While there appear to be few clues in the deaths of the four University of Idaho students butchered last week and there is no suspect in custody, one rumored clue has been ruled out by law enforcement.
In a somewhat bizarre coincidence, just a few miles from the students’ shared off-campus home in the town of Moscow where they were stabbed to death, there was a report of a pet dog being skinned and filleted. But the Moscow Police Department announced on Monday that the Oct. 21 incident involving the dog was not related to last week’s grisly crime.
“Detectives are aware of a Latah County Sheriff’s Office incident of the report of a skinned dog and have determined it is unrelated to this incident,” the Moscow Police Department said in a short update on Monday evening, according to Fox News.
Moscow, Idaho police in new press release say the report of a skinned dog is unrelated to the unsolved murder of four University of Idaho students pic.twitter.com/IgS2gnwnCL
— Steve Lookner (@lookner) November 22, 2022
Police said the incident involving the dog “was determined to be wildlife activity and is unrelated to the murders,” KXLY reported.
The commercial AM radio station also reported that police located a dog at the home where the four students were murdered. The animal was unharmed and turned over to Animal Services, before being released to a responsible party.
However, the reporting contradicts what the owner of the dog found dead last month recently said.
Pam Colbert, 78, told the Daily Mail that a Latah County Sheriff’s deputy would confirm that their pet’s killer was, indeed, a human.
The dog was a rescued Mini Australian Shepherd they named Buddy, and she said he never returned after being let out of their Moscow home on October 21.
“It was like a deer that someone had hunted,” Pam said. “They cut him around the neck and just skinned him. His little legs had fur and his little face had fur, but the rest of him was just skinned.”
“The other side of him was as though they had filleted him like they were about to eat him,” she recalled. “It was terrible. Unbelievable. They cut him like you filet a fish. We found his collar, but we didn’t find the pelt.”
Her neighbor, Clint Hughes, concurred, according to Fox News.
“You could tell it just wasn’t an animal that did it,” Hughes said, adding that “it was obviously done with a knife.”
Yet another mystery in a brutal murder that has so far stumped authorities, which now includes state police and the FBI — the FBI is now accepting tips and digital media at fbi.gov/moscowidaho.
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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