Hidden True Crime - IDAHO FOUR: Idaho Suspect Arrested - Psychologist Dr. John Matthias Weighs In on Bryan Kohberger (Dec. 30th, 2022 Live Show)

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

(This episode was previously recorded during a Hidden Hour LIVE SHOW on Hidden True Crime's YouTube page December 30th, 2022. Every Friday night, unless otherwise posted, subscribers are able to ask forensic psychologist Dr. John Matthias questions.) This was recorded the night of the arrest. You can watch the LIVE SHOW here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtQC9xQcN2Y Another live Hidden Hour with our gems! Subscribe for additional Friday night lives, psychological analysis, and insider interviews for an in depth look at crimes.  Each Friday night we host HIDDEN HOUR, to share our night with our Hidden gems. While HTC is developing--the exact time is not as certain. Please always check in to see what time our Friday night live is airing until we have a solidified schedule.  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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or a 2.9% APR on a 2025 Ridgeline or CRV. See dealer for financing details. Hello, what a day it's been. Thank you, everyone, for being with us. To say the least, what a night and a day it's been. We've been working hard with this breaking news that's come down that a 28-year-old man was a. arrested in Pennsylvania in connection to the Moscow- Idaho homicides for University of Idaho students.

Brian Coburger is the suspect's name. He is in custody. We're still awaiting more. He will be in court for the first time on January 3rd. That's Tuesday, the day after the holiday. And I'm sure we'll know a lot more than. We both watch the news conference today. our channel,

Hidden True Crime live streamed that press conference. And there is a lot we know and a lot to learn. As police said in that press conference, that this is just the beginning. They said this is the beginning of a new phase. So we're anxious to learn more. But it's also been a very big night and day for us, hasn't it, Dr. John?

We were up late working because actually we had heard from more. multiple sources that there might be a big update this morning. We heard that late last night. And with that being said, we had a very late workday, working on some other projects. Those of you that joined us for our middle of the night live know that. I want to give a big shout out to my amazing and talented wife. We were on a live last night at like one to two-ish somewhere in there,

our time, Pacific time. And she didn't get to bed until 4 p.m. I didn't get to bed till 3. So we were up late. And then our phone started blowing up this morning with news of what was occurring in Idaho. And then Lauren went on national news outlets two to three times. I think she's been on three times today and learning more about the case and our sources and our contacts. And it's just she's been working incredibly hard.

And you must be exhausted. So thank you for your hard work. And I'll make sure you get to bed early tonight. Thank you, babe. That deserves a babe. Thank you, babe. Thank you, Dr. John. For those of you new to our podcast and our YouTube channel,

Dr. John is a forensic psychologist. He's also my husband. So for all of those may be confused. Thank you, sweetheart. That was really nice. I woke up to my phone buzzing and leaned over. You know, you do that in bed, leaned over, looked at a text, realized there had already been the arrest,

which is what we were speculating might happen. And as I was trying to read the text and learn more, I started getting a phone call. I jumped out of bed and it was a producer for News Nation. And yeah, I've been working ever since. So thank you. And we'll be on after this. So which means we need to get going.

I'll be on with Ashley Banfield later tonight. So let's get this started live. Our hidden hour live started. There is, again, a lot we know and there is a lot we don't know. So I want to ask you, Dr. John, where do we? start. Yeah, that's a good question. So let me just make a quick disclaimer here, which is that we don't know a lot and a lot more information is going to be forthcoming apparently next week when they released a probable cause statement. So I should point out that in my analysis that this is

speculation and the suspect here is innocent until proven guilty. So we're not suggesting necessarily that he committed this crime because we don't know what the evidence is. However, in some of the speculations, I think there's going to be a presumption that there was a crime committed and he was somehow involved in it. But I don't want to suggest that he's definitely guilty because we don't know. The disclaimer is that I'll develop some scenarios and hypotheses and provide some insights if I can. My guess is if you ask me, it sounds like they probably had a DNA match somewhere or maybe a fingerprint match. Presumably, it seems like from some of our sources that he worked security at a school.

In that circumstance, he would have had to have been fingerprinted and maybe they matched him to those. I don't know. Presumably, you find something that tied him to the crime scene. You wouldn't expect this suspect to have any DNA or fingerprints in a house that presumably he was never in. My guess is they found any DNA from him unless he has a compelling reason. for being there. It wouldn't look good for him. He was arrested in Pennsylvania. That's where his

family is from, but he was a student nearby at Washington State University, a PhD student studying criminology. We'll talk about that in a little bit. Since we don't know a lot of the details, I want to back up a little bit and kind of take a burden of view of this situation. You have to begin, for me at least, the idea that the suspect was having aggressive and violent impulses and probably fantasy surrounding some type of murder. And, you know, my thought on that would be that that's not necessarily unusual, that there's a Freudian idea, which is one of Freud's big ideas, which is that we're creatures, we're animals.

