No sooner did I record an episode about the unsolved quadruple homicide at the University of Idaho, than I returned to my old home on the Palouse. I talk about what folks there told me about the murders, the national media and the investigation into the killings. It seems like everyone knows a little something about the case, but what no one can quite grasp is why they happened. And, as someone who grew up on the Palouse, it made me wonder -- are we culturally blind to evil? Is the idea that someone could kill just because they wanted to kill so foreign to us, that we can't see it or accept it?
No sooner did I record an episode about the unsolved quadruple homicide at the University of Idaho, than I returned to my old home on the Palouse. I talk about what folks there told me about the murders, the national media and the investigation into the killings. It seems like everyone knows a little something about the case, but what no one can quite grasp is why they happened. And, as someone who grew up on the Palouse, it made me wonder -- are we culturally blind to evil? Is the idea that someone could kill just because they wanted to kill so foreign to us, that we can't see it or accept it?
These opinions are my own, don't take them.
Welcome to the Compass of Power. I'm Adam Wilson. I like to talk place and politics and the connection between the two. And I was outta town last week. I was with my mother who died. And it seems strange to talk about that kind of personal stuff with the internet, but it also seems strange. Not to mention it, just keep going, like, oh, everything's the same as it was last time, cuz it's not the same as it was last time. It's weird. It's very surreal. And this isn't gonna be a podcast about my dear mother, but it death does make you think about what are you doing with your life? Where are you putting your energy? And I'd rather be talking with you and be discussing things that are of interest to me than say, I don't know, cutting the trim I need to install. That project kind of got sidelined, but it's gotta be done.
But again, if there's something I want to do, I'd rather be talk about these things which are of deep interest to me. So I'm doing it. And I like to talk politics because my mother liked to talk politics and her mother liked to talk politics. And that's where I get it. That's a fact. Look, going back home to see my mother meant going to the Palouse, which means I was in Moscow, Idaho again scene of the University of Idaho Murders. And I had just done a podcast episode about that, talking about the politics in place, about Moscow, the previous episode. And then I ended up having to go there. So it seems like I should fill in some of the gaps with like my firsthand account of having recently been there, as you know, as popping in to get supplies and things, visiting with family, talking to folks.
And look, everyone in Moscow knows a little bit about the University of Idaho murders, and I won't give you all the background there, but four students all in their twenties were murdered about a month ago as they slept in their beds. No real suspects, right? This is not a true crime podcast. I'll say that again, even though we're coming back for a second bite. But, you know, I'm not here to like necessarily solve things, but we're talking about the importance of place and I was just in that place. And you can feel the impact of not just a quadruple homicide on a small town of 25,000 people, but also the impact of national media attention onset small town. In our last episode, we talked a little bit about how the University of Idaho got to be where it is, why it's next door to Washington State University, and how these two universities are far, far away from the population base of their states.
They're both over the mountains and through the woods, 300 miles away from where the rest of the political power structure is. And they are on what is culturally the same territory. Pullman Washington home of wsu, Moscow, Idaho, home of the University of Idaho are part of the Palouse, which is a very unique and beautiful region with its own culture that cuts across the state boundaries now. And we talked about why most of it's in Washington, but some of the Palouse is in Idaho for political reasons. But culturally speaking, it's the same place. And it's always difficult for actually for me to, when I'm saying I'm going home to see my folks they're like, oh, Eastern Washington or, or are you going to Idaho? Well, listen, some of them are in Eastern Washington and some of them are in northern Idaho, but they live like five miles apart.
And topographically speaking, there's no difference. But when people are trying in their brains to understand where I'm headed, they need to put it into a political category. They understand. So I usually just don't argue. You're going to Eastern Washington. Yes. You going to North Idaho? Yes. Because in truth, I'm going to both places. They're the same place in this case, the Palouse and it's a, you know, Moscow is a big town on the Palouse with 25,000 people and they are all trying to make sense of what's going on with this in incredible crime scene and the fact that they can't seem to solve it. And you know, I was talking last time about, well, do people really not feel safe or they just skip in town, right? Are they just like, Hey, I get to get outta my classes and I'd rather go home than be here.
