Law&Crime Sidebar - Idaho Quadruple Murders: Crime Scene Expert Details Home Blueprint

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and retired crime scene reconstructionist Johnny Law provide an in-depth breakdown of the home blueprint where four University of Idaho students were found murdered earlier this month.GUEST:Johnny Law: youtube.com/@thejohnnylawLAW&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. views 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 want to assure you first off that the loss of Zana, Kaylee, Madison, and Ethan remains the highest priority for the Moscow Police Department. We will continue putting all of our resources into investigating and solving these murders. We do an in-depth analysis of the crime scene where four University of Idaho students were found murder. What does the house layout tell us about what happened? Retired crime scene reconstructionist and YouTuber Johnny Law breaks it down. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and

Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. We all want to understand why this happened. And what drove someone to do this? The families of those involved in our entire community deserve to know. There are still so many questions regarding this horrific quadruple homicide out of the University of Idaho. I'm talking about the four students, 21-year-old Kaylee Gonzalez, 21-year-old Madison Mogan, 20-year-old Zana Kurnodal, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin, who were all found brutally murdered in their off-campus home out in the college town of Moscow. Now, police haven't revealed much about the investigation. We know that there have been no arrests. We know that no killer or suspect has been identified.

What we do know is that several people have been ruled out, and this includes Bethany Funk and Dylan Mortensen, who were the surviving roommates of the slain friends. They all lived in the same house. Funk and Mortensen were on the ground floor while the victims were killed on the second and third floors, which actually brings me to one of the most important aspects of this case, and that is the crime scene, the house. And to get a better understanding of the layout of this house, I'm joined. by Johnny Law, a 25-year retired veteran crime scene reconstructionist and sheriff sergeant who actually

served as a SWAT team sniper and also in the United States Marine Corps for two tours. He actually provided an in-depth breakdown of the house on his YouTube channel. So I encourage everyone to check it out there. Johnny, thanks so much for coming to here on Sidebar. All right. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. So, and by the way, thank you for your service as well. We very much appreciate it. Done some great work and also on this as well because a lot of people do have questions here. So we're going to start off. There is a sketch that we're going to show everybody. And my understanding it was provided to you by a third party says that it was posted

by the property management. So it's kind of unconfirmed, right? But your first, this kind of crude sketch, it pretty much matches up to the property that could be found on a website like Zillow, right? Yeah, correct. When I received it, you know, the overalls for the outside and the inside and the layout really, really matched. I took it to Zillow, started comparing stairwells where those were located and the actual

bedroom layouts and the windows where those were laid out and it matched right on yeah so if you look at this image right it shows different views of the house the top view the front view the rear view and then it has it shows three floors so briefly if you can briefly summarize what should we know about this house when we're looking about it let's start there what should we know about the house it was originally probably a one story that they built into a two-story house and right above the the two bedrooms on the bottom directly above that there's one bedroom directly above another and then above another bed and then above another room is just a living room area. So there's pretty much dead space from there all the way to the third floor. Let's start with the real interesting question that everybody has.

It's whoever did this, you would imagine that the two surviving victims who are on the ground floor, if you look at it right here, wouldn't they be the first victims, right? You go in, I imagine the possibility as the killer comes in through the door and you would go strike the first two victims on the ground floor. But to have the victims on the third and the second floor, what do you make of that? Well, we don't know where they entered. We don't know if they entered through the front door or the second story slider that goes into the kitchen. Just from law enforcement reports and video, they're spending a lot of time at the sliding glass door. Looks like they're throwing some fingerprint dust on there, maybe some other chemicals on there to see if they can find any kind of evidence of blood or fingerprints.

But I didn't really see them spending a whole lot of time on that front door so they could have entered up to the backside where there's a tree line. But right now, there's no reports on which way they did enter. There's a ladder on the side of the house people have been talking about. We don't know if that ladder was there before, if it was used to gain entry somewhere else. It's unknown at this time. It's all speculation. So just to make clear, there could have been a ladder that might have been used or maybe the tree to get to the second floor? There's a ladder leaning up against the house on to the right of the front door along the side of the house.

There's been a lot of scuttle butt about that ladder. Who knows where, you know, if it was used, if it was been there, if investigators brought it, we don't know. But they've been spending a lot of time on that back slatterglass door. And so I think they're paying a lot of attention to that point of entry right there, whether it was secured or not. Let's start with the second floor. Okay. So the second floor is of particular interest. We know that two of the victims were found there.

What should we know about? And again, I'm looking at the sketch, bedroom 2A, bedroom 2B. There's a living room. There's a bath. There's stairs, which we'll get to in a second. And then there's this patio ground. Let's talk about the bedrooms. What do we know?

Well, we know if you're looking at the sketch and 2B, that that's probably more than likely, Zana's room. that's where she stayed, where Ethan probably would have been staying with her on November 13th. 2A, there's a lot of pictures of Dylan up there, but I think reports are that 2A may have been vacant at the time, and that Dylan may have been in 1B down to the bottom right. Now there's also pictures of Dylan in 1A. So, I mean, Bethany in 1A. So we think we're confident Bethany's in 1A that Dylan's either in 1B or she's in 2A,

because there's pictures of her in 2A with some of her. items of clothing in there. So right now, just speculation, we don't really know exactly. And, regardless, if she's staying in two gay, she could have been sleeping in one B on the 12th. She could have been in Bethany's room with her, you know, as girls commonly do. My daughter did it all the time. So it's all speculation at this point. We just know that police said two are found on second, two were found on the third. And we know that Ethan and Zana were a couple. And so obviously they would be together in this room. What's the layout of too big? is just when you enter the door, there are some pictures of a bed that is directly against

