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Moscow, Idaho

T he FBI trailer that will act as the agency’s mobile command center pulls up to the Moscow police station on Thanksgiving Day. The truck is so enormous, it looks like it might not fit through the gate. It does. Just.

TV cameras film the arrival, of course.

In this week’s press conference, the chief and his team try to strike a more media-friendly tone, even addressing the fake news out there.

“We have heard that Kaylee stated she may have had a stalker. Detectives have been looking into that and to this point have been unable to corroborate the statement, although we continue to seek information and tips,” Captain Roger Lanier said, reading from his script, adding that, contrary to online rumors, the victims had not been bound and gagged.

Just a few days later, the team obtains a search warrant for Kaylee’s Tinder account.

Kaylee’s wounds had appeared to reflect the possibility that she had woken up and tried to either fight off her attacker or call for help and then she was somehow stifled.

Broadly, this will make its way into the public consciousness, courtesy of Steve Goncalves, who cites the coroner and blames the police for not sharing more details.

But the public certainly does not know that two days ago, the forensics team sent a sample of the DNA they’d found on the knife sheath to Othram, a DNA sequencing and genomics lab in Texas.

That’s because the investigators had run the DNA through CODIS, the FBI’s database of fingerprinted individuals, and it had come up empty.

So now, using the new methodology of investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) that has sprung up around the popularity of public genealogy sites, Othram will try to build a family tree around it.

But the process could take days, maybe weeks.

Investigators have also sent off 103 pieces of evidence, including hair, fingernail clippings, and footprints, to local labs. Law enforcement’s interview team has spoken to more than one hundred people so far.

The chief’s victimology teams are building detailed profiles of the four victims they are getting to know as well as they know their best friends: Xana, the charismatic extrovert; Ethan, the all-star laid-back athlete; Maddie, the quieter only child; Kaylee, the exuberant go-getter.

At least one of them was a target. Which one? Why?

The chief still hasn’t got a suspect, so it’s understandable that he doesn’t yet have a handle on a motive: “I think you’re always looking for the why all the way through your investigation,” he said.

“Typically, the why doesn’t just jump out to you because you have to piece the whole picture together.

And really every piece of something that you get, or every warrant you do, there might be a nugget in that piece that gives you a little bit more of a clearer picture.

And maybe not, maybe you get nothing out of it.

Maybe whatever you put in for didn’t give you any fruit at all. ”

There’s one critical development in the case the chief doesn’t share with the media.

The team monitoring CCTV cameras is homing in on the white car seen doing three passes around the King Road house between 3:29 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. At 4:04 a.m. it appeared to make a three-point turn near the residence, go back and forth on King Road, then take Queen Road, which had a turnoff going behind the house.

The car reappeared at 4:20 a.m. and left at high speed.

Yesterday the FBI vehicle specialist got a better shot and identified the vehicle not as a Nissan Sentra but as a 2011, 2012, or 2013 white Hyundai Elantra.

So, on November 25, the day after Thanksgiving, the chief approves a message to local law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for this specific car.

Four days later, in the early hours of November 29, over in Pullman, Washington, WSU police officer Daniel Tiengo searches for white Elantras registered at the university.

He sees that one, a 2015 model, belongs to a student named Bryan Kohberger.

A colleague of Tiengo’s, Officer Curtis Whitman, spots the actual vehicle in a Pullman student-housing parking lot. He logs it.

But white cars are ubiquitous. So are Hyundai Elantras.

So, since this car appears to be a model from the wrong year, the Pullman cops don’t pass this up the food chain to Moscow.

They don’t yet know that the FBI vehicle specialist has in fact now conveyed to his agency that it’s possible, given the shape of the fog light and rear reflectors in the available images, that they should extend the date range of the Hyundai Elantra to as late as 2016.

Meanwhile, Fry has got his hands full managing another screwup with the media, possibly even worse than the first. This one’s from a surprising quarter.

On November 29, Bill Thompson gave a rare interview to a TV reporter named Brian Entin, a rising star at NewsNation.

Entin and his crew stormed into town like a tornado.

Of all the national reporters, he’s the one getting access.

He’s gotten to the Goncalves family and to Aaron Snell.

And, somehow, he gets to Bill Thompson. Who made a rare mistake when Entin asked him about the use of the word targeted .

Some of the students and the victims’ families, Entin said, have been frustrated, not understanding what that word meant. Could Thompson explain?

Thompson told Entin in a recorded video interview that targeted had perhaps not been the right word to use.

He said that investigators believed that whoever did this was still at large and was specifically looking at the King Road residence, but they could not yet say who might have been the target.

Entin posted the video of the interview to Twitter.

But then, just a day later, Thompson spoke to KTVB’s Morgan Romero and gave a different explanation—he said that one of the victims was definitely a target, although he did not specify which one.

Hours later Thompson wrote a letter to Romero walking that back. She tweeted a quote from it: “Investigators do not believe the murders were random, but we cannot unequivocally state the residence, or any occupants, were specifically targeted. I apologize for any confusion.”

Piling onto the bonfire of confusion, Moscow police posted a “clarification” to their Facebook page:

Conflicting information has been released over the past 24 hours.

The Latah County Prosecutor’s Office stated the suspect(s) specifically looked at this residence, and that one or more of the occupants were undoubtedly targeted.

We have spoken with the Latah County Prosecutor’s Office and identified this was a miscommunication.

Detectives do not currently know if the residence or any occupants were specifically targeted but continue to investigate.

Chief Fry knows that the PR damage is done. Under pressure from the media, who themselves are under pressure from the Goncalves family and others to get answers, Bill Thompson misspoke.

All that progress Fry made with Aaron Snell just got undone and more. Thompson’s office puts out a statement saying he will be giving no further interviews.

The image of the Keystone Cops running Moscow has been reignited in the national media, Pete Yachmetz, a security consultant and former FBI agent, tells the New York Post .

“What is also happening now is the police, by providing imprecise comments, are creating an erosion of public confidence in them… That’s unfortunate because in the end public confidence is needed to solve this crime.

The public is very concerned there is or may be a killer in their midst and they see no progress in the investigation. ”

The Post quotes Steve Goncalves telling Fox News right after Thanksgiving that he was frustrated because the police hadn’t spoken to him in three days.

“We’re the same family that found the original timeline.

We’re the same family that broke into the phones.

We tried everything in our ability.” (In fairness, Goncalves has another source of stress he keeps private: The family has been getting threats in the mail and online.

Steve is concerned for the safety of his youngest daughters.

But when he tells the police this, the reaction is underwhelming.

“Tell them to be aware of their surroundings” is the unsatisfactory response.)

When Evan Ellis interviews the chief in the midst of all this, Fry blows off a bit of steam. He tells Ellis that he’s discovered the national media, disappointingly, is focused only on the story and money.

But for him, this is not about those things. It’s about lives. Four human lives and families.

He doesn’t tell Ellis—at least not on the record—what he thinks privately: He has tremendous sympathy for the Goncalves family, but he wishes they would say less to the media.

It makes police less inclined to share developments with them.

Because the one thing that would ruin the investigation is for someone to know too much about it—and talk about it on TV.