Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Murder Suspect Bryan Kohberger Stalks Victims on Instagram?

Episode Date: January 18, 2023

Disturbing posts credited to Bryan Kohberger have been revealed. An investigation by the New York Times of the accused killer's social posts uncovers chilling comments he made as a teenager about his mental health. In one 2011 post, a then 17-year-old Kohberger wrote on the a forum for  people with a condition called "Visual Snow."  "Am I the only one who experiences depression, crazy thoughts, no emotion, delusions of grandeur?" he reportedly wrote.  Kohberger also writes that he felt that he can "do whatever I want with little remorse." Joining Nancy Grace today: Dale Carson - High Profile Attorney (Jacksonville), Former FBI Agent, Former Police Officer (Miami-Dade County), Author: "Arrest-Proof Yourself" Dr. Bethany Marshall - Psychoanalyst (Beverly Hills, CA); New Netflix show: 'Bling Empire' (Beverly Hills); Twitter: @DrBethanyLive   Sheryl McCollum - Forensic Expert, Founder: Cold Case Investigative Research Institute in Atlanta, GA; Twitter: @ColdCaseTips; Host of "Zone 7" Chris McDonough - Director At the Cold Case Foundation; Former Homicide Detective; Host of YouTube channel, "The Interview Room" Giovanni Masucci-Senior Digital Forensic Examiner - Over 35 years of combined professional experience in Political and Governmental Affairs, Physical & IT Security, Technology, Consulting, & Investigations Laura Ingle-Senior Correspondent, Fox News Channel, Twitter: @laurraingle, Instagram:@lauraingletv  Join Crime Stories with Nancy Grace tomorrow for a detailed discussion of the late breaking release of the Kohberger apartment search warrant.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Finally, have we found the link between Brian Koberger and his four murder victims, according to police? Of course, the state never has to prove motive, but any jury would wonder why would he target people he had never met or had he? I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Thank you for being with us here at Fox Nation and Sirius XM 111. First of all, take a listen to our friends at Fox 13 Seattle. David Rose actually asked a retired Seattle police detective about why investigators have not revealed a possible connection between him and the victims. You never have to know why it happened. You just have to show that it happened. I mean,

everybody wants to know why and the link between this guy and the victims, and maybe it'll come out in the future, but it's not necessary for a successful prosecution. Well, he's absolutely correct about that. I've got an all-star panel to break down what we know right now, but before I go to Fox Senior Correspondent Laura Engel, let me hit Dale Carson, high-profile lawyer out of Jacksonville, and more important to me, he's a former fed with the FBI, former cop in Miami-Dade, certainly no lack of business there. You can find him at DaleCarsonLaw.com.

Dale, the state never has to prove the motive, ever, under the law. But I always try to give the jury a motive or some sort of a connection between the victim and the defendant because they're looking for that. And if you don't give it to them, I don't mean just anything you can dig up. I mean the motive, the connection. They could go back to the jury room and think, wow, you know what? There's a lot of forensic evidence, but he never even met these people. There's got to be another way to explain why his DNA was on the knife sheath. If you don't give them a motive or a nexus, you're going to have a problem come verdict time. Well, that's absolutely right, Nancy. You're so right. The idea that humans in a jury panel can convict somebody just based on circumstantial evidence,

which we've seen put together in the arrest affidavit, is very difficult for the prosecution. And it's one of the ways the defense attorneys poke holes in that kind of circumstantial case. All you have to do as a defense attorney is present reasonable doubt. Mm-hmm. Such as, you know, Sidney, sitting here at the studio, had never even met Dale Carson before her fingerprints turn up at the murder scene. Hey, maybe she was just there for a party earlier. A little chip and dip went down. That doesn't mean she's the killer. Well, of course, she is the killer.

But one Gerard could just be the fly in the ointment if you don't give a motive. But again, let me reiterate, state never has to prove motive. But do we finally have a link between Brian Koberger, the PhD hopeful in criminology, and the four, and I can only describe them as beautiful, young Idaho University students. Take a listen now to our friend Dave Mack at CrimeOnline.com. Just two weeks before four University of Idaho students were murdered last November, Brian Koberger sent a series of messages to one of the victims on Instagram. An investigator close to the case tells people, in late October, an account authorities believe belonged to Brian Koberger sent a greeting to one of the female victims.

