Law&Crime Sidebar - 'DNA and Videos Everywhere': Idaho Killer Will Be Caught, Student's Father Believes

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

Idaho murder victim Madison Mogen's father said he believes the killer will likely be caught because of "DNA and videos everywhere" nowadays. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and legendary homicide detective Fil Waters break it down.LAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. I think all the people working on trying to figure this out and it really means a lot. A father of one of the victims speaks out. A former tenant talks about the crime scene and online slews target an ex-boyfriend. We delve into the latest into the University of Idaho murder investigation with legendary former homicide detective Phil Waters. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Another week, another day, and still, no arrests, no publicly identifiable suspect, and no recovered murder weapon in the University of Idaho

Quadruple murder case. This is the killings of 21-year-old Kaylee Gonzalez, 20-old. 21-year-old, old Madison Mogan, 20-year-old Zonar-Kernodal, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin. Their bodies were found in their rental home on November 13th, and there's still so many questions that we have. Now, while we don't know what is happening behind the scenes with law enforcement investigators, what we can discuss is what's happening publicly because we do have some updates to go through. And to help me talk through this and get the latest in the investigation about where we're at, I'm joined once again by Phil Waters, who has been with us the last few weeks to go over this case. Phil is a former legendary homicide detective who has worked over 400 cases, and he is an expert interrogator,

Phil. It's great to have you once again back here on sidebar. Good morning, Jesse. I appreciate you all having me back. Of course. And I want to start with right now Ben Mogan. So Ben Mogan is the father of Madison Mogan. I don't believe he's spoken out previously. I could be mistaken, but this is significant what he said. He spoke to a local media outlet. And he said, while there are still so many questions that haven't been answered in this case, he believes the killer or killers will be caught. So this is kind of a different sense of what we've been seeing online and from the community where there's the seeming lack of trust in law enforcement.

He has said, quote, from the very beginning, I've known that people don't get away with these things these days. There's too many things that you can get caught up on, like DNA and videos everywhere. This isn't something that people get away with. That goes unsolved. He also said, you know, that how state investigators have been getting kind of outside help from the FBI. And he said that with these resources, they should be able to solve the case. He said, quote, I have to just know that they know what they're doing. And if they don't, then they're going to know someone that does. What do you make of his statements? Do you agree with him? Well, to a degree, I do. And I'm, of course, heartfelt prayers have been going up for him and the other family

members of these young people, the tragic event. I do agree with him to, in the sense that there are a lot of resources now today from a technological standpoint that has brought the conclusion to cases, brought about in a more timely way. Now, I use that word timely loosely because it may take the timely manner in this particular case. It may be two months. It may be two years. And it, you know, could go on from there. But the statement that he makes about people just don't get away with this kind of thing in today's world, that is true to a degree. But again, when it comes down to, it's just going to be good old-fashioned detective work that gets this thing solved. And that's just hitting the, hitting the bricks, getting out there,

talking to people, processing the evidence that's been collected, and then seeing where that evidence leads. So I think there's a better chance that something like this, especially the scope of this particular crime, will be resolved. Yeah, and we know that the chief of police has come out and basically tried to reassure the public that we got this under control, you know, we're in charge of this. We know what's happening. So I know there's been some questions about the leadership in this investigation. What I want people to know is this is a Moscow police department investigation. We're utilizing the resources of the FBI and state police. But we pick the investigators.

My command team oversees this. We have 94 years of experience between us. We do have outside help, but there's so much we don't know behind the scenes. I feel the reason, one of the reasons he came out, Mr. Mogan, is because there's something happening online. Obviously, people have shown an intense interest in this case. He said, quote, I can get all my news about it right from there. And I don't have to try and judge through all the misinformation. The reason I say this is because people online find, it seems to me, are having such a need to try to find the killer that they're looking at all the places that either police have already looked or police have said, that is just a red herring.

And the reason I bring this up is there's a young man named Jack DeCore. I'm hopefully I'm pronouncing his last name correctly. He's the ex-boyfriend of Kaylee Gonzalez. He dated her for five years. They broke up three weeks before the murder. He was looked into by police. He was cleared as a suspect, and even Kaylee's family has said he is not involved in this, but internet sleuths do not agree. According to his aunt who's spoken out, she says the internet has come after him.

They think he's the killer. It's been tough on him. So it seems to me, Mr. Mogan coming out and saying, leave it to the police is a way to kind of temper the flames that we're seeing online. And I'm curious that that's putting pressure on police right now to solve this quickly so that the wrong people aren't targeted. Well, I don't think there's any more pressure on law enforcement than what is already there and what is already self-imposed. Look, I know that when I worked cases in Houston, especially when it was a multiple fatality case like this one, and you've got and you have to go to the family and speak to them about this and you have to have empathy. You have to have compassion for those folks in the discussion of the scene itself because you want to be honest.

with the family about what is going on. And I think that's what's happening here. I don't think the chief, the optics of this thing when it first got started horrible, only because this was so out of the realm of what the chief had experienced in his career, and especially in this community. But now it would appear to me that they have this communication better on track. And I think that when they, at the very beginning of this thing, the Moscow PD realized they were really in over their head in terms of investigative experience. And they reached out to the state and the FBI. I've said this before. It's not like diehard. You know, gentlemen, I give you the FBI. That's just not the way this works. So they had the foresight and the wisdom to do this.

