Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Breaking Down Bryan Kohberger's Body Language: 'Demon Possessed'

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

Bryan Kohberger sat still and listened intently as family members and friends of the four University of Idaho students he murdered called him a loser, pathetic and a psychopath. He also listened as the victims' loved ones described their loss, pain and grief. Kohberger only uttered three words during the hearing but his facial expressions and body movement spoke volumes. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy sits down with body language expert Susan Constantine to analyze it all in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Get 15% off OneSkin with the code CRIMEFIX at https://www.oneskin.co #oneskinpodHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Guest: Susan Constantine https://x.com/bodylanguage01Producer:Jordan ChaconCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. If you the time has now come to end Mr. Coburger's 15 minutes of fame. It's time that he'd be consigned to the ignominy and isolation of perpetual incarceration. Brian Coburger may have only uttered three words during his sentencing for the murders of four University of Idaho students, but his face said it all.

A body language expert joins me to talk about what Coburger's face and movements were telling us as families told him what they thought of him. The truth is, it was dumb as they come. I'm Anjana Levy and this is Crime Fix. Before I get into Brian Koberger's body language, I wanna tell you about something. Law and crime is creating something new for our viewers,

something that you're really going to love and enjoy. We want to make sure that what we create is based on your opinion and your voice. So we've created a short survey to get your feedback and we'll be selecting 10 people at random who took the survey to get a free law and crime t-shirt. If you want your voice to be heard, please check out the survey and let us know your thoughts.

The link is in the description and it's also pinned in the comment. So now back to Brian Coburger's body language. I'm sure you watched that sentencing hearing. I'm still thinking about it. Brian Coburger, of course, is now the property of the Idaho Department of Corrections. The only time we'll likely ever see him again is when his prison mugshot is updated during his sentencing hearing for the murders of Maddie Min, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Zana Cronodal in Boise, Idaho, we got the clearest view of him that we've had in

some time. That's because the courts have only permitted streaming of their video system. And for the most part, our view of him has been a little blurry. But during his sentencing hearing, the court camera was a little clearer so we could get a better look at his facial expressions. He's a pretty stoic person. His affect is flat. He doesn't show a lot of emotion. And his lawyers have said in motions to strike the death penalty that that was because he had level one autism. They said he wouldn't react to gruesome crime scene photos because of that diagnosis, not because he was an uncaring or unfeeling person.

We also have still photos of him from the sentencing. He appeared to look at the camera at times. Now I can tell you, I had a really good view of him during both the plea hearing and the sentencing hearing. During the plea hearing, Brian Coburger, he barely blinked as Bill Thompson read the facts of the case. He appeared almost transfixed by what Thompson was saying and almost appeared as if he was checking to see if everything Thompson was saying was correct or maybe even reliving

the night. Imagine that. Then during the plea hearing, Coburger sat in his chair handcuffed as victims' families talked about the pain of losing their friends, their children, their grandchildren and sisters. Coburger appeared to rock at times, and there were also times when he actually seemed to nod his head ever so slightly in agreement. I want to tell you about OneSkin. They are sponsoring today's episode of Crime Fix. Let's be honest. Being on camera as much as I am, having the right skincare products matters a lot. Our skin changes as we get older.

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travel-size products. One of the things I like most about OneSkin is how easy it is to integrate it into my daily routine. Just a few simple steps and I'm good to go. For a limited time, you can try OneSkin and get 15% off using the code crimefix when you check out at oneskin.co. That's 15% off at oneskin.co with the code crimefix. And remember to tell them we sent you when they ask you where you heard about them invest in the health and longevity of your skin with one skin your future self will thank you trust me. So I want to bring in an expert in body language to discuss Brian Koberger's body language his facial expressions which are kind of hard to read he's a stoic guy he doesn't give us

a lot to work with but we have somebody who of hard to read. He's a stoic guy. He doesn't give us a lot to work with. But we have somebody who knows how to read people pretty well. She is Susan Constantine, and we've had her here on Law and Crime many times before. So thanks for coming on Crime Fix, Susan. I appreciate it. I want to get your thoughts just right off the bat, just generally speaking, a broad overview of what you saw

