MOSCOW, Idaho – The brutal murders of four University of Idaho students in the early hours of a Saturday in November marked the first homicides in Moscow in years, according to authorities, but while such crimes are rare, details on a few can be found. be shocking
Sunday marks four weeks since the murders of 21-year-old Kaylee Goncalves; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20, in a rental house across the street from the university’s Greek Quarter. All three women lived there and Chapin, who lived in a fraternity 200 yards away, was visiting his girlfriend, Kernodle. Police have not publicly named a suspect or any person of interest.
While the city’s last murders occurred in 2015, in August 2011, a college professor pointed a gun at a graduate student with whom he had been romantically involved and then killed himself in a murder-suicide, school workers told Fox. News Digital on Friday.
Katy Benoit, a 22-year-old music and psychology student from Boise, was gunned down in her off-campus apartment months after she ended her romantic relationship with University of Idaho professor Ernesto Bustamante.
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A University of Idaho memorial for Katy Benoit, a former graduate student who was fatally shot by a professor in 2011. Inset: Katy Benoit.
(University of Idaho/Facebook, Moscow Police Department)
The Associated Press reported in 2011 that the police affidavit contained a statement from Bustamante’s friend Rowdy Hope, who alleged “that Bustamante had multiple firearms and multiple personality disorders…[including] one Bustamante calls ‘psycho killer’ and another Bustamante calls ‘the beast'”.
Police reportedly found Bustamante in a hotel room the day after Benoit’s murder, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
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“We are shocked and saddened by the death of Kathryn ‘Katy’ Benoit, who was murdered outside her off-campus residence in Moscow last night,” the university wrote on Facebook on August 23, 2011. “There is no way to express how devastating which can be the loss of any life, but especially someone so young with so much potential.”
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“Her final weeks as a physicist on Earth were filled with excitement and anticipation for her new role as a paraprofessional, where she would teach undergraduate classes in Social Psychology and Developmental Psychology,” her family wrote in an online obituary. “Katy is the recipient of Bronze, Silver and, just last year, Gold Congressional Awards, given by Congress to outstanding young Americans with high achievement in volunteer public service, physical fitness and personal development.”
A University of Idaho memorial for Katy Benoit, a former graduate student who was fatally shot by a professor in 2011.
(University of Idaho/Facebook)
Benoit’s death prompted the school to start an annual event called Campus Safety Week and the Katy Benoit Safety Forum. The university also installed a monument in her honor on campus.
“Katy Benoit Safety Month is still held annually and includes a safety forum, student ‘lighting audit,’ trainings and other events,” Jodi Walker, the school’s executive director of communications, told Fox News Digital on Saturday.
Moscow is generally considered a safe community, where there have been few murders over the years.
Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, Madison Mogen, 21, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21, along with the two other roommates of the women in Kaylee Goncalves’ latest Instagram post, shared the day before the murders.
(@kayleegoncalves/Instagram)
Court records show that the 2015 slayings involved a local man named John Lee, also known as Kane Grzebielski, who later pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder and another count of aggravated assault.
Lee fatally shot his foster mother, his landlord and a local restaurateur, the Associated Press reported at the time, wounding another man who survived.
Lee is currently serving a life sentence for the crimes at the Idaho State Correctional Institution.
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In 2007, another man, James Leonard, shot and killed Tyler Lee in a driveway on Genesee. He initially claimed self-defense but pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was later released, only to be arrested last week in Moscow on domestic violence charges just over a mile from the off-campus home where someone killed four students in the morning of November 1. 13
Police said his arrest had no connection to the murder investigation.
Detectives in Moscow, Idaho are interested in speaking with the occupants of a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra, with unknown registration, in connection with the investigation of a quadruple homicide on November 13, 2022. This image is not the car in question, it is for reference only.
(Moscow DP)
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Anyone with information should call the information line at 208-883-7180 or by email tipline@ci.moscow.id.us.
Police are also seeking to speak with the occupant or occupants of a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra that was near the crime scene at the time of the murders.