And he kind of borrows this idea from Darwin. And the Freudian idea, essentially, is that if we're animals, then we're driven by aggressive impulses or instincts, and we're driven by. bisexual instincts. And, you know, as much as we want to deny the fact that we're creatures, that Freud kind of reminds us, no, you know, in some ways we're really driven by the same things. And so this idea that aggressive and violent impulses play a role in human behavior is an important one. And it goes back to Freud. And it's based on that notion that I just described. So Freud's idea is that we all have these impulses, right? And some of us deny them.

Some of us acknowledge them. This is, by the way, what the psychologist Carl Jung called the shadow side. So we all have kind of a shadow side, and we all have to deal with that. Some of us deal with it in a more healthy fashion than others, but it's there. So I think this story starts with that. And it starts with the fact that Brian Kohlberger is having probably a lot of aggressive and violent impulses. And I want to actually, you showed me a question. quote. That's his favorite quote.

Yes, I have it here actually. Brian Coburger psychology. He says his favorite memory or quote, it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle. Right. And that's a really interesting quote. You know, if you ask me for my favorite quote, it wouldn't be that.

That quote suggests that there's some conflict, right? The quote actually, so the quote I think speaks to what I'm talking about. I mean, the quote is vague, right? But he's saying that you can entertain thoughts and not accept them. So it sounds to me like he's having potentially violent or aggressive thoughts and impulses, and he's trying not to accept them. He's doing everything in his power to deny those or suppress them or run away from them. So I think this story begins with that conflict.

There's a conflict here that is, you know, it's an age-old conflict in human beings. And that conflict is that we have a propensity towards aggression, but we have to find a way to deal with that. And we have to, if we're going to live in a community and function in society, we obviously can't be aggressive because there's criminal justice systems. There's a lot of things that would get us into trouble if we act on our aggressive impulses. But this quote is really interesting because to me, this is where this story starts. And his interesting criminal justice, I think, is part of that story too, in the sense that I think he's getting into criminal justice because he's having these overwhelming, aggressive and or violent, maybe even murderous impulses, and he's trying to find a way to

manage them. So I think by getting into criminal justice and studying the criminal mind and he's, He's trying to normalize it. He's trying to make sense of it. In a way, he's trying to make sense of himself. So by getting into criminal justice, I think this is his way of coping. This is a coping strategy to deal with violent impulses. And if we back up a little bit, actually, we don't know anything about his childhood.

We've heard that he was a pretty normal kid to some degree that people liked him. He was friendly. all the things you typically hear, things you'd hear about Dahmer, you know, by the way. But there is a piece of that story, which is a little troubling. And this was this was conveyed by a TikToker. Yes, a TikToker shared this video today. And about knowing him, her brother was good friends with him. She was good friends with him.

They went to the same high school. She was sharing some experiences with him. She had photos with him that she shared. Casey Arns. Casey, if you'd like to reach out to Hidden True Crime, we did reach out to you. We'd love to talk to you more about this. Casey said, stated that he had a heroin addiction in high school, that she thought he had gotten over, but there was that drug addiction struggle.

She specified heroin, didn't she, John? You also listened. Yeah, heroin. In this video. And so that was a main point that she made that was of interest to, you. And I also want to point out that somebody else on our public hidden true crime Facebook page did state that he knows the family, that this was in a public comment thread, and that they were by all accounts, a nice family and he feels bad for them. So that's what we're learning so far.

Right. But the heroin addiction is interesting. And actually somebody added to that a little bit. We can't reveal that source, but somebody added that it went beyond heroin. heroin addiction. So this is in high school, or actually it's high school in young adulthood, because if you do the math, she said that the heroin addiction essentially ended around 2017. That would have put him around 23 years old. So clearly he would have been out of high school. So this is an addiction that went on from high school into young adulthood, presumably when he was in college and maybe even someone in grad school. So this is not, this is not like a one-time experiment with heroin. This is a much more serious problem. But the person that we heard from said

that his issues went beyond heroin, that he was starting to engage in some, I forget the term, but some scary stuff and that the person is going to be associated with. And that implies that clearly that there's something darker and deeper going on here. I don't know. We don't know what that stuff was. We don't know if it involved violence or violent fantasies. We don't know if it involved criminality. As far as we know, he doesn't have a criminal record. But not having a criminal record doesn't mean they're not having aggressive or violent thoughts.

