Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Bryan Kohberger's HUGE Red Flags Before and After Idaho Murders

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

In the months before Bryan Kohberger murdered four University of Idaho students, he was working on his PhD at Washington State University miles away. Idaho State Police reports detailing interviews with Kohberger's professors and fellow students found one believed he would become a predator. Students described Kohberger as acting inappropriately with female students and professors. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy goes through the interviews in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code CRIMEFIX at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: http://incogni.com/crimefixHost:Angenette Levy  https://twitter.com/Angenette5Guest:Dr. Daniel Bober https://www.instagram.com/drdanielbober/Producer: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 Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. People that he went to school with that he interacted with had unkind things to say about him. Brian Koberger's lawyer had good reason to be concerned. Newly released reports from Idaho State Police reveal all of the red flags and concerns. Faculty and staff and students at Washington State University had about Brian. Coburger before he murdered for University of Idaho students I go through the information including his mistreatment of women his obsession with serial killers and what's going on with this video

that looks like Coburger in prison that's been floating around social media I'll explain Coburger actually told a woman, I don't date broken women. And he also told a colleague that whoever committed the Moscow murders must have been really good. Those are just a few of the new pieces of information I've found in a stack of Idaho State Police Reports, documenting the agency's role in the investigation into the murders of Maddie Mogan, Kaley Gonzalez, Zanacornado, and Ethan Chapin. Coburger admitted to the crimes last month, pleading guilty to one count of burglary and four counts of murder, and now he's serving four consecutive life sentences at Idaho's maximum security institution. Now, one thing we're learning from the reports that may not be

entirely surprising given what we're dealing with here and what else we're learning, Brian Koberger apparently liked to watch himself on television. That's coming from an interview of an inmate who was in the same pod of the Latow County Jail with BK. The report states, after arriving in their pod, Koberger immediately sat down and watched the news about his arrest watching multiple channels that were covering the story. Koberger said, wow, I'm on every channel.

The inmate also stated, Coburger was very quiet and it was very awkward having him in the pod. And get this, the inmate said Koberger, watched the trial of another accused murderer very closely. The trial of Alec Murdoch in South Carolina. that was in February 2023 and early March of the same year. The inmate said Coburger never talked about his case, but seemed smart and psychoanalyzed everything.

This inmate, whose name is redacted, also said Coburger, used three bars of soap each week and took hour-long showers each day and washed his hands so much that they were red. He also said, Coburger, wanted fresh bedding and clothes each day. The inmate said Coburger talked with his mom on video calls. calls a lot and told her to get an attorney after seeing somebody on the news. The inmate said Coburger was smart and talked over him because of his vocabulary and that he loved baseball. His favorite team was the Yankees. And the inmate also said, Koberger claimed his favorite movie was American Psycho starring Christian Bale.

Now to those interviews with professors and students at Washington State University where Koberger was getting his Ph.D. in criminal justice and criminology. Koberger was in his first semester at the school and he was a teaching assistant. And it wasn't going well for him. Students were complaining about him, particularly female students. Last spring, BK's lawyer, Ann Taylor, she said she was very concerned about the students possibly being called to testify in the penalty phase because she said the behavior that they complained about was because of his autism. Take a look. When I look through the mounds of discovery, there are probably 100 hours of interviews of people that Mr.

Koberger went to school with at WSU. And of course those interviews come just hours and days after the headlines hit that Mr. Koberger's been arrested in this case. And people that he went to school with that he interacted with had unkind things to say about him. And a lot of their unkind things, when you understand them in the context of autism,

the way he may stand in a room near a doorway, way, the way he may look too long at a person. Their interviews are different when you know he has autism and you know the characteristics he displays. But those awful comments, those mean comments about him, if the state uses those as aggravators, that's using his autism characteristics. I cover a lot of really scary crime stories here on crime fix. And if it's taught me anything, it's that privacy and personal safety absolutely cannot be compromised, especially when it comes to your personal data online. You would be shocked at how much of your information, like your name, phone number, and even home address is just floating around the internet for data brokers

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of the rest of it. The new Incogni Unlimited feature even allows users to customize their data removals and tackle the toughest of breaches with the help of a team of privacy specialists. So if you care about your online safety and you should, take your personal data back with incognit, use the code crime fix below on the screen and get 60% off an annual plan. Now, maybe some of Brian Coburger's behaviors, his social awkwardness was due to his level one autism, but one of his female professors told detectives, she feared Brian Coburger would one day become a predator. The investigators wrote, she told her colleagues, he is smart enough that in four years, we will have to give him a PhD and mark my word. I work with predators.

