University of Idaho murders compared to Ted Bundy murders

The disturbing killing of four University of Idaho students on Nov. 13 bears an eerie resemblance to two previous college town massacres– including serial killer Ted Bundy’s infamous sorority house spree over four decades ago. 

Retired criminal investigator Matt Hogan told Fox News that the Idaho killings were “strikingly similar” to the events of Jan. 15, 1978, when Ted Bundy broke into Florida State University’s Chi Omega house in Tallahassee.

“Bundy had knowledge of the victims in the house, and it was a sort of frenzied attack with extreme violence,” Hoggatt explained.

Bundy – by then a prolific serial killer who is though to have abducted and murdered over 30 women, often raping their dead bodies – fatally beat and strangled two Chi Omega sisters, leaving two others seriously injured before moving on to nearby basement apartment. A fifth victim also survived, but was left with permanent deafness. 

“Bundy enjoyed the hunt and the actual climax up to the murder. He enjoyed the anticipation and the plotting, and it’s kind of what it seems like here,” Hoggatt said.

Idaho police and the FBI are still hunting for the killer of college students Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin, who were all stabbed to death in a seemingly unprovoked attack in their off-campus house in Moscow in the early huors of Nov. 13. The have yet to release the name of a suspect or find a murder weapon.

Bundy – who was eventually executed in Florida in 1989 – is not the only killer to terrorize a Sunshine State college town.

Joseph Scott Morgan, a professor of applied forensics at Jacksonville State University, told Fox that the Moscow massacre reminded him of Danny Rolling, the so-called “Gainesville Ripper” who murdered five University of Florida students over four days in Aug. 1990.

“It involved knives, occurred in a college town but in off-campus houses, and Rolling went into these homes that had more than one occupant,” Morgan explained. 

In addition to robbing his victims, Rolling taunted police by leaving their bodies in crude poses. His reign of terror famously inspired the 1996 horror flick “Scream.”

Both Rolling’s crimes and the University of Idaho killings were “extremely high-risk,” Morgan said.

“But all this is speculation,” he clarified. “All that really matters right now is getting this person caught,” he said, referring to the hunt for the Idaho killler.

Despite Hoggatt and Morgan’s comparisons, retired FBI profiler Jim Clemente pushed back on the idea that the Moscow killer is a serial predator like Bundy or Rolling.

“If it was a serial killer, I would expect him to kill everyone in the house, so I believe this was a targeted attack, totally different from Bundy, which was a random attack,” Clemente told Fox. Investigators in Moscow previously confirmed the attack was “personal”; two other housemates were left unharmed, and reportedly did not hear the killings taking place.

Speaking to The Post on Wednesday, Clemente insisted that the killer was likely a “younger” man whom at least one of the victims was familiar with.

“Going into an occupied dwelling with six young adults, any of whom could have a knife or a gun or a cell phone to call the police is extremely risky unless you know the circumstances inside,” he reasoned.

As of Thursday, Moscow police are looking into a possible link between the Nov. 13 killings and the unsolved double-stabbing of an Oregon couple last year.

“We’re looking at every avenue and we have other agencies reaching out to us with other cases and stuff that we are going to follow up on those,” Police Chief James Fry said Wednesday.