Law&Crime Sidebar - 'They Have Suspects': Ex-Sergeant Believes Idaho Police on Verge of Breakthrough in Student Murders

Episode Date: December 28, 2022

"I think they have suspects," former NYPD sergeant Joseph Giacalone said discussing the latest Idaho student murders investigation update. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber and Giacalone 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. 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. Is there something specific on the call that you believe could lead to an arrest? Like I said, I can't discuss that. It's part of the investigation, but as soon as we can release that information, we will. The Moscow Police Department releases some updates in the University of Idaho murder investigation. But what does it all mean? Retired NYPD Sergeant Joseph Jack alone breaks it down.

Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. We have some more updates for you right now in the University of Idaho murder investigation. I'm talking about the killings of 21-year-old Kaylee Gonzalez, 21-year-old Madison Mogan, 20-year-old Zana Kernotal, and 20-year-old Ethan Chapin, whose bodies were found in their off-campus home back on November 13th. Now, at the time of this recording, there have been no arrests, no publicly identifiable suspect, and no indication that the murder weapon has been recovered.

But as I said, the Moscow Police Department has issued a press release with some updates. And to help me break down these updates, I want to bring in Joseph Jackalone, retired NYPD's sergeant and author of the Criminal Investigative Function Third Edition. Joseph, thanks for coming here on Sidebar. We really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for having me, Justin. I'm going to go through some of these different points, and then I want your reaction to it and what this means. So the first two points are, let me your phrase, I'm not necessarily going in the order of which it's listed, but I think this is the way that I think we should structure it.

So two points that they have in this press release are. Number one, they say, no suspect has been identified and only vetted information that does not hinder the investigation will be released to the public. We encourage referencing official releases for accurate and updated progress. All press releases and related information is available. give their website. They go on to say that investigators believe someone has information that adds context to what occurred on the night of the murders and continue requesting additional pictures, video, and social media content. Our focus remains on the investigation, not on an individual's activities displayed in the tip. Whether you believe it is significant or not, your information might be one of the puzzle pieces that help solve these murders. And then it says digital submissions of tips and leads will not be publicly disclosed due to our ongoing commitment

to keep information private and details may be pertinent to the ongoing criminal investigation. My first question to do is, does that alarm you? Because doesn't it make it seem like they're not as advanced in the investigation as you would hope? No, not yet. I mean, I am concerned about how things are, you know, how things are progressing. But you have to understand something. The police department always holds back information. They don't provide things that will be detrimental to the case. And we have seen a large outpouring of information coming from the true crime community. And some of it has been just wrong. And it's just been actually awful. So they have to try to kind of combat that. And if you look at this bullet, there's a lot of things

that they're saying in here. We're not saying in there. Right. So there's a lot of what they refer to as, I refer to as cop speak. So they're trying to tell everybody, listen, we haven't come out with anything publicly yet. That doesn't mean that they don't have a suspect or suspects. But what it does tell everybody, it kind of puts them on notice, that anything that comes out, basically, outside from the police department is, you kind of not pay attention to it because they're not running the investigation. The Moscow Police Department, the state, and the FBI are all involved in this, right? So the Moscow, we know is the lead because I don't see a federal nexus here, not yet, right? We're not privy to everything. But here's the other thing when you look at this.

There's an old motto that all investigators have, and that is somebody knows something. And that's probably universal throughout the entire United States. And the idea is to try to get those people who have maybe witnessed something that they thought was strange. You got to remember, this is a small community. This is, when you think about it in the grand scheme of things, you know, small university, people coming and going. You have family members, everybody, this is national and international news.

And what they're hoping is that somebody has spotted something that they thought was out of place. And the time was this really to come out with information like this was in the very beginning when this crime happened. But when they say no suspect has been identified, Does that mean publicly identified? That doesn't mean that they haven't found anybody. Because the way that I looked at it, if they had someone on their radar, I think based on

what we've seen, they're not going to tell the public, right? They're not going to tell anybody yet until there's arrest. I'm reading that and saying they really have no idea who did this yet. We need more help. Maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way. Maybe they really do have some suspects, just they haven't publicly identified the suspects. How should I be reading that? Well, yes, they're not going to have, listen, I think they've, they've,

They do have suspects or people that they think are involved in this crime, whether it's an individual or individuals. I do think they have a focus on specific people. And the reason why I think that way is because of the DNA and all the different things that they've taken out of the house. I think that they would try to maybe key in on a couple of people. You got to remember, cell phone records, internet records. We saw video surveillance, whichever I referred to as the three forensic horsemen.