So we don't know of any critical record at this point. But getting back to my idea that this is about the conflict between aggressive impulses and managing those impulses, heroin is a good way to do that. If you want to suppress any type of, well, maybe not any, if you want to somehow stop the flow or suppress some of your violent thoughts, heroin would be a pretty effective. In the end, it wouldn't work, but it would be a way to deal with that issue. So heroin can be a type of self-medication that essentially numbs you to the world. So if you're having violent fantasies and violent thoughts,

heroin is going to help with that because it's going to numb you. it's going to, you know, essentially, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, it's going to involve rage or anger. It's going to, it's going to help with that. But of course, it's only a band-aid. So I think if the story I'm developing is that part of this is about that conflict, then the heroin addiction makes sense. And to answer these question about whether this was his first crime, as far as we know it was, we, We're trying to dig it a little deeper in that, and I assume it's possible that in the probable cause statement that once they extradite him to Idaho, that they may talk more about a possible criminal history. But it does appear that this may be his first crime.

Although one of our sources indicated that there were some trouble in adolescence and there was some trouble that went along with the heroin addiction. I don't know if that means robbery, burglary. We're not sure what that is, but there does seem to be more of a troubled past year. This was not someone without problems. This was someone who had some serious problems and a serious addiction. Again, getting back to this narrative I'm developing about aggressive and violent impulses, I think the heroin part makes sense to me. So I went live earlier today with the press conference.

There were a lot of interesting comments on there that you later watched and saw. Are there any of those you want to touch on? Yeah, there were a couple about his research projects. So part of this story I'm developing about him, I think this research project would be a big part of it. This was a question from Kerry G. And she says, he became his research project. There's a similar idea from hive mind concussion. She says he wanted to be his own case study.

I think that's fascinating because I think, and I think those are right on, by the way. So let's talk about his research project a little bit. And also let me say, by the way, some of these comments we get are so great. Like I, this idea that he's his own case study is great. It's a brilliant insight. And I'm so proud of our community for their insights

and for their intelligence. and thank you guys for always kind of keeping us on our toes and having great conversations and moving us closer to the truth, if that's what we're looking for here. So I think he has this conflict. He's got this conflict over his aggressive and violent impulses, maybe even murderous impulses. At some point, I think those impulses become severe. They probably become maybe a little bit obsessive or compulsive, and he's struggling to manage them. I think that's why he enters criminology because I think he's interested in studying the criminal mind

to try to cope with his impulses, his aggressive impulses. His research study, I think, is a further step he's taking to try to manage those impulses by involving other people in research. In other words, I think he's starting this research because he wants to normalize his aggressive impulses. He wants to see what other people are thinking and feeling, and he wants to compare it to his own behaviors and his own impulses, right? So, and his own fantasies. So I think all of this is an attempt for him to try to cope, to try to normalize these extreme thoughts and feelings he's having. So he starts this research project.

We have access to some of the questions from that research project. Let me mention a few of these because they're really interesting. So one of the questions, and I'm not going to read all the questions, but one of the questions is, and this is in his survey. So I don't have all the details of the survey, by the way. I don't know. He's looking to interview criminals, but it's not clear what types of crimes. So I don't have the exclusionary criteria, meaning does his study only include murderers, does it include rapists? It's not clear.

He doesn't, we don't have that. Here, I'm going to read a series of questions that I think are relevant to understanding the suspect. The first question is, why did you choose that victim or target over others? I think that's an interesting question because it implies that crimes involve a target. That's not necessarily true. There's a lot of crimes that are impulsive. What we're going to see in the survey, and I'll continue reading these questions, is almost a prescription for his murders.

In other words, there's a really eerie sense in which he's using these questions to script the very things he's going to do. Yes. And why is he doing this? It goes back to my initial premise, which is that this is someone who's deeply conflicted about his murderous impulses. And he's trying to manage them, and this is how he's trying to do it. So the second question is, before making your move, how did you approach the victim or target? Again, this is like, these are not the questions I would ask, by the way.

If I was interested in diving deeper into the criminal mind, these are not, these are, these are not questions that would have universal appeal. So he's assuming that a criminal makes a move and that the criminal approaches the victim or the target in some way. You know, a lot of crimes, I don't think a lot of criminals think about making moves, by the way. So these are interesting questions. I think in some ways, they're indicative of his personal desires and his biases rather than a survey that's more objectively looking at the criminal mind. The third question, what was the first move to accomplish your goal? Describe your thoughts

and feelings. Let me read the next question. How did you accomplish your goal? Describe your thoughts and feelings. So also, again, this is a little bizarre because a lot of criminals don't necessarily have goals. I think, you know, this is interesting because I've interviewed hundreds of criminals. And one of the questions I always ask at the end, and this is more, I don't expect an answer, but I always ask this question at the end of hours and hours of interview. One of the questions I always ask is, why do you think you committed this? crime. And 90 plus percent, let's say 95 percent of the time, the answer I get is, I don't know. In other words, most criminals don't know their motivations. Most criminals are not very self-reflective.

