He’s spent his entire life trying to understand the minds of criminals, and now he needs someone

After a job interview on April 12, 2022, the police chief responded to an interested applicant’s thank-you note, saying, “It was nice to meet you, too.” Bryan Kohberger, to whom the email was addressed, was one of four candidates for the Public Safety Research Assistant position. Thousands of miles away, the young man had completed his master’s degree at DeSales University in Pennsylvania and was preparing for the first semester of his PhD in criminology at Washington State University. He discovered that the police were looking for a colleague in Pullman, where his new university course had begun.

Later in the fall – according to leaked press reports – the same man, at the same police station He applied as a trainer “It will help rural officials learn how to collect and analyze technical data,” he wrote in a study.

It is still unclear whether the two apps are identical, the reports are false, or two separate stories. Whichever version is real, it sure is creepy:

Kohberger was the suspect in four fatal stabbings in Idaho in November who reported to police.

It’s already known that the 28-year-old studied criminology (you can read our detailed article on the murder and investigation here), and a newly emerged story of a police job interview confirms that the suspect may be insane. With the soul of criminals and police work.

The American press, aided by police data, has now sketched the man’s career path in sufficient detail. among others, The New York Times And this CBS And spoke to the man’s acquaintances, retrieved Kohberger’s old online entries, and examined documents from the NYT investigation.

Neurosis, emotional emptiness

According to his acquaintances, Kohberger grew up in a troubled family in the small town of Albrightsville, Pennsylvania, about 100 kilometers from New York and Philadelphia. His father was a maintenance worker and his mother worked in a school. He has two sisters, one of whom is a family therapist, the other a school counselor, and the latter Two days ago A 2011 low-budget horror film in which students are murdered by a serial killer.

At the same time, Kohberger had persistent low self-esteem and emotional disturbances. “I feel like a sack of organic meat with no self-esteem,” she wrote in a post in 2011 when she was 16, later adding, “When I hug my family, I look at their faces and I see. Nothing, it’s like I’m watching a video game, or something. No”.

He wrote that when he looked in the mirror he saw a “sick, tired, useless and stupid boy” and unfit to live. Then she laments that she thought her father was good and behaved badly.

“I enjoy nothing. I am empty, I have no opinion, I have no emotions, I have nothing. Do you feel this?”

On the online forum Tapatalk, he discussed with his colleagues, for example, that he has a rare neurological disease called visual snow syndrome (VSS), which causes the patient to see or see a moving snow globe. Poor quality, “anti” TV broadcasts. . As he wrote there, his vision of his emotional emptiness and blizzard appeared simultaneously in September 2009.

Although Kohberger did not use his real name on the forum, the birthday given was also correct, and the username Exarr matched the person’s email address, which the press pieced together. According to his friends, his illness made Kohberger so nervous that he completely destroyed himself during high school, tried in vain anti-migraine drugs, went to a neurologist and began a strict, sugar- and starch-free diet. He did not eat bread, only certain kinds of fruit.

Kohberger was a good student, he studied a lot, but he was very hurt According to his classmates In such cases he simply ran away from his bullies. His passion for law enforcement appeared already in 2011 High School Yearbook Testimony And for him, the then sophomore’s dream was to become a member of the Army Rangers, an elite military unit. A picture of him reclining in uniform was also taken for the yearbook.

He became a different person

By 2012, he had learned to live with his illness and began to see the world with a little more hope. The formerly obese teenager lost weight, according to a forum post, he lost half his body weight, and in his last year of high school, he simultaneously took criminology courses at a local vocational high school. police officer He took up boxing and became aggressive, turning from a bullied child into a bully, physically and psychologically abusing his peers when angry.

He graduated in 2013, began studying psychology at nearby Northampton Community College, and worked part-time as a janitor at his old high school. Around this time, around 2013-2014, he became a heroin user. Rich Pascua, his friend at the time, was his main partner in this, and now the clean man told the press that Kohberger, who worked for a while at a pizzeria, also regularly invited him. Weed. Then, suddenly, Pascua’s call is answered by Kohberger’s father, who says his child is on a “super secret mission.” That means – Pascua decoded the message – Kohberger went to rehab.

“I used it only when I was seriously suicidal. Since then I have learned a lot and there is no one to do it again,” Koberger wrote in Messenger later, already in 2018, about the drug to another acquaintance. According to his claim, he had been clean for two years at the time. This year, he wrote in the same introduction that he wants to study criminology and catch violent criminals, but he also knows that this type of work is not easy to find, so he is thinking about consulting work to deal with wanted criminals.

Kohberger graduated from Northampton Community College in 2018 with a degree in psychology, then went to nearby DeSales University for a master’s degree in criminology, where she also took Katherine Ramsland’s classes. Ramsland is a forensic psychologist and has published books on The Mind of a Murderer and How to Catch a Murderer. During his study last year, Kohberger used Reddit to seek out people who had been in prison and were told to share their thoughts, feelings and actions with him from the first moment to the last moment of the crime scene. He graduated in 2022, then studied at Pennsylvania State until he moved to the distant state of Washington for doctoral training in the fall.

Expect to open sooner or later

His classmates describe him as a sharp-witted, intelligent person who likes to show it off and is active in class. In the days leading up to the November murders, Kohberger engaged in a lively debate about how prosecutors win cases using crime scene science, DNA and other evidence. In the days after the murders, he graded papers as a teacher’s assistant.

Although his past and his mind have been well-documented by the press, certainly by the police, no one knows what the motive for the murder was.

– until it is proven that Kohberger actually did them. He has pleaded not guilty and says he was at the scene of the murder, 12 kilometers from where he lives, because “Idaho has better stores.”

The According to experts speaking in the press Only the criminal can answer the reasons, but sooner or later he “likes to talk, he likes attention, he’s narcissistic, he likes to be smart about everyone”. The only suggested motive, but at present completely unsubstantiated, is that bullied young man, rejected by girls, never had a girlfriend, takes revenge on girls, and cares too much about his looks that the party-loving, happy-go-lucky type always considered him a breeze.

Where he lives Anyway, there was a problem in a beer hallHe asked female guests and servers if they were single and where they lived, then became angry when they refused.

For now, further inquiries after his arrest remain unanswered. During a search of Kohberger’s apartment, a computer, disposable gloves, clothing receipts, a mattress cover, a vacuum cleaner’s dust bag, a pillow with some brownish-red dirt and an object with a “deep red spot” were seized. They also found what were believed to be animal hairs, as there was a dog at the puncture site. Police also searched Kohberger’s office at the university, where he was a student and teaching assistant, but nothing was seized from there.

The man’s parents said they didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary about their son after the murders, and even when police announced they were looking for a car similar to Kohberger’s, they didn’t suspect him – at first police couldn’t find the year.

Officers in the case Reporting ban Aggrieved parties including victims’ legal representatives, victims’ families and witnesses were ordered. The case is being heard in Idaho, where the court has held two technical sessions so far, with a preliminary hearing expected to be June 26, when Kohberger will remain in custody at the Latah County Jail in Idaho. Bail. He has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of theft and could face the death penalty. Solicitor He asked everyoneWho knew Kohberger

Help the authorities and justice systems know what they need to know about the man and help them understand what happened and why.

Other important sources: The New York Times 1., 2.