If we give him a PhD, that's the guy that in that many years when he is a professor, we will hear is harassing, stalking, and sexually abusing of his, I thought would be his, you know, his students at wherever university he ended. This same professor said that Coburger liked to dominate conversations, went on monologues, and stated his opinions as fact. Students felt he mansplained to them. Also, her class with Coburger met on Thursday afternoons in the third. Thursday after the homicides, Coburger missed class. The report states she noticed a bandage on

Coburger's middle and ring fingers of his right hand. Coburger told her it was from a silly accident that happened indoors. She didn't think it happened indoors because it looked like it had been scraped on asphalt. She believed she observed this injury prior to the homicides but wasn't certain. She said Coburger was systematically late to her classes. One time he arrived on time and she told him, hey, you're not late today, and he laughed awkwardly. There were things the professor told detectives that she had heard about, but had not witnessed. The report states, Coburger told a female student that was both disabled and gay, that he would need his partner to be physically perfect, and a disability would not be acceptable.

She also said Coburger kept telling her he wanted to study emotions and decision-making, and she did not remember the details of the story, but recalled Coburger had said, something homophobic. Now, the professor said she felt Brian Coburger was actually stalking people. And because of performance issues with Coburger and his TA duties, they recommended cutting his funding to get him out of the program. Meanwhile, a male WSU professor told detectives that Coburger would come to his office on Fridays and basically want to talk to him endlessly, almost in a way to control his time. He said he wondered whether Coburger could have committed the murders, but called it a fleeting thought. Investigators also interviewed a 24-year

old woman who was a Ph.D. student. She had a disability. She said she told someone she had a bad feeling about Coburger when she met him, but that that person told her she should give him a chance. The woman said she confronted Coburger about the way that he was speaking to women, and she told investigators they had a diverse group in their class, and she noticed early on that he didn't like people who were not the same demographic as he was. The woman said Coburgers' mannerisms contributed to his rudeness and she even called him out for how rudely he treated a deaf student. She said Coburger stared at people in an intimidating way. Investigators wrote, several of the students supported her rebuke of Coburger. Coburger responded to her by saying, I care how you feel,

but you are wrong. The woman told investigators that after this, she felt targeted by Coburger, he would do things like stand by her desk so she couldn't get out of it. She said, Koeberger would talk her into the ground about how she was wrong, about whatever topic he was interested in discussing, essentially berating her. Now, this next part is really creepy. The student said she was interested in the fact that since the Moscow murders, some people were comparing them to the Ted Bundy murders that occurred at a college sorority and that Koberger wanted to talk about those murders with her. The student said Koberger studied sexual burglars and their motivations and decision making. We now know that

Coburger was essentially obsessed with serial killers and searched them on his phone, including Ted Bundy. The woman said she felt that everything Coburger did was calculated and that he wanted to be viewed as the strongest and smartest person in the room. And she recalled in November, seeing him once with bloody knuckles, and he had started wearing a big puffy coat to class, which was unusual. And get this next thing. Koberger said, if he were to ever have a sexual partner, they would have to have no physical

or mental disabilities, they would have to be straight and the opposite of gender non-conforming. The student said some students believed Coburger was autistic, but she thought he was a narcissist. The student also said when she first heard of the homicides in this case, she wondered if it could have been Coburger who carried them out. Now, these reports are quite lengthy. The student said she also discussed the death penalty with Coburger. The student said Coburger was the only student in the class that believed in the death penalty. Koberger asked her if her 12-year-old daughter was raped and murdered if she would support the death penalty.