They're not very insightful. They don't know themselves very well. So they don't have goals. You know, it's interesting that he, he's making the assumption here that criminals have goals. They're making moves towards a target with goals. Again, this is, reflecting his biases. And this is scary in the sense that this survey is literally laying out how he sees crimes being accomplished and what happened in Moscow, Idaho. Right. Like it's almost like a snapshot of his thought processes and his biases and how he sees crimes. Because I can tell you from a lot of experience that many criminals don't have goals. Most criminals don't know their motives. Some do, but it's rare. They don't know their motives. They don't know their goals. And so a lot of

crime is not necessarily goal directed. Even if it is, even if the target is, let's say an estranged husband wants to murder his wife or spouse. And let's say that's the goal. They may know that goal, but a lot of times they can't articulate the motives. So, you know, it's not clear. Again, I don't think the survey has universal appeal. I think it has limited appeal or limited applicability. And then here's here's the last part of the survey. Here's the last question I'll read. After committing your crime, what were you thinking and feeling? That one is the most fascinating to me. And by the way, we'll share these survey questions on our Facebook page hidden true crime and on our YouTube community page. I'm going to take a little bit of a different tack here. When I think about

this last question after committing your crime, what were you thinking and feeling? I'm going to take a little bit of a surprise detour here, but I think this is really relevant to this situation. And I'm going to refer to a great literary work, in my opinion, probably one of the most interesting or important literary works by Dosyewski, which is crime and punishment. And Dosyevsky, some critics have called this a philosophical novel, meaning that those yes, he took an idea, and he put that idea into practice through his character. In this case, the character's, his name is Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov is a murderer who killed two people in the novel. But Raskolnikov, before he commits the murder, Raskolnikov says, essentially, I want to see if I can commit murder and get away with it without having any guilty feelings or without having any impact on my life. So in other words, Dostoevsky's idea, his thought is

can you commit a crime without any distressing thoughts or feelings? Right? And that's exactly what this question is asking. After committing a crime, what were you thinking and feeling? That's the question Dostoevsky asked in 1866 when he wrote crime and punishment.

Can Riskolnikov commit a crime without any guilt, without any conscience, without worrying about the effects. In fact, the idea is that, and he, I'm simplifying a very, very complex topic here, but Raskolnikov refers to Napoleon as a great man who could rise above something like a conscience. And Raskolnikov wants to emulate what he calls great men in the sense that they can commit crimes, without any concern for the moral consequences, moral or legal or social consequences. And I think this is interesting and important to me

because there's a sense in which I have that Brian Koberger is in some ways similar to Ratz Kalnikoff, in the sense that it's almost as this survey as asking people, hey, can you commit crimes without feeling guilty? Can you commit crimes? without any repercussions. And I think in an odd way, this is a very, very dosi-esque-type crime

in the sense that I think Kohlberger felt like he could go in there and commit a crime like Raskolnikov without getting caught, without having a guilty conscience, without necessarily having to deal with his thoughts and feelings about it. Although it would be, I think it would be very interesting to me to give him the same survey that he was giving of his participants in the sense that what are his thoughts and feelings?

Does he have any thoughts and feelings? I think he has this conflict over these violent impulses, but does that bother him? He clearly commits this crime thinking he's going to get away with it. So in that sense, I think in a way this is almost... So as one of our listeners pointed out, in a way, I think this is almost his very own experience. He is enacting his own experiment of murder.

And he's asking the question, which was asked by Dostoevsky with duress Kalnikov, can I get away with this murder without a care in the world, right? And that's amazing and frightening. But I think you have something like that going on here. That to me is more important than the specific in terms of where the students, young adults in that house targeted, we don't know that. We're going to learn that next week. But they may have been targeted.

But whether they were or not, I think that's less important than the fact that this is someone who thinks they can rise above criminality or any consequences for a criminal act. Like Raskolnikov, in the end, Raskolnikov, by the way, doesn't. He repents. And Dostoevsky is very much a religious writer. of sorts, although that would be a long discussion. But I think that this idea that somehow

he can move beyond the context of time is important here. And I know people are probably going to say, well, does that make him a psychopath? Most people don't realize how much their personal information is being bought and sold every day. Data brokers are making billions, pulling details about

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But so that's where I would start. I don't know if that information would be helpful to law enforcement. I think it would be really, if I could get. get in there and do an interview with this guy? Yes, tell us about that. I would be really, really fascinated to know if he's read him in punishment.

