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Idaho Killings


Bobcat1

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/2/2022 at 8:22 PM, tvc184 said:

The police have released no clues to protect the investigation. 

From a CNN article:

“The arrest comes a day after police said they have received about 20,000 tips through more than 9,025 emails, 4,575 phone calls, iand 6,050 digital media submissions, while having conducted over 300 interviews”. 

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Apparently they got DNA and other evidence from the scene that matched the suspect. 

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6 hours ago, tvc184 said:

From a CNN article:

“The arrest comes a day after police said they have received about 20,000 tips through more than 9,025 emails, 4,575 phone calls, iand 6,050 digital media submissions, while having conducted over 300 interviews”. 

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Apparently they got DNA and other evidence from the scene that matched the suspect. 

How does law enforcement handle these numbers of tips?  Does each and every one get addressed, are obviously ridiculous ones dismissed and who makes that call?

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6 hours ago, LumRaiderFan said:

How does law enforcement handle these numbers of tips?  Does each and every one get addressed, are obviously ridiculous ones dismissed and who makes that call?

I think they try to follow up on each, usually by a task force or group of investigators assigned to the incident.

It is not always that many tips however even when there are that many tips. It isn’t like thousands of entirely different clues but mostly a repeating of clues. For example 800 people might report seeing a vehicle in that area and give similar descriptions.

 Like, we got an X number of tips that a small SUV was seen leaving the parking lot. Those tips collectively show:

Year model: 2012-2019 or unknown  

Color: Green, blue, aqua, turquoise or unknown but medium to dark. 

Brand: Toyota, Hyundai, Honda or unknown.

 And so on.

 That matters because if someone turns in a bright yellow, 1998 Ford Explorer, it probably isn’t going to be a suspect vehicle. BUT…. you still keep the tip just in case. Maybe that was the one person that saw a different vehicle and I could break the case open. 

Another quick example is if 175 people gave the same name and/or description of a possible suspect. Like, a guy named Such And Such started hanging out with that group a couple of months ago and he seemed strange. But let’s say that a couple of those “same” tips gave additional information like, he had made claims of having fantasies about being a serial killer. Like with the vehicle, a very similar set of tips keep popping up.

So with just the vehicle and suspect tips (none of which may be true) we have almost 1,000 tips of a maybe strange guy (likely with a physical description) possibly named Such And Such and a vehicle that may not be linked to him that is a midsize to small SUV, in a year model in the mid to late 2000s and having a green, blue or similar color.

So do 1000 different investigators need to be assigned to that? No. 

 I have been involved in a couple of those types of investigations on a smaller scale. I actually called a tip line from another state to give a tip (reported to me) about a national story (kind of like this) that was all over the news prior to today’s social media. The Internet was big but not like it is today. I spoke to a female sergeant (if I remember correctly) and she asked if I thought the tip was valid.  I told her that the tip was from a person that I trusted and I absolutely thought that the person thought it was legitimate. We kind got a laugh out of that, cop to cop. She made a comment like, yeah I know what you mean.

So, does each and every one get addressed? Yes and no. They probably get addressed by compiling them like I showed. Now that they have arrested a suspect, we could have a good chance of finding out that if the tips were valid as in, a few may have turned out to be correct. A person leaving a tip probably doesn’t know anything about the crime. They are just passing on potential leads. Just like the tip I called in, the person saw a vehicle and a description of two people but the tip was of an out of state license plate with either partial or complete numbers (getting too many years ago to remember). Was it actually the suspects? Did it help? Did it match similar information? I haven’t gotten a clue but that is sometimes what breaks a case. You can bet it was logged with the rest of the tips. So let’s play what if. What if the news story that I was involved in (from several states away) by passing on a tip was the only one from this area of Texas and with the license plate description? Does that make it invalid? Certainly not. A couple of hundred tips might’ve come in about another vehicle and they could’ve all been wrong although similar and the one I called in might have been completely accurate.