during that hearing the other day, when Brian Coburger is just sitting there, this is a different Brian Coburger than we've seen, only in that he's now in a jail jumpsuit. They were trying to project the presumption of innocence to the public, now he's in handcuffs, he's restrained, he's guilty, he has admitted that he is guilty, and he's sitting there just taking all of this in and listening as people basically say he's the

worst piece of filth on the planet. Yeah, it's really interesting to watch all of that. It was cringe-worthy, wasn't it? So when I'm looking at his overall appearance, he's resolved himself to the issue that he was ready for the big punches. So his overall affect we've seen through in this hearing and throughout, he doesn't show the right amount of natural emotion. I think it's unrealistic to think that we would have. He never has.

So to expect something different from what we already know, I think that would be highly unlikely. So the fact that he's detached, he's removed, he's showing a lot of hyper-focus in his facial expressions, there are clues though, if you look close enough, and I think we're gonna talk about that in some of these clips. Well, and we are gonna look at the clips.

One thing I found interesting, and I was in the courtrooms and I had a really pretty good view of him, he seemed to be clenching his teeth a lot. And so it's not like I know Brian Coburger and I've been in court with him before, you know, a handful of times, but there was a lot of teeth clenching. There was a lot of this, sticking his tongue into his cheek as people were speaking. What do you make of that? Is that just

like him trying to stop himself from reacting or saying something? What do you think that could be? All right. Well, there's two things, and I'm so glad you said that because this is very interesting about the tongue poke. The tongue poke is when a person is feeling a lot of stress. They'll tongue poke, and what it does is it stretches the fibers of the inside of the mouth,

and that's where a lot of anxiety and stress comes from. So if they can stretch those fibers, it helps to release stress. It's a form of manipulation, like with a self-soothing gesture. The other part of it is, when you see a tongue poke, that is like taking a sword and striking somebody with it. So you have to tie it to what's being said and where he is doing the tongue poke. Because literally what he's doing,

if you think about it, which is kind of freaky, it's like stabbing somebody with a knife every time he's sticking his tongue out, poking it through his cheek. It's a form of anger. We've seen the tongue poke a lot in our research, and that is when you have very strong feelings or opinions, and when they'll do that. It's a form of dislike, distaste, resistance, anger, lots of different adjectives you could sum it up. The other part is when you're clenching your your teeth, that is again when you've got a lot of cognitive load, high emotional stress, clenching down on it is a way to

release some of that tension. It is tension in itself, but by pressing down on it is a form of resisting anger. So anytime you see someone clenched down to the cheek, their teeth, this is a form of anger. So pay attention. Those small little, good for you to pick that up because I've done been on a lot of shows and a lot of who've been in the courtroom, no one has ever brought that to my attention. That's significant. Yeah, I had a really good view of him. And I want to go back now just briefly to his stoic affect pre-trial.

Well, we didn't even get to trial. But when his attorneys were trying to get the death penalty stricken, they were wanting to tell the jury that he had level one autism, which used to be called Asperger's syndrome. They said the reason you could put a horrific crime scene photo up on the Elmo or whatever and he won't react is because he's got level one autism. It's not because he is a horrible uncaring human being. It's because he's got this level one autism. So you put this horrific stuff up on the screen,

he's just gonna sit there and be like, you know, whatever. So could that level one autism, and Asperger's diagnosis, now keep in mind he was working on his PhD and I know that that doesn't necessarily, those things don't necessarily impact one another. Could that impact somebody's facial expressions

to that degree? Yes, it can. And I'm glad you brought that up too, because I talked about this last night when I was on another other show. He has a high IQ, low EQ. Okay. Big difference here, right? So he doesn't have the emotional intelligence to be able to regulate emotions. Now you're going to add the autism on top of it. Autism is oftentimes they cannot read or emote emotions correctly because the way they see it, a lot of times they see sadness and anger and autistic children or people with autism,