So now they have these resources are marshaled to come up, hopefully finding the right person who's done this wrong thing. But in regards to the boy, go ahead, Jesse, do you want to? No, I was going to say regarding the boyfriend, how can we be sure he was properly ruled out? out, and I understand why people are going after him. You know, when you talk about stabbing, it seems like a kind of a personal, intimate event. So you would look at somebody who maybe had something personal against Kaylee. How can we quiet any of the online speculation against the boyfriend? How do we, can we trust law enforcement?

They properly ruled them out. Well, that's just going to have to be, that's just going to have to happen. I bet the problem is with what has happened with the boyfriend and this online stuff. You know, this is the, this is the bad part about the online generation. theories and so forth and so on regarding anything for that matter. But in this particular case, you know, people hide behind their names, you know, their Twitter names, whatever, and they just put this stuff out. I don't think this bell is ever going to be unwrung regarding the boyfriend, the ex-boyfriend. It's, it's, that genie's out of the bottle and people are going

to continue to do what they do because that's the nature of people. In terms of him being ruled out, the first thing I would have done, and I'm sure this is one of the first things they did in this investigation was, as you start working this thing from the inside out, and you're going to start at the most personal relationships with those four victims, all of them, not just Kaylee. You're going to, all of them. And in this particular case, Kaylee has an ex-boyfriend that she had just broken up with. Well, certainly that's somebody that the detectives are going to look at right off the bat. They're going to bring him in. They're going to interview him. And they're going to find out where he was when this happened. So if that's been verified, if no, if nothing

can put him at that scene. That's it. He's ruled out. Now, that doesn't mean that if something does come up in a piece of evidence that would cause them to have to go revisit him and talk to him about explaining why we find this there at the scene, then they'll do that. But I mean, in terms of this young man, he's just being raked over the coals unmercifully and it's improper. Well, again, the hope is that they're looking at everybody and everything. Two of the people, that were ruled out very early in this case were the two surviving roommates. We've talked about this before on sidebar that the victims were found on the second and third floors, but there were two surviving roommates who apparently might have slept through everything. They were on the ground

floor. They were not harmed in any way. Here's what's interesting. It's come out that a former tenant of that house, somebody who had graduated, I think, in 2022 earlier. He said the house is a creaky house, you know, and this is his name is Cole Altonade. He told ABC News that you could typically hear every movement inside the home. It's quote, it's definitely an old creaky house. You can't walk up any of the stairs or any of the floors without everybody in the house knowing it. He also talked about it how to kind of being a party house and people knew about it. And there are people who are very familiar with the house since it, you know, people were coming in and out. So now we're wondering two things. Is it A, the killer killer, somebody who had been to that house previously, right?

If you take him in his words, somebody who maybe was familiar with the layout of that house. And B, again, there's a lot of questions about the two surviving roommates. How could they not have heard anything? And I know that there was a 911 phone call place the next day where they talked about, I believe it was an unconscious person. They had called the friends to the house first before they made the 911 phone call. But again, we haven't heard the 911 phone call. We don't know the contents of it.

Pure speculation at this point. But hearing how the house was in a state where it'd be very difficult to not hear something, what's your take on it? Well, I've also read where there was a personhood formerly lived in the house that said that he roomed on the first floor and he couldn't hear anything going on on the second third floor. I don't know what this other person's definition of an old creaky house is, but that doesn't look to me to be an old creaky house. Certainly there's going to be creeks and so forth and so on. It's made out of wood and sticks and bricks. So this is another person giving

some information that really it doesn't make any difference. It's just something that they want to, for whatever reason, want to interject themselves into this thing. They want to make a comment about it in regards to, and I've heard some well-known folks on the interwebs talking about how could how could they not hear this? How could they not hear this going on these two roommates on the first floor? How could they not have heard this? You know, how do we explain that? And that, to me, that is just sensationalism for its sake. And there is a completely logical reason why they didn't hear. Number one, they were asleep. They may have been passed out. And I'm not suggesting that they were. I'm just saying that the consistent businesses may have been that.

case. And this is a silent killer moving through the house that what looks to me from the outside looking in appears that they knew where they were going to. And you have to remember that Ethan and Jonah were on the second floor. And they were presumably, I would imagine the blood trail would be able to tell who was who was killed first. I'm just assuming that they were when this person, if, if Kaley was the one they were after, and that's an if, then they realized that this was not Kaylee, and they went up and found her and then did what they did to Kaylee and Madison. So the use of a bladed weapon, that's a silent killer, and this person apparently is

efficient with the use of that weapon, so they could go in, do what they needed to do, make very little noise, and nobody would have heard anything happen. So, Phil, before I sign you off, we have about 30 seconds. I want to ask you real quick, is this case unique or bizarre in any way, or is this just standard from what you've seen in your experience? only reason we're looking at is because it's so much attention on to it. But is there anything unique or bizarre about it? I think the only thing that's, to me, the only thing that is unique about it is where it took place in Moscow, Idaho at the University of Idaho. That to me is

the uniqueness of this case because of that community. I've said it before, you know, in the last 15 years, they've had seven homicides, and all of a sudden they have four in one day. So that's the only part of this that I would find unique. I mean, in terms of work in the scene and the crime itself. There's evil in the world and unfortunately it landed in Moscow, Idaho on that day. And we're going to continue to follow it. Phil Waters. Thank you so much for breaking down these new updates for us. We appreciate you taking the time as always. Thank you, Jesse. And that's all we have for you, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber.

I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this Law and Crime series, Add Free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.