Hidden True Crime - IDAHO FOUR: Bryan Kohberger Unmasked

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Our Idaho Four series continues with an in depth analysis of Bryan Kohberger's Hidden motives leading up to the killings of Ethan, Kaylee, Maddie and Xana in Moscow, Idaho in November, 2022 This episode was recorded on Hidden True Crime's YouTube page July, 2023. Every Saturday night, our gems are able to ask forensic psychologist Dr. John Matthias questions. Another live Hidden Hour with our gems! Subscribe for additional Saturday night lives, psychological analysis, and insider interviews for an in depth look at crimes.  DR. JOHN MATTHIAS is a licensed clinical and forensic psychologist with 30 years’ experience in both clinical and forensic work. He serves as an expert witness for the federal government and has consulted on numerous high-profile cases for District Attorney’s offices and defense attorneys in several states. In the forensic area, Dr. Matthias has developed expertise in personality assessments, hidden behavioral motivations, complex trauma and criminal psychology. In the clinical realm, he has worked with numerous victims. He received his Master’s degree in Marriage, Family and Child counseling, as well his doctorate degree, from the University of Southern California.  Dr. Matthias graduated with honors in philosophy from Princeton University, and he won the prestigious McCosh Thesis prize while there. In high school he graduated valedictorian from a large public high school in Chicago where he was chosen to participate in a ground-breaking valedictory study that continues to this day.  Dr. Matthias has been an adjunct assistant professor in the University of Nevada Las Vegas clinical psychology doctoral program since 2007. He supervises UNLV doctoral students on forensic assessments, clinical case formulation, and various therapeutic approaches to clinical work. Your support helps us produce these podcasts/videos. We have some big plans to explore the true crime terrain in a way that no one else has attempted. HIDDEN: A TRUE CRIME PODCAST is: CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY REINVENTED. Join us on a journey into the darkest recesses of the human mind and the unconscious motivations that drive human behaviors in order to understand the world and ourselves.  WEBSITE: https://hiddentruecrime.com/ TO SUPPORT:  https://www.patreon.com/hiddentruecrime https://paypal.me/hiddentruecrime https://cash.app/$hiddenTruecrime Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Our Sponsors:* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Acorns: https://acorns.com/HIDDENTRUECRIME* Check out Armoire and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.armoire.style* Check out Effecty and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://www.effecty.com* Check out Happy Mammoth and use my code HIDDENTRUECRIME for a great deal: https://happymammoth.comSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/hidden-a-true-crime-podcast1836/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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the way. Hello everyone. Hello to our gems. we are live and I saw the the amount of gems that we're here with us tonight, hidden gems. I can't believe it. We have Australia, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Prince Edward Island, Brisbane. So good to see everyone. Hello, Minnesota. We have Murphy's Law. That's what John called

today. Murphy's Law are, should we tell everyone? So I shower today at my in-laws house because we had a flood, a rather large flood. It's still flooding. We've got some buckets and our waters turned off. I ran to go shower somewhere else. And then our podcast episodes, our entire catalog of podcasts, except for about six,

all disappeared. Very stressed out about those two things. Our child had his own little trauma. His tablet broke, which might not be that big a deal to many of you, but when you're five, it's a really big deal. That was a much bigger deal than the flood.

You could have cared less about our house flooding. He was like, wow, look at all this water. But when his tablet broke, he dropped it and it shattered. He was not happy. But we're here and we are here ready to talk Idaho for Moscow, Idaho, University of Idaho case. This is a case that John, you and I have been covering from the very beginning. but of course then I rushed off to Idaho for a different case, the Lori Vallodebel case, which I will be going back for the sentencing at the end of this month.

And here we are, though. We have not stopped talking about this case. On November 13th, the most tragic thing happened in the small college town of Moscow, Idaho, and three roommates and a boyfriend, Ethan, Ethan, Zan, Maddie and Kaylee were brutally stabbed to death in the middle of the night in a town that rarely sees crime. And for a very long time, nobody, there were no suspects. We covered it from the very beginning. You profiled who you thought might commit such a crime, John.

John is a forensic psychologist. He evaluates criminals for a living. And so we did a lot of speculating on what type of person could do such a thing. Well, we journeyed with all of you, our hidden gems, even appearing on Dateline with all of you when we learned that Brian Coburger was arrested and charged in the murders of these four young people.

That is where we are now. John, maybe at this point, but why don't you tell people where we're going to continue? We'll revisit some of the old information and get people up to date, and then we have new information related to some of his mother's posts on social media. We have some information from friends that have spoken out since the crimes were committed. We have more information about his firing from Washington State

as a TA. And I think that plays a huge role of this crime that we didn't really, we haven't talked about since we covered it last. So we'll put together some new pieces, I think, and present some new ideas and hopefully we'll, in that sense, we'll continue to illuminate Brian Colberger's psychological portrait or psychological... We're going to talk about the information from his dismissal from Washington State as a TA. I think that's a really important part of this story. We probably, we didn't know about that at the time. We last talked about Colberger.

So we will discuss the importance of him losing his TA position, him being fired, essentially, and how that contributed to, I think, to his actions, to the murder. And, of course, I've had time over the last few months to reflect more on it and to think more about it. And so I think this will just be an updated psychological portrait of Brian Colberger, based on what we know, based on as much information as we've been able to obtain. And, of course, it will change. You know, a lot of information has not been released, but we will amend things as we learn more. I also want to share, I know that there are a lot of theories surrounding Brian Coburg.

when it comes to guilt or innocence. And I just want to share that today, of course, as always, Brian Koberger is innocent until proven guilty. They can duke it out in court to decide whether he is guilty or not, and that's where that happens. So in that sense, this would be considered very much speculation, but it's speculation tied to concrete evidence. And there is a presupposition,

certainly underline our interpretation or analysis, which is that the evidence does point to him. And it certainly justifies charges against him. So let's just recap some of the things we've talked about and some additional thoughts I might have. We talked about the Tapatoc Forum where he talks about visual snow and he talks about some mental health issues there. And so I want to reiterate one of the points that we made there, which is that he talked about his depression. Let me start with a couple of elements of the Tapatoc that I think would be that are useful in understanding Brian Coburger from his childhood. and those would be what a friend described as his lifelong depression.