So again, I think that the thousands of tips would be cataloged and an attempt made to follow up, depending on time.

Of course, they could have locked on this guy very early and it just took this long to compile the case. That was kind of the point I wanted to make when this thread first started. Just because you don’t hear it on the news does not mean that it does not exist. To say the police have no clues is entirely understandable but likely not correct. I thought that I read in reference to this arrest that they had DNA material from the crime scene. That alone would be a significant clue, especially with computer searches. 

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In reference to database searches by/for law enforcement, we have:

AFIS for fingerprints. 

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CODIS for DNA. 

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NIBIN for firearm ballistics. 

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We have had several cold cases made locally by hits like in CODIS. 

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7 minutes ago, baddog said:

Me too, like where they found his DNA and how they matched it in Pennsylvania. Stuff like that. Also motive.

Motive is what has me the most curious.  He was getting his phd in criminology.  It kinda makes you wonder if he was some kind of psychopath trying to be the next Dexter, or if this was a crime of passion somehow

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Just now, baddog said:

That really may not be too far off. 

It obviously could have nothing to do with it but that would be one heck of a coincidence.

I would like to see how the put together the case but that might never be known except at trial.

 A motive is usually meaningless at trial but it might help close things up for a jury. You never know what a juror will rationalize.

Jilted boyfriend where he wanted to kill his ex plus the guy that stole her and the others were unfortunate to be at the wrong place and time?

Psycho serial killer?

Similar to a school mass murderer but he didn’t want to get caught so he could do it again?

A fantasy of outsmarting law enforcement (which I think might be common in serial killers). 

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I’ll go with the last one. There has to be a huge reason for stabbing instead of shooting, of course stealth. Whether motive has bearing on the trial or not, I’d still like to know why anyone would do something so heinous. For me, this was planned more than an ex would do. I have been wrong before. 

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Being a criminologist might have been his downfall. 🙃

I have a book by Dr. George Kirkham… somewhere, Signal Zero. It would be in my language, “officer needs assistance”. Every part of the country or even individual agencies have their own code. It is the ultimate call for help to assist an officer in trouble, potentially in danger of serious injury or death. I have responded to many such calls and made a few myself.

 But who is George Kirkham?

He was basically a police hating PhD in criminology at Florida State University. His doctorate was from the generally thought to be anti-government, anti-authority UC-Berkeley.

Like a lot of criminologists (but certainly not all), he had no experience in much of his field of expertise and his knowledge of the subject was taught by professors…. who also had no direct knowledge of what they were teaching. It was academics who had learned from other academics who had learned from…..

 Police officers also go to college and some of Dr. Kirkham’s students were police officers. Some of them told him that much of his conclusions and lessons were full of crap. One of them eventually challenged him to go to the police academy and ride patrol. He approached the dean of his college department who endorsed the idea.

He convinced a sheriff, I believe in Jacksonville, Florida, to let him go to the police Academy on the weekends. He finally got his commission and went on patrol in one of the worst part of town. Signal Zero was part of his experiences. Cases like, in his first couple of days he had to deal with a drunk in a bar. He was going to show the veteran hard core cop how words could diffuse the situation and there was no need for a show of force, much less put your hands on someone. While he was within a few moments on the ground screaming for help, his partner stepped in or something to that effect. I think he said something like, I kept hearing someone screaming and then realized it was him.

It was supposed to be a one summer experiment for a couple of nights a week. It ended up being years spent on patrol at a couple of different agencies. He was still a professor and he still taught class but now he saw the issues from the other side. I remember reading a comment by him that much of what he had written in his academic career, and much of what he was teaching in many cases was not true. But wait, he had a PhD in criminology as taught by PhDs in criminology.

So Dr. Kirkham wrote more books and produced police training films. Much of the backlash that he received from (now we would call woke) students who didn’t want to hear his police experiences and other professors who saw him as I guess a sellout or a brainwashed person who should no longer be teaching.

