Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bryan Kohberger Eating Disorder, Psych Evaluation UNSEALED

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

Bryan Kohberger underwent a number of evaluations by mental health professionals as his lawyers prepared to defend him against four counts of murder in 2025. Dr. Rachel Orr, a neuropsychologist, met with Kohberger and conducted a battery of tests. She diagnosed him with a number of disorders including Autism and an eating disorder. Now some of Dr. Orr's findings have been unsealed. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy looks at the findings in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.Host:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guests:Joe Giacalone https://www.youtube.com/@TrueCrimeWithTheSargeMark Weaver https://x.com/MarkRWeaverCRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Van DinhGuest 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.

There's a lot of conflicting things that come out of this report. And I'm sure that the psychologist was frustrated at certain times, too. Brian Coburger's mental health records released. We are taking a look inside the mind of the confessed killer who's now trying to take back his guilty plea. What did mental health professionals see when they spent hours with Coburger behind bars? I'm Ann Janette Levy, and this is crime fix. Brian Coburger is serving four life sentences at Idaho's maximum. security institution and adjusting to life on J Block has not been easy for him. He has filed grievances

about missing fruit from his meals and inmates taunting him by yelling through the vents. Those grievances appear to have waned in the months since Coburger arrived at one of Idaho's toughest prisons, but now Coburger wants to withdraw that guilty plea that resulted in him being sent to prison for the rest of his life. Had Coburger gone to trial for the murders of Maddie Mogan, Kaylee Gonzalez, Ethan Chapin, and Zanacronodal, and had he been found guilty at trial, his lawyers were prepared to call several experts to the stand as they begged the jury to spare his life. These experts included a neuropsychologist, Dr. Rachel Orr. She's a neuropsychologist who spent a lot of time with Koberger and evaluated him for his defense team. You can read

between the lines and see that Dr. Orr had some difficulty with Brian Koberger at times. Dr. Orr also interviewed Coburger's parents and older sisters. Dr. Orr diagnosed Brian Coburger with the following. Autism Spectrum Disorder Level 1 without accompanying intellectual or language impairment. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Combined presentation impartial remission. Obsessive compulsive disorder with absent insight. Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder or ARFID. Now, ARFID is an eating disorder. The Cleveland clinic defines ARFED as a disorder that causes a person to limit the amount of food that he or she eats. It is not the same as simply being a picky eater. Now, what causes ARFID isn't known, but the

clinic says it could be the result of anxiety, fear, genetic changes, social, cultural, and environmental influences, or even trauma. Dr. Orr said that Coburger had been diagnosed with several things in the past, including developmental coordination disorder, anorexia, andorexia. nervosa, binge eating and the purging type. She said that was in complete remission, though, unspecified depressive disorder, opioid use disorder, which was in sustained remission. We know that Brian Coburger struggled with heroin addiction as a teenager and eventually overcame it. Dr. Orr noted many of her observations about Coburger in a chart, and she noticed some odd behavior for sure, one involving Coburger's insistence on stopping what they were doing

so he could use the restroom. Dr. Orr wrote, multiple instances of pacing back and forth waiting for correctional officers to retrieve him from the conference room when Brian abruptly had to use the restroom. During these instances, Brian communicated his perception that it was very urgent, that the urge to urinate crept upon him, and that he was concerned he might not make it while waiting for jail staff. On these occasions, Brian provided no indication prior to such urgency that he needed to use the restroom. If you love digging into the details of true crime cases as much as I do, you must download the Law and Crime Plus app. If you haven't checked it out yet, here are three reasons you should jump on board today. Number one, you get complete access. Watch the best shows from both law and crime

and court TV completely ad-free. Number two, you get the case files, deep dive access to raw trial evidence, including body camera video, 911 calls, crime scene photos, and much more. And finally, for a whole 30 days. We are giving all of our viewers a full month to test it out completely risk-free. So head on over to law and crimeplus.com, enter the promo code crime fix and start exploring today. And Dr. Orr noted that Brian Coburger didn't have great self-awareness. Dr. Orr wrote, next to insights, overall poor, though with moments of fleeting acknowledgement when explicitly challenged to consider his role in certain situations. and dr orr made it sound as if koberger monopolized the conversation at times generally goal-oriented but often his thought processes appeared over-inclusive at times he insisted on telling a more elaborate build-up to his main point

