A taxi driver who took University of Idaho students Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogen home on the night of the grisly murders said the girls were “super excited” about going home to chow down on mac and cheese — as he opened up about how the unsolved slayings have “weighed” on him.
Speaking to the Daily Mail this week on condition of anonymity, the cabbie said he was likely one of the last people to see Goncalves and Mogen, both 21, alive before they were slaughtered along with their roommate Xana Kernodle and her boyfriend Ethan Chapin, both 20, on Nov. 13.
“It’s weighed on me,” the driver told the news site.
“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,” he continued.
“It’s not lost on me that my job was to get these girls home safe but that didn’t really help this time.”
Nearly six weeks after the four students were found stabbed to death inside the rental home they shared on King Road in Moscow, Idaho, police have yet to identify a suspect in the brutal slayings that rocked the college town.
The Moscow Police Department has been facing growing pressure to make an arrest against the backdrop of intensifying public scrutiny and criticism from the victims’ families, who’ve accused authorities of failing to share information with them.
Police investigators and amateur online sleuths alike have endlessly pored over the doomed students’ final movements before the killings, with a surveillance video showing them waiting at a food truck presenting a particular point of interest.
The driver who took Goncalves and Mogen home said he picked them up between 1:40 and 1:45 a.m. from outside the Grub Truck food truck, where they bought pasta dinners.
“They had their food, and they were super excited about their mac and cheese as girls are after they go to the club,” he recalled.
The cabbie said the two friends sat in the back and chatted, but never mentioned anyone named “Adam,” who was invoked in a surveillance video earlier in the night featuring one of the girls.
“They were normal just like any other night. They weren’t upset about anything or talking about anyone,” the taxi driver noted. “There was no nervousness about them. They weren’t afraid of anybody. There was nobody following them or following us.”
The driver recalled that he let Goncalves and Mogen out of the car on the street outside their home, rather than in the driveway, and left without waiting for them to enter the residence.
The unnamed driver said when he learned the identifies of the butchered college students, he went straight to the police and handed over his digital data and a time-stamped receipt from the Taco Bell where he headed after dropping the students off at home.
Reflecting on the multi-agency investigation, which so far has very little to show for it, the driver said that many people in the Moscow community have lost faith in the police and feel like they are not doing enough to catch the killer.
“Those kids deserve justice and they’re not getting it,” he said.
Local cops, who are being assisted by dozens of FBI agents and Idaho state troopers, said they are working through nearly 12,000 tips and are also still looking for the white 2011-2013 Hyundai Elantra that was seen near the crime scene.