That might sound trivial to a lot of psychologists, but those types of details are very, very valuable in terms of what's inside this guy's mind, what's talking about? Does he identify with Raskolnikov to some extent? Because I'll tell you, some of these survey questions remind me so much of Dostoevsky,

and when I started learning about his involvement with criminology and all this other stuff, I started thinking immediately about Dostoevsky's. It's a really fascinating situation. I mean, it's horrible. I don't mean that fascinating in the sense of good. I mean intellectually fascinating, emotionally horrible. What's one financial lesson you learned the hard way?

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Somebody else asked, Blue Sky asked, if they felt the survey was truly one of his surveys for school, or if he made that up for his own thoughts? He was the principal investigator in the project, but it's not clear. He had other students working with them. So it's not clear what kind of ownership he had over the project. It's not clear if those questions were devised by him.

Whether they were or not, he chose them for inclusion. So he chose the survey, and it's eerily similar to the very elements that would go into this type of crime. And also, by the way, we should mention we haven't vetted this, but we had a listener earlier today who said that they took his survey, right? Somebody asked that. Yeah, that is in the comments on our earlier video today under the press conference if you want to see that. Yes. This person said, we don't have these questions, so I can't vouch for their accuracy.

But these are some additional questions that a person who took this survey, said we're in this survey. One of them is, have you ever felt like murdering someone? And another question in there was, what weapon did you use or would you use? Another question was, what were your thoughts before the murder? So if those questions are in there, especially this question about have you ever felt like murdering someone, I mean, clearly I think if he devised these questions, clearly this is on his mind. This is in his head, right? This is what he's thinking about.

You know, you received a, you were once a PhD student. You have a doctorate. I don't think he'll ever be receiving his. Well, maybe, maybe I shouldn't say that. But I'm pretty sure Washington State's not going to grant him a degree in prison unless he becomes the subject. You know, we don't know. You pointed out with the survey questions. We don't know.

But you were saying that he might have chosen a survey. Is that what you're saying? You're a psychologist participated in studies like this as a Ph.D. student. Your program was really different. But talk to how that works a little bit. Could you explain just the process? The question's asking, was this a survey that was already devised? For example, if I go into a prison, one of the tests I might give would be the MMPI, two or

or the RF, whatever, I would use some version of the MMPI, which is the Minnesota multifacic personality inventory, which is a test that has been developed over many years, and it's a standard test for assessing personality qualities. And so I think the question is, is he just using something that's already out there that someone else developed?

And I think it's a good question because it's asking, Well, maybe this is a script that kind of emulates what he did, but if he didn't develop it, how is that relevant? And again, I think it's relevant because he has to read the questions and choose which ones he thinks are the most pertinent. Or he has to choose a survey, which he believes is the most representative of the criminal mind. So whether he developed the questions or not, he's still choosing questions that he thinks are the most important to ask people about their criminality. It's still reflecting his biases. I mean, to me, I could be wrong,

but I don't know the survey he's using. So to me, it seems like he's developing the questions. And these questions, by the way, in terms of test construction, these are not the best questions. If I were to take a look at some of the criminal mind, I would not be asking questions about goal orientation and targets. And, I mean, that has some relevance maybe, but a lot of crimes are impulsive.

A lot of crime, you know, maybe he's just looking at premeditation. I don't know. Again, I don't know enough details about his research project, but it's incredibly eerie how those questions read like a script for these murders, potentially. And again, I'm just speculating, but that's where I land with that. Thank you. Lynn asked a question and it's a question I have to. Thank you, Lynn.

Brian Enton tweeted earlier this morning. This is Brian Enton's tweet this morning. I'll read it directly from him. I am told when Idaho quadruble homicide suspect, Brian Christopher Koberger was in custody, he asked if anyone else was arrested. I'm told he had a quiet, blank stare. There's a lot of speculation.

about that some people wondering if he's wondering if other people were actually, you know, if there were other people involved. And I think I'm wondering more about the psychological thought of that. I don't know enough about this guy to even approach diagnoses, but it seems like the kind of question that might be geared towards throwing investigators off. It seems like maybe he's, maybe he's not being genuine. I don't know. I almost feel like that question is a question that's trying to throw people off. Like you got the wrong guy, clearly, you know, you need to arrest some other people because they had a bigger role than me. You know, I have to think that the evidence they found, the forensic evidence they found probably pointed mainly towards him or they would have

had multiple arrests. But again, it's possible that there could be other people involved. I mean, it is a difficult crime pull off for one person. It would require a lot of strength and a lot of agility. So is it possible? Yes. I don't know. Is it, is he being deceptive? That's, that's my first thought is he doesn't want to take responsibility for this. And he's trying to imply that he wasn't the only one involved or maybe other people had more of a role than he did. Right. So I think this is a little bit of a ruse to throw people off off the trail. You know, DNA doesn't lie. So I don't know. one of the biggest questions I had that they hope they would answer in the press conference

and they didn't of course is uh and it was asked I believe by a CNN reporter they wanted to know if he knew the victims we've speculated on him knowing the victims police have speculated on the house being targeted perhaps it was murder by proxy meaning the type of uh victims were targeted at this point we don't know. Yeah. Would you profile Brian Kohlberger differently if he knows the victims? What would that mean? And what would it mean if he didn't and he just randomly chose his house?

