Law&Crime Sidebar - 'This Could Be Our Car': Crashed Hyundai Has 'Slight Connection' to Idaho Murders, Ex-FBI Agent Says

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

"This could be our car. It has to be investigated," former FBI agent Jennifer Coffindaffer said describing how Idaho investigators should be responding to the smashed-up, abandoned white Hyundai Elantra recently found in Eugene, Oregon. Over the weekend, tips about the abandoned vehicle poured into the Moscow Police Department, who said they are investigating whether the car is involved in the Idaho student murders. The Law&Crime Network's Angenette Levy and Coffindaffer have the details.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. A white Hyundai Alantra without license plates and front end damage found in Eugene, Oregon, hundreds of miles from Moscow, Idaho. Could it be the car police have been searching for for weeks. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy and welcome to Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. We've been following the investigation into the murders of those four University of Idaho students since it happened back on November 13.

Kaley Gonzalez, Mattie Mogan, Zana Kurnodal and Ethan Chapin all found stabbed to death in that home on King Road. Police have been asking for leads for weeks about a white Hyundai Alantra between the years of 2011 and 2013 that was. in the immediate area of the crime scene that morning. We now have photos from Tuesday morning about that vehicle. Photos of it have been circulating online since Monday. And these are photos of a very similar vehicle found on West 7th Street in Eugene, Oregon. There is front undamaged. The bumper is hanging off. It's dirty and there are no license plates. So that is a similar vehicle to the one

they're looking for that's been found. And I contacted Moscow police about it. And they told me that they are aware of the vehicle and they are working on it. And Eugene, Oregon police say that they will be impounding that vehicle. And joining me to talk about all of this is Jennifer Coffendoffer. She is a retired FBI agent. Jennifer, welcome back to Sidebar. Thanks for coming back on. Thank you for having me. Jennifer, let's start with this white car. It's a white Hyundai Alantra. The photos are floating around on the internet. And they show a Hyundai Alantra with front end damage, no license plates on a street corner in Eugene, Oregon. We're not saying it's the car, but Moscow PD tells me they are aware of the vehicle. They're investigating it. Eugene PD told me they had notified Moscow about it. So your thoughts and

feelings as a retired FBI agent on this vehicle just appearing on this street corner with no plates and front end damage. Well, certainly, enforcement would be completely remiss not to take this clue seriously. They need to go out and discover why in the world and how in the world that ended up there. And if there is any connection, remember, and this is just an interesting little nugget, but Maddie was born there in Eugene. I don't want to say she was necessarily raised there from the information I've been able to find she spent her early years there. But nevertheless, there is a slight connection to one of our victims. In addition, it's odd for a vehicle to sustain this sort of damage, not have a license plate, be abandoned. It is somewhat contemporaneous

with these murders. Granted, it's going on five weeks out. So it's not as if the individual fled to Eugene, abandoned the car, something like that. But there could be a nexus. This could be our car. It has to be investigated. And that's what the FBI needs to do. And they are doing that, according to Moscow PD. They are aware of the vehicle. That's what they told me on Monday. evening and they are investigating. We're hoping to get more information about it. And again, they've been going through 22,000 vehicles. This could be the vehicle. It could not be. We don't know, but we're going to stay on top of it for everyone and see if there is a connection here. Jennifer, I want to move on now to the video in this case, the digital evidence. And I'm talking

photographs and video. As of about a week and a half ago, they already had more than 1,000 video digital submissions. That is a mountain of material. Some of those could be brief clips. Some of them could be hours-long video clips. So what does it take to go through all of that? Because I've heard people testify police officers in the past in court when they're talking about going through surveillance video. And they literally have to sit there and watch it sometimes for hours and log the details. Well, you're exactly right. Having been on the other side of that, on numerous occasions, it is painstaking. You go moment by moment, keeping your eye to every detail on that clip, everything that surrounds. In other words, what's in the background that's happening,

sound if it's available. You have to really analyze moment by moment. And sometimes, as you mentioned, these clips are very long. They have requested from the 12th through the 14th for most of these video clips. So this isn't just a snapshot in time. They are looking for incidents that occurred in and around this event. So it's painstaking. I realize that many times this is going to be analytical work that are done by the FBI's analysts. And they are very well trained. They also go to Quantico to investigative techniques. They don't tote a gun, but they're very well versed in how and what to look for. And I expect throughout the United States analysts in the FBI are reviewing these videos as we speak. So throughout the United States, so they've got all hands on deck looking at this

