Computers seized in UI slaying

BOISE – Authorities in California have seized two computers from the home of the parents of John Joseph Delling, the 21-year-old man who is accused of killing a University of Idaho student and under investigation in the separate slaying of a Boise State University student.

Delling is also suspected of having shot and wounded a man in Tucson, Ariz., police say.

Ada County sheriff’s detectives with a search warrant took the computers from his parents’ Antelope, Calif., home late Friday.

“Those are the two computers that Delling is believed to have access to,” Scott Johnson, a lieutenant with the Ada County Sheriff’s Office, said Saturday. “They got four or five boxes of things.”

He said he didn’t know what else was seized but that all the material is being brought back to Boise. A computer forensics team will examine the two computers. Johnson said he didn’t know whether they were desktops or laptops.

Delling, a former Boise resident who last lived in Antelope, Calif., has been linked to the Arizona shooting of Jacob J. Thompson, 23, on March 20, Ada County Sheriff Gary Raney said. Thompson, who is originally from Boise, is now in rehabilitation after being shot in the face and chest, Raney told a news conference on Friday.

Delling was arrested Tuesday by police in Sparks, Nev., on a stolen car warrant issued by Ada County and a first-degree murder warrant issued by Moscow police in the death of UI senior David Boss, a former classmate of Delling at Timberline High School in Boise. Thompson also attended Timberline, Raney said.

Boss, a 21-year-old history major, was killed early on March 31 in his off-campus apartment, shot twice in the head, police said.

Police have also identified Delling as a suspect in the death of Bradley Morse, 25, whose body was found early Tuesday in a Boise city park pond near an office of the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation where Morse worked as a janitor.

Delling apparently drove some 6,500 miles across much of the West, including California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Arizona and Nevada, during a four-week period prior to the killings in Idaho, Raney said.

Authorities fear there may be other victims, but were not aware of any Saturday.