Well, I think, again, I don't know enough. So I don't want to speculate too much. But I think if he knew the victims, I would move more in the direction. So the profile I talked about like three or four weeks ago. in one of our lives, which was a profile based upon what mass murderers look like or what the research on mass murderers shows, which is that oftentimes they're these loners that get rejected or maybe even in cells. And I think if he knew them, I think I'd probably move in the direction of some type of rejection or some type of him feeling emasculated by them in some way.

but I still think I like to go, if we back up to the broadest possible perspective, I see this is, again, I see this is a little bit of an experiment in the sense that maybe the victims didn't matter as much as the fact that this was someone who was like Raskolnikov, who saw themselves as conducting an experiment with their own murderous impulses to see if they could get away with a heinous crime without any repercussions. And by repercussions, I mean repercussions in terms of law enforcement and repercussions in terms of their psyche. Could they endure the potential psychological ramifications of murder? Would they feel guilty?

Would they feel confusion? Would they feel torn? And that's, again, that's the story that Dosyevsky tells in crime and punishment. And so in a really peculiar way, I think. there's some parallels there. And if they weren't targets, then if they weren't targets and this wasn't directly aimed at them, it could be murdered by proxy. They represented something that he detested. They were well-liked and well-known in a sorority, and perhaps he detested that type of group. but I think

the whole research component really lends itself to this idea that somehow this was someone who was trying to figure out a way to cope with violence and perhaps even to commit murders that he believed he could get away with you know he could

avoid any type of punishment or repercussions thank you blue sky for your comment which we just pinned join Lauren and John around their dinner table for bonus content by joining Patreon. Patreon.com slash hidden true crime. Certainly, it seems the survey was a guy is to really help him gather knowledge, to help him get away with a murder and perhaps find relatability. I also did hear someone today on the news speculate that he had perhaps studied how to maybe get away with something like this. Shelley is asking John, from your experience, how many

in a psychology-related field suffer from you spot it, you got it. I think in other words, she's meaning projection. The scariest person I have met in psychology, the person, the scariest she ever met is a PhD in psychology. And there was another woman that said her ex-husband was a psychologist and a narcissist. It's a familiar story, you know, the firefighter that's an arsonist, the the anti-gay preacher who ends up himself being gay. I mean, yeah, let's go to psychology. You spot it you got at syndrome in psychology. How many would you say suffer from this type of thing?

I think psychology, although most people think of psychologist is having special insights into people. Psychology is like any other field. It's like the legal field or any field with professionals, that there's a huge variance in people's skill sets and self-knowledge and abilities. So it wouldn't be unusual that psychologists would have some narcissistic traits or psychopathic traits, and they might use some of their knowledge and insights in the field to manipulate and deceive others. So that's, you know, every quarter I get a newsletter from my psychology boards,

and it has ethical complaints. And every time I get a letter, you know, there's complaints about therapists sleeping with their clients or somehow abusing their clients in some way. And to me, it's just unbelievable. It's unthinkable. But so I think it's important to point out that, yes, there are psychologists that get into trouble. And the issue is usually the same, which is that there's generally a lack of some type of inner life that or some type of. insight into themselves or self-knowledge that they're really lacking. And so they don't really see their blind spots.

And that gets into trouble. And in fact, not only they do not see their blind spots, but they will go to extensive lengths to use what they know about people to deceive them and to manipulate them and use them. And so that's in some ways even worse, which is, by the way, why there's very severe penalties for psychologists or therapists who engage in sexual relationships with their clients. It's a very, very severe, it's a very, very severe behavior with really traumatic repercussions.

And so, yes, I don't know if I answered the question, but yeah, but psychologists are, fortunately, I think it's a small percentage of psychologists, but we're certainly not immune from indiscretions and we're human beings. And that's why I think it's important to me to constantly learn and evolve and try to grow and stay open and to really look at my shortcomings and blind spots and to improve. Thank you for sharing that. You state that as Lottie, Eliza says, that she is a close family member who is forever diagnosing everyone and believes their opinion is gospel. They won't move from it. And I will say that John is somebody that stays very open.