So a close friend of Brian said that Brian confided him that he had lifelong repression, which is depression, which is also something that he mentions in the Tapah Talk discussion. He also talks about anxiety a great deal in the Tapatok. So I think this combination of depression and anxiety is important in setting the stage. And apparently he has this depression and anxiety from a very early age. So the anxiety will become relevant, I think, because it seems likely that he develops some obsessive-compulsive qualities later on. His diet is very obsessive-compulsive-like.

I don't know if I would diagnose him with OCD, but he certainly seems to have some of those qualities. His exercise is very compulsive. There are certain things that he does that are repetitive. If you start with kind of this anxiety and depression, and you see this as eventually, or maybe even early on, We haven't talked to enough family. We haven't talked to any family members yet.

We'd love to. But it's possible to envision some type of obsessive, compulsive type qualities developing at a fairly early age. And so I think that's going to be an important part of the story later. The other thing that's an important part of the story from his childhood is his weight. He seems to have struggled with his weight from a very early age. And he seems to have been, according to a number of friends and childhood friends, he seems to have been bullied quite a bit. There was a lot of rejection in his childhood. But I think there's something else to that.

I don't think it's just the weight that led to the bullying. I think we're now seeing that there's a very kind of socially inept quality to Brian Kohlberger. There's a woman who I won't mention her name, but she's actually, she gave an interview. It's on video. She described a date with Brian Kohlberger in 2015-ish. He would have been around 1920, 21, 2016. The exact date is not clear.

but he was a young adult or late teenager. And she talked about how he was persistent in wanting to walk her home. They went to a movie and he was really persistent in wanting to walk her home. And she agreed because she thought he was a little creepy. So she didn't want any conflict. So she agreed to have him come back with her. He went into the apartment and she said that he kept tickling her. He would like tickle her like a kid.

And I mean, this is a 20 year old. And so he was persistent. And she didn't know what to do. She thought this was really awkward. Like who tickles someone on a first date? I mean, they went to a movie so they didn't even really interact. And they go to her apartment and she's now engaged in this really bizarre, tickling behavior. And so her story is that she doesn't know what to do.

She's a little bit afraid of him. So she says she has to go to the bathroom and she feels sick and she pretends to get sick in the bathroom. And he leaves because even that apparently was too much for him. So he didn't want to persist with the tickling because I think he believed or believed based on what she was saying that that she was sick. So he left. And then an hour later, Brian Colberger sends her a text saying, I think you have really, this is a quote, according to her. But she says, quote, you have really good birthing hips. Someone's weird, right?

That's weird. That's weird. So I, and I use this an example. This isn't just the only example, but this is an example, I think, of kind of this socially awkward presentation and this social ineptness that he's, there's something peculiar about his social interactions. And some people have speculated that maybe he's on the autism spectrum. I don't, I just, I wouldn't know enough to go there. I just simply don't have enough information to make that assessment. That's something that a forensic professional would have to do if they met with him in person, obviously, and did some testing.

and I clearly haven't done that. I think that the bullying is not just the weight. He's being subjected to some bullying because of the weight at some point, but I think it's also this awkward social presentation, that there's stories of him going up to some females in the hallway and asking him on dates. Or there's one story in particular where he walks up to a student, like in sophomore year, and he says to her, let's hang out, like their best friends.

And he's never met her. He's never talked to her. So there's there's just this presumption that somehow people should instantly like him and that he's instantly likable. And I mean, he doesn't understand that social interactions take some work and you just don't come up to someone and say, hey, let's date. You know, I think you're, there's something there that's really socially peculiar. And I think it's those, it's that combination. It's the weight and the social awkwardness that's leading to the bullying. It's not just the weight.

I kind of speculated early on that a lot of his classmates were saying it was the weight. But I think it's more than that. You have these elements. I think also it seems to me likely that there's probably some genetic issues here in terms of temperament, that it seems to me he's probably fairly sensitive, that he's probably a bit introverted. And again, I wouldn't be able to confirm that unless I did some testing. But when you put those together, when you put together the introversion, the depression, the anxiety, maybe some qualities obsessive compulsive disorder. You put together the bullying with the

rejection, the weight, the social awkwardness. I think you're really kind of setting the stage for potentially for mental health problems later on. One of the symptoms of some of these issues was that he became addicted to heroin. And he was a heroin addict, apparently from a fairly young age until early adulthood. So by some accounts, as early as 13, 12, 13, let's say 13-ish to 22. So he struggled with heroin addiction for many years, apparently on and off, probably some years were worse than others. But there are friends who have talked about helping him acquire heroin, people that knew that were friends with him that knew about this addiction. Apparently, the addiction was pretty severe. And that makes sense to me, too, in the sense that I think

someone experiencing these mental health problems might be inclined to self-medicate with heroin, specifically if they have issues around anxiety. He actually tells a friend that he's using heroin to deal with his depression. And I guess that's one way to deal with depression if you want to blunt all affect. It seems to me that he's probably using heroin more to deal with the OCD and the anxiety issues he's struggling with because heroin would tend to kind of soften or lessen those obsessive thoughts. might be having. I think it's highly probable that when he's a young teenager and he's subjected to all this bullying, that he's also starting to have maybe some revenge fantasies. I think this is where it

starts. He's thinking about ways to get back at people. And one of the interesting things about his bullying is a lot of the bullying is happening from females. So because of his social awkward qualities and because he's walking up to females in the hallway and saying, hey, I'm, you know, I think you're really cool, let's hang out, that they're pushing back a little bit. So it's not hard to imagine that this is someone who is now starting to think a little bit about revenge and about, you know, he's having these fantasies about retribution and getting back specifically at women, that a lot of the women are harming him and they're rejecting him. And he's feeling a great deal of shame and he's probably feeling a great deal of anger and maybe even in some cases rage. And so I think

it starts, it starts in, probably in the early teenage years. So why is that relevant? Because heroin would be a way to really attempt to reduce or blunt some of those violent fantasies he might be having. Another way to deal with that, by the way, this is something that he does successfully, is that he becomes a good student. He's, he's quite smart, he's quite intellectual, and that actually benefits him. So he uses his intelligence and his, his ability to really think critically, apparently, in some ways. To his advantage, he's a good student. He gets a lot of praise for that.