And when he didn't get a reply, he sent several more messages to her. The source said he slid into one of the girls DM several times, but she didn't respond. Basically, it was just him saying, hey, how are you? But he did it again and again and again and never got a reply. Straight out to Laura Engel joining me. Laura, it sure is an honor and privilege to have you with us here today on Crime Stories. Laura Engel, senior correspondent, Fox News Channel. Here's the irony, Laura Engel.

The girl or girls or even Ethan, but I think it was one of the girls, may have never known that Coburger was DMing them, which is, I actually got a question last night on Twitter. What is a DM? It's a direct message. And that means that you can, if you post something on Insta, everybody that follows you is going to see it. But you can direct message.

Let's just say I have Laura Engel's Insta. I can DM her, direct message her, and everybody else in the world doesn't see it. So, Laura Engel, the girl or girls may not have even seen his messages, his barrage of messages. That's correct. And, of course, this news coming to us from a source that spoke to People magazine about this. But you can only imagine that we are knowing this now because the phone was handed over. The parents, I think, have looked through the phone. I don't know the chain of custody that her phone went through.

But it has been revealed now that it looks like there was a message coming from somebody that appeared to be Brian Koberger. And you're right, the direct message thing, it happens to me. I have an Instagram, a public one, Laura Engel TV. And if somebody messages me from a post that I make or a great report last night or something, I will see it. But if I'm not following that person, it'll go to this kind of envelope that I forget about. So there's sometimes I'll go, oh, yeah, I need to look at that. You know, you need to accept the messages and there'll be a long string of, you know, random strangers saying things. And sometimes I don't see it. And then you can either accept that message.

You can delete that message. Sometimes they're creepy messages, as we all know, being on Instagram. So there is a very big chance that she or he, whichever victim this was, didn't see those messages because there wasn't a reply according to the source. I've got so many awesome experts. Did you just hear everything Laura Engel just said? She knows every minute detail of this case. And she can deliver it in a way that it all makes sense. Before I go out to digital forensics examiner Giovanni Masucci, Cheryl McCollum, Laura Ingalls said something that really perks my ears up. And that was,

she mentioned chain of custody of the phone guys with me, Cheryl McCollum, a forensics expert and founder of the Cold Case Research Institute. You can find her at coldcasecrimes.org. Oh, and she's a star of a hit new series. It's a podcast called Zone 7. Can you hurry up

with some more podcasts, Cheryl? This once a week business is not doing it for me anymore. Cheryl, chain of custody that Laura Engel just said. Really, you know, with all other evidence, you have to have a chain of custody. Here's a good example, Cheryl McCollum. I was prosecuting a serial killer and I could get him for sure on one murder of a Jane Doe. So I went for that. I left everything else out because it wasn't as strong. And I didn't want to dilute my strong murder case with some very weak evidence in other victims' cases.

So I went forward and I had an awesome homicide detective. Well, listen to this. He gets the DNA from the defendant, takes to the crime lab, and then, listen to this. You might need to sit down, everybody. About, I don't know, three weeks before trial, I get a call from the crime lab that says, who brought this over? It's not signed.

Oh, oh, I just gave myself chills, which means he did everything right, but he forgot to put the piece of evidence tape over it and sign his name and the date and time, which means it broke the chain. The chain of custody means if you don't have every minute accounted for with a piece of evidence from the time police find it until the time it's presented to a jury, then the chain has been broken and it will not come into evidence. It can't be corroborated. So this is what I did just the end of that story. I still had time

under discovery. I ran and you recall my personal detective, Ernest Denise Smith. We ran, we sped in that old county issued Crown Victoria to the Fulda County Jail. I had the defendant pulled out. I stared at him the entire time through a glass wall, and I watched the nurse take his DNA. I watched her put that

in a sealed envelope. She gave it to Ernest. He signed it. He came and got in the car with me. Of course, we always fought over who's going to drive. I let him drive because you know how men are, control freaks. I let him drive to the crime lab. We walked it in together and we handed it not just to the receptionist, who's awesome, but to the scientist. We redid the DNA on a rush order in time to hand it over to the defense prior to trial,

