November 10, 2024

While Idaho Slept

Author: J. Reuben Appelman
Genre: True Crime
Publisher: HarperCollins, 2023
Pages: 288
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Just after 4:00am on November 13, 2022, four University of Idaho students were viciously stabbed to death in an off-campus house. The killings would shake the small blue-collar college town of Moscow, Idaho, dominate mainstream news coverage, and become a social media obsession, drawing millions of clicks and views. While a reticent Moscow Police Department, the FBI, and the Idaho State Police searched for the killer, unending conjecture and countless theories blazed online, in chatrooms and platforms from Reddit to YouTube to Facebook and TikTok. For more than a month, the clash of armchair investigators and law enforcement professionals raged, until a suspect - a 28-year-old Ph.D. candidate studying criminology - was arrested at his family home 2500 miles away in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania on the day before New Year's Eve.

Review: I followed this case closely in 2022, and was interested in reading more about the students and murders. Interesting that I finished it just before the second anniversary of the crime. My heart breaks for the families, and with daughters graduating this year and next, it reminded me that I'll soon be sending my own children out into the big, crazy world.

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