The Idaho Murders

And so this took place in November of 2022, or rather the story began in Moscow, Idaho.

were four college students at the University of Idaho.

Kaylee Gonzalez, Madison Mogan, Zanna Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, who just happened to be Zanna's boyfriend, were all stabbed to death in off-campus housing in the early hours of the morning.

Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but you and I both been university educators for a number of years.

And of course, we were college students for many years before that.

But much more importantly, this struck home in so many ways because you it's it's there's really no way to talk about even being a university, any kind of educator in the United States without thinking about violence.

thinking about gun violence, which this was not.

But how many alerts have we gotten whenever we were working or going to a school or both about potential robberies, carjackings, or worse? These are things that you live with, this reality, whether you're a teacher, a student, or both.

So this really couldn't have been...

I don't want to say it couldn't have been more personal, but it really, in terms of our profession, this was so resonant to me.

And...

I always feel pressure to do a good job in representing the humanity of the victims and their stories, but even more so this time for me.

Well, and one important thing, too, I think to note in that regard is that that's probably also a very uniquely U.S. American reaction, too.

I just am thinking if we have international listeners.

I'm wondering if, yeah, the alerts and the violence on campus, maybe because we talk about guns and that comes up in this case as well, in just that the parents assumed that that's what it was because it's become pretty normalized.

And I'm wondering if that's a uniquely American thing, too.

Yeah, very well could be.

This is a three-part docuseries that we reviewed, of course, for the podcast.

There are a lot of things that stand out to me.

One person in particular, chief of police for Moscow, Idaho, Anthony Dollinger.

Quite a stoic man.

He's really kind of the backbone of the docuseries in terms of He narrates so much and gives so much insight into every aspect of it.

Such a very, very stoic, very reserved, and yet he's talking about, he's very open at the same time about the tremendous emotional impact this case had on him and everybody on the force that was involved.

Yeah, he's really well-spoken.

He's very calm.