And so that becomes a real plus for him. I'll talk about how that actually might hurt him later in the sense that he uses this over-intellectualization, I think, is another defense mechanism. So very much like heroin, this over-intellectualization is a way for him to not only get some praise, but it's a way for him not to deal with the emotions that he's experiencing. So it's a way for him to push out all the shame and the anger and the rage, right? So much like heroin, this over-intellectualization as a defense mechanism really becomes a way for him to cope with the world. More so over time because he's on dean's lists. He gets one of his professors says he's the most brilliant student she's ever met.

right he's he's getting a lot of praise and a lot of accolades for his academic success and for this intellectual quality so i think that's going to be another interesting part of this story in the sense that in many ways i think these murders become an intellectual exercise and you know i've made a comparison to dosti assi's crime and punishment or i've talked about res kalnikov and how for Rask Kalnikov murder was very much an intellectual exercise as well. And I think there's, oddly enough, you know, we're talking about a crime that's committed 150 years later that's in America, not Russia, but, but Dostoevsky certainly understood something about the criminal mind. And there's so many parallels here with Kohlberger in terms of just this intellectualization and

kind of dehumanizing the murder from something that involves human beings to something that involves an idea or a principle or an intellectual idea. And so, right, and that, by the way, that's what terrorists. Terrorists are really outstanding at taking something that has a huge human toll. And it's about injuring and harming and often murdering human beings and then calling it something else, calling it ideology or calling it something an idea or something intellectual, right? And I think you have that here to some degree. So I think that's part of this story, And so this quality of being really smart and intellectual, it keeps cropping up. In grad school, one of the students, one of his fellow grad students says he always had to make sure

that you knew he was the smartest one in the room. He made a point of arguing his point endlessly until he won. And he never left the room without thinking that guy's the smartest, or that guy believes he's the smartest one in the room. So I think that's part of this whole over-intellectualization with Brian. Colin Colberger is that, you know, but it becomes reinforced over time. Right. Because he's having, he's having a lot of success as a student.

He's doing quite well, and he gets a master's degree and he gets a lot of praise. And he's one of the few students from the DeSal's master program in criminology that gets into a PhD program. So he has so much success doing that. He sees himself as really smart, in fact, smarter than anyone else in the room. And, you know, that could have been, it could have been something that really saved him in the end if he was willing to kind of deal with some of those underlying emotions of shame and rejection and abandonment that occurred from his bullying. But it appears that there's no evidence whatsoever that he was going in that direction. And so that's another thing, by the way, that comes out of this sense of intellectual superiority is that he has, he develops a sense of grandiosity that he's smarter than everyone, that he's superior. And unfortunately, in September, September 23rd of 2022, he gets in an altercation with the supervisor at Washington State.

Okay. This is important. Yeah, this is really important. So now everyone, take note of this timeline. Yeah, take note. So he enters graduate school. He gets to Washington State in June. He moves out to Washington in June. And I think graduate school starts.

He probably has some orientation meetings. but graduate school starts in August, and literally within the first month of school, he's in an altercation. So the term that Washington State uses is altercation. Obviously, we can't see the specifics of what that's about because school records are quite private. And although News Nation was able to obtain the broad outlines of his dismissal, they were not obviously allowed access to the details of his school record. But in his school record somewhere, you're going to find that On September 23rd, he gets in an altercation with the supervisor, is Professor Schneider. We don't know what it's about, but when you see the term altercation, that's not good.

No. And that's not, I presume this is some type of verbal altercation because if there was a physical altercation with the professor, I believe he would have been dismissed immediately. Maybe not. Maybe there would have been a bit of time to evaluate it, given the state of academia these days, there's quite a bit of leeway in terms of dismissing students, which, by the way, makes this all the more remarkable, the fact that he's actually dismissed as a TA. And as someone who was in grad school for many years, by the way, you have to be way, you have to be a real outlier to get dismissed as a TA. I mean, you have to engage in some really reprehensible behavior because most grad schools, they chose you. You've gone through a process of being admitted and vetted, and they're choosing you, they're investing in you. they're usually giving you scholarships, and they're not in any hurry to get rid of you.

Because of the commitments they've made, they see this as a reciprocal process. They've committed to you, now they want you to commit back. And the bar isn't really that high. You just have to perform adequately, attend classes, get decent grades, treat students with fellow students with respect. But here we are, September 23rd. Brian Colberger has an altercation, and that's the term they used with the supervisor. Yeah.

So here are you, I think you're starting to see this intellectual superiority seep through. It's starting to come out. I don't know what this altercation's about, but if I had to guess, it probably was a difference of opinion or, you know, maybe something to do with the way to teach his class. Who knows? but clearly Brian Colberger felt that he was right and his professor was wrong. I think at this point you're really starting to see how this intellectual superiority is starting to manifest itself in a really negative fashion. And again, getting back to the social awkwardness, I mean, any grad student knows that it would

be really unseemly and uncomfortable to confront to have an altercation with your supervisor. Sure, I had some verbal sparring with some supervisors, but it was purely. intellectual and it wasn't me being oppositional or challenging my professors. It was just engaging in discussion where there were some disagreements. And it was just an exchange of ideas, right? But that's not what this is. Yes. As Jean wrote, the term altercation is definitely reserved for out of the ordinary uncomfortable disagreement. It's uncomfey. That's a good way to say. Let's look at the timeline of his dismissal from Washington State. So he moves to Pullman, Washington on June 25th, 2022. He's starting school in August by September 2030. He's already

in an altercation. So less than a month later on October 21st, and let's keep in mind the timeline of the crime. So the crime here, the crime, as most people will remember, that the crime was committed on November 13th. So this is really important. All of these issues with Washington State, let's keep in mind the timeline leading up to the actual murders on November 13th. Okay. So October 21st, he receives an email from his professor that he had the altercation with talking about deficiencies and ways to correct those deficiencies. Then on November 2nd, which is literally a little bit more than a week after this email from Professor Snyder, on November 2nd, he is called into a meeting with faculty. So now we're talking about multiple faculty members. So his behavior obviously hasn't improved much.

