norah. o donnell: interesting, scott macfarlane, thank you. we re just getting breaking news in the case of those four clenls students murdered in idaho. the autopsy report was just released and reveals the victims were stabbed to death. the county coroner tells cbs news that the killer likely used the same large knife to attack all four students. cbs s christina ruffini is there. she spoke with the coroner who says the nature of the crime seems personal. reporter: more than four days since the gruesome murders at a house off campus at the university of idaho, the town of moscow remains in shock. the campus is deserted. the murders are still involved. the social media video shows two of the victims at a food truck just hours before they died. today the county coroner released the cause of death. they were all murdered through stabbing with some kind of a probably a larger knife. reporter: outside the home just across the street from the university, police tape and a small mem
police are sitting on a lot of basic information about what they are describing as being a homicide leaving the campus and small community in the dark looking for any answers. here is what we do know. sunday around noon police got a call there were four university of idaho students unconscious in a rental house off campus. when they got there all four were dead victims of a homicide. they are 20-year-old ethan shape an and three co-eds from idaho. a 20-year-old in a relationship with chap-in. 21 eared madison mowing en and 21-year-old kaley. the picture was taken hours before their deaths. they were apparently at a party saturday night and reportedly found the next day by one of their friends. university of idaho officials put the campus on lockdown. it was lifted after only one hour with the police and later the mayor saying that there was no ongoing threat to the public.
i was there within a minute or two of shots being fired. there were already police officers down the street. i saw three or four police cars coming down lane and down high street. everybody i was around was running in the opposite direction telling people to move in the opposite direction. i was in a house off campus. i went straight there. everyone seemed to be in a panic running away. when you got back to your house, were your roommates there? were they texting with people on campus? had the word started to spread? a couple of my roommates were home. as soon as it happened i was on the phone calling people trying to figure out if it was okay. luckily everybody i know is okay. all of our prayers for them. everyone is okay. i was contacting everybody. it seems like a somber mood on campus obviously now. i don t think it weighs in
appropriate for steven coffeen. the red bull insanity defense is hardly unique. a defendant once blamed hallucinogenic tea. another said he was being chased by space aliens when he killed a cop. and remember the infamous twinkie defense? harvey milk shot and killed by fellow san francisco leader dan white, whose attorneys claimed a diet of sugary food gave him mood swings that made him snap. why do these things cause insanity? it doesn t mean necessarily anything about twinkies or red bull. it s, frankly, a series of events that causes an individual to not be able to understand that the actions, activities they re involved in are criminal. reporter: we have seen and will likely continue to see the insanity defense in a slew of high-profile cases. but truth is, it s used less than 1% of the time. and it works for just one-quarter of those defendants, like steven coffeen, who could be released from a mental institution in just months if a judge agrees he was insane at the time. jerem