just in the nick of time. Oh, dear Lord in heaven. Can you even imagine, Cheryl? No. That's why I know. It makes me very anxious to even tell that story. But Laura Ingalls said, chain of custody on the phone. But with a phone, Cheryl, do we need the actual phone or can we go into the iCloud? Well, it's going to be both. I mean, you've got a couple things going on here. The phone is going to be paramount for me

as far as his phone. Let's start with the accused first. His searches, his pings, and who he communicated with, whether or not they communicated back. Because we're not talking about what they knew. We're talking about what he knew and what he did. Then when you've got the victim's phones, again, you're going to be able to see any communication between them. And I want to start, even if there is a stalker, because remember, Kaylee told people she had a stalker. Her daddy said she had a stalker. The vape store said they were talking about her having a stalker.

So did she ever text that to anybody? Did she ever say, hey, Maddie, y'all come here. This guy's here again, or I feel like I'm being followed. Can I just try to get the bus back in the middle of the road? Cheryl McCollum, see, you have so much information, and that beautiful head of yours. Nice way of saying, I'm talking about him DMing one or more of the four victims. They're going to be able to tell that from his phone. Laura Engel said chain of custody.

Giovanni Masucci, Senior Digital Forensic Examiner. Giovanni, thank you for being with us. Giovanni. You're welcome. I like Cheryl. I want to hand the phone over to the expert, you, in court, and say, tell me everything. But what if the chain has been broken, chain of custody? Can't you pull everything down from the iCloud?

Not everything. I want to have the actual phone. Okay, that's not at all what I wanted you to say, but go ahead. I'm sitting down. I may need to lay down for this. Go ahead, Giovanni. Okay, you can pull a lot of data. It depends what's being backed up off the phone.

So that's where the issue is because not everybody puts everything in iCloud. You know, I never select anything. I just assume everything's going to an iCloud. No, no, there are some defaults. But if you want additional data like your social media, if you want text messages, any type of communications, phone data going to be backed up, you basically have to click that in there under your general section under services. But, yeah, it doesn't all go up there. So, you know, the best bet is to have the actual phone. The tools now are so advanced, and they can incorporate, they can ingest all these phones at once into a digital intelligence solution. And what it'll do, they'll correlate and graph.

Okay, yeah, you're way, way, I need a war room for this. Okay, my little flowcharts are working. Now, just slow down just a little bit. Go back, like, three sentences. With me, Giovanni Masucci, and it sounds like Laura Engel and Cheryl McCollum are correct. We are going to need the actual phone. We're going to have to show the chain, and we're going to have to, if we can't show the chain of custody, we're going to have to show that those DMs were sent before the parents got the phone.

Something like that. Okay, go ahead, Giovanni. Yes, correct. And so they can pull that parents got the phone. Something like that. Okay, go ahead, Giovanni. Yes, correct. And so they can pull that data from the phone. The forensic tools are sophisticated enough now that they can pull the Instagram data from the victim and then correlate it with the defendant. And so that's going to be important. But I'm sure they're withholding other data as well.

What do you mean by that? You can't just drop a little bomb like that on me. You're sure, and I quote, they're withholding other data as well. What do you mean by that? You know, I consult the federal government on forensics. And so, you know, they can't reveal all their cards yet. I'm sure there's because in discovery, it all come out because the defense has the, has the right to get whatever's being discovered and especially in how they're

asking for it. And so, you know, typically as they're putting the cake together, they're going to have data that they'll be able to have to share eventually, but I'm sure there's more data that they're compiling off both the victim phones and correlating and also off the defendant's phones. And it's a process. It is a process. And you've got to handle hand everything over to the defense under a seminal U.S. Supreme Court

case, Brady versus Maryland. I went all the way to the Supreme Court and bottom line, you have to hand over scientific evidence, all of it, good or bad for the state. That includes DNA, fingerprints, fiber analysis, you name it, plus electronics. Anything that has to be analyzed by a scientist or technician, fingerprints, the whole shebang, hair evidence, mitochondrial, blah, blah, blah. All has to be handed over. All defendant's statements, all the witnesses you're going to bring on, and possibly a summary of their testimony. Everything you've got that is exculpatory has to be handed over ahead of time. You might as well just give the defense the whole file so it can never be said you withheld anything.

Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. So, guys, if, if this is true, the reports that he had been DMing, direct messaging, one or more of the four victims, did he know that this weekend was the weekend that Kelly Gonsalves was coming back to the house. She had already moved out, but she had a new vehicle, and she wanted to come back, go to a party that was going to be held that weekend, and show her best friend, Maddie, her new car. They'd been best friends since sixth grade. Was he following her online? Did he see that she was coming back home?

Or had this date, the date of the murders, been long pre-planned by Brian Koberger? Take a listen again to our friend Dave Mack at CrimeOnline.com. Kaylee Gonzalez had already moved out of the home where she and three other students were brutally murdered, but tragically returned to Moscow to visit her best friend that weekend. Kaylee's parents said that the 21-year-old had recently left the student rental property on King Road, Moscow ahead of her upcoming graduation that December and a move to Austin, Texas for a new job at a tech firm. On the weekend of November 12th, she decided to go back to the college town to visit her best friend and show Maddie the Range Rover she had saved up for and bought. The two young women had been inseparable since meeting in the sixth grade.

They died together in the same bed on the same night. Oh man, the way he just said that. So what do you think, Laura Engel? Was it a matter of wrong place, wrong time? Somehow, I don't think so. I think that he had planned this date for a long time.

I mean, there's obviously no way to know exactly, but the fact that she was not supposed to be there. She was obviously all of the victims were very public with their movements, plans, announcements, partying on their Instagrams. So one could, you know, theorize that Brian Koberger might have known that she had left. But, you know, is it fair to say that he would know that she was coming back? I don't know if there was a post because I don't know if her account has been, there seems to be a mimicked account now online of Instagram of her. But I don't know that she ever wrote,

I'm going back to Moscow this weekend to show my best friend the car. Like, I don't know if there was that kind of detail, but it could be wrong place, wrong time, or he spotted her that night out at the corner club and this is the night I'm going to do it. And we just don't know that part. But it is really interesting to think about what was going on in that house. And another thing I want to bring up,

and I want to kick this around with everybody here, that there have been specials, right? We all watch each other. We all watch other networks and get tidbits like you're playing of these clips. I watched one of the long form specials this last weekend. And I went back and I watched a part of it three times last night to make sure I heard it correctly. There was a network that reported that there was a party on Friday night at that house, that there was a party that went from Friday night into Saturday morning, and that there were reported, according to some kids, maybe up to 150 people in that house the night before the murders. I don't know that I've heard that before, and I don't know if that's correct. Those are what sources had told NBC.

I'm wondering if anybody because that jump in. Well, if it's true on social media, if you have friends, they're going to discuss who might show up and who not might not show up. And certainly if you're monitoring the social media connections to these individuals, you're likely to generate a whole bunch of intelligence. I would have loved to have that when I was an FBI agent so that I could listen and see what people are doing. We had to interview hundreds of people to develop that same body of information that now is available in an instant on the internet. Straight out to Chris McDonough joining me, director of the Cold Case Foundation, former homicide detective. I found him on YouTube.

He's the host of The Interview Room. Chris has combed over the area surrounding the crime scene with a fine-tooth comb. Chris, jump in. Tell me what you thinklooking what his signature is. And here's what I mean by that. The forensic digital footprint that this guy is leaving is revealing a great deal about his personality. And you want to take this information and then look back as to what this guy has been doing pre-incident. And I do believe it will emerge that this guy has had many weird encounters with women

and probably has underlining fetishes, including potentially a variety of things that he's engaged in over the years. Chris McDonough, I don't think there's any way you could be more correct. And that is why we have Dr. Bethany Marshall, the only person on the panel that hasn't weighed in yet. But I was saving her for something special. Dr. Bethany, get ready. Take a listen to what our friends at ABC say.

The man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students reportedly made chilling comments about his mental health as a teenager. A person who knows Brian Koberger tells ABC News he is extremely confident Koberger is the author of posts in a forum for people battling visual snow syndrome visual snow is a rare disorder that affects sight doctors say patients often see what looks like TV static in their vision headaches and ringing in the ears is another side effect, along with depression and anxiety. Some patients might notice this coming on after an event, like a head injury or a really severe infection or illness. So it's not just the visual snow syndrome chat forum Koberger participated in.

