Mass murder with edged weapon

Four University of Idaho students were ‘left to bleed out’ in brutal targeted stabbing attack: Blood is seen oozing through walls of home – as cops call the scene ‘the worst we’ve ever seen’:

  • Sources in Moscow, Idaho, say the house where four students were brutally murdered Sunday was the worst they have ever seen
  • There was so much blood that it oozed through the walls of the three-story house near the University of Idaho campus
  • ‘We have investigators who have been on the job for 20, even 30, years, and they say they have never seen anything like this,’ one police source said
  • Police are now trawling through the contents of trash cans near the scene looking for the ‘edged weapon’ the killer used

This hits harder than it would have had it happened in some distant city, I drove through Moscow on Monday night on my way to Boomershoot territory. I graduated from the University of Idaho as did my ex-wife, one of her sisters, and her mother. My brother and his three children all attended the U of I. My three children, my father, and numerous cousins and high school friends attended the U of I as well. I owned a home and lived in Moscow, at least part time, from about 1990 to 2012. One of my daughters and my ex still live less than 20 minutes away.

It got even more disturbing with this:

Fry said investigators believe two other roommates were home during the attack, but they were “not injured.” When asked if they had been involved in a hostage situation, Fry said no. He did not speculate on why the crime was not reported until noon when uninjured, living people remained in the home, and, to protect the “integrity of the investigation,” would not confirm if the surviving roommates were the ones who called 911. Fry did say that the roommates were still at the house when police arrived.

“We don’t know why that call came in at noon and not in the middle of the night. … We’re investigating everything still to try to pull all the pieces together,” Fry said.

I found out about the murders via a text message from Mike B. Mike played a big role in getting “campus carry” through the Idaho legislature. It didn’t help these students but it might give a number of students comfort and safety in the coming weeks.

One has to wonder… Since this is getting so much attention, and the murderer(s) have got away with something like a nine or ten hour head start on the police, if there will be copycats. Knives are almost completely silent, never need to be reloaded, unrestricted sales, no serial numbers, easy to make, found in every home, etc..

If the murders had been with a gun it would have been called a “mass shooting” and more calls for gun control would have been in the headlines before the bodies were cold. So what will the gun control advocates have to say if “mass stabbing” becomes a trend here? “Common sense knife control”?

What I will say about the potential for copycats is, “People, show any copycats why you don’t bring a knife to gunfight.”

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17 thoughts on “Mass murder with edged weapon

  1. When I first saw this story I thought of you because you’ve mentioned Moscow and I knew it was near your “shooting range.”

  2. Yes, knives are completely silent, but I cannot believe the victims were, and the silence (i.e. non-reporting) of the two other roommates is quite abnormal. Even with the silence of the knives, there should not have been silence during the event.

    What a horrifying and strange case.

      • Good points. I suppose the roommates could have also thought the others were hungover/asleep.

      • Joe, under that hypothesis it is also true, unfortunately, that having a defensive firearm at hand would have been no help.

      • A knife “used properly” on sleeping victims would not have bled substantially – lots of bleeding occurs with multiple wounds that aren’t immediately fatal, which pretty much guarantees noise from said victims…
        P.S. From what I’ve seen of Moscow ID police over the past few years, I’m not surprised at them using excuses to not give out information…

  3. I too graduated from U of I and lived just a block away in the apartments on Queen Street. There were reports of a strange-acting individual near the Steam plant with a knife. 46 years earlier (when I was there) that was, unfortunately, not uncommon in my experience. Mostly they were drunk, sometimes on drugs. I suspect more of the latter today. The dismal winter climate led to the highest rate of alcoholism that I have lived. (The summers were great though.)

    There were reports of an unconcious person outside. What became of that? A survivor, or another victim? Maybe no such person, just a ruse to get the police?

    • I’ve “struggled” with the unconscious person report too. I haven’t seen any reference to “outside” so my current hypothesis is that a bedroom door was locked but no one responded to knocks and voice.

  4. We need a lot more info. And the mayor saying it was no cause for the community at large to be on-guard about…Was absolutely something un-fathomable.
    Done right? Stabbing people to the point of blood being everywhere, is not being done right.
    It seems strange that someone would silently kill 4 people, then go on a quiet stabbing frenzy so as not to wake the folks in the next bedroom?. (I’m not a serial killer, so I can’t say for sure.)
    One would think someone that experienced would have showed on the radar somewhere.
    I just hope the un-answered questions aren’t allowed to drag out for ever, to get memory holed.
    May God be with the families and community as they grieve.

    • IIRC, there was a college dorm attack by a famous rapist/murderer, where he killed multiple girls, but one survived. No one noticed at the time. I think she was instrumental in his court case.

      • That was in the late sixties, and the eight murdered women were a group of nursing students. One hid under a bed and lived, so the murderer lost count.
        The murderer was Richard Speck, the murders occurred in 1966 in South Deering Chicago, and the monster died of a heart attack in prison in 1991.

  5. On hearing that there were two additional students in the house, my first thought was that they were aware of the attack in progress but were trying to hide or otherwise be unnoticed by the killer. It seems entirely plausible that fear kept them from moving or calling police until they were certain that the attacker was no longer on site. On the investigation side, I cannot believe that the attacker was not known to the victims in some way unless there are other considerations that have not been published. Such an attack with its apparent brutality is not likely random. The victims were either known to the attacker or the attack was a contract to insure compliance of someone else through terrorism and fear.

    • The attack occurred between 3:00 and 4:00 AM. The police were not called until about noon with a report of an unconscious person. If true, then I find it hard to believe the roommates were aware of the attack as it happened.

  6. I suspect fentanyl overdose is involved, and the stabbings may have been done after the fact to confuse the death investigations.
    And: “There’s no danger to the gen-pop.”
    SAY WHAT??

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