those are the emotions they see. They also have a hard time emoting an emotion. And that brings me to things that I've been thinking a lot about regarding this case and why he does what he does as far as his facial expressions. Now, I think that we need to really consider that there are other underlying issues that are also creating these responses or non-responses because he has that high level of paranoia. So there's something psychological, is there something that is neurological, has there something to do with his learning disorder, all of those things all play in how he's responding other than the fact that he lacks any sort of empathy and concern because we see him,

he has an antisocial personality disorder. A lot of people are calling this psychopath sociopath. There's no, and here's the book, just so you know, this is what we use in our- DSM-5, yes, I'm familiar. There is no such diagnosis as a psychopath and sociopath. It is antisocial personality disorder. So what we're looking at are traits

and expressions and behaviors, and we kind of assign the sociopaths so so to psychopath. So in layman terms, yes, I would call him a sociopath psychopath. And to be clear, I just want to clarify. They did say that he had never been tested for that or assessed for that. His attorney said that, but pre-trial, they didn't want, they wanted to bar the state from using the word psychopath or sociopath, but you're right. Like, you know, psychopath, they used to call it psychopathy. Now it is called antisocial personality disorder.

It would be interesting to see if he will be ever assessed for that to see whether or not he does indeed have antisocial personality disorder, because I've had a number of people such as yourself say they believe he does. Susan, let's get to the clips now. Dylan Mortenson, she was a surviving roommate. She is the roommate, as you know, who saw the man in all black, the masked man with the bushy eyebrows in the athletic build and toned slim build walking through the house that night with what appeared to be a container.

So she was probably gonna be able to identify him. She couldn't say who he was, but she saw the bushy eyebrows. So she spoke in court and Brian Coburger was staring her down. So let's take a look and talk about it on the other side. Okay. What happened that night changed everything.

Because of him, for a beautiful, genuine, compassionate people, were taken from this world for no reason. He didn't just take their lives. He took the light they carried into every room. He took away how they made everyone feel safe, loved, and full of joy. He took away the ability for me to tell him that I love him, and I'm so proud of him. Okay, so what did you see?

Okay, I'm going to show you what I do. Okay, so your viewers are kind of getting into my head what I do. I'm looking at the 52 different muscles in his face and just in our mouth, we have 20 muscles that activate. You will see what I call a very quick, extremely micro, when I mean ever so slight, there is a concealed smirk. There was one smirk that popped out there

and immediately released, okay? That was what we call leakage. If it were to maintain, it could be performance, but it wasn't. When it's leaked, it's telling you psychologically and emotionally what that person is feeling, and then it's masked very quickly. So there was a form of what I would call enjoyment.

I see this in the BTK, I'm on that task force. Same kind of weird smirk that pops in and then goes back into neutral. The other thing that I saw was there's these little micro head nods and pay attention because you'll just see them just see how my head is just slightly moving. Yeah, I noticed that too. The slight it was happening the whole day.

Like he would it was just very subtle like a slight head nod. It was even less subtle than what I'm doing. Yeah, so these are all what we call leakages. And when a person is, we see this at admission of guilt, we'll say, you'll ask them a question regarding an incident. And then there is a form of affirmation or agreement, or can be in, they're hearing you, they're giving you affirmation or agreement or can be in they are they're hearing you they're giving you affirmation that they're acknowledging and it's ever so micro it's not these big ones like I'm doing with you when you're talking I go oh yes I get that and we do these head nods they're very very micro leakages so he's he's acknowledging what she's saying and he is acknowledging what she's saying, and he is hearing what she's saying. And then now you combine,

there's a couple of deep breaths that happen, right? Did you see that? When, and it was here up high in the chest versus down low. So how do I know that is because I can see his shirt moving right here. When you see these deep breaths, it's not like where you can see it more demonstratively. He masks a lot of his emotions, he contains a lot of his emotions, so you're only going to see fragments of it. But when we see that, that's fear.