He's very humble. And yes, while dating him, I thought, oh, he's going to diagnose. me and I would get mad when he was looking at me too long. I'm like, what are you thinking? What, you know, and he is not that way to thank you for sharing that and, um, yeah, staying open. Uh, thank you to Cindy. I have the same questions about if anyone saw any signs. Thank you to Lauren M. And I want to share this from Lynette. She says, this guy was a fully invested academic. I will say at his master's program, he didn't make the dean's list. We, we tweeted that, which means he had a high GPA. Uh, it's going to be like,

the unabomber, she states he'll have some gigantic manifesto somewhere. What are your thoughts on that, John? You know, again, we don't know enough details here, but I think if he, if he looks something like an in-cell, which is, you know, an involuntary celibate, and which is very misogynistic and someone who hates women, then, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see some type of manifesto or some type of writing about how women are inferior and deserve to be harmed in some way. So, yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see that. I don't know, although based on the survey, it's one thing to be a good student, to be a serious academic or to have some serious scholarly insights, I think that might be a little

different. Whether he has those, I'd be a little skeptical of. But yes, I think it's a good question. I wouldn't be surprised that to see some type of potential in-cell type beliefs that might be expressed somewhere. That brings me up to a question that somebody had M.K. Goober had this question. Do you think his, so it wasn't, they said that they were not sexually assaulted, according to police. Yeah. So she's asking, you know.

know, because of the lack of sexual assault, do you think that has anything to do with, add to the rage, add to that rage, he had a lot of rage, there was no assault. Do you think it has to do with any lack of his sexual, and I lost the last word that, his inadequacy, I believe that was her last question, her last word, his sexual inadequacy. Yeah, it could, you know, one of the commonalities among mass murderers is that often they feel of masculated. They feel they feel like they're not living up to some masculine

stereotype and one of the ways they get back is through violence and obviously he did that. So could that be a part of this? Yes, I definitely think that something about his inadequacies around masculinity and sexuality

could definitely play a role here and that the comment there about that the knife can represent, yes, the knife could represent something sexual. I agree. I think we've talked about this before, how the knife is potentially symbolic of a phallic symbol. I mean, I know some people might think that that's going a little too far, but it is an intimate way to kill someone and you're very in very close proximity to them. I could definitely make a strong argument that there's something sexual about the way these murders happened, even though there wasn't sexual activity. I don't think honestly, even if he was thinking about a sexual assault,

I don't think he would have the time or the means to pull that off, especially with four victims. But that's not to say that he wasn't thinking about it or it didn't occur to him. Thank you. I'm looking at some of our questions. Ozzy Tad left a question. You've mostly answered it on our earlier YouTube library, I asked people to leave questions.

She's curious, though, that, well, a couple things. She asked you to go over the survey questions, which you did. And I'll just read, he seemed focused on trying to find out how people felt, she says. Like seeking reassurance, it would be a buzz and make him feel stronger, would it? Or is he intrigued if people had regrets? And then she asks, did Dr. John ever study or have students who were a bit creepy and possibly studying that field as a way to immerse themselves in their area of family? Of course, I realize you can't specify students, but in general terms, you have had a lot of students.

Are there definitely different interests that they have some maybe not as healthy as others? So I'm assuming that some of my students aren't going to watch this, but I go through a fairly rigorous screening process with my students. My job with UNLV is to supervise students in the community, which means that I do practicum work with students so that they're able to work with clients or go into the jails or prisons with me or whatever the situation is. And so I work very closely with them and probably more so than most professors at UNLV in the sense that these are hands-on experiences. so I'm very selective and I go through a couple of interviews with them to make sure I'm comfortable with them. But in terms of having creepy students, I haven't encountered that yet.

I have had students that were a little narcissistic and overly controlling. And, you know, they tend to present a little bit of a problem because they're not very open-minded. But whether they would fall into this type, a thing, no. I don't think I've had any students that have been close to, close to committing murders. With that being said, you've already mentioned some of the things that you would ask him in an interview. You would ask him why he did this if you were to sit, or if he did this, you know,

if you were to sit in front of Brian Koeberger. What else would you ask him or what else would you be most curious about? And again, I don't, when I do an evaluation, I get a full docket of court material and previous record, criminal record, and school records, I get as much as I can. I get everything that they can give me on a prospective client. I will get that information. So the more information I have, the better. So in fairness, I don't have any information on this person, except for the limited information

we talked about today. And that's not a lot. So I'd be really going out on a limb here. but I think if my basic premise is accurate, that this is someone who's really struggled with aggressive and violent and even murderous impulses, which I believe he has, you don't get to a murder like this without having some of those impulses. I think what I would want to know,

what I would be the most interested in would be when did those begin? And how did those begin? In other words, what happened in his childhood, or what was going on in his childhood that created those impulses and how did it become such a conflict for him? Was it something he experienced? Was it something he witnessed? Was it right?

