The driver who took two of the murdered University of Idaho students home the night they were killed has broken his silence to tell how he is haunted by the knowledge that his job was to ‘get them home safe,’ but instead he delivered them to their deaths.
Speaking for the first time and exclusively to DailyMail.com, the private taxi driver who was probably the last person to see friends Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen alive said: ‘It’s weighed on me. I’ve replayed that night a million times over trying to think if there was some sign or some detail that something was amiss but there was nothing.
‘It’s not lost on me that my job was to get these girls home safe but that didn’t really help this time.’
Best friends and roommates Kaylee Goncalves (left) and Madison Mogen were last seen alive by a private taxi driver who drove them to their off-campus rental house where they would be brutally knifed to death along with two of their housemates just hours later on November 13
Madison Mogen, 21, top left, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, bottom left, Ethan Chapin, 20, and Xana Kernodle, 20, were murdered in their off-campus university home on November 13
It is approaching six weeks since Kaylee and Madison, both 21, were knifed to death alongside roommate Xana Kernodle, 20, and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, also 20, during the early hours of November 13.
The four were slaughtered across the upper floors of the three-story home on King Street in Moscow, Idaho, while two other students slept in rooms below.
The shocking killings marked the first homicides in Moscow in seven years and with no leads shared, nor suspects named, many have questioned the town’s police department investigators’ abilities to handle a crime of such magnitude.
Today, the man who drove Kaylee and Madison home, has recounted his recollections of that night and claimed that the community is living in fear, with little faith in MPD.
Speaking on condition of anonymity he said: ‘I had known Kaylee and Maddy and Xana too – they would occasionally get rides home and there was nothing out of the ordinary about that night.’
The driver spoke to DailyMail.com on condition of anonymity, recounting the night he picked up the two friends after they stopped at the ‘Grub Truck’ (pictured) following a night out in downtown Moscow
Video footage shows Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves stumbling towards the counter, ordering a plate of pasta, and waiting 10 minutes. They interacted with other young kids who were also waiting for food and took photos of each other before walking away with their food
There were dozens of other youngsters waiting for food at the truck, which is parked outside a nightclub in downtown Moscow, Idaho, every Saturday between 10pm and 2.30am. One young man, who is shown standing behind Kaylee with his hood up, appeared to be with them, but he did not leave with them
The last known movements of two of the victims: The girls visited the food truck at 1.43am-1.53am. Police say they were murdered shortly afterwards sometime between 3am and 4am
Surveillance footage of Kaylee and Madison showed the girls picking up pasta at Grub Truck around 1:40am after ending their evening out at the nearby Corner Club bar in downtown Moscow.
‘I picked them up about 1:40, 1:45am,’ said the driver. ‘They had their food, and they were super excited about their mac’n’cheese as girls are after they go to the club.’
They sat in the back, and they chatted, they were normal just like any other night. They weren’t upset about anything or talking about anyone.’
The driver said he was familiar with surveillance footage in which one of the girls appears to be talking about somebody called ‘Adam’ earlier that evening but, he said: ‘They didn’t talk about him or any boy on that ride.’
Moscow Police have contacted ‘Adam’ who they have described as ‘cooperating’ with their investigation.
According to the driver, ‘Sometimes the girls would talk about boys but that night they were just excited about their food.
‘There was no apprehension, no weird feelings there, no upsetness. There was no nervousness about them. They weren’t afraid of anybody. There was nobody following them or following us.
‘There was absolutely nothing about that ride that was different or abnormal. They were just typical sorority girls, talking away and half the time they don’t pay a whole lot of attention to us drivers. We’re just kind of doing our thing.’
The driver said he didn’t pull right up to the door of the girls’ house, stopping instead on the street out front.
The bodies of Kaylee and Madison were found on the top floor of the house. Ethan and Xana were found in a second-floor bedroom. Survivors Dylan Mortensen and Bethany Funke were sleeping on the first floor
No one knows what will become of the off-campus house in the unsolved case as the owners are remaining mum
He said: ‘I just sort of pulled in front of their driveway. I didn’t pull right into the parking lot. I usually try not to do that because that’s an easy way to get robbed.
‘I try to stay in positions where I can go either direction so I can get away if I have to – it’s never happened but you hear about these things.’
But, on that night, he saw and felt no threat.
In fact, he said: ‘I didn’t watch them go all the way in. There were the two of them, it’s a relatively safe place. It’s not something I would usually sit and watch.