There's something else, Dr. Bethany. I'm coming at you with both guns a-blazing. Take a listen to this New York Times reporter, Nicholas Bogleboros, on our friends over at CNN. It begins with these posts on a forum website when he's about 16 years old. And he's talking about feeling a range of mental health conditions or problems with his life. He talks about not being able to feel emotions, feeling like he's detached from the world and that when he hugs his own family, he sees nothing. He also described looking at his life and going through the motions like it's a video game and he's really hard on himself saying he feels worthless that he's a jerk to people in his life and and doesn't feel bad about it afterwards wow i've got

some quotes of what this guy posted and they are listen this bethany i feel like an organic sack of meat remember he's a he's a rabid. I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth. He allegedly wrote on Tapatalk, a mental health forum, and that was at age 16. As I hug my family, I look in their faces. I see nothing. It's like I'm looking at a video game, but less. Nothing I do is enjoyable. I'm blank. I have no opinion. I have no emotion. I have nothing. Can you relate? Well, no.

And another, he boasted he could do whatever I want with little remorse. Also, I only used heroin when I was in a deep suicidal state. Hit it. This backs up and supports what we know about sociopaths. So brain scans of sociopaths reveal that the part of the brain that is responsible for remorse, for attachment, for love, for excitement, these parts of the brain do not light up on brain scans. In fact, even the part of the brain that's responsible for impulse control, the prefrontal cortex, that there's bundling of white material in that part of the brain, meaning it's not very active. So this is a wonderful opportunity to see and to hear a sociopath write about what we already know from brain scans. Now, Nancy, you and I have talked many times about the fact that sociopaths are empty. They have low levels of excitement. They have internal deadness.

And that's why they're prone to this thrill-seeking behavior. Now, there's this other post that really grabbed my attention. He explains, he writes, I'm no longer the healthy blonde haired boy with blue eyes. And in a few years, something about I have darker hair and darker eyes, half the body weight. So he's writing about his perception of himself. And it reminds me of a patient I saw many years ago who was a pedophile. He was later caught, obviously, then taken out of my practice. But he was what we called autoerotic. And that means that his sexual interest was directed back against himself.

He would watch himself masturbate in the mirror. And he would cut his hair in the mirror. He would rub oil on himself in the mirror so that sexual excitement was generated by thinking about. Okay, Dr. Bethany, as much as I would like to hear more about your patient rubbing oil on himself, I don't know how he got to that point. Well, it's just these self-referential texts are weird. I'm no longer the healthy blonde-haired boy with blue eyes. And how did you extrapolate from that to your pedophile client rubbing oil on himself? You know what? Don't need to know that. Take a listen to our friends at ABC.

In one post in 2011, when Kohlberger would have been 17 years old, a question was posed to other people in the Visual Snow Forum asking, am I the only one who experiences depression, crazy thoughts, no emotion, delusions of grandeur. The post ends saying he felt that he can do whatever I want with little remorse. In another post in the forum later that year, the same author writes, I simply don't want to live anymore. People say these are supposed to be the years I enjoy and cherish. Well, I can't say I will cherish these days. Okay, Dr. Bethany, without going back to your pedophile client rubbing oil on himself in the mirror, can you analyze that?

Well, it's not fun to be a sociopath. We think of them as being driven by this lurid need for excitement, and they love all the stalking. And yes, there is fetishized sexual interest in the stalking, but he describes being sociopathic as extremely disturbing. He's removed from the world. He's not attached to other people. So, Nancy, we're wired for attachment. That's how we survived as a species. People who are in good mental health care, they love, they have remorse, they attach.

And he finds it extremely disturbing to not be attached. And so let's think about his attachment, his weird attachment to these four students and especially to Kaylee. All it takes is a tiny sliver of an interaction to form an obsession between a stalker and a victim. Could that come from you or Coburger sending the DMs, direct messages, but never getting a response? Just the thrill of sending them and the anger or the frustration of no response, is that enough of an interaction? Yeah, it's both theoretical, what I know about stalkers and what we're beginning to see is that she didn't even respond to him and all those images out there, it could have just been seeing one beautiful image. Look,

we are attached to these victims by looking at the images and reading the story because we're wired for attachment. He attached just by like maybe seeing even just a piece of clothing or something. Now, remember what I've said about stalkers so many times on your show that they have the fantasy or the delusion that there's a complete attachment system between them and the victim, right? Yeah. Even though there is none. So every time he was not responded to, the rejection deepened and deepened and deepened along with the rage and the desire to seek vengeance or to punish her for not responding