It continues. He's called into a meeting with faculty where they develop an improvement plan. So on November 2nd, which is roughly 10, 11 days prior to his crimes, he's sitting in front of multiple faculty members. They're pointing out his deficiencies. I'm sure Professor Snyder is there. And they're developing an improvement plan. Now, he's been in school for less than a semester.

He's had an altercation with the supervisor. He's getting complaints, by the way, from fellow students. when he's finally dismissed on December 19th, which is obviously after the crimes, when he's fired as a TA on December 19th, 2022 at a faculty meeting, there's information that's released that multiple female students had complained about his behavior, including one specific student who said that he followed her to the car. Without consent, without being invited, he just followed her. We're not sure why, but she was uncomfortable with it.

That's the important point. Uncomfortable enough to bring it up, and that is scary. Right. And that would have been post-murters. And again, you already said this and you reiterated it, but I want to reiterate it, reiterate it just one more time. This is his first semester in his PhD program, new state, new school. This is a big deal. And it's not like he was getting cocky in his third year or whatever. Like this is. Right. He's a newbie. Like so much for impression, so much for impression management. I mean, I guess, I guess he wanted to take the graduate school

program by Storm, and apparently he did, just like one click away from being kicked out. If you're, if you're fired as a TA, you're basically done in a graduate school program simply because, number one, you're not going to get the funding you need to support yourself. So that's, that's critical. But also being fired so early in his program. And some, some TA ships are connected to tuition reimbursements. It depends on the school, but presumably, my guess is, Washington State that being a TA and getting funding as a TA may have been connected to tuition reimbursement. So now it's quite possible that not only did he have to pick up his own tuition for the next semester, but not only would he have to pay his own tuition, but he has to

pay all his personal expenses, living expenses, right, food, everything. So it certainly makes it more difficult. But also it also goes on a... And C.C. is asking you're believing he might have even been in, I need to confirm that facility, he might have even been living in facility housing. Right. That's true. That would be in jeopardy too. So if you can't be a TA, how can you be a college professor? This is a very big deal. It's not just being like fired from an aid job. I think this is important to really emphasize. Yeah. Right. It really is. It's so critical. And this information came out after we lost talked about the case. So this is something we haven't discussed before. but it really throws into question his future in the program.

When I have seen graduate students fired as TAs, usually their life in the program is short-lived. My guess is he knows that his place in this program is probably in jeopardy. It's probably precarious. And he probably knows he doesn't have long before they dismiss him from the program. I think that's definitely on the table here.

I think the reason that's so critical, the reason why this whole timeline at Washington State is really so critical is because I do believe that some of the motive for these crimes was an attempt to even the score with Washington State. In other words, he had a grievance against the department. He had a grievance with Professor Schneider. He wants to settle that grievance. And I know this is going to sound crazy.

And this is going to take me back to Ras Kalnikov from Dostoevsky's crime and punishment. But I think he wants to commit the perfect crime. Yeah, I agree. That's what you've always said. Yeah. intellectual exercise to show the program that they were wrong, that he understands criminality better than they do. In fact, not only does he understand it better than they do, but he's going to show them that he can commit the perfect crime and get away with it. And he's going to have

that secret that he can harbor when he's in the next faculty meeting or when he's meeting with Professor Snyder, right? He can think, wow, these idiots think they know something about crime, but I committed the perfect crime. I know more than they do. Grieve and settled, right? That sucks. Just to up, well, I mean, you can even, that has even more when you realize he didn't get the job with the law enforcement, the internship with the law enforcement. Right. That was, that was another one of the way. I didn't know if you were going to get to that, so I don't want to jump ahead. But that right there, what you just said, I want to commit the perfect crime and have this almost throw in just some extra notches on his belt of grandiosity. He, I'm sure, was also very angry that he was not accepted to the internship because he was a finalist. And when he was in Pennsylvania, deciding on Washington, he was a finalist for an internship with police. And that letter he wrote saying why he was a good candidate as he felt he wanted to help them with evidence.

Rural, you know, he referred to rural law enforcement agencies and their need for help. He didn't get the internship. So another reason to say, yeah, well, I committed a crime and you guys didn't figure it out. Right. I agree. So that the interview with the Pullman Police Department goes back to April. So that's before he moved to Pullman. But yes, that's right.

