Idaho college murders - live: Moscow police insist case ‘not cold’ as victim’s family considers legal action

The five vehicles seized from the house where four students were murdered have now been left languishing in the snow in an outdoor parking lot.

Last week, investigators towed the vehicles – some of which belong to the victims – away from the property on King Road to a storage facility.

The vehicles had already been searched but are being held as the investigation continues.

Photos captured by Fox News have now revealed that the cars have been left in the snow exposed to the elements – as well as potential trespassers – for the past week.

The grieving father of murdered student Kaylee Goncalves is considering hiring a lawyer to try to force police to release information about the case, as tensions continue to mount between law enforcement and the victims’ families.

Goncalves’ father Steve Goncalves told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that he has consulted with several attorneys about what legal avenues could be used to challenge what he feels is a lack of transparency from police.

Mr Goncalves revealed he has become increasingly frustrated with investigators as he accused officials of “messing up a million times” during the ongoing probe.

More than three weeks have now passed since the four students were found murdered in an off-campus home and police appear to be no closer to catching the killer – while remaining tight-lipped about several details of the killings.

“There are things that we can request and things we can do to get to the truth faster,” said Mr Goncalves.

“You have to fill out forms to get this evidence released to you. I don’t know how to do that.”

He added: “They’ve messed up a million times. But I don’t get to say that because what experience does Steve have? He doesn’t know.

“He’s just a dad who woke up one day and had his life turned upside down.”

Moscow Police Chief James Fry said on Tuesday that police will now return some of the victims’ personal belongings to their family members.

Starting Wednesday morning, the police chief and other members of the department will collect and remove some of the personal items from the home where the murders took place.

The items released “are no longer needed for the investigation, so that they can be returned to the families”, police said.

People are being asked to keep roads clear around the home on Wednesday so that the moving of the items can be done “as privately as possible in an effort to maintain respect for the victims and their families”.

Locals tell The Independent’s Sheila Flynn how fear is deepening as time goes by without any arrests and with little information from police:

Parents are ordering deadbolts, teens are asking for guns and the streets are empty in Moscow. There is a killer - or killers - on the loose, more than two weeks after four college students were murdered in their beds. Locals tell Sheila Flynn how fear is deepening as time goes by without any arrests and with little information from police

Jake Schriger, a fellow student at the university who had been dating Madison Mogen for nearly a year, spoke about his 21-year-old girlfriend at a vigil in Post Falls, Idaho, on 2 December.

Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were stabbed to death in their off-campus home in the college town of Moscow on 13 November. Three weeks later, the police are yet to name a suspect in the quadruple murder.

“None of these people deserved this,” Mr Schriger said in front of the families of the victims in Kernodle’s hometown.

“She was the first person I talked to every morning and the last person I talked to before bed,” he said, adding: “She was the person that I loved most.”

Steve Goncalves, whose daughter Kaylee Goncalves was brutally stabbed along with her friends Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin on 13 November, told the New York Post on Sunday - three weeks after the killings - that he has turned to private investigators for help.

His decision to seek outside help stems from a lack of confidence in the Moscow Police Department, which has been working with the Idaho State Police and the FBI on the murders.

Mr Goncalves noted that one of the officers in the investigation was only a teenager when Moscow saw its last murder in 2015. “So they’re just inexperienced — and I don’t want anyone making mistakes in my child’s case,” he said.

Steve Goncalves told the outlet that one of the officers working on the case was still a teen when the last murder took place in the college town of Moscow in 2015

Steven Goncalves, father of 21-year-old Kaylee, said that the suspect went upstairs where his daughter and her best friend Mogen, 21, were sleeping on the same bed on the top floor, which was out of the way of the killer’s entry point.

Authorities said that the perpetrator entered the house through a sliding glass door or window on the second floor of the home, which meets a hill on the ground level in the backyard.

The other two victims — Kernodle and Chaplin — were found dead on the second floor of the house.

Mr Goncalves said the entry point was the middle floor. “So, to me, he doesn’t have to go upstairs. His entry and exit are available without having to go upstairs or downstairs,” he told Fox & Friends on Sunday.

“Looks like he probably may have not gone downstairs. 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.”

Three weeks on from the murders, there continues to be a huge almost five-hour gap between the time Kernodle and Chapin were at the frat house party and the time they arrived back at student house.

On the night of 12 November, Kernodle and Chapin had gone to a fraternity party at Sigma Chi from 8pm to 9pm on the University of Idaho campus.

The young couple then arrived back at the home on King Road that Kernodle, Mogen and Goncalves shared with two other female students at around 1.45am on 13 November.

The two locations are only minutes apart on foot and are based in busy student areas, close to Greek Row where the University of Idaho’s sorority and fraternity houses sit.

Three weeks on from the murders, there continues to be a huge almost five-hour gap between the time Kernodle and Chapin were at the frat house party and the time they arrived back at student house

Speaking to Fox News Digital on Monday, Scott Laramie described the nightmare of losing his and his wife’s only child as “the hardest thing in the world.” Mr Laramie is the stepfather of Madison Mogen, one of four students killed in Moscow.

“It’s still hard to believe sometimes. We get up in the morning, and it’s like, ‘Nah this isn’t happening,’ then it kicks in,” Mr Laramie told Fox. “We love her and we miss her, and it’s the hardest thing in the world to try to figure out how to live without her.”

Scott Laramie described the nightmare of losing his and his wife’s only child as “the hardest thing in the world”

Dylan Mortenson and Bethany Funke were asleep on the first floor of their Moscow, Idaho, student rental house when their three roommates Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, and Xana Kernodle, along with Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death on 13 November.

At a memorial held in Post Falls, Idaho, on Friday, a youth pastor from Real Life Ministries shared a letter written by Ms Mortenson, according to the Idaho Statesman.

She described Kernodle, 20, as the “life of the party”, adding she was “strong, intelligent, hardworking” and beautiful.

Ms Mortenson said she looked up to Chapin, 20, like an older brother, and described in glowing terms the love that the two had for each other.

Dylan Mortenson and Bethany Funke were asleep in their Moscow, Idaho, student house when their flatmates were stabbed to death