because yesterday we learned that they now have 60 FBI agents assigned to this case throughout the country. They had 46 last week. So they've increased the manpower by 14 agents. That seems significant. It's very significant. And if you look early on to the first press release, they had 22. We've got, we've really, they've increased by threefold the amount of agents they initially had now into the 60s. And we're not even talking about analytical help, lab help, support help, the secretaries and clerical staff behind the scenes that are really making all of this go much quicker than it normally would in terms of turning around investigative findings of these agents. So you have a basically the size of one of our field offices working on this,

one of our smaller field office. It's important. Everyone realizes we have, we meaning the public, there's a killer on the loose. And this is nothing, it makes this case exigent. It's something that has to be addressed by law enforcement, both from a safety standpoint and, of course, from a justice standpoint. So the FBI really probably very early on, although the public might not realize it, was at the helm of this investigation. And certainly whether it's successful or not is going to be falling on the FBI in their efforts. I want to talk about the video again. The fact that you have to painstakingly go through it, then maybe if you don't have a clear picture, it has to be enhanced. So we touched on this briefly under our last episode. What can the FBI do? I mean, I think people get a

picture in their mind of some CSI lab where they do something, they adjust the pixels and then the picture is completely clear. What actually goes on with that video enhancing? at the FBI lab? Well, and I will say, I am not a video expert. The video experts that the FBI has are not only well trained. In other words, they have mentors that have trained them for months and years sometimes on how to properly conduct these enhancements. But they also have so much formal training and continue education.

So they also are able to use. the state of the art equipment that is available to enhance these videos. So I can tell you from a case agent standpoint when I needed a bag looked at closer because I couldn't make out where the bag was from or a face because it's the surveillance video and it was too grainy and it was dark and we were far away or a vehicle where the tag was rainy. We would send that in and the lab is amazing. Their returns would always help to magnify what we were looking at. I can't remember one case out of dozens and dozens that I worked where a submission to the lab didn't result in a positive enhancement of that evidence. And so that could be of a person or a vehicle license plate. So there's a lot

they can do with the adjustments they can make in the software, I'm assuming. Yes, and audio too. Sometimes you might not be able to pick up the audio, but they can enhance that as well. So if it can be done, they can do it. And Jennifer, I just want to talk briefly. On Monday, the police said they passed the threshold of 10,000 tips. I can't imagine. I've heard of cases where they have 1,000 tips, kind of weeding through all of that. Some of them may be they're not good tips.

Let's just be honest. But some of them may have valuable information. So let's talk about what it takes to not only organize that, but to go through that. 10,000 tips, that just boggles my mind. Yeah, it is mind-boggling. And it's really incumbent on the public when you're submitting a tip that you don't get extraneous tip information that you're just sending in for a reason that doesn't directly pertain to this case and this time frame and the Alontera and so on and so forth.

Unfortunately, I know for a fact that tips like this come in because tips like this come to me. And so it's very incumbent on people to really keep on track because every tip that comes in, I can assure you, they have to log it. They are cataloging it in the FBI files and they're taking a look at it. And from that point, as they come in, they're triaging. And the individuals who are triaging are typically analysts that, again, again, are very well educated and versed in evidence collection and what would be relevant to this case. They're also very well versed in the facts and details of this case, because at the end of the day, if you're not up to speed on what is coming in and what is happening on this case, you can't

even make intelligence decisions to help guide the FBI agents that are actually doing the interviews as to what direction they should be going in. So as information comes in, they're putting it into different piles, if you will, as to what needs to be addressed first and then what needs to be addressed later. And those leads that they feel are very important. They are getting that straight out to the lead detective and the case agents. And that is being directed to the 60 other agents to go out and facilitate those interviews. Well, it's certainly a monumental task and it's very important. I mean, we have four kids, and they were kids, whether they were 21 or 20 or not. They're kids. And they were murdered for no reason. And we hope that they get some answers. The families

get some answers soon. Jennifer Coffendoffer, thank you so much again for coming back on. We appreciate it. Thank you. And that's it for this edition of Law and Crime Sidebar podcast. It is produced by Sam Goldberg and Logan Harris. Bobby Zoki is our YouTube manager. Kira Bronson handles our social media and Alyssa Fisher does our bookings. You can download and listen to Sidebar on Apple, Spotify, Google, and wherever else you get your podcasts. And of course, you can always watch it on Law and Crimes YouTube channel. I'm Ann Janette Levy, and we will see 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.