Those three things, they're putting these pieces together. Now, the case is not moving as fast as the public wants, but that's not the way these cases work. You have a quadruple homicide. This is something that is very time-consuming. And the problem that you were running to is with the DNA is that there might be multiple donors in a house of this kind of situation where it's at a college campus and they're going to have to call through a lot of these things. So I believe that they have people that they were looking into, right? So they might need a DNA exemplar. They might need to be able to eliminate people. They're not going to keep the public and specifically the perpetrator guessing, right? This is not

checkers where the police move and the person move, you have to play chess, right? You're thinking three moves ahead. And sometimes in policing with these criminal investigations, you have to play poker, right, where you have to bluff people. So the lack of a specific target or anything like that or even hinting at it, I think would be really bad idea, especially the way the true crime community, some in the true crime community, has been really looking into these cases and coming up with their own wild theories and kind of like some have actually interfered with it, right? We're seeing the release of videos and everything else, which is not good. And I'm going to get to that in a second.

I do want to focus on one other aspect, the murder weapon. We don't have any indication that it's been recovered. Having said that, is it possible the police department has recovered the murder weapon, but they just won't tell us? No, I think they would tell us if they recovered the murder weapon, right? So the issue, unless they want to try to track down where it was possibly bought, you know, maybe there's a serial number on it that they can actually, you know, trace that down. We have federal agencies involved in this, right? So we have the FBI working on this.

We have access to databases and those kind of things where they could find out. So, you know, listening, finding the murder weapon is extremely important in this case. But will it identify the person who is responsible? Maybe. You got to remember, the person who bought it might not be the responsible person who actually committed these acts, right? It could have been somebody bought it, somebody stole it, somebody bought it in their home and somebody took it from their home, right, unbeknownst to the owner. So these are, those things all have to be, taken into consideration. You had mentioned something about people online getting involved and that could be a distraction. Well, one of the other bullet points in this Moscow police department

press release is they say, at the time in this investigation, detectives do not believe that the female associate professor and chair of the history department at the University of Idaho suing a TikTok user for defamation is involved in this crime. The Moscow police department will not provide a statement about the ongoing civil process. Now, to give everybody a little bit more context about this. There was a woman on TikTok named Ashley Gillard, self-professed tarot card reader who claims in a series of posts that a University of Idaho professor named Rebecca Schofield is the actual killer. She makes the allegation that Schofield was in a relationship with one of the victims and then killed everybody. What I did on his or his and her is two totally

different readings. It looks like he would be put the justice way before she does. They will be slow in arresting her. She's going to first go to another job. She's going to leave her current job. and start writing. She's going to focus on her writing and she's going to isolate herself. So she's going to leave. That's after she backstabs the killer, she's not going to live up to her promises for him. I mean, she can't. So it's a change of plans. That's when she's going to get out of Dodge. She'll be isolated in some like cab in or a house somewhere. She's going to focus on her writing, her books. She's going to get a lawyer, but she's still going to lose her case.

She's going to go to jail while her trial is pending. The final verdict will reveal that she's guilty and that she wasn't the person that everybody thought she was. See, the zombie? It may take a while for this all to happen. Now, we know that Professor Schofield has sued Gilar for her comments. And I'm curious when you look at that, the fact that they had to come out and say, she is not a suspect.

What'd you make of that? Well, I'm sure the professor's attorneys are very happy with that bullet, right? Because it actually leads off the press conference. So it kind of leads credence to that this was all nonsense. and this is basically fabricated. You can't accuse anybody of anything. Name names. First of all, you're going to see what's happening.

You're going to get yourself sued. But the thing that I'm worried about is that you're going to get somebody hurt, right? It's irresponsible to name somebody or focus in on a specific person, whether, you know, I'm not even going to say it because of the fact that there are people out there who will target this individual and may cause physical harm or what have you. I mean, we have to be very careful. And, you know, the true crime community, most of them have done. what they want to do in respect.

You know, they're interested in this case. They're looking up things. They're trying to help. But there is a small contingent that is wreaking havoc. And we're going to see those people weed it out eventually. And if it requires filing a lawsuit, if it requires, you know, a takedown order or a cease and desist from lawyers, I think this is unfortunately where we're headed. This might be, Jesse, the biggest case so far we've seen with social media influence, you know, to date for sure, as far as I'm concerned. That's my opinion, of course.

