Episode Details

Nine days after four University of Idaho students were murdered, former FBI profiler Jim Clemente described the unidentified killer as likely being a young man close to the victims’ age who had little criminal or forensic sophistication and probably had not committed that level of violence before. Clemente believed the offender appeared sloppy and compulsive, but he also viewed the decision to enter a house occupied by six people as evidence that the attack was not random. He theorized that the killer either knew one or more of the victims or had stalked them closely enough to understand their habits, including when they returned home, when they slept and whether they were likely to be intoxicated and vulnerable.


Clemente said the choice of a knife suggested the killer wanted a quiet weapon or regularly carried and displayed one to others. The offender’s willingness to stab four people, including a male victim, and continue after encountering resistance suggested to Clemente that he was comfortable with blood and might have possessed experience as a hunter, butcher or in a similar activity. He advised investigators to look for someone who had been fixated on a victim, showed unusual pride in a knife, left the area after the murders, missed work or arrived late, and followed news coverage of the investigation obsessively. These remained Clemente’s behavioral theories during the unsolved stage of the case, not findings announced by investigators.


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