he could be disorganized but generally circled back to his point and told me if he interrupted his trajectory insisting he be able to continue I mentioned that Dr. Orr also spent time talking with Koberger's family. Dr. Orr wrote, regarding daily living skills, Brian's mother also identified underdeveloped social skills and limited pursuit of typical leisure activities in everyday life compared to what is typical for age. Slight differences relative to age were also noted in the way in which he takes initiative or lack thereof in work activities, e.g. attitude at work, following instructions. And Dr. Orr wrote about the family's feeling that Brian didn't really have the ability to see how his own behavior impacted others. She wrote, family members also consistently reported limitations in Brian's self-awareness and ability

to monitor his own behavior, particularly for impact on others. For example, all family members acknowledged that Brian doesn't always notice when his behavior directly upsets others and does not understand why people are upset. Multiple family members also reported that he often annoys or upsets others without intending to do so, and these patterns were discussed at length during interviews with family. So to really drill down on the details of these psychiatric evaluations, I want to bring in Joe Jackalone. He is a retired cold case sergeant with the NYPD. He's also the host of the YouTube channel True Crime with the Sarge. Check it out. And he's been following the Koeburger case since the very beginning with me. Joe, thanks so much for coming on. Good to see you again, Anjaday. Yeah, good to see you. Long time to see. So tell me, if you would, what stood out to you when reading all of this. What were the little nuggets that stood out to you as a former homicide detective?

Well, the first thing is that he's very impulsive. He's got zero patience, and he is very demanding, like the part where he's telling the psychologist, like, you know, I'll tell you when I'm done, right? So he was exerting some of his authority, so to speak, quote, unquote. And one of the things that it didn't really get into that I thought that the psychologist would was that, you know, was he talking to her that way because she was a woman, right? They didn't ever answer any of those questions, or maybe that was the redacted part, where, you know, he was talking down to her, it seemed to be, at certain times.

And we do have some pages that are all redacted, big black boxes. Wouldn't you love to know what that said? So, you know, I think a part of the prosecution's case, and they never really came out and said this, but the victims in this case, three of the four, were women. And it was largely reported that Brian Koberger at the WSU campus creeped women out. He made them uncomfortable. It seemed that he did not have a good relationship with women, despite the fact that he had a very close relationship with his mother and appeared to have a good relationship with his older sisters. So this is a guy who struggled to develop good relationships with women.

That is a key here, I think. Was he treating these evaluators differently because of their sex? Right. That was one of the first things I was thinking of as I was reading this, and I was looking for little tidbits here and there that could give us a clue into that. You know, when you read this whole document in this entirety, what you can of it anyway, you know, I believe this would have definitely helped the prosecution's case a lot more than it would have helped the defense.

I mean, it showed somebody who, they said, does things without thinking, is basically very impulsive, you know, acts first and then thinks about it later. So, I mean, those are the kind of things that kind of things that kind of. kind of fit right into this crime scene. I want to talk a little bit about one thing that really stood out to me. And if we're talking about somebody who really wants to assert himself and assert control, you know, Joe, I think we've all had those moments in life where you just suddenly have the urge to use the restroom. It happens.

You have to go to the bathroom. You have to urinate, right? You have to go potty. But there is a specific instance in here that the doctor noted, and I think she did so intentionally, because she talked about how he said he had to urinate during this evaluation, and he was insisting that no, he had to go right then and there. Everything had to stop. Everything had to cease because it just crept up on him, and he had to go to the bathroom. Like, no ifs, ins or butts. And there was no negotiation whatsoever.

And I think that you might be able to look into that, at least I think you might be able to look into that and see that this is somebody who wants his needs met right now. No exceptions. And he is in jail at this point in time. And you don't always get to say when you, what you want to do, like you don't get to dictate what you're doing when and where. I mean, if you're in your jail cell, you get to use the toilet because there's a toilet in there. But you don't necessarily. when you're in a room with an evaluator get to say, I have to go now and I have to go now. It's almost like I'm in control, not you. Right, yeah, you stole my thunder a little bit there because I was going to say, in prison, you have no freedom of movement. You do what you're told. You go to the bathroom when you're told when you're outside of your cell and all those other things. You know, you have to ask permission to do everything.

So for him, it was maybe, you know, all that pent-up emotions that he's been dealing with while he's in jail sitting in the cell. and now he's trying to exert his power again and go back and try to see if he can regain some of his, you know, thought processes on how he wants to handle things. But, yes, I'm sure he's having a very difficult time in the prison setting right now in regards to things such as this. He's not in control. That's the problem. And they talked also about how he was, you know, this was a very abrupt interruption of the evaluation when he said he had to use the restroom. And he said that he was concerned. He might not make it.

