Gas Station Clerk Acting on 'Intuition' May Have Just Given Police a Breakthrough in Idaho Quadruple Murder
A hunch coupled with dedication to keep looking for anything that can help solve Idaho’s quadruple murders — and a lot of graveyard shift down time — may have produced a lead for police.
It has been just over a month since University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were killed in the house the girls rented in Moscow, Idaho.
A Mobil gas station attendant, who works the overnight shift at a station not far from the place where the killings took place, said she began poring through surveillance tapes due to an “intuition,” according to the Daily Mail.
What she found could help police in their effort to track down a white Hyundai Elantra that they have been seeking for a week. Police have said the car’s occupants could help them with their investigation.
On Monday night, the worker, whose name has been withheld, spotted a white car going “real quick” past the station at 3:45 a.m. on Nov. 13, according to Fox News. Police have said they believe the murders took place between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. that day.
She said she took a photo of the image of the car on the video screen and sent it to a police email address for tips. On Tuesday, police appeared at the station and took the footage to help with their investigation.
“I had a weird feeling to go get on the cameras,” she said.
Lots of down time helped, she told the Daily Mail, adding that she began her searches after police said last week they were looking for the car.
“I was just sitting here on the graveyard shift, really bored, and I decided to look through the surveillance footage. I just thought I would find something. I’m really intuitive,” she said
She said she could not see inside the car, but added, “It could be the one that police are looking for.”
From the reaction of the police, she said, “It definitely seems like it could be something.”
With a month since the killings having passed with no suspects named, Pete Yachmetz, a security consultant and former FBI agent, said it is time for a new direction in the investigation.
“I think the Moscow Police Department is in over its head. I think they’re drowning. They don’t have the resources to properly address this type of crime,” he said, according to the New York Post.
“I think it might be time for them to relinquish the lead agency designation. The lead agency is the one who makes all the determinations for how the investigation progresses,” he said.
Moscow Police Captain Roger Lanier said the department will get there in the end, according to the Idaho Statesman.
“Every single day we get a good amount of viable tips, and those tips help us do everything from clear people, who maybe there was some speculation about, to further some of the theories that we’re working on,” Lanier said.
“So the next is just to continue on what we’re doing, eliminate the information that we know is not going to be relevant to the investigation, and take all the new information. And eventually, we see this coming. Eventually we’re going to narrow in on exactly what happened and who did it.”
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