The car is going to be important. The prosecution really needs evidence from the car to close the deal. They didn't find the murder weapon which suggests it was transported away from the scene. The other thing that is just really confounding is why a call did not go out to 911 from the survivor who had the encounter. Something is not adding up.
Only thing I can think of is she was heavily under the influence, maybe even stuff other than alcohol, and was afraid to get in trouble for that. Or even not completely sure of what she had seen due to substances. Cant think of a logical reason other than that. But on the other hand, she clearly heard things and saw something that made her fearful
It's a confounding case. The suspect is the perfect suspect at the moment. However the case is largely circumstantial other than the knife sheath. The scenario that keeps coming up for me is that the suspect planted the sheath to try to throw the authorities off. However he made the mistake that he actually left trace DNA on the snap. It's just beyond belief though that he just walked by the 5th person after killing 4 others. The person that did this was clearly interested in killing people. Maybe he ran because he didn't know if she'd already called 911?
I definitely think that his fantasy on how this would play out, and how it actually did may have woke him up during the crime. He probably didn’t account for everything he saw and heard from his victims.
Still thinking about why 911 wasn’t called… a couple of things, even what she saw and what she heard, 4 people murdered with a knife was probably still very far from her thoughts. It was likely unimaginable, it’s just imaginable to us after the fact, because it’s what ended up happening. considering that, calling the cops , could end up in them finding things in the home , that could mean the end of a college education, removed from a sorority etc, or even trouble with the law. Maybe even a bag of weed. Alcohol, with underage residents etc.
Yeah that’s it, just a naive college girl, never thinking there would be a murder. As far as the noises go, it was probably common to hear a lot of commotion in that party house all hours of the night
He stupidly turned his cell phone off too late and on too early. They track him heading back to Washington after the murder
That’s what I’m thinking, his image walking by may have scared her… but still not thinking murder with a knife at that point.
She looks out and see a guy creeping around with a fucking mask on at 4:30 am. How the fuck do you not call 911 until noon the next day?! Something isn't right.
My original thought too, and it still baffles me. But like I said, 4 murders is still maybe not on her mind. It was probably not even close to being on her mind. Maybe as weird as it was. It wasn’t worth calling the cops and having shit they had in the house found .
I'm sure the police conducted a detailed interview of this woman, and they probably pressed her really hard on the incongruity of her story. I'd love to know what explanation she gave. I also wonder if they took blood samples from her for toxicology tests and whether they found drugs and paraphernalia when they searched the crime scene. . I'm trying to think how this will work tactically. Since she saw the killer inside the house and since she describes him as matching the general description of the defendant, the prosecutor probably has to call her in his case-in-chief. That, of course, opens the door to defense counsel grilling her on the implausibility of her story. Assuming the other evidence is solid, I doubt this will affect the outcome, but I'm sure it's giving the prosecutor a few sleepless nights.
She may have been drunk, went in and passed out. It was probably more scary to her after the fact, in description, than it was at the moment.
I think what we got yesterday, was just enough for the arrest. I’m sure le wasn’t going to show their full hand. Much more to come, and I think this guy is toast.
We know that the surviving roommate called friends over before calling the cops. maybe she was calling her roommates all morning, scared in her room, and they weren’t answering. She was afraid to come out, until people came over .
He did a lot of stupid things. Assuming everything is above board on the prosecution side he's probably toast. It'll be interesting to see what the defense strategy is. His public defender is probably sizing him up and trying to figure out whether to press him to look for a plea deal that will take the death penalty off the table. She's also likely to ask for a psychiatric evaluation. Everything else in the case is circumstantial except for the knife sheath and the DNA on it. That's hard evidence that will be very hard for the defendant to get around. The thing that's particularly hard for the defendant at this point is that the knife sheath will force him onto the stand and then there are a bunch of things he will get asked about for which he is unlikely to have good answers.
It's premature for defense counsel to be thinking about strategy or a plea bargain. She hasn't received pre-trial discovery yet so she doesn't know what cards the State is holding. She probably doesn't know much more than what appeared in the arrest-warrant affidavit. It would be malpractice to plead him out at this stage. 1. She'll talk to her client and see what he has to say. If she's smart, she won't take anything he says at face value (unless he admits committing these murders). She'll probably also retain a psychiatrist to examine him. However, since he was a doctoral student who was functioning in every-day life, it would seem that a psychiatric defense might be a long-shot. 2. As for plea bargains, look at it from the prosecutor's perspective. This was an egregious murder with multiple victims and committed in a cruel and depraved manner. It caused panic in the local community. If guilty, this defendant looks like the poster boy for the death penalty. No prosecutor is going to look to take the death penalty off the table unless he's got significant problems with proving his case. This is a career-defining case for this prosecutor.
The more confounding thing is that she eventually went to sleep. WTF. I could see being so terrified that she didn't make a noise or come out for hours because she couldn't be 100% convinced that the threat was out of the domicile, but if it were me? I would be looking for a way to climb out the damn window, something, anything. If that wasn't possible my mind would be working, working, working on how the hell am I getting out of here. Get out first, ask questions later. I only say that because she had to know on some level that harm or worse had come to the other people in the home, so at that point in time it's not necessarily a selfish shitty thing to do to try to get out to save your own life. It's a selfish shitty thing to do when you can save someone else's life and you choose not to purely out of cowardice. Cowardice and self-preservation are hardly the same thing.