He was pacing back and forth. What does that tell you as somebody who has dealt with many a defendant and suspect over the years? Yeah, well, I mean, the fact of being a caged animal, right, being in a zoo, what does the animal do when he's a high, you know, he has high anxiety and everything that just paces back and forth in their cage? This is somebody who is trying to exert his power again. authority and his control. And remember, this guy was, you know, in the classroom. His guy was teaching students. And we know that there were several complaints about the way he treated the students in those aspects. So once again, he was in a position of authority. He was looking to be a police officer or getting into law enforcement or the criminal justice PhD program.

He's looking for a place where he can exert some of his authority. And it didn't work out for him quite as well as he planned. Let's go now to his social behavior. There's a box about Brian's social behavior that we're going to put up on the screen. And it says he had some typical behavior that was seen in Brian's, it was fairly consistent, though intense, eye contact, polite demeanor, and social conventions shaking hands upon greeting. Such behaviors seemed routineized. Brian also made clear attempts to ask questions about others at times, but often the questions were about very specific details of topics that had been discussed previously on a few occasions, he made positive comments

about my educational attainment. So he was impressed by the evaluator's level of education. He was never overtly inappropriate. Frequent, atypical social behavior was evident in multiple respects, however, including lack of descriptive or emphatic gestures, a typical speech tone and cadence, awkward interactions, lack of fluidity, awkward delivery of humor at times, carrying on with a joke longer than expected, awkward comments. I had a lot of fun doing the XX cognitive test, weird, inconsistent understanding, acknowledgement of humor, poor reciprocity of interaction,

including very frequent refocus of conversations back on his own experiences or unusual responses to my sharing, reduced social quality at times without awareness. So it seems like maybe, you know, I'll tell you when I'm done, that type of thing, kind of self-centered maybe? Yeah, apparently. I mean, the first thing I saw was I was glad to see that the psychologist was licensed while she was doing this because we've seen in other cases where it might not be the case. But the issue that comes down to is that this is also the things that law enforcement looks for.

Those hand gestures, like for instance, I speak with my hands a lot. And when you're talking to somebody who does that, they're showing a lot of different kinds of movements And when those don't stop, those are usually kind of red flags that maybe this person is not telling us exactly what the truth is at that point because they're trying to control everything and they can't. So, you know, when I look at those kind of things, I'm like, you say to herself, wow,

these are the things that we look for in that interview room. And that's something I would have then gone to after getting this report. I would have gone to the detectives that did the interviews with them and saying, hey, did you notice anything without showing them the report and see what they had to say. Or maybe they documented it. in their reports. It would have been interesting kind of thing to come out. It said that he was highly distracted by sounds

or activity in the environment with frequent peripheral monitoring. So he's kind of looking off to the side quite a bit. Numerous instances when he appeared not to be listening to instructions requiring repetition, weakness and self-monitoring of his own responses on verbal tasks. Concentration appeared most notably impacted during a timed visual matching measure due to an external distraction resulting in the spoiling of the subtest.

What does that tell you? Yeah, once again, he's controlling the entire event that's going on, even at the cost of having to maybe redo this all over again. So, you know, we've also seen prisoners in the system make these things go a lot longer than they should because it's better than sitting in their cell or being somewhere else. So it's kind of a little bit of a break from it. But then again, you turn around and you say to yourself,

he exhibits things about wanting to end things right away and saying that he's going to tell you when it's over and all the other stuff that goes along with it. So there's a lot of conflicting things that come out of this report. And I'm sure that the psychologist was frustrated at certain times, too. She didn't write it in there, but you can almost sense it, I think, in that regards. And it would have been interesting to see what she would have had to say on the stand. I was going to ask you if you thought that maybe he was intentionally trying to, drag this out because he felt he was as a PhD student somebody who was finally getting to talk to somebody who may be on his level who may be able to really speak to him and understand him and as you

said it's better than sitting in a cell yes it happens all the time so when you have a situation where you're going to get out of your cell and you can extend this as long as you want because nobody is really going to put a time limit on it. And it's just a quick kind of vacation, so to speak, away from his normal everyday routine. So, I mean, yes, I would definitely think that he extended this certain sessions longer than he should have. But the issue that comes down to is that the therapist,

the psychologist, is trained to be patient and let this thing take its course. And, you know, when they document inside that it was, you know, basically ruined certain aspects of the test, it becomes more difficult for them that they either have to make the decision if they want to do this over or not. So, and if you think back, Janette, remember there was a situation where he was being so far harassed, you know, through the vent system and all that other stuff. It kind of makes sense with his auditory stuff going on that this is really starting to bother him.

