Documentary about the 2022 murders of four students at the University of Idaho - and the internet sleuths who tried to solve the case - was an uncomfortable watch
In the early hours of 13 November 2022, four students from the University of Idaho – Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen – were stabbed in their off-campus residence. The case shocked the world and went viral almost immediately.at the time, you won’t have been able to escape content about “The Idaho Murders”, as the case came to be called.
As hunger for new information grew in the days following the crime, footage from a local food truck featuring two of the victims was initially released to huge uproar. The van’s owner Joseph Woodall, along with a person in the video dubbed “hoodie guy”, were subjected to untold scrutiny, supposedly in the name of justice. In Woodall’s words, “people on the internet sleuth side of things were just trying to get content, dramatising tragedy”.
Something other than truth was driving Riches, who seemed more interested in stringing out the case than resolving it. But while McDermott was generally pleasant and inquisitive as a host, she struggled at times to press the sleuths hard enough about their motivations, or to hold them accountable for the devastation they left in their wake.