There's so many ways to get there. But if that's the fundamental conflict that he's dealing with that leads to murder, then what I want to know is when did that start? How did it start? Was it related to the family culture? Was there potentially a genetic component? So all of these questions I can't, we can't begin to answer because I don't know anything about this guy. But I do know that you're not going to get to a murder like this without some type of murderous impulses. So when did that start?

How did he manage it? Again, I think the heroin addiction could be a part of that. And that would be part of the story. By the time he gets to the heroin addiction, if he's using heroin to try to suppress some of those murderous impulses, obviously this thing starts way before then. So how far back do we have to go into his childhood to figure that out? That's what I'm interested in. That's where I would really try to focus.

And I would do that in a way that would be pretty subtle, I think. Gene Marie says he must have imagined and planned this murder. And again, one of the first things you told me this morning, as I leapt out of bed to try to brush my hair before learning and jumping on the news, you said, you know, we learned very quickly about that he was a PhD student studying criminal justice or criminology. And you simply said, that's fascinating. That's so interesting. And you said this likely means that he fantasized or thought about doing something like this.

And I know we've already talked about this, but Jean-Marie is putting that back up there. I want to say that was the first thing that you said today. I think this is, yeah, I agree. this is someone studying criminal justice in an attempt to manage those violent impulses that he's experiencing. And, you know, I should point out, too, that most people in criminology and most people in criminal psychology are not having those impulses at that level, obviously. So he's an out, no matter how you look at this, murder is unusual, and he's an outlier. So I don't want to have any implication here that because he's studying

criminology, that somehow that contributed to the murders, most people studying criminology don't murder. However, when you take someone like him, someone who has overwhelming, probably overwhelming violent impulses and doesn't

know how to manage them, that becomes a different scenario. If you take that person and you put them into a criminology department, I think, you know, that's a different scenario than taking someone who can manage those types of impulses and putting them there. Is there anything else you would like to discuss Dr. John?

I think that's as far as I can go with what we know. I think this narrative is going to change or update over time. But I think one of the things I would point out is that there's been a lot of ex-detectives and, you know, pundits talking about these crimes for a lot of time. And in some ways, I think, like for myself, in some ways, it's not necessarily even the psychological field that can allow us to understand this crime. It turns out maybe it's a literature. One thing I'm always stressing is we have to be open and stay open to whatever the possibilities

are and to look at many different perspectives, I think, to understand anything in life, whether it's crime, relationships, children, right? And so forensic psychology offers some very good insights and evidence for why certain crimes are committed. So it's profiling, but it will only take us so far. And then I think we have to look for other, once we hit those limits, maybe we have to look at literature or some other areas to really help us dig deeper or see the bigger picture to understand what's going on.

All these different theories, all these different experts sharing their thoughts, you included, me included, some are the same, some are different. Thank you for sharing that. By the way, on that topic, just quickly, I don't want to get on a soapbox here, but... Oh, get on a soapbox. We're here. We're here for your soapbox. This is a crime where there was so much misinformation and so many conspiracy theories floated and a TikToker was accusing someone, who obviously wasn't involved in the crimes.

That's the problem, I think, when you narrow your focus so much, when you have a preconceived idea of who did this for whatever reasons, I think you can really lead people astray. And so I think it's really important to stay open and to consider other options, even if those options are outside the field of profiling or normal detective work or whatever. And, you know, I think hopefully I'm, at least tonight, I could be completely wrong, but starting to create a little bit of a narrative that looks at the bigger picture and maybe gets us thinking about other issues. Like, yeah, like this guy did research. Was this his research project? Exactly. Wondering if this actually was his real research project.

There were so many incredible supporters today. We cannot get to all of the questions. as always, the chat goes fast, and we have a lot we want to talk about. But as always, please put your questions in the comments of this video. We read them all. We will pick some of those questions to discuss on our next week, our next hidden live, hidden hour live. We always go live on Friday evenings. As we progress and learn more, these will certainly be questions that we'll continue to answer. Thank you. We love our community. And thank you, Blue Sky for reminding us again to join us on Patreon. Patreon.com slash hidden true crime.

If you want more of Dr. John, we share more there. John always wants to know about Brian Koberger. So if you know him, if you know people who know him, if you're concerned about staying private and sharing what you know, please email us a hidden true crime info at gmail.com. And we are very grateful for anything you can share. Thank you so much. Your old or broken phone can let you down.

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