He applied for an internship with the Pullman Police Department in April. He conducted an interview and he was rejected for that. So I think that plays in too. You have a series of rejections, actually. So you have Washington State essentially rejecting him as a graduate student, potentially probably throwing him out of the program. Clearly he's been expelled from the program. now, but he probably was going to be expelled from the program soon. And I think he knew that. So there

was a lot of shame around that. The rejection from the Pullman Police Department, that was also being rejected. I think there was some shame there. And I think the last piece to that puzzle was that presumably, we haven't been able to confirm this because no information has been released, but it seems that he reached out to at least one of the victims on social media and through a direct message and the victim, we don't know who it is. We speculated, but the victim did not respond. And I guess he was persistent. So he continued. And again, maybe this goes back to some of the OCD, but he kept going and he kept going and he wanted to hear from the victim. And I think the expectation was that he's some hot shot PhD student in criminology just, you know, down the street. Why isn't she

interested in him? She never responded to him. So I think there's some objection there too. So he's just getting boom, boom, boom, didn't get the internship. Now he's at risk of losing his TA job, which means his major part in the program. And he also thought he'd be probably, yeah, womanizing in a new state, being a PhD student. And that's not happening either. Right. And this is the first time he's away from home. So this is, that's another part of this puzzle is that at the age of 27, and I guess maybe we can attribute some of this to the pandemic in terms of why he stayed at home until he was 27, but he moves out of the house for the first time at 27 years old. And we'll talk about this in a bit, but I think there's definitely some dependency,

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Protect yourself now atora.com slash remove. I think his mother serves as a buffer. you know, she helps him self-soothe. She helps him cope with some of his emotions that he probably struggles with. I think she really assists him dealing with those parts of himself, specifically his emotions and his shame and his feelings of rejection, that he doesn't know how to deal with anywhere else. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way? I'll go first. It's not too late to start saving. Today's episode is sponsored by Acorns. Acorns is a financial wellness app that makes it easy to start saving and investing for your future. You don't need to be an expert.

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Compensation provides incentive to positively promote Acorns. Tier 1 compensation provided. Investing involves risk. Acorns Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. A few important disclosures at acorns.com slash hidden true crime. Let's continue with this idea of superiority that this is an important piece of this puzzle. And so I talked about his way. and how he was bullied for his weight.

So apparently he goes to a transformation. Between his junior and senior year, he loses 130 pounds. And one of his friend says, and this is a quote from his friend, his friend says, in his junior year, he was down to earth and overweight. But in his senior year, he became thinner than a rail and aggressive, right? And that's what people are really noticing, that he loses this weight, a lot of weight. And he becomes much more aggressive. he becomes much more arrogant, right?

There's a bit of a transformation here. In fact, I'm going to quote something he wrote in a job application as to why he should get it. When he applied to the Pleasant Valley School District for a part-time security position in 2016 in a job at talking about his losing weight, he wrote, and this is a quote, this is proof that I have the required dedication to be successful. So not only is he having academic success, but he sees the weight loss as another feather in his cap. He sees the weight loss is something that makes him successful and special.

And as a consequence of that, you have someone that now, I think, perceives himself to be intellectually and physically superior. So this just this doesn't end with the intellectual superiority. You also have someone who has some arrogance around his physical prowess and losing weight and what that means for him. And he sees himself is in many ways physically superior as well. So in some sense you have, and again, I'm going to take this back to Raskolnikov. In crime and punishment, Raskolnikov advances this idea of what he calls the Great Man Theory, or what DOSC he calls the Great Man Theory. The Great Man Theory is that someone is of intellectual and physical superiority,

and they can commit murder and get away with it because of that superiority. Nowadays, I think we'd call it more like narcissism, but that's one of the theories advanced in crime and punishment by Raskolnikov. that fits Brian Colberger so well. It fits him to a T, right? The superiority and with the weight loss, it's the whole person. It's not just his intellect. It's who he is. It's now everything about him, right? And I think that's why he's so devastated when he can't connect to the women at Washington State or he can't connect to some of the women at DeSales, that he just assumes that they're going to automatically be attracted to him, but they're not. And so that becomes an obvious problem.

We might not have proof, but we have a lot of evidence. We have some evidence. That's true. Again, you know, there would be some ties there to, to Raskolnikov. Raskolnikov, I wouldn't call an in-cell, but just this notion, it's Raskolnikov is very attracted to political movements. And although some might hesitate to call the Encel movement political, it certainly is a political movement in the sense that male superiority would translate into a political stance that favors men. So, in positions of power. So I want to jump back to to his mom for a minute. Yeah. Because we. still have this even, we went even further back into his life. And let me try to tie some of that into his mother, by the way. I mean, there's, there's a lot of psychological theories about why he would feel

superior, you know, superior to women. But I mean, but I think at the most simplistic level, it appears that his mother was very protective of him, maybe overly protective. You know, she, by the way, she's based on her social media. She seems like a very kind person. She seems like a very nurturing, kind person. There's nothing about his mother that suggests that she's in any way malicious or mean-spirited or that she was overly critical over her son. But I think that presents an interesting dynamic, though, in terms of having a mother that fosters a certain amount of dependency and is overly protective and sees you as being superior in some ways, or at least incapable of doing wrong. So you have the female that's at the center of his life is super supportive

and overly protective. But then you have this other part of his life where these classmates and other females are bullying him. They're mean-spirited. They're rejecting him. Right? So he's getting a mixed message about women.

On the one hand, he loves his mother. He feels very close to his mother. He, in some ways, he probably needs his mother. But on the other hand, he can't make any headway or any progress in terms of dating or meeting women or are developing interactions, you know, developing relationships with the opposite sex. And so I think that that's a very confusing message to him. They were a buffer for him.

They took care of him. They helped him. His mother was, right. And so. Yeah, he has this, yeah, yeah, he has a superiority complex. You're right, where he doesn't think he needs his parents. Like, he can just do this on his own, move to Washington yet needs his parents. Lived at home. Lived at home. During grad school. lived at home. Yeah, during his master's program, he lived at home, right, correct. He lived with his parents. So, so certainly, yeah, I think his mother was a really huge buffer in terms of helping him kind of shielding him from the realities of the world, let's say that. So even though he's getting rejected by a number of women, his mother is soothing him and helping him work through it.