Maybe influencing an ongoing investigation. I remember the Amber Hurd Johnny Depp trial. Man, social media was all over that every five seconds. The problem with this is, you know, it takes resources and time away from the police department to address this and put it to bed. And obviously, what's really interesting is Ms. Galard has doubled down on her claims that the professor is the killer, so something there. But there's another point in the Moscow Police Department press release.

They say there have been numerous inquiries from members of the public and media to verify digital media published online. Any picture of video provided through the official public records request process is authentic. However, once a record is released, we can no longer verify its authenticity, as we do not know if anything has been altered. Detectives are aware of videos distributed by local businesses. What does that mean? It's quite unfortunate. We've seen at least one video released in its entirety.

What did you say to Adam? Where we had basically, the thing that really was interesting is that it was recording audio. Now, you'd have to ask a lawyer about this, but from far as I was concerned, you can't record audio unless you're part of the conversation. So to me, that was an interesting thing. So everybody was walking by, we heard, you know, so that was where the whole thing about Adam came up, right? Like, what did you do to Adam, I think, or something, someone's something. substance like that where they were talking about the girls were walking down and of course everyone jumped on that so that was an unfortunate release and we now saw i think a still photo of

something inside the bar so there are reports that there's this newly leaked image of what could be consolvis and mogin inside a bar at 132 a.m. on the night of the burders it's an image apparently from a surveillance video again it hasn't been authenticated now remember it's believed that they got home close to i think 2 a.m. and we believe that the killings happened between 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. Yeah. Talk to me about you make of that image that's circulating online? So, yeah, so we have another, you know, release. Now, this is actually probably some of the worst things that you can see what can happen in this situation, where we have either businesses who are sharing this with true crime people and

they're putting it out on the social media or on YouTube or what have you. This doesn't help the investigation, right? This actually only now compounds issues. And we see the police department do this a number of times where they're answering out things specifically from the public, right? And that's not even the media or the press. This is, you know, we don't have journalists and reporters ask it for the stuff. We have people from all over the country. And here's the other thing. And not really many people are talking about.

They've had over, I think they said, 10,000 tips, right? That's kind of unheard of, which means to me that most of the tips that they're getting have little to no value. But the police department has to go through each and every one of these things. They have to be answered out somehow. So these are, then, time consuming. And you saw the FBI adding, I think it was 10, 8. agents. If we're chasing down leads that have nothing to do with it and then complain that this is taking too long, I think we could kind of figure out exactly where, you know, where the problem

actually is. We don't want to turn people off. And they specifically said kind of that kind of cop talk in there too, that even if you think it's not important, send it to us anyway. So yeah, they don't want to prevent somebody who might know something from doing it. But here's again, I mean, we're dealing, they're dealing with an enormous amount of information. And I think that's slowing them down to him. Let's talk about the amount of information that's coming to the Moscow police department, the amount of tips. So another bullet point in their press release is they say, progress continues to locate the white 2011, 2013, Hyundai Alantra, believed to be in the immediate area of the King Road residence during the early morning hours of November 13th. Investigators believe

the occupant or occupants may have critical information to share regarding this case and have identified over 22,000 vehicles. If you know of or own a vehicle matching this description or know of anyone who may have been driving this specific vehicle on the day's proceeding or the day of the murders, please forward that information to the tip line. Now, this is something that the Moscow Police Department has been looking for, for what, the last two weeks or so? What is your take on the fact that they haven't been able to locate it yet? Well, because of the fact that the information that went out, as far as I'm concerned, it came out later on than it should have. I think they should release that information much sooner,

and that would have been the time to put a reward out for it, right? Especially right before Thanksgiving, when all the families and everybody's come together, people have gone home from school or what have you, that was your opportunity to try to get some information out there. That being said, it's a good sign that they are still, they still believe that that car contains a piece of evidence or the person involved in this case.

So that's something good because eventually it kind of fell off the radar, so to speak, previous press releases. So I'm glad to see that they're bringing that back. Now, finding a car with no plates is extremely difficult. And what happens is there are tools that the police department use. I'm sure they went to the university because generally in colleges, I'm not so sure about the university here, but they usually require you to register a vehicle, you know, to park in that location so that we don't get people leaving their car. So I'm sure they went through that avenue. And then the other avenue is you have to go through the DMV. Now, going through the DMV and asking for every white allantra, there's, there you go, 22,000 cars can show up. Now, that could just be from

Idaho, right? Because remember, you also have to look at, it's close to other states, like Washington, right? Because the autopsy was done in Spokane, I think. So you now have to create this huge circle and you keep on going out. And quite frankly, that is an amazing task that they have to go through because they don't have any other identifiers other than it's a white car. And we think it's an elantra, right? We don't even, we don't even know for sure. So, yeah, that's a I think they're hoping that the public, once again, would help out with this. And people say that they discounted the one that they found pretty quickly. Well, I think that's here you go.

