have DNA with no connectors to it, it's really not doing them any good. On Wednesday, hundreds of community members gathered for a vigil to honor the victims.

11:30Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen, Zanna Kernodal and Kayley Gon, Gon Salvas at the vigil. Steve Gon Salvas, Kayley's father disclosed that his daughter and Mogen were killed together in the same bed. He said, Kayley and Madison were lifelong best friends who were together until the end. And it's my deepest hope, my deepest hope that none of these kids suffered at the end here. Hopefully it wasn't something that they had to suffer through. I don't even want to think about that. Honestly, it's so heinous, so disgusting and so unnerving that I don't even want to think about it. And to think about the way her dad feels or any of these parents, it is just beyond the pale. No parent should ever, ever have to deal with their child dying and being killed or murdered. It is just unimaginable for most of us. But now this is the reality that these parents, these friends, these family members are going

12:32to have to live with forever. And there's no going back. There's no fixing it. All there is now is the pursuit of justice. And hopefully that happens very quickly. All right, everybody, that's going to do it for this episode. If you like to contact me, you can do that at Bobbi Kapuchee at proton male.com. You can also find me on Twitter at B O B B Y underscore C A P U C C I the link that I discussed can be found in the description box.