I assume that no one is going to track down any of Dr. Kirkham’s books or articles so here is a 60 Minutes piece on him done almost 50 years ago.

 Like Dr. Kirkham found out, reading books by people who were taught by people who wrote books who never actually applied it, may not always have the correct answers. 

 

 

 

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11 minutes ago, baddog said:

I’ll go with the last one. There has to be a huge reason for stabbing instead of shooting, of course stealth. Whether motive has bearing on the trial or not, I’d still like to know why anyone would do something so heinous. For me, this was planned more than an ex would do. I have been wrong before. 

Motive is almost always the most interesting part of such a case.

It just isn’t a requirement for a conviction.

It would be very hard to make great movies if we never got into motives.

I see a lot of Facebook lawyers make statements like, if he committed the crime then what was his motive? I don’t know, he didn’t get his Frosted Flakes today?

And you could be correct about a knife. Any gun might have the potential to be traced, even if purchased on the street. 

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7 minutes ago, baddog said:

Well from this article, he may have been a member of the woman haters club. 
 

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Another Ted Bundy…..

Which also begs the question, was the stunning criminal act his first or will they start finding bodies.

 I think it may be hard to pattern these killers but I thought many/most of them built up into these types of crimes. They didn’t go from zero to 100 in a single incident but anything is possible.

Smaller acts of violence, like starting on animals and slowly building up.  

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Wouldn’t Nancy Grace be a joy to life with?

She is full of it about half the time and vindictive. She hit a couple of good points though.

I think the comment the suspect is reported to have said about anyone else being arrested was just part of the game.

 She is correct (or possibly) about location of any DNA. It is like fingerprints at a crime scene. Anyone who has ever walked between cars in a parking lot has probably left their DNA and fingerprints at some locations.

It is like a school getting broken into and a student’s fingerprints are on the teacher’s desk. With 80-100 students a day, if the print belonged to any of them, so what?  I lifted some fingerprints from a classroom but they were inside of a locked cabinet. The teacher left the keys in her desk so a student might have found it. Fingerprints on the teacher’s desk might mean nothing. Those same fingerprints inside of a locked location that no one is supposed to have access to might mean everything.  

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Interesting tidbit of info... investigators are stating that they have his phone returning to the scene at 9:21 am, several hours after the murders, but before 911 was called.  Perhaps he was returning to look for some evidence he'd left?  You'd think he'd be smart enough to not take his cell phone with him considering his educational background.

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1 minute ago, bullets13 said:

Interesting tidbit of info... investigators are stating that they have his phone returning to the scene at 9:21 am, several hours after the murders, but before 911 was called.  Perhaps he was returning to look for some evidence he'd left?  You'd think he'd be smart enough to not take his cell phone with him considering his educational background.

 "The suspect's phone arrived near the scene of the crime at 2:47 a.m. local time, at which point, the phone stopped working, the affidavit states. It was turned back on at 4:48 a.m. and cellular resources showed the phone was on the highway driving away from the scene shortly after. 

At 9:00 a.m., police said the phone left the suspect's home and arrived at the crime scene at 9:21 a.m. It had left the scene by 9:32 a.m., showing that the suspect likely returned hours later." 

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This confuses me - 

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One of two roommates who were not harmed in the attacks said she 

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 dressed in black inside the house on the morning of the killings, according to the probable cause affidavit.

 

Identified as D.M. in the court document, the roommate said she “heard crying” in the house that morning and also heard a man’s voice say, ‘It’s OK, I’m going to help you.’” D.M. said she then saw a “figure clad in black clothing and a mask that covered the person’s mouth and nose walking towards her,” the affidavit continued.

“D.M. described the figure as 5’ 10” or taller, male, not very muscular, but athletically built with bushy eyebrows,” the affidavit says. “The male walked past D.M. as she stood in a ‘frozen shock phase.’

“The male walked towards the back sliding glass door. D.M. locked herself in her room after seeing the male,” the document says, adding the roommate did not recognize the male.

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