Topics I'll be thinking about until we hear more:
1. THE CARS
1.1 He had to know Ethan was over - his very distinctive red jeep was parked up front and he had been watching the house. Why did this not stop him?
1.2. If he was not recording them (not ruling that out) nor stalking them that very weekend (not ruling that out either) it is very possible he did not know Kaylees new car. Why did an unknown car parked up front not stop him? It could have been like someones family visiting?
1.3 Kaylees car was returned. AFAIK, the others were not? It hints that there was no evidence in her new car, while there was evidence in the other car(s) or they did not want to risk giving them back and risking the defence claiming something about the cars that would be hard to disprove otherwise.
2. THE HVAC
The
HVAC team was on the scene at the house on Dec the 5th. Now that might be totally irrelevant, as there are tons of reasons for them to be there, but as
BK is supposed to have a background in HVAC, this gives me a pause. Was that not his first time in the house?
3. THE BATHROOM
Why does the
affidavit (p2) mention the upstairs bathroom and the wall it shares with MMs bedroom? I mean it's not exactly smooth, the way it comes up:
"I later learned there was a dog in the room when Moscow PD officers initially responded. The dog belonged to KG and her ex-boyfriend JD.
Ofc Smith the pointed out a small bathroom on the east side of the third floor. The bathroom shared a wall with MM bedroom which was situated on the south-east corner on the third floor. As I entered the bedroom, I could see two females in the single bed in the room."
4. WHEN BK MOVED TO PULLMAN
Per the
affidavit (p16), he was already near the house on August 21. When talking of BKs phone being near the house: "All of these occasions, except for one, occurred in the late evening and early morning hours of their respective days.
One of these occasions, on August 21,2022 BKs phone utilized cellular resources providing coverage to the King Road Residence from approximately 10:34 p.m. to 11:35 p.m"
AFAIK, this was before classes even started and he was already either stalking them or at least meeting them.
4.1 This begs to ask, when and where did he became aware of his target? (From all we know, he could be the online ex-bf from 6 years ago of any of them, so the question is, how did the stalking start.).
4.2 And on what date did he actually move there?
5. DEPARTURE
5.1 How did BK know at ~2.40 (or before) that it's time to depart towards Moscow and his victim(s) is waiting at home, not at a party, at a sleepover, having a movie night with roomies, in their rooms with a hookup, on a video call etc? Like did he just take the drive with all the weapon and costume "just in case" it works out? I mean did he even have a burner phone to continue monitoring at least their online activity while his original phone was turned off?
5.2 What triggered him to attack that night? It was not ideal conditions to commit a perfect crime, that's for sure. There were 2 cars up front that could have not been there, for one.
6. THE DRIVE
6.1. What was BK doing with the weird drive to King Road?
He did not even take the shortest route (Maps suggest to take the northern road by the airport - maybe avoided it due to cameras? But he was still caught on plenty...).Was he choosing this odd route to fetch something, to see something, to meet someone or to avoid to be seen by the cameras? Or something else entirely? Heck, maybe taking drugs before the "action"?
6.2 And why the circling before onset? Why not sit still and look at the house, makes way more sense somehow. Afraid of car being seen standing somewhere? But now it was seen on more cameras. I mean it's a generic car and with engine off at the night... Did he still have several options of houses to enter and was circling between them? (I personally don't think it's likely, but he
could have been stalking more than one household)
BOTTOM LINE
All in all, I am still leaning towards there being a specific motive. IMO, as soon as people heard "a phd student in criminology" they jumped into "serial killer", "well planned", "psychopath", "just wanted to kill". If we could just for a moment ignore what he did in academia and think afresh. Like what would you think
with the same evidence had it been told that the prep was a 28 year old male who had previously worked at a pizza place, possibly had a history of drug abuse and other mental illness and had just moved cross-country from his family. He drives to crime scene with his own car, enters the home of 5 young females while a visitor is obviously over, looses the cover of his murder weapon next to a victim, leaves DNA, video and phone evidence and even an eye witness.
Would your first thought still be "serial killer mastermind human hunter very well planned, only killed because he wanted to kill and to commit a perfect crime"? Because mine sure is not.
I think he had a specific motive, was fuelled by rage, acted irrationally that night due to a specific trigger and maybe had been stalking at least one of them via some sort of audio/video recording devices on their car(s) and/or in the HVAC system. I also think the crime scene was more graphic than just stabbing and probably only towards one victim with also possibly a trophy of some sort collected.
All MOO unless linked data.