the, I don't know, orientation-wise. If you go in the door and hook a left, the bed is laid in that direction, that orientation, go in the door, the bed's kind of laid in this direction here. And there's just normal girl stuff that's throughout the room. But other than the bed being laid out one way in photos on the 13th, unknown. So the 2B, do we know if something happened in there, the chance of somebody would hear it in the upstairs rooms where, again, Kaylee was found and Maddie was found, or below where the two surviving victims were. I mean, the room of 2B, what's above and what's below, the best you can understand? Well, above 2B is nothing because the rooms, you know, the third rooms are above the second floor because it can't,

it cants out, right? So 2B ends here and then there's this canned out kitchen. Well, above that is, is 3A and 3B, but on the other side of the kitchen is another bedroom, which is 2A. So 2A is kind of on a different, it's kind of an add-on, if you will. There's a step down from 2B that goes out to a kitchen, and that's where 2A is, and then directly above the kitchen and 2A or 3A and 3B. So in other words, let's say the killer or killer struck at 2B first, right? It wouldn't be surprising that the other people in the house wouldn't hear it. There's nobody, right, there's nobody above, there's nobody above 2B, right?

Now, if Dylan's below on 1B, then that's happening above her, if she's there. If she's awake also, we have to think about that as well. Right. Okay, so let's go to the third floor. Can you tell us how the second floor and the third floor where the staircase is and how quick it would be for somebody to get from, let's say, 2B up to, and again, I'm looking at this sketch here, 3B and 3A. Yeah. So if you can imagine coming out of 2B and button and taking a hard right, you'll go down to drop down and straight ahead the stairs go up. And they just loop around in kind of a U-turn. And right when you come up to the top, right on the left is 3B and to the right is 3A. I mean, it's a pretty quick. It's not a big house. So it'd probably take, I know, less than 30 seconds to do that. And the rooms 3A and 3B are very easy to get to from back and forth.

Very easy. There's just a hallway separating them. Do you have any, based on looking at this case, do you have any idea about the order? I mean, It might be so premature, the order of the killings or anything that's a difference to you between 3A, 3B and 2B? I don't. Investigators are going to have a lot of better time figuring that out, you know, based on just the way the stab wounds are and transfer of blood and commingling of blood. And they got a, you know, they have a hard work because if you're doing a killing in one room

and you're taking that blood and you're going to another person, you're introducing that blood into another person. Now you're commingling that blood. And then you take that to the third person and the fourth person, assuming it's the same. knife, you have commingling. So investigators will have to say, well, if this person's DNA is not in number four and everybody else's is and some other, you know, upstream or downstream, they're going to have to try to figure that out and blood type that in the lab and figure out if there's any commingling at all or if there's any kind of blood evidence on the floor as well for that may have

dripped off the knife or if the suspect got cut himself. Do we know anything at this point about blood stains, blood spatter, anything like that? Nothing, nothing other than the pictures on the outside of the wall that looks like suspected blood that's coming from 2B, where Zana and Ethan were staying, that they'll field test that and then run it to a lab to verify it. That's the only pictures of blood, I think, that we have right now. By the way, the house, the neighborhood, it's around, the sort of neighboring houses. For anybody who doesn't know, how close is it to neighboring houses?

Is it kind of secluded in a way? Where is this house based in terms of the Moscow area? You know, it's not very far out of town. I've seen some reporters that did the drive in like three or four minutes they got to this property. It's got surrounded by trees on a couple sides. It's not a normal track house where there's houses right next to you, you know, where you could, you know, touch your neighbor's house.

It's probably got, you know, a half acre a lot, something like that. So they're a little bit spread out, but not so much spread out that you can't see each other. When you look at this house, I mean, the whole, the whole situation is so incredibly eerie. And, you know, I just remember my time in college, so many houses look like that. There's nothing from the, when I'm looking at any of this that stands. out to me. It looks like a typical off-campus house, a typical scene. None of this makes sense. Is there anything looking at this crime scene that stands out to you? I mean, if you were in charge of this investigation, what would be some of the first rooms you would look at? What would

be some of the things you would want to know? Is there anything that stands out to you, even from this bird's-eyed view about the house that says, huh, I would look a little bit closer at that. I really trust the investigators right now to do their job. They got a lot of help. They got a lot of experts in there. They got hundreds of years experience that are coming in here. doing the best they can. I can't imagine rolling up on the scene, especially I worked at a small police department in Oregon that only had, you know, half a dozen officers. So I can't imagine rolling on this and in reaching out for help when I was, when I was a new cop. But, you know, the things that stand out a little bit that would help a perpetrator would be the wooded area

behind it. There's a lot of concealment back in there. I don't know what the lighting situation was in on the streets as far as how well that's lit. There's been some reports that it wasn't well lid and now it's lit up. But that tree line is a pretty good place for someone to lay and wait if they wanted to. So I'd really be focusing a lot on that area. Now, you know, it's cold, it's raining, it's wet. And so a lot of the evidence are going to try to find in that area. It's going to be pretty difficult to find. Johnny Law, thanks so much for taking the time. I encourage everyone to check out your YouTube video on this. We're even going to further detail about the house. And you've been following this case as well since it started. Tell everybody where

they can find you and get more updates about this case. Yeah, you can find me on YouTube, the Johnny Law on YouTube and Johnny Law 5-0 on most socials, and you can hit me up over there anytime. Johnny, thank you so much. Absolutely. And that's all we have for you, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast, 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, AddF, free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.