And so in that sense, I think that when he goes to graduate school and doesn't have his mother there, things are quite different. He's getting a much bigger dose of reality. And I think it's really hitting home that perhaps maybe there is something wrong with him. Maybe he is somewhat inadequate. I think his mother was really able to convey a message to him that he was perfectly fine. And even though these women were rejected him, he just needed to stay with it. He was just a normal guy and smart guy with a lot to offer. And so he just needed to stay with it. But that I don't think is what he saw in grad school. I have the question. You know, oftentimes men that have issues with women don't like their mother or have a conflicting relationship with

their mother. He's comparing women to his mother or if he didn't like his mother or how that would play a role. It's probably confusing to him in the sense that he expects women to be like his mother. He has an unrealistic expectation of how other women should treat him. They should dote on him. They should sacrifice for him. Again, like none of this is helping him develop healthy relationships because his relationship with his mother is not reciprocal. It's completely one-dimensional. So I think, in that sense, his mother really seems to love him, but she's creating some problems here.

She's creating some confusion because he has this expectation that all women should love him like his mother, and they won't. That's not real. In fact, I would make an analogy, I would, I think there's something analogous there to Brian Laundry and his mother. And we talked about the letter that Brian Laundry's mother. road. And I think there's some parallels there. I think it's a very similar type relationship. It sounds like she was always trying to give him the benefit of the doubt and encourage him.

It kind of babied him. Let me read some comments that his mother is making on various social media platforms. This is a comment from Reddit. And this is June 25th, Saturday, June 25th, 2022. This is shortly after, I believe, her son left on that day or right around that day. And she says, this is from Marianne Kohlberger. She says, hello friends, the quote, hello friends. Today, my 26-year-old son left for Washington State to begin his doctorate in criminology. We live in Pennsylvania. I probably won't be submitting many designs in the next few days because I will be too busy crying. I will see you all soon. Now, having your son leave and crying and missing your son, that would be perfectly normal. But there's something really fascinating in this

comment to me, which is she gets her son's age wrong, right? Like, he actually leaves for school when he's 27 and she says he's 26. Now, now you may, you may see that as a minor detail, right? Like, okay, so she's off by a year. But actually, I kind of see that as a really salient part of this comment in the sense that she's minimizing his age, right? There's almost, there's some level of denial here in the sense that she's wanting to see him as being younger than he is. And there might even be a little bit of shame in the sense that, hey, you know, this isn't exactly like saying my 45-year-old just left the nest. I mean, he's, he's not that old. right but I mean and especially with the pandemic I guess more young adults were living at home for

longer periods of time but still to leave home at 27 I mean that's that's not exactly the norm either so I think getting his age wrong is almost a little bit of denial about what's going on like she wants to see him she's kind of infantilizing to him a little bit she wants to see him as as much younger and much more dependent and and there might even be a little bit of shame around the fact that he's this age and leaving home for the first time. You know, the baby's leaving the nest. I mean, a lot of, you know, a lot of, maybe it's changed today. You know, when I, when I left for undergrad at 18, you know, that was, that was me leaving the nest permanently at that point. So, and again, making allowance or so the pandemic, maybe that's changed. But this is still a little peculiar.

And for her not to know her. I think you do have a point. And yes, everyone stays at home longer. We agree. I think, though, I want to point out that there's a lot of leaving and coming back and Brian had really never left. That's one thing I want to point out. There was no leaving and coming back. He went to undergraduate and his master's program very close to his home. And so I just want to throw that out there. Secondly, I do think you have a point because she is in a Reddit community that she'd become close to many people there that were strangers that didn't know her in real life. So she could sort of slightly change things. She might not have even realized she had done it. It might have been subconscious, but it just might have felt better to her to say

26th and 27. And yes, these are strangers, so they're not going to call her out. And she's looking for comfort from this community and understanding about her son leaving. So to me, it does make sense what you're saying, John. I just want to validate it. Yeah, I think that there is some psychology behind that. Right. It's a peculiar slip. However you look at it, it's a peculiar slip. I mean, she knows her son's age. She knows he's 27. She knows he's going to to school. Let me read something from the next day. So people responded to that. And then she wrote back and she says, she thanks someone for being kind to her. She says, quote, my son will be in Pullman in the eastern part of the state quite close to the Idaho border. He knows absolutely no one,

no one in caps. He knows absolutely no one. And we have no family there. I worry about him being lonely. So your message made me feel better. That's interesting too. That in some ways, in that comment, she's saying, I don't know if, I don't know if my son can fend for himself. She's worried about him being lonely, right? She's, they have no family there. The implicit assumption is that you have to have family somewhere where you're moving to somehow feel secure. Yeah, she's concerned.

She is legitimately concerned and I think that she knew to be concerned. And I think we see her concern. She's realizing that her son is leaving the nest for the first time. Whether that's normal or not, she fibbed a bit about. his age and she is worried about him probably because she realizes she needs to be worried. She probably understands very much so why she needs to be worried. Yeah. And she's expressing that.

I think she's validating our perception that he's a little socially awkward. I think she knows that. She knows it's going to be hard for him to make friends. She's worried about him being lonely because she's concerned that maybe he can't make friends. So I think she's seeing some of the things that we're talking about. Yeah. Let's move on. This is from August 17.

also on a Reddit post. She says in June, my youngest child, he relocated to Washington State from our home in Pennsylvania. It was for a wonderful reason to attend Washington State University for his Ph.D. and criminality and criminal justice. You would think I would be so happy, and I am for him, but he is so far away and my heart is aching. I think I'm a little depressed, but I will work through it. I think this is where my lack of inspiration is coming from. So six weeks later, mid-August, she's acknowledging that there's some dependency, I think. You know, I mean, sure. She's absolutely acknowledging dependency.

I see that. Yes, exactly. And so I think that's why I wanted to read this. Right. And it also shows that she probably knows he's lacking some social skills, as some people are pointing out. She knows that her son might struggle, that he's an introvert. So let's continue.

