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Rathdrum, Idaho

A livea, Steve, and Kristi Goncalves are seated together on their black leather couch, tissues in hand. A large photograph of Kaylee hangs behind them.

They are giving this in-depth interview not to a reporter from a news network but to a cybersleuth from New York, Olivia Vitale, a brunette in her twenties.

They’ve chosen Olivia rather than a journalist from an established news network, Steve says, because, in going through Kaylee’s TikTok, he learned that Kaylee watched Olivia’s interviews under her moniker “Chronicles of Olivia.”

Could this be a sign that Olivia is the chosen one to find whoever killed Kaylee?

“It feels like… this is Kaylee-approved… And if that can play a role in solving this crime, then that makes it a lot better. That helps with the process of healing,” he says on camera.

Toward the end of the interview, Alivea explains that she has taken it upon herself to be the Goncalves family’s own cybersleuth.

Her mother, Kristi, tried for a week to follow University of Idaho—Case Discussion Facebook group page but quit because it made her too upset.

But Alivea understands what a treasure trove—a hive mind of research—exists online.

Alivea speaks slowly and emphatically to the camera: “I’m in every group I can be.

I monitor every post. Because what if he slips up there?

What if he’s in one of those groups? What if he says something that’s a little too close, that gives me a bad feeling?

That’s why it’s a long shot, but it’s what I can do.

I can take that time. I can read these posts.

I’m physically capable of doing that. So I will. ”

Alivea devotes all her waking hours to the work, because who knows what—or who—she will find.

The same day that the Goncalves film with Olivia Vitale, the chief and his colleagues field a query from NBC about a Texas-based self-described psychic and TikTok cybersleuth.

Ashley Guillard, creator of “Ashley Solves Mysteries,” has now posted hundreds of videos accusing University of Idaho associate history professor Rebecca Scofield of orchestrating the murders.

Professor Scofield has never met any of the four victims. She and her husband and young children were in Portland, Oregon, when the murders occurred, but this doesn’t matter to Guillard, whose “evidence” is based solely on her “clairvoyant” insights.

She keeps posting that Scofield had had, at some unspecified time, a romantic relationship with Kaylee, and when she was jilted, she hired a hit man to prevent the affair from ever coming to light. Guillard identified the hit man as Jack DuCoeur.

Scofield hired a lawyer in Boise, former US attorney Wendy Olson, who wrote twice to Guillard asking her to cease and desist with the lunatic claims.

But the psychic doubled down and posted even more.

On December 21, Scofield sued Guillard for defamation. The suit claimed that her family’s safety had been put at risk.

So, today, NBC is on the phone to the police, asking if Scofield is, in fact, a suspect.

By now Fry, Snell, and the communications team know better than to bother squawking in disbelief when the crank questions come.

They give a measured statement: “At this time in the investigation, detectives do not believe the female associate professor and chair of the history department at the University of Idaho suing a TikTok user for defamation is involved in this crime.”

“I know I said at one point, ‘There are no dumb questions,’” Fry later said. “But I was wrong. There are.”