And maybe one of the reasons why we're back talking about this case because he's trying to get this overturned. As a clinician, though, a clinician would be hit to this. This is what they do. They evaluate people all day. you have clinicians of different, you know, strengths and weaknesses. We're all human beings at the end of the day, no matter what alphabet soup we have at the end of our names. But I'm thinking the clinician can identify these things. They know when somebody is trying to play them. Well, I'm sure just like detectives do. So it's the same kind of situation that you're dealing with when somebody is telling you

the truth, when somebody's trying to give you a different line of story. And I'm sure that they would have, if she was on the stand, they would ask her about the questions that you ask. Because all these things are really important when you're doing your investigation. The type of question, whether it's open-ended or close-ended, trying to get to a specific location or a time event is really important aspect. And psychologists, they do this. They take a much deeper dive than we do as cops. So it would have been, to me, it would have been actually pretty interesting to see where this is headed. It most definitely would have.

and it'll be interesting to see, even though the odds are against it, whether we see this go forward into something more than just a post-conviction motion. We're at the really the beginning of this. Joe Jackalone, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. Any time, Agent. To dig into really the legal part of this now, I want to bring in Mark Weaver. He is a death penalty prosecutor in the state of Ohio was once a deputy attorney general, sometimes sits as a judge, a special prosecutor, Mark. Upon reading all of this,

I've got some of it in my hand right here, upon reading some of this, is there anything you're seeing here that could be used by Brian Koberger's attorney in a post-conviction petition to show that he possibly was coerced by his attorneys to falsely confess? Even though creative writing is not taught in law school,

some lawyers are really good at creative writing and particularly the lawyers who have very little chance of winning, they have to be good at creative writing. So what I imagine is going to happen in this post-conviction relief process is that I think there's a lawyer who's been assigned. This was originally Coburgers' own filing, and now he's got a lawyer to help him. It's a job of that lawyer now to creatively apply these facts

and somehow make out the notion that somebody's suffering from the lowest level of autism possible, but yet was that a graduate student in criminal justice didn't know anything about the court proceedings was completely tricked by all the lawyers and the judge and ought to get another shot at a trial. I don't think there's much likelihood of it happening, but it's the job of lawyers to try the best they can

for their client. You know, he's got several diagnoses going on here, and let's look through these diagnoses that Dr. Orr, who's a neuropsychologist, she has great credentials. I mean, they did not get just some fly-by-night person to come in to evaluate him. His lawyers went and got a good expert. And she said, yes, as you mentioned, that he did have autism spectrum disorder level one without accompanying intellectual or language impairment.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder combined. presentation in partial remission, obsessive compulsive disorder with absent insight, and then he's got this, you know, eating disorder where he restricts certain types of foods that he will eat. I'm assuming that's why he was vegan and his obsessiveness with the veganism. You know, I'm thinking maybe they're going to say he just was obsessing. He was obsessing. He's got OCD. He's got, you know, partial ADHD.

he's just sitting around and his head is just spinning about going to death row one-way ticket to death row being in this small cell and he just thought I have to do this or else I'm going to get the death penalty like my lawyers say yeah my friends tease me because when we go out for lunch I won't eat anything that's got mayo on it or any sort of toppings and so I'm a picky eater that does not mean I'm not responsible for my acts so picky eater is sort of of an odd one to put into there. You mentioned I've prosecuted death penalty cases. When I prosecuted Sean Great, the serial killer, Sean Great, I was cross-examining the psychological expert trying to get Sean Great to not get the death penalty. It was unsuccessful. But the

question that came to me when I read his report and it said that he suffered from attention deficit disorder, I looked at them in front of the jury and said, is that what my grandma used to call ants in your pants? And I got a little laugh out of the jury. And I meant to, because that's a ridiculous notion that something about that you can't pay attention very long, somehow relieves you of culpability for murders. Mind you, I've been to grad school, I've taught grad school. You cannot make it through grad school unless you can read the material. And so Brian Coburger had enough attention span to be able to read graduate level material. But is he malleable and coercible?

I guess that's the question. Yeah, probably not. The best case we have in this is the Atkins v. Virginia case out of the U.S. Supreme Court. And then there they were looking at what then was called mental retardation. Now it's called developmental disabilities with very low IQs, people who just don't understand what's happening. That's not true in this case.

Brian Kulberger is not a well-adjusted person. but the standard for not being held criminally culpable or not being able to understand what's happening around you is much higher than he's suggesting. It's a very uphill battle for him to try to get another trial. In fact, the judge doesn't even have to have a hearing. The judge can resolve this, as we say, on the papers, simply by looking at the filings. Interesting. We have a whole grid here that is in this filing. And under comprehension, this is something you touched on, Dr. Orset appeared intact, no evidence of difficulty understanding me.

