Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin were found dead in an off-campus rental house in Moscow on November 13.
Police have not yet identified a suspect or made any arrests in the case, which has stunned the tiny university town.
“We have not changed our belief that the murders were a targeted attack,” the Moscow Police Department said in a news release on Sunday. “However, investigators have not concluded if the target was the residence or its occupants.”
On Sunday, NewsNation’s Brian Entin reported that Goncalves’ injuries were “significantly more brutal” than Mogen’s.
That “may end up being a very, very important piece of evidence when it comes to determining who the target was in this attack,” Entin said.
Goncalves and Mogen were killed in a room on the third floor of the house “so the killer had to go specifically upstairs to get to them,” he added.
Last week, a retired FBI profiler told Newsweek that police could determine who the killer’s intended target was by analyzing if any were treated differently.
“Was there one victim or two, that had excessive stabbing injuries?” Mary Ellen O’Toole said. “Was there treatment of a victim in that household that differed from the other three or the other two? That would tell me that was the targeted victim…that maybe enabled the police to surmise there’s one person in particular that the offender was after.”
On Sunday, Goncalves’ father, Steven Goncalves, said he believed it was his daughter or her best friend who were targeted because the way they died seemed different and because the killer is suspected to have entered the house on the second floor.
The killer’s “entry and exit are available without having to go upstairs or downstairs. Looks like he probably may have not gone downstairs,” he said on Fox and Friends on Sunday.
“We don’t know that for sure, but he obviously went upstairs. So I’m using logic that he chose to go up there when he didn’t have to.”
Steven Goncalves said he understood that law enforcement was remaining “tight-lipped” for a reason, but he also expressed frustration with the lack of communication from police and called on investigators to share the alibis of certain individuals.
“I probably overdisclosed information that they wish I wouldn’t have said but this story is going cold,” he said.
“There’s less people coming to Moscow… I hate to be a pain but as a father, I just can’t even sleep thinking that I could be doing something.”
The Moscow Police Department has been contacted for comment.