So see ya, but maybe not a fear for their safety. And I'm gonna talk a little bit about that because everyone I talk to knows a little something about this case. Everyone has read up on it. Everyone knows someone who saw the victims that night or knew the victims or was in a party at that house once. And it's interesting to hear them roll through it. Some of them don't particularly like the way everyone's playing. Detective. I don't think that I pleased every person I talked to by bringing it up, but most of them do. You know, most folks just like the rest of the country want to know what the heck happened and they're trying to figure it out and they have some inside information, right? Somebody told me that the police were pulling cameraed footage from downtown Pullman, for instance. I don't know if I read that now. I'm not like, again, I'm like a master of this case, but I don't remember hearing that mentioned.
One of my family members was like, I went by that house or saw it or somehow, but like he had personally seen that there was blood dripping out from underneath the siding where the siding meets the foundation on that house, which sounds gruesome, but then we're like, really? And somebody googles it and pulls up a news report photograph of the blood on the outside of the house. And that's a little weird. I mean, it's, it's weird. And that they, that it's such a horrific scene. It's weird that you could see it from the outside and the police hadn't done anything about it. And it's weird that you can be talking about what would be a salacious a crazy bit of inside gossip knowledge for a small town except for now you can Google it and just find it on some national news site because that's how many reporters are in town.
And I heard that, you know, of course the reporters from all over the nation and probably some internationally are in Moscow. And it's interesting the first few days and then it gets irritating. And that university of I Idaho students were being hounded by reporters. And here's the interesting thing, apparent, this is what I'm told not, I'm not reporting this, I'm just like telling tales that I have heard. But that the university told its students, like if news reporters approach you, you can just say, I don't want to talk. Which is totally true. I used to be a news reporter and you can just say, I don't want to talk. But here's the interesting thing. Students were telling the reporters, I don't want to talk about it. And then they were being pursued nonetheless by the reporters. Like, oh yeah, but tell me again how you feel.
Are you feeling safe right now? Excuse me. Excuse me. Can can you talk to me for a minute? No, I really can't. No, just take a second. Come here and that. Let's talk about cultural differences. We discussed how the Palouse is a very nice place. It's a very polite place. I think a very, you could make a good comparison to the Midwest because it was founded by a lot of farming families particularly of like the, the German or Nordic persuasion, just like you would find in like Minnesota or you know, maybe comparable to Iowa. Not like the same cultural melu as Seattle say. Seattle has this knock on it for being the Seattle freeze, right? It seems like they're friendly but actually they're not friendly. And that lots of people try to figure out, well where did that come from?
What's the cultural roots of this sort of like aloofness in Seattle or in some of the Western Washington areas? And it is weird. I'll tell you, when I moved from eastern Washington to western Washington, it got weird that I didn't say hi to everyone. But you don't do that. Even if there's one other person on the street and you're walking by them, one other person on the sidewalk, you may not say hi cuz you don't know them. That's not the case on the Palo. And I bring that up because when you've got national news reporters, and I get it, you are on assignment from cnn. You're told to go get a story outta Moscow, Idaho. You're gonna get it even if these students don't want to talk. But that is deeply out of the norm for the Palouse. When someone says they don't want to talk on the Palouse, that's a big deal.
That is a very strong message. They're sending you. I don't have time to talk or I don't want to Talk is fairly extreme in the narrow band of acceptable polite communication. And then to ignore the fact that they said something extreme to you, like, I don't have the time to talk and to plow through it and keep trying to talk is like that would come across as extremely aggressive. Like you have now just breached a few norms because I breached a norm by saying I didn't want to talk to you. At least I'm being honest, but now you're still trying to talk to me. That's crazy talk. So it was like scandalous. It was scandalous when people were telling me about this. Like, you know, that the reporters are asking people if they want to talk and they're saying no, and they're still trying to talk to them like that's offensive to people.