to him. It's Laura Engel. And I just wanted to, as we're talking about these writings and the things that he wrote that are so dramatic, if true if this is him remember he had two older sisters amanda and melissa right they grew up with amanda is a licensed counselor and she is a registered behavioral technician melissa works in mental health she's a mental health therapist in New Jersey, working in anxiety, trauma, work stress, emotion regulation, and career counseling. So those are his two siblings. And I just wanted to point that out because every time I hear these words that he wrote, allegedly, I keep thinking about, you know, whenever we tell these stories and we talk about these crimes. Oh, only somebody knew if they monitored him. And I keep thinking about the sisters. It's not their fault, of course, but it's just interesting that that's what they do.

It really is. I wonder if he had heard any of that lingo, the psychological lingo from the sisters describing their studies or their jobs. Guys, listen now to our friend Moa Lenge at GMA. Newly uncovered social media posts painting a clearer picture of who Brian Koberger was as a teen years before he was charged with killing four University of Idaho college students. The New York Times first reporting on posts believed to be written by Koberger between 2009 and 2012, where he shared struggles with mental health and thoughts of suicide. Koberger writing in 2011, as I hug my family, I look into their faces, I see nothing. It is like I am looking at a video game, but less. Koberger also writing he experienced depression, a constant thought of suicide, crazy thoughts and delusions of grandeur, saying, I feel no emotion and along with the depersonalization, I can say

and do whatever I want with little remorse. Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. I want to go straight back out to Giovanni Masucci, Senior Digital Forensic Examiner. Okay, Giovanni. Yes. I've got a ton of things he allegedly posted, comments he made that are really chilling in light of the four murders. But how can I corroborate that this is actually him

posting these things? Well, they're going to do requests to these sites, these social media sites, to grab that data. Now, depending on how current the social media posts were. They're old.

Some were when he was 16. But a lot of these sites, they do back up the data. And so law enforcement can request this. People don't realize it, but they do back up the data. And what does that show? Your IP address? The person that was sending them which computer they were using?

Email address that's attached to it. Any information that's required by that social media site to set up that account, which could direct right back to Brian. And information that's required by that social media site to set up that account, which could direct right back to Brian. And so that would correlate information that way. But also anything that is posted as well, up to current as well, but on the old data, they can pull that data and corroborate it.

Nancy, can I jump in? Please do. You mentioned War Room a second ago, and you know that's how you and I would have worked this case. We would put this up on the wall, and one thing that I would want to know is his phone pings and how that correlates with their social media posts. Specifically now, I would want to know when he made these instant messages, if it's him when he got no response did he take a drive over to 1122 king road and again looking at his phone pings the other things i would want to put up on the wall is what these people are saying when kaylee first mentioned she had a stalker

when the vape store you know manager when they went in there and she was talking about the stalker, I would want videotape from the corner club the last place they were before going to the food truck. Well, I agree, but I still contend that he had this planned for a very, very long time. Hence, the at least 12 prior times he had been near the location. Now, here's another thing. We're looking at all his deep dark secrets that he posted on chat forums but he can appear to be

somewhat normal. Take a listen to our cut 335. Now this is a neighbor who does not want to be identified. He does not want to go down in history as being friend of Brian Koberger's. But this is also a neighbor that is married. And after the neighbor had tried to do a few things with Koberger at Koberger's father's insistence, when Koberger's dad dropped, moved K Coburger to Pullman, nine miles from the murder scene. The father approached at least one neighbor and said, look, can you be his friend? He has a hard time meeting people, basically setting up a play date for Coburger. That said, the wife had a sixth sense and she said, no more. He cannot come back to our place.