She also said she noticed that Koberger was regularly late for classes where a female was instructing and rarely when a male was instructing. She said that on one occasion, Koberger expressed to females in the class that once he was in the job market, they would be screwed in competing against him for a job. The student said Koberger is always the first person to a job. express his support of police. She said Coburger committed these homicides because he wanted to know what it felt like to commit these crimes in relation to his studies. And ultimately, if he could get

away with the crimes further supporting his belief that he was smarter than others, she said committing these crimes and his need to control others is consistent with his personality. So that right there is one of Brian Coburger's Ph.D. classmates giving her theory on why he committed these murders. She believes he wanted to know what it felt like since he was so focused on offender decision-making and sexual burglaries. Another student who was interviewed by detectives recounted what she said Coburger told her, and it could reveal why he committed the murders at the time that he did. She described Coburger as a vegan, a strong Catholic, and that he did not drink. The woman said she and Coburger discussed their study of violent offenders. This included areas of

study like sexual burglary, sexual assault, and forensic awareness. He talked about different emotions violent offenders might have. He discussed how offenders might avoid getting caught. These people were criminology students. So of course, the topic of the murders in Moscow came up and the student said she discussed them with Koberger. Detectives wrote referring to the Moscow homicides, Koberger had stated that whoever had committed the homicides must have been pretty good. This conversation occurred approximately three weeks after the homicides occurred. They discussed the idea that students were getting ready to leave for the winter break right after when the homicides occurred and that this timing made it a good choice by the murderer.

So they actually discussed the fact that these murders were committed before the winter break was about to start and that timing was better for the murderer. Is this why Brian Koberger chose mid-November to commit these crimes? The report continued. In reference to the Moscow homicides, he would say that it was horrible. In discussing whether the murderer would be caught, he said maybe it was a one and done type thing. She said Coburger sometimes discussed the evidence left behind it crimes and how an offender might mitigate against that by wearing gloves. These statements were related to her research work and not specific to the Moscow homicides. She said he did not discuss vehicles, surveillance or weapons, that could be used, but did talk about the time of day that offenders might choose. The student also said she had never met someone who was so condescending to women and she didn't understand why the faculty didn't do something about him. Detectives wrote, Coburger had asked if she was single. She discussed her relationship with her partner.

He asked about other friends of hers and if she was interested in getting together outside of school. She said she was not interested. She said she had told him she had been, and this part is redacted, I think it says that she had been sexually assaulted and stated that he did not date broken women. The woman said people in the department wondered whether he was an in-cell that someone who is involuntary celibate and therefore develops hatred for women. She also said there were some in the department who wondered by the way B.K. treated women whether he was a possible future rapist. I'd like to bring in Dr. Daniel Bober. He's a forensic psychiatrist, and he's been looking through some of this material with me. Dr. Bober, your initial thoughts on reading some of this.

We have Brian Koberger, away from home for the very first time in his life, goes to WSU. He's going to get a Ph.D. in criminology and criminal justice. And it seems he gets there. And he's just offending everybody right and left. He's making colleagues uncomfortable. he's making female students uncomfortable, very kind of creepy stuff. And I'm seeing that Brian Koberger, as a TA, felt he had a little bit of power. You know, at DeSales, he was just a student.

So he didn't have any power. So your thoughts. So full disclosure, I've never evaluated him personally, so I can't make a firm diagnosis. But there seems to be elements of dominance, power and control. There's clear interpersonal dysfunction. He has hostility towards women and a sense of entitlement. The way he interacts with people, obviously, it's very off-putting. But to me, it seems like he's someone who really enjoys being in control and having a sense of power.