And it just again reminds you of like how Ill-suited the Palouse, Moscow, Idaho is to deal with a national news story culturally and otherwise. And that brings me to evil. Let us discuss evil here. While I was there, I was talking to my Aunt Joan, and if there's one person who knows about evil, it would be my Aunt Joan. I love her. And she has dedicated her life to fighting the death penalty and therefore has represented many murderers, many of the worst murderers. And she certainly knows about the worst in people. And she believes that we shouldn't engage in that by being complicit in murdering them. By the way, just so you're all clear where she's coming from but I asked her what she thought of this case. You know, here you've seen a lot of terror seen but studied and, and been engaged in cases with horrific crime scenes.
And this certainly seems like a terrible one with four people stabbed to death in their beds. What do you think? And we discussed a little bit and generally she's like, I think it's a serial killer, you know, serial killers and I'm not an expert, but we're talking about people that this is not a, it is not the crime of passion, I suppose, right? Like we can all I think without really having to try can understand a jealous husband murdering his wife's lover or two men getting into a bar fight and one of them goes over the line and does something that kills the other one that's, you know, murder. It's killing another person. But it's a crime of passion. And I think within the, you know, we can, it's within the bounds of acceptable conduct in the idea that like, it makes sense to us and there may be punishment, but we're like, I get, you know, that you were really angry at this person, but you cannot do that.
You can't take it to the point of of murder. And then there's serial killers who are not killing for any kind of understandable reason. And I'm, you know, I'm not gonna play psychologists here for the serial killers, but they murder again and again and again in a series and they seem to develop methods and they seem to be participating in it for the sake of the murder. And they are clearly deeply disturbed and very dangerous people. And that my aunt Joan, who knows a lot about these things was like, that's what it feels like to me, me now <laugh>, you know, let's be clear that when you deal with the worst in society, you often see the worst in society. And that's as true for defense attorneys as it is for police officers, right? But it really did get me thinking about how I've been imagining the case.
Cuz it felt a little bit like to me, like at first like, oh, is this like, is this some sort of I don't know, like some sort of romantic situation that went crazy out of hand that didn't quite seem to fit? And then there's of course there's rumors. I heard the rumors while I was in town of like maybe somebody's family was involved in drugs. I you know, you can guarantee that's gonna come up anytime there's an unsolved murders. Like someone's gonna try and tie in drugs. Doesn't mean it's not true, just means like, you know, there's a place people go.
But you know, none of it seemed to make sense. And then you're like, oh, but then there was like an unknown serial killer, like mass killer, just like hanging out in Moscow. Nobody knew about it. That also seems like a pressing thing, like pressing the edges of, of believability. But it did make me think of another rumor I heard there, and this is, I underline rumor. This is, I'm only offering this as to illustrate sort of my thought process. But one of the things people told me was like, well, I heard that the killer as he left the bedroom, locked the door and then closed it. And that's why the roommates that were there who slept through this and called the police or you know, like were aware that there's a problem the next day were slow to do anything because you get, and that makes sense, right?
That would make sense. Like, you get up, it's a party house, you're trying to talk to someone in there, they're not answering the door's locked. You're like, oh, oh man. How, how drunk are you? Are you sick? Do I need to call the ambulance? Like, how bad is this? And you, you're negotiating through the door and no one's answering and it just gets worse. And then finally you're like, fine. And the original call remember, was for an unconscious person. So this idea that like the doors might have been locked from the inside or locked as the person left got me thinking. And then you talk about serial killers and I just, I guess I'm going, where I'm going here is I talked to my wife afterwards and we were thinking about it and it does seem like it seems more likely than not to me, that you're talking about someone who was fantasizing about murdering people.