‘Sometimes I absolutely will [ask or intervene] if I feel a kid needs help. I’ve taken kids to get their stomach pumped if I feel they have to.
‘This is a college town, these kids are just trying to live their lives, we [drivers] try to look out for them. They don’t need to be preyed on.’
The fact that Kaylee, Madison and their friends were so brutally murdered within a couple of hours of him making that drop-off has, the driver said, ‘weighed’ on him.
He said: ‘I’ve been driving here for years, and it weighed on me. It was rough, to think I was one of the last people to see them alive.
‘When I saw the news on Monday it occurred to me, I was in that neighborhood but that was before they’d released any names.
‘As soon as I knew for sure it was the girls I went to the police.’
Kaylee Goncalves (left) and her best friend and roommate Madison Mogen
The driver said he was also familiar with the girls’ housemate Xana Kernodle and he boyfriend Ethan Chapin, who were both murdered that night as well
He was, he said, swiftly eliminated from enquiries having provided officers with a wealth of digital data and the timed receipt from the Taco Bell to which he went after dropping the girls back home.’
In the weeks since the murders he has watched, he said, with dismay as police have shared little information and the families of the victims have grown increasingly impatient.
He said: ‘I took about a week [off driving] when I just stepped back from it all. Those kids deserve justice and they’re not getting it. It feels to this community like the police aren’t even trying.
‘Which is one hundred per cent related to how they aren’t communicating with the community. People are scared.
‘Most of us have very little faith in the MPD. We can’t tell if we are watching qualified investigators who have a handle of the situation or if they are completely at a loss and grasping for straws.’
Moscow Police have pushed back at the suggestion that inexperienced officers – the lead investigator has only been a cop for two years – are hampering or have already botched the investigation.
No murder weapon has been recovered and no suspects named, but police are still seeking the occupants of a white 2011-2013 Hyundai Electra with unknown license plates caught on CCTV in the area near the time of the killings.
Police in Eugene, Oregon, alerted Idaho cops to this Hyundai Elantra which was seen on CCTV in the area near the time of the killings but it has now been ruled out as being connected to the killings
There are now six detectives from MPD, 62 FBI agents, 13 Idaho State Police investigators and 15 uniformed troopers assisting with community patrols and forensic experts working through the painstaking task of processing evidence recovered from the scene.
Meanwhile Idaho Governor Brad Little has directed up to $1million in state emergency funds for the ongoing investigation.
But, so far, all the information MPD has shared concerns parties they have eliminated from their enquiries including the driver, the two surviving roommates, a hooded male seen in Grub Truck surveillance video, the male they called numerous times during the early hours of the morning, anyone present at the house when 911 was called and a sixth person named on the lease who had moved out of the home before the school year started and was not present at the time of the murders.
Moscow Police Chief Jim Fry defended the investigation during an appearance on NewsNation Thursday. He said the investigations have been ‘handled properly’.
‘We secured the scene quickly, we called in the state police, we did our due diligence in getting the things that we needed to do to have this be a solid case all the way through.
Chief James Fry who heads up Moscow Police, in the small city of 25,000 people admitted he has no clue where the killer is
‘We called in the state lab to collect evidence and I believe it was the initial stuff that we started and how we did things that will help bring this to a conclusion,’ Fry said.
‘I think there’s some misconception out there with how we operate here in Moscow’, he added.
‘We’ve called in ATF in the past, we’ve called in the FBI in the past on many of these big cases because they have resources that we don’t, and we want to have the best investigators there.
‘We’ve always done these investigations with the help of our federal and state partners,’ he said.
‘We’re continuing the investigation. We’re continuing to push on. Like I said from the very beginning I’m very confident we will have a conclusion to this timeline as things develop and we’re following up on all those things.
‘We’re conducting a lot of interviews and we’re putting the puzzle together. There’s a lot of things we don’t know. We’re not sure where the individual [responsible] is. Every tip helps.’
Earlier this week, during a Today Show interview, Shannon Gray – an attorney representing the family of Kaylee Goncalves – said that the family is increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of progress on the case.
‘We want to let them know that we are holding them accountable for their decisions,’ he said. ‘And if they are in over their heads, then acknowledge that and turn the investigation over to someone who is more versed in handling these types of matters.’
‘I’m not sure they’re capable of handling a quadruple murder.’