When we are breathing high in the chest and it starts to beat a little bit faster, higher in the chest, that's a fear response. Now let's go to our next clip. This is where a relative of Zana Kernodal, I believe it was her stepfather, basically told Brian Coberg who wants to take him out in the woods for five minutes and teach him a lesson. So play the clip.

I don't know what my limits are here, but I'm really struggling, dude. I am struggling. So I want to, I want to just be out in the woods with you just so I can teach you about loss and pain. I'm not, I believe I love God. I wouldn't take your life. That's up to him, I love God. I wouldn't take your life. That's up to Him. But I guarantee you, you are weak. God, I would just give a moment, man, five minutes out in the woods. Oh man, you're going to go to hell. I know people believe in other stuff. You're evil. There's no place for you in heaven. You took our children. You are gonna

suffer, man. I'm shaking because I want to reach out to you, but I just, I hope you feel my energy, okay? Go to hell. All right, Susan. I just love these clips. They're so good. There's so much information here. So you can see from the very beginning when there's another affirmation, right? You see the head nod again. Then you look and you see when does it stop. So there was acknowledgement very early on and then it stopped. Then he mentions about his's weak, right? You just see an eye blink, it's not very long.

I was looking to see if there was a longer eye closure or maybe a rapid one, none. Zip-bo, zip-zip, nada, nada. So what does that mean? That tells me that there's no cognitive load. So it didn't affect him, that did not land in the way that I think that he was hoping that it would, that it would somehow create some sort

of physiological response. Nothing happened. And then even when he said that he was evil, right? Then his eyes became very still and his body, his head became very still. So again, what does that actually mean? Just means that it's different from when we saw the difference. So we're looking at the baseline. Why did it slightly change when he said he was evil? It would be interesting if he really believed that, you would have seen a

little head nod. I don't think he sees himself as being evil. Hmm. Interesting. All right, let's look at our next one. This is Olivia Gonsalves, the sister of Kaylee Gonsalves, wrapping up her victim impact statement and really letting him have it. The truth is, as dumb as they come, stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty. Let me be very clear. Don't ever try to convince yourself you mattered just because someone finally said your name out loud. I see through you. You want the truth? Here's the one you'll hate the most.

If you hadn't attacked them in their sleep, in the middle of the night, like a pedophile, Kaylee would have kicked your ass. Thank you. Thank you. Applause So, we see the swallow. Did you see the swallow? When she first started off, and I don't know exactly what was the word or phrase that she said, it was heart impact, but what was coupled with that was a rapid flutter. So that is what we call a cluster.

So that's something to really pay attention to. That's cognitive load. So anytime a person swallows, right, you're taking a big hit, something is kind of thrown you off and you're about to hear something really bad. And naturally what we do, you might even say, I'm going to swallow before you hear the bad impact. So he was almost prepared for it.

And then the cognitive load, meanting like it was, that was where it was almost a bit overwhelming, so that created this cognitive load. It's called like a cognitive dissonance, and that's what happens when you hear something and all of a sudden you have a response, like it was almost, like you almost didn't expect that. So it took a minute for that to actually process and that's why we call that cognitive load. So then she had mentioned she uses a lot of

adjectives right and she's of course using like the one with dirty and there were several other things that she was saying. Watch his eye blink every time that she would use a specific adjective you would see him blink, blink, blink, blink. Again, that's cognitive load. Those are all like punches. You don't see him like how a person that shows real empathy where they would become angry or they would be taken back or they, you know, they grimace. He doesn't do that. He expresses differently, okay? And that's why I'm saying there's more going on than what we see that's happening, psychologically, biologically, maybe even spiritually, you know, because personally I think the guy's demon possessed, but that's for another conversation.

I want to know what you think about him looking over at the gallery. I have my own take on it. After the clapping, what did you make of that? That's just a confirmation. So what he's looking at is a confirmation glance. He's looking to see who was clapping, who responded to it. Sometimes people would do this even with their attorney. If they're making a statement, they'll look over to see, did I do that right? Is that okay? It's a confirmation glance.