And, you know, we've seen some of these things and other killers like Ted Bundy, like Dennis Rader, like Edward Kemper. So it's very familiar stuff. he had an animus toward females and the women that were interviewed the professors who were interviewed could see that that that he was not mixing well with female professors they were taking polls and keeping track of how often he was late to the classes of female professors versus males which he was never late to their classes I mean he's saying things to women you know there was a student, a colleague of his who it appears was sexually assaulted and she revealed that to him and he said, I don't date broken women. My response to that is it appears

that Brian Coburger doesn't date any women. So is this just like something in his brain that he thinks I'm too good for that? Like he's building himself up? Or maybe he's someone who's been rejected by women. He seems to objectify them. Is this something that he was born with or is this something that he learned? Obviously, there is neurobiology involved in terms of his temperament and personality traits, but he might be someone who was subjected to trauma, to abandonment, to bullying, all these things could have shaped who he is as an adult. When the topic of the Moscow murders came up with him and one of his colleagues, he said in one instance, oh, yeah, that's horrible.

But in another instance, he said, yeah, whoever did that, it's pretty good. You know, and they're talking about this in the context of these are two PhD students who are discussing a horrific crime that happened about 15 minutes away from them. But he's saying, you know, whoever did this was pretty good. And the person who did it, you know, they agreed was pretty smart to commit this crime in mid-November because the kids were going to get ready to go home for the winter break. Could that be this simple that he picked that time because he knew the kids would be dispersing for winter break?

This would create chaos on campus and that it would make it harder for the investigators to interview people? Absolutely. But listen, this is someone who always from the beginning has had an interest in criminology, right? right? He blurs the line between his own interests and his own personal pathology. So when he talks about some of these other killers, this might not just be because he's interested in what drove them. It may be admiration. It might be identification with their methods with the way they operated. So I think he's quite fascinated by it because in some way he sees himself in them. he also you know tried to discuss this with um one of the other students and he brought up ted bundy and the kio omega murders and how they these were similar and he really wanted just

to discuss the kio omega murders with her is it is this a way of him to like kind of put him on the level and his brain without revealing without taking off the mask that that he did something just like Bundy, and by talking about Kai Omega, he's basically reliving what he did. Well, I think he's fascinated with it. I think he identifies with it at some level. It's almost like he's admiring the way an artisan performs.

And it's really so interesting because you have to wonder if this is someone whose violent fantasies became reality in a way that just was so gratifying for him that it was really the only way he knew how to operate based on his upbringing and based on his hardwired personality. What we're reading in these documents

is really so disturbing. And it sounds like you've kind of boiled it down to this is somebody who likely was rejected. This was somebody who wants to be in a position of power and control. I mean, and then he talks about with his other colleagues, you know, just being fascinated by decision making, the decision making and the emotions of the

offender. You know, I kind of think he was fascinated by all of this and obsessed with it because it was speaking to him. Do you think that's possible or it's just because he wanted to do this and plan this and carry it out? And so he's fascinated by how they felt or was it just simply that he wanted to know how it felt to kill somebody? So it could have been both. It could have been subconscious. He could have been interested in it, but maybe he was trying to learn about himself. Maybe it was a voyage of self-discovery. Again, there's a lot of elements here.

We have narcissism. We have grandiosity. We have this gender bias and hostility towards women, which again may be a defense mechanism against his own feelings of inadequacy, harassment, intimidation, objectification, boundary violations, a sense of entitlement, these deviant sexual interests, low empathy, callousness, all these different traits, which could be suggestive of a variety of different disorders and things that we've seen in other serial killers that he portrays. Well, it's really disturbing.

And, I mean, these reports from Washington State University, these police reports on the interviews have, I think, been really, really revealing. Any final thoughts? No, I think that these interactions with other people really complete the picture. I mean, this is really the best way to get a window into his state of mind is based on these interactions he's had and how he lived his everyday life. I think these are these are invaluable when it comes to really putting it all. together and what drove him and motivated him. Well, Dr. Daniel Bober, thank you for your time. As always, I appreciate it.

My pleasure. So at the beginning of the show, I mentioned very briefly that video that's been floating around social media, it appears to show Brian Coburger in a cell at the prison. I reached out to the prison and they said they are investigating this. They did warn against possible AI and the use of AI and enhancing videos. but it certainly does look real. The prison is investigating. They said they warned and reminded staff about not doing anything like this back on July 23rd and July 25th.

And if it is determined that this video is indeed authentic, then this person is in big trouble and could be criminally prosecuted. 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. Thank you.