But under impulse control, and this could have played against Brian Koberger big time at trial. It states impulsive tendencies throughout the evaluation attempted to begin tasks early or turn pages himself violated rules and rushed through tasks. if I'm the prosecutor in this case, I think I would have showed the jury. I would have maybe questioned Dr. Orr on this and shown how everybody said these homicides couldn't have been committed in the time period they were. And now you're saying Dr. Orr that he rushes through tasks. That's kind of gross to kind of compare that. But he is somebody who Dr. Orr says rushes through tasks.

Yeah, when you're in a tough situation, they say any port in a storm, whatever you can do to make your argument. And so they're relying on this or they're going to try to rely on this. What you just described there from that report describes, I'm making the numbers up here, but it's pretty close, 40% of 15-year-old boys. And so that doesn't make it particularly extreme or unusual. Is it unusual in somebody who's an adult? Yeah, there are fewer adults who have those sorts. of things, but none of this means he didn't understand what was happening. I think I mentioned this on one of our previous interviews.

Probably nobody outside of lawyers understands a criminal trial better than a graduate student in criminal justice. He really did understand what was going on. Under thought processes, it says that he's generally goal directed, but often his thought processes have appeared over inclusive. At times, he insisted on telling a more elaborate buildup to his main point then it said he interpreted instructions literally at times leading to numerous questions in need for clarification as well as apparent confusion about how to answer some items rigid thinking and behavior were also evident in multiple instances particularly related to time frames routine and lengths of breaks so i we've got rigid thinking goal-oriented thought process

You know, he's got OCD. I just think a lot of this would have played against him at trial had this come in, had the jury heard it. Sure. You could imagine at trial, the jury's back in the jury room deliberating. And one of the jurors says, what kind of normal person would go kill four people like this with a knife? And somebody else would say, well, let's look back at that report because it's not all that normal. He's competent. But you can see he has got a skewed view of the world.

And that's what sometimes causes killers to misinterpret what their victims intended. If he did know any of these students from outside the house, could have misinterpreted what probably one of the women thought. You can see a jury using this information as a way of understanding why he did his crime, but not as a way of finding him not guilty of the crime. Family members, according to Dr. Orr, reported that Brian compulsively talks and you can't get a word in. Brian's sister Melissa also identified notable patterns of social cognition, often characteristics of autism spectrum disorders such as literal thinking, problems appreciating the big picture, and overfocus on details. All of this kind of makes it sound like Brian Koberger is a hard person to deal with.

Yeah. When you said an over attention on details and I can't get a word in edgewide, it reminded me a lot of defense lawyers have prosecuted cases against. These are just personality traits. At best, it's a personality disorder. As I mentioned before, yeah, defense lawyers have to use what they have. There's just not a lot here. Arguably, he would have a much better go

if he'd had a proper appeal from a proper trial. But given that he pled guilty, he didn't tell us the facts of the crime. He should have done that. That was probably a mistake on the prosecutor's part. But he waives most of his appellate rights, and the post-conviction relief process is a part of that appellate process.

And there has to be an egregious violation, a manifest injustice, for a judge to want to overturn. turn what happened. Yeah, should have taken it to trial because pleading guilty, that was not the proper route if you wanted to maintain your innocence and then do an appeal, eventually file a habeas just, he's going to do it now. But that whole, you know, standing up in court and saying, I understand what's going on and I did this and I'm guilty and I'm pleading guilty because I am guilty, not the right way to go.

Yeah. As an acting judge and a magistrate, I've done thousands of what's called colloquies with defendants who are changing their plea. And as a prosecutor, I've sat through many as well. They're meant to be very detailed because you want to make sure the defendant knows every little right he's giving up. Sometimes the judge will ask a question to make sure the defendant understands exactly what all the words mean. That process is designed to make sure that petitioners, like this will fail because if you said, yes, I understand over and over and over and over again, it's unlikely that later you'll be able to say, I didn't understand. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. We're keeping an eye on it. Mark Weaver, thank you so much. Yes, thank you.

So for now, Brian Coburger's new lawyer is getting to know him as they work through this post-conviction process. A new petition will likely be filed after the lawyer is able to review the case file and meet with Brian Koberger. And remember, you can check out the case file on our new app, Law and Crime Plus. You can also read Dr. Orr's full report there. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Ann Janette Levy.

Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.