So for him in this scenario was he was wanting to see how other people responded to that impact statement, those words. Were those people showing any emotion? And it's very quick. He reminds me, it's kind of kooky when you think about like a Chucky doll and then we see these horror movies and their faces still and then just their eyes move, he does a lot of that. So he's really under control. He's got a lot of control. But that was a confirmation glance. Let's look now just briefly at the one and only time during this hearing we saw Brian

Koberger speak. All right, Mr. Koberger, you have an opportunity to make a statement if you wish to. I take it you are declining? I respectfully decline. All right, what did you think? So I'm going to, I wrote this down and I want to read it to you. It says, I respectfully decline. He wasn't just refusing to answer.

He was sidestepping a minefield. In the world of statement analysis, this kind of paraphrasing raises a red flag. It's the polite way on the surface, but underneath it is a strategic dodge. He didn't deny, didn't acknowledge, didn't even hint at emotion. Instead, he distanced himself

with a careful wording refusal that sounded respectful, but reals insensitivity in high-state cases like this one. So I was putting my thoughts together about that because when a person says I respectfully you know decline he should have said no your honor or I decline but I respectfully decline so it and the surface of that it would seem as if he was being respectful or cordial. The fact that he actually had to say I respectfully is he is trying to take the power back. Like it's more about me than it is you. So that is a way of dodging out of answering, I decline, being an affirm, a firm deny, a firm denial.

All right, let's look at our last clip now. This is Brian Coburger listening to Judge Hippler. And what's interesting about this is that everybody keeps saying, you know, law enforcement, the judge, the victims, that he, that Brian Coburger wants fame and they don't want to give it to him. And so there must be something that they know that Brian Coburger, this introvert, wants fame. So let's watch what Judge Hippler said to him.

The time has now come to end Mr. Coburger's 15 minutes of fame. So let's watch what Judge Hippler said to him. The time has now come to end Mr. Kohlberger's 15 minutes of fame. It's time that he be consigned to the ignominy and isolation of perpetual incarceration. Okay so here's another one where if you look at his facial expressions you will see a very gradual, micro-gradual disdain. So his eyes become more fixated, his orbital muscles around his eyes become more tense, and you'll start to see his lips start to press in. When I looked at that whole part, because there's, you know, there's a whole part of it, what I was interpreting that is that he was reminiscing, as he was saying that, about assaulting the judge. I saw the killer instinct when he was, when the judge was saying that of his hatred. It's almost a form of a

nonverbal slaying of that judge. And if you could see that morph and what, just so you know that when I'm analyzing these really intense moments, I slow a video down so low that I can literally see them in microseconds. And when you see them in microseconds, you can start to see where the lips start to just kind of slightly tighten, right?

Eyes become more fixated, brows come down more. So that is like a, what we call a preeminent attack, physical attack on a person. That's what we call dangerous demeanor. So that was actually a precursor to imminent violence. Interesting. So you felt he was like to the judge, almost like a how dare you? Like he, if he could, he would have hurt the judge almost like a how dare you like he if he could he would hurt the judge I Think that he was actually reminiscing thinking about the

Attacking on there is there is something that was happening in that moment of where he was so fixated I think that he was thinking about I Hate to say this, but it's almost like killing him or attacking that judge. You could see that anger, that killer eye, the killer instinct of what those individuals saw during that attack.

Because what we call this is what we call precursors, we call it left to bang, right? And left to bang means what are the indicators that we can pick up that are precursors to imminent violence? So you only have a microsecond to get out, a microsecond, because it happens that fast. So that's what I saw was in iAlert, which are our preeminent behavior indicators of what you see before an attack. But he keeps himself very tight and in control.

That's why you only see the eye blinks, right? He's like a teapot. He's holding all that energy in and the only place you can see it is in a little eyebrow brink or maybe just a little tightening of the lips, furrowing of the brows ever so slightly or micro head nods. Wow. Well, Susan Constantine, I really appreciate your time and your expertise as always. Thank you so much for coming on. Hope you'll come back.

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Jeanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.