This is from November 18th. So this is months into his entering the PhD program. This is Friday. November 18th, 2022. Again, she's writing on a Reddit thread. She says, quote, been kind of blue since my son moved to Pennsylvania from Pennsylvania to Washington to study in a PhD program. I miss him terribly. And I think everything is just a little less colorful without seeing him all the time. But he will be home for nearly a month at Christmas time. Yay. Again, you know, I think it's perfectly normal to miss a child who's going away for the first time. But we're talking about 28-year-old,

who she doesn't see as necessarily as very independent or capable of negotiating the world on his own. And clearly this sense of things being less colorful and being depressed would indicate that there is some dependency there. And as you just said, that perhaps she doesn't see him as being capable of taking care of himself without her being present. Right. She knows that she probably sees his weaknesses and understands where he struggles and she's worried about him. Exactly. And another thing I should point out, too, is that him leaving home for the first time at 27 is not simply, it's obviously not just the choice of the parents. That Brian Kohlberger is choosing to attend universities and programs that are in that area. So even though there's the pandemic and a lot of the Pennsylvania, in the Pennsylvania area. In the Pennsylvania area, right, until he goes to Washington State. So for all of his undergraduate and graduate education through his master's program, he is making a decision to be in the area and to live with his parents. He could have easily applied to schools outside of that area or outside of the radius of their home

where he would have been forced to live on his own or at least live on campus or whatever he chose to do. But the reality is that this is a mutual, this is a reciprocal decision in the sense that his parents not only want him at home, but he's making that choice too, that he doesn't see himself as thriving outside of the family environment. I mean, it could have been as simple as applying to a school in Ohio or somewhere close, where he, but he would have been on his own. Yeah. And he would have been on his own at a lot younger age, right? So, so I think it's important to point out, this isn't just a one-way decision.

This is, this is mutual. They both want to, he wants to live with them as well. Let's delve a little deeper into his relationship with his mother. There is, I think, a piece of that relationship that may not seem relevant at first glance, but I think we'll help make sense of it. And that is that Marianne Coburger was a huge fan of Downton Abbey, the show. Who's a Downton Abbey fan here? We're about to talk, Downton Abbey.

Yeah, we're about to get into that show a little bit. Now, most of our listeners know that I'm a big consumer of crime culture shows like Dexter and True Detective. And there's a lot of stuff I love that's out there that would be considered kind of pop culture stuff. Downton Abbey is not one of those shows. So I'm not familiar with this show. But when I read this, when I came across some of these posts, I thought that was completely relevant to understanding Marianne Colberger and her relationship with her son.

I think our viewers are going to have to really help us understand this piece a little bit more. So on one of the posts, on one of the Reddit posts, she engages people about the show. This is a post she wrote on November 24th, 2022. So this is actually after, this is post murders. She says, let me start by saying, I am forever team borrow. Barrow, by the way, borrow, barrow. Okay.

You'll have to forgive me because I haven't watched the show. So let's say Barrow, like narrow. Okay. Yeah, Barrow like narrow. She says, I am forever team Barrow. Thomas is hateful in the beginning of the series, which incidentally starts with Thomas recently coming to Downton. Through various dialogue, one can tell that Thomas has not been treated well by family

or people in general. He is jaded, self-centered, and driven by the fear of being treated poorly and unfairly, not at all unusual for someone who has experienced his past rejection. Thomas is going to hurt first before anyone has a chance to hurt him. Exclamation point. She goes on, quote, Coming to Downton gives Thomas the stability he never had. It also gives him the consistency of people who aren't going to accept his poor behavior.

Ultimately, the Downton staff becomes the family he, never had. They hold his feet to the fire and over time all the prickles and stings and Thomas smooth themselves over. Thomas is a character of total redemption. He comes to love the others and they come to love him. Thomas's vulnerability is evident even in the early episodes where he is being just awful. I was always tuned in to Thomas's vulnerability and hidden goodness. So there's a lot to unpack, I think, from this quote in the sense that, you know, when I read this, when I first read this and then thought about it for a minute, I thought this is, in many ways, this is a projection in the sense that this is how she sees her son.

That's, when I listen to that, I think this is how she sees her son. This is exactly how she sees her son. So I think, you know, to use some of her terms, she sees her son as being vulnerable. She sees her son as being, quote, someone who has experienced past rejection. and she recognizes perhaps that he might be somewhat jaded, self-centered, and driven by the fear of being treated poorly, unfairly, recognizing his past bullying. When you and I talk to people about this show,

there was not a single person who was Team Barrow. People did not like this character. And so I think it's really fascinating that his mother loves this character and sees this, this is her favorite character on the show. And he's basically a villain who harms people. apparently, but she also recognizes his vulnerability and his past rejection. And I mean, I don't know. That's almost precisely what we've been discussing about her son. Right. The rejection, the series of rejections potentially leads to the murders or contributes to the murders and the vulnerability

that her son feels is something that he dislikes immensely. This vulnerability idea is fascinating in the sense that I think it goes beyond vulnerability a little bit. It's vulnerability, it's insecurity, it's inadequacy. It's all the things that I think the social awkwardness and the bullying from his childhood kind of created. And violence, by the way, is a way to compensate or overcompensate for that sense of inadequacy. Violence is a way to show that you're powerful and you're in control and you're not vulnerable. You're strong, right? And so there's different versions of Koeberger here in the sense that we have a

He was a Coburger who his mother sees as being very vulnerable. And then we have a Coburger that's presenting himself in graduate school, someone who's intellectually and physically superior. And so I think it's parts of Brian Coburger that really drive this narrative. If somehow the vulnerable Colberger was at the forefront or something that Brian Coburger was more aware of, I don't think you would have had these murders. I agree. This case began with the FBI calls an unsub.