Do not invite him for dinner. And when asked, she couldn't say why. She just didn't want him around. Now, take a listen to this text Koeberger sent to the friend. The last message I got, he said, happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. And this was 11 days after. Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family. So not only did he go straight back to school like nothing was wrong, he was texting neighbors, happy Thanksgiving, as if everything were perfectly normal. But I want you to hear what criminology professor

at Birmingham City University, David Wilson, has to say in our Cut 337. Criminology is at the cause or an effect. And it is simply not pathological to want to study criminal mind. That's what I do. It would be pathological to want to study the criminal mind to understand something about yourself. And that indeed is what is being argued in the probable cause affidavit in relation to Brian Koberger. I've taught criminology students for about 25 years, and I would say a handful of them have creeped me out. Okay, I want you to hear more. I don't think it was really laid out that clearly in the probable cause for arrest affidavit,

but take a listen to more in our Cut 340. Well, I kind of felt, now you might say this is spurious, but because I know the person that's been accused of this murder had studied under Kathleen Ramsland who studied the BTK a serial killer by the way who had a background in criminal justice so there's another serial killer that has a background in criminal justice he kills 10 people in the 1970s 80s and 90s and guess the first target of that man's killing cycle was a group of four people a family of four in a house that he had never previously had connections to so there's a sense in which you've got some eerie echoes going on here. Cheryl McCollum is it true that Brian

Kroberger also studied under Professor Ramsland? Yes absolutely. What do you know? I just know he was in several of her classes and studied under her. And, you know, I'm certain that they had a working relationship, if nothing else, because the level that he was at in the master's program, I mean, you get to know your students pretty well at that level. You know, they are writing all the time. They're researching all the time. They're discussing topics all the time. So he was there and studying under her, no question about it.

To Laura Engel, senior correspondent, Fox News Channel, I've been asked by many people whether Koberger was obsessed with Ted Bundy because they have a lot of similarities. What, if anything, do you know? There have been reports of similarities. What, if anything, do you know? You know, there have been reports of that. Obviously, we know that he had been studying what he had been studying for a very long time, 28 years old. In these studies, we have heard classmates say that there was some type of connection in the sense of him being interested in him. And we've heard, of course,

the studies of that professor that you just mentioned. But in terms of him writing about having a connection with Ted Bundy and mimic him, you know, wanting to be like him or anything like that. I haven't heard anything like that. But I have heard reports that he was interested in those types of people. Nancy, if I could jump in about that. Yes. Okay, so Brian Koberger is playing at being human. He's pretending to be human. He's not human. He doesn't feel human. He uses the word depersonalized. He pulled that out of a textbook somewhere. He's sending, you know, happy Thanksgiving messages to the neighbors who are clearly rejecting him. He's pretending to be sociable. People like this, they don't. There's some report that says maybe he even had Asperger's.

So this inability to relate to others, I think, just fueled the feeling of rejection and the rage he had. But if there was a connection to Ted Bundy, I would also think that he's trying to locate a sense of himself in the people around him. Kind of like, oh, like a two-year-old at the fair. Am I like the clown? Am I like the monkey? I mean, who am I most like? So that that's really what's going on in all these strange behaviors. Interesting. Well, there's been another theory out there. Guys, you had just been hearing David Wilson, criminology professor, speaking to you this morning. There's also another theory floating around that he intentionally left the knife sheath with his DNA on it. I think that is wrong. And the other night when I was driving through the dark, Chris McDonough, you know

exactly where it is, his long circuitous route that took him an hour to get home when he reportedly left the crime scene. It's pitch dark. There are no streetlights. Very hard to see. And I've got 20-20 vision. I just wonder along that drive when it hit him, oh, my my stars where's the knife sheath yeah and it is an interesting theory but i agree with you nancy 100 it's highly unlikely no way okay let's get a vote on that what about adele carson you agree with chris mcdonough you know i do i i don't think he intentionally left it there i think the argument from the defense is that he was never there and somebody else got his fingerprint on his DNA and left it. That's the argument. Laura Engel, do you think he left it there on purpose?

You know, that's a great question. I personally don't think he did. Me either. That's crazy talk. And just to go back really quickly about Ted Bundy, that is where we're going to that search warrant. Those search warrants, when they are released, when we find out what they found in his apartment, when we find out what the search history was in his computers. Right. And remember all those conversations from the neighbors.

He was up late at night. He was walking around. Was he pacing? Was he thinking? What was he Googling? You know, those are the types of things that we will learn as we get closer, as we get closer to that probable cause. I can't wait. I wonder if we'll find out before the preliminary hearing.

I certainly hope so. Guys, we wait as the evidence unfolds. Nancy Grace, Crime Story, signing off. Goodbye, friend. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.