If anybody who's responsible for that crime murdered these four women, excuse me, the three women in this man, all that blood, all that thing dragged it with them. They got into that car. They dragged the evidence with them. They will be able to tell right away if that's the car. I don't care what they try to do with it. Now, here's the other thing. Do you think we might find the car somewhere in a ditch, somewhere set on fire,

somewhere, you know, thrown in a lake, you know, that could also be a possibility because there's no plates. We don't know, and that's going to be the problem trying to locate this car. You tip off suspects, and that's what the police don't want to do. Yeah, and that car that you had mentioned, they ruled out. They ruled out the owner of the car. The car was registered in a different state. They found it, I think, in Oregon, and they said it didn't have a relation to the crime. I wanted to ask you about, because Chief Fry, the Moscow Police Chief Frye, said the reason we're not releasing more information right now is we are concerned about it eventually. prosecution down the line. In fact, he went on to say that they wouldn't release the 911 phone

call that was apparently made by the roommates the morning after the murder, where we believe other people came to the house too. There was a report that they told 911 of an unconscious person. They won't share more information. They won't release the 911 phone call until they get the AOK from prosecutors. Well, you always hold back information on any case that you work, but one this big, you hold back because you want to have an unbiased jury pool. And It's not just about today. It's about in a year from now or whenever we make an arrest and go to trial. We want to have that pool of people who can look at the case and not have all the facts to that to make the decision to find this person guilty.

Is that standard operating procedure? They're concerned about a prosecution down the road. He said he was afraid of taining a jury pool. Well, no, it's absolutely important. So when you're investigating any homicide specifically, you have to believe that you're going to catch the person and that this case is going to trial. And you have to dot your eyes and cross your teeth. Now, here are some issues, though. We saw statements made by the coroner that what I thought were pretty bad, you know, in respect of locations of wounds, how they were state.

I've never seen that before. And then we saw the prosecutor himself doing interviews and making statements about telling people they think they get, you know, you give themselves up and this and that. Once again, I've never seen that before either. And we haven't seen that now in a few weeks, and I think people finally got the message on that. If I was the chief, when that was happening, I would be extremely upset over this because, once again, you're preparing for court. And at one point, I even did an interview. I said at this point, I think that the state attorney should be looking to maybe take over this case after hearing what the prosecutor was saying. And I think that still is something that could happen down the road, because once you make public statements about a case that's an investigation that's ongoing and you're talking about things, it could be detrimental.

to the case because of the fact that you remember this is a if you live in new york or chicago or miami and you look at moscow i mean this is like a neighborhood in those kind of cities so it's a small it's a small place and yes you can take your jury pool and then p and then you're going to go through the thing about people trying to say defense attorney say we want to take it out of the area because they're not going to get a fair trial i mean it just adds all kinds of things to it and of course we know that the prosecutor from the lata county prosecutor's office basically came out gave conflicting information about was the house the target was it the people that was a target. That was a whole big mess. Before I let you go, Joseph, I want to ask you something real

quick, because it is being reported that Moscow PD officers who are investigating this case are being offered counseling services. What do you think about that? Well, listen, mental health and policing is something that has to be addressed because of the fact that, you know, you see a lot of things. And you get to remember, they really don't deal with a lot of homicides. And this must have been a bloody scene. You know, you're talking about a state, I think, that had 41 homicides reported in the entire state last year. So this is something that is important. I mean, we saw it, of course, with Sandy Hook. We saw it with Yuvalbi. Yes, mental health things are something extremely important that police officers should receive. And the gruesome nature

of these killings, right? And that's the thing that we can't forget about it. Joseph, I'm going to give you a final word, 30 seconds. Do you have confidence that this case will be solved by 2023 in the next year? Yes, I do think so. You got to remember this is going to be patience. Maybe, you know, in the next, hopefully within the next six months, as they're calling through all this information and looking for things. You have the state involved. You have the FBI involved. I think that you have a lot of good men and women that are working in this case. Joseph Jackalone, thank you so much for taking the time. We really do appreciate it. And if we get more updates, we'd love to have you back on here on Sidebar.

Thanks for having me, Jesse. 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 ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.