The father of one of four brutally murdered University of Idaho students believes his daughter or her best friend was the killer’s target.
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It comes as reports emerged that his daughter, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, had “significantly more brutal” injuries than the other three victims. Goncalves was murdered alongside best friend Madison Mogen, 21, and Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, both 20.
All four had been stabbed to death.
While cops backtracked on their claim the murders were targeted, Steve Goncalves told Fox and Friends, they had it right the first time.
He based his conclusions on where his daughter and Mogen were discovered on the third floor, far from the mysterious killer’s entry point.
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“To me, [the killer] doesn’t have to go upstairs,” he told Fox and Friends. “His entry and exit are available without having to go upstairs or downstairs … I’m using logic that he chose to go up there when he didn’t have to.”
But last week, local cops shrugged and said they didn’t know if the house or victims were targeted.
“I’ll cut to the chase — their means of death don’t match,” he told Fox News on Saturday. “Their points of damage don’t match.”
The two young women had been best friends since childhood and were sleeping in the same bed in a third-floor bedroom when the attack unfolded. Kernodle and Chapin were slain in a second-floor bedroom where the sliding door was located.
Two roommates asleep on the ground floor were unharmed.
“Looks like [the killer] probably may not have gone downstairs,” Steve Goncalves said. “We don’t know that for sure, but he obviously went upstairs. So I’m using logic that he chose to go up there when he didn’t have to.”
With the clock ticking, cops have yet to name a suspect or offer a motive.
Former CIA and FBI agent Tracy Walder suspected the murders were a “targeted attack.”
“I have been saying for a while that some of the ways that we can know that this is a targeted attack is in the manner in which some of these victims were killed,” she told NewsNation.
“And I want to be sensitive, obviously, to these parents and to their friends and family.
“But what you might see in a situation like this is sort of a gross overkill of one victim versus the others who maybe simply just got in the way, and I believe that that’s what her father is referring to.”
bhunter@postmedia.com
@HunterTOSun