You're talking about someone who had a crime they wanted to commit and then were looking for the place in the time to commit it. It reminds me a little bit of a, one of my favorite short stories, the tell tell Heart from Edgar Allen Poe, which is just haunting, but it's the, the person, the narrating voice in that story is so impressed with himself on how perfectly he murdered this old man. And what he's frustrated with is that no one seems to understand how well he did it. And this is starting to feel a little bit like that, you know, like a little bit like they had a plan. I will, we've discussed in the last episode in Moscow, Idaho, all those people, 21 and up exaggerating here, Brighton, not everybody but the, the college students who are able walk downtown where there's a bar scene and you go to the bars and then you, or you go to a party and then you walk home or you catch a ride home at two in the morning and you pass out and you go to sleep and you're young and you, you know, a few hours later you've slept it off and you're back to the races.
And that happens, you know, literally hundreds of people probably, you know, maybe thousands every night, every Friday and Saturday night. And that is exactly what happened in this situation where you had four young people go out to parties, go out to the bars, have a few drinks, come back at two after everything's closed and go to sleep. Only now that there's a horrible crime. And it feels like maybe that horrible crime was established already. Like, look, I'm in a town where I could do this, where everybody is sedated from the time of 2:00 AM to 6:00 AM where the doors are unlocked as a rule. And I hope they're locked now, I'm sorry Moscow, that you have to lock your doors. I am. That isn't fair because it should be a safe place. But you can see there it is totally within the realm of possibility that someone exploited the culture there for their own evil ends.
And if there's a connection to place in politics, which is the topic of this podcast, it's that, that, you know, I'm often talking about how the, as the population moves, the power ships or why people are moving here or there and when moves occur, what does that do to the politics? But it's not always singers moving to New York to be discovered or going to Nashville, right? It's not always technologists with brilliant ideas going to Silicon Valley. It's not always this positive side of people going where there's a culture that's going to allow them, you know, like there's a, a ladder that they can climb. Maybe it goes the other way. Maybe people can be on the lookout for nice safe little college towns because they're not nice, they're dangerous and they want to go where they can find people the murder in the dark of night.
That's a terrifying thought. And maybe I'm just being morbid on the account of my recent loss, but you are where you're from. I, you know, that has a huge influence on you. That's part of my point with this podcast. And I'm from a nice place. My mom raised me in a nice little town on the Palouse. And so I think perhaps I'm a little blind to evil cuz it's not always there. And even when it is there, it's, it tends to be like buried. It's difficult to discuss, it's difficult to deal with. And so I think that perhaps, you know, everyone on the Palouse and, and people who were from the Palouse have a hard time getting there to the idea of like, there's not one of those murder mystery explanations where someone had a motive. Maybe it's just evil and we have a hard time seeing that.
And I think we all have those blind spots, right? We all expect the world to be the way it is where we are. We expect our world to be the world, but that's not true. So I don't know where it's all going, of course, but I just offer, I, is this an addendum? I guess it's an addendum to the previous podcast just to say, in addition to everything I talked about, the political forces shaping the place and the culture and how the culture led to this environment where this sort of thing could occur because you have a safe little college town. Maybe that's why it happened, because someone who wanted to do something truly awful went to a place where something truly awful could be done. And because people are blind to that kind of evil, they aren't, they aren't pouncing on it.
They aren't on guard against it because they are unfamiliar with it. Hmm. Kind of a downer guy. Sorry. Okay, that's enough for now. I will be back, I hope soon and we'll talk about some more stuff. Certainly. hat tip to Raphael Warnock and Georgia. I think there's a lot to talk about the future of national politics in Georgia, but we just, you know, like I said, I was on the ground on my home turf. So I'm reporting back to you on what I have found. Thanks for listening. Please keep listening. Tell your family or friends and let or more just tell people that might like it. I don't, don't lay this trip on your family if they don't need it. All right.