An unsub is an unknown subject. This case began as a mystery to be solved. It began with outknowing who did it. We know it was a horrendous crime, which I think created a lot of interest. But it offered to the public or to web detectives, internet detectives, it offered a chance to solve the case, to solve the crime. And I think that draws people in quite naturally. So the fact that there was a suspect that wasn't identified or known, I think that that sparked

a huge amount of interest. in addition to the fact that the crimes were brutal, just the brutality of the crimes. I think it probably would have provoked less interest if, let's say it was Colberger, if Colberger had used a gun. If he had walked in, just massacred people in the house with a gun and left,

it probably would have been a little less interesting. I mean, I think it would have still had interest, but the fact that he used a knife, and a knife in some ways is so personal and so intimate that and so chilling and horrific and grisly that I think that made it all the more interesting and that gets would get to my next point which is that for many of us this type of crime is a literal nightmare this is like Freddie Kruger leaving your dreams and showing up by the side of your bed at four in the morning or Mike Myers from Halloween or any of these mythical figures,

Hannibal Lecter, take your pick. Or if you want to go back, I could even say, this is like, you know, even if you go back to like Jules Verne, like old stuff from, you know, the monster at the bottom of the sea, that comes out of nowhere and swallows you whole, there's something really primitive about this type of killing. There's something primal and primordial. It's, it's, I think, so you have that, you have this quality, like this very kind of animalistic,

primitive quality to these murders that really provoke something in us that makes us really afraid, right? It creates a lot of fear and it creates a lot of uncertainty and insecurity. But again, like, I think all of that is to say that that, that's why, by the way, monsters haunt our nightmares, because we don't understand them very well and they show up when we least expect them to show up. And I think that's what you have here. Nobody wants to wake up at 4 a.m. in a complete deep sleep with somebody with a massive knife, willing a massive knife leaning over their bed, right? That is, that is something we'll keep most of us awake at night.

That should never happen to anyone, especially four young college students. Yeah, this is, it's a real life horror movie. It's just brutal. You don't know, we don't know, initially we didn't know who did it. You've got, I think all of those, elements are combining to really create an unusual level of interest in curiosity. Again, that's what makes this a literal nightmare in the sense that every pop cultural show that depicts these types of murders. And I mean like mythological, again, mythological figures like Dexter or Hannibal Lecter or Freddie Kruger, right?

These are all part of our psyche to some degree, but they're not real. We see them as unrealistic. But this is real. And this is exactly what we don't want to see happen to us or our loved ones or our family. And we don't want to see it happen to strangers. Right. It shatters our assumptions about the world. If our basic assumptions about the world are that the world is fair and safe and just,

this type of crime really upends that. And it really shatters that assumption. And it really creates a rupture at the center of the universe that we want to repair. And so here we are trying to repair it. That's why so many people are talking about this crime, because we all want reparation, we all want justice to some degree, we all want to put the universe back together. I think there's three primary reasons for the violence here. One of them was that I talked about that he wants to even the score with his department.

One thing I didn't mention is that Brian Koberger's birthday is November 21st, 1994. So November 21st is literally a week, roughly a week, after he commits the murders. So I think that's another element in the sense that he's turning 28, which means, that he's, you know, I guess you get a pass, you probably get a pass on being a real adult until you're like 25, 26. But 28, you know, there's probably some expectations you're going to do something with your life. And he's on the cusp of, of, he's lost, he's been fired as a TA. I mean, he doesn't know that on November, on his birthday or when he commits the crimes, but he has a pretty good sense that things aren't going well. So his birthday's coming up.

That's another element. His birthday's coming up. He's going to be 28. And I think he's realizing that all this investment he made in criminology, could be coming to an end, that he might be looking at changing careers or having to reverse course. And so there's this whole set of expectations, I think, that are being upended. In addition to the fact that he's getting in altercations with the supervisor. So, you know, I mentioned this is kind of trying to even the score with his program. I think it's more than that. I think there's, there's a bit of an existential crisis here in the sense that he may have to find a completely different career. He may have to reverse completely and start all over again. He's, you know,

he's getting close to 30. He's got to do something with his life. He knows this. He can't, I guess he could live at home forever, but he probably doesn't want to, or maybe he does. I don't know. But anyway, I think there's a little pressure from his birthday coming up, too. So it's interesting that that this crime occurs a week before his birthday. So let me throw that in. I think that's another possible motive. You think that's another possible motive? So you have this getting even or suddenly in the score with this department. I mentioned that another reason I think for the violence, you have this attempt to cope with the sense of inadequacy and the sense of insecurity and to kind of transform it to its opposite, which is the sense of superiority or power. And violence is a very efficient way of doing that.

It's a very efficient way of feeling special or feeling powerful when you don't in general feel that way, which, by the way, research on school shooters, especially research by Peter Langman, has shown consistently. I've made analogies to, you know, school shooters and Koberger. I think there's quite a bit in common there. But that was another reason. There's a third reason here. And that is, I think that violence often can be a distraction. And I think Kovberger needs a distraction.

His world is coming unraveled, and he's feeling a lot of shame. This is someone who's not good about processing emotions. So typically when you struggle to deal with the emotions that he would be experiencing, the shame, the rejection, the anger, all these interior emotions that Koberger was probably experiencing that he struggles with. In those types of instances, often violence can be one of the best distractions in the sense that you're literally transferring the focus. of what's going on in your life from something internal to something external. And so the whole system

or this whole plan of stalking and planning and getting the... Like all of this becomes a really big distraction from the realities of his life, which are, again, that his life is coming unglued, that he's going to probably get fired as a TA and he's probably going to leave the program

that he's been rejected apparently by several women or potentially by several women. or potentially by several women. He didn't get the internship. And this is somebody who was a star in his previous program. This is one of his professors, Michelle Bolger, says he was the most brilliant student she'd ever had. Right.

This is someone who went from being a star to now watching his life unravel within six months. Yeah. Violence can often be, if you want to change the dynamic of what's going on in your life, violence is one hell of a way of doing that. It's one way of really quickly changing, changing the score. It's a way of changing the dynamic in your life from something that is forcing you to deal with it and forcing you to really confront certain emotions to creating a massive distraction that takes all your time and energy of focus away from what's really going on.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for sticking with us. Thank you guys. Good night. Hello, Hidden Gems. It's Lauren with Hidden. a true crime podcast. As a TV reporter, I learned the art of visual storytelling. So if you're like me, you enjoy listening, but also viewing. You can actually head to our YouTube channel, Hidden True

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