The Megyn Kelly Show - December 20, 2023


Inside the Mind： Idaho College Murders and Bryan Kohberger, Megyn Kelly Show Special - Part Three ｜ Ep. 690

Hosted by
Megyn Kelly
Mentioned
Brian Christopher Kohlberger Howard Bloom Inside Looking Gary Jenkins Papa Roger Bonnie Clyde Tony Ziva James Fitzgerald Michelle Bolger Elvis Costello Candace DeLong Ted Kaczynski Jack Bayless Phil Houston Doug Brunt Marianne DeSales Melissa and 2 more
Pursuit and Arrest： Idaho College Murders and Bryan Kohberger, Megyn Kelly Show Special - Part Two ｜ Ep. 689 The Trial Ahead： Idaho College Murders and Bryan Kohberger, Megyn Kelly Show Special - Part Four ｜ Ep. 691

Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

150.3

Word count

5,652

Sentence count

466

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

14

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On October 29th, 2010, a group of four people were brutally murdered in a sleepy college town in Idaho. The only suspect is a 28-year-old man named Brian Kohlberger, who claims to have nothing to do with it.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:02.860 Someone is trying to frame us.
00:00:05.140 Until our names are cleared.
00:00:07.700 We're fugitives from interval.
00:00:09.480 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.
00:00:12.880 Espionage?
00:00:13.560 You still as good a shot as you used to be?
00:00:16.600 Better.
00:00:17.400 Is there love language?
00:00:18.860 We like to walk that fine line between techno thriller
00:00:21.340 and romantic comedy.
00:00:24.180 We make up our own rules.
00:00:25.940 NCIS Tony and Ziva.
00:00:27.400 Now streaming on Paramount Plus.
00:00:30.620 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show.
00:00:32.580 Live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.
00:00:43.260 I'm stuck in the depths of my mind
00:00:45.880 where I have to constantly battle my demons.
00:00:49.160 Am I here or am I fake?
00:00:51.940 I feel myself slipping away.
00:00:55.220 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, everyone.
00:00:57.020 I'm Megyn Kelly.
00:00:57.860 And welcome to episode three of a special edition of the show
00:01:01.600 focused on the fascinating and disturbing case
00:01:04.300 of Brian Kohlberger and the quadruple murder
00:01:07.080 in a sleepy college Idaho town last year.
00:01:10.080 We started the week diving into the gruesome stabbings
00:01:13.040 and got to know the victims a bit.
00:01:15.800 Yesterday, we walked through how Kohlberger was identified
00:01:18.140 and the incredible series of events that led to his arrest.
00:01:21.700 Today, we take a look at who Brian Kohlberger is.
00:01:27.560 The man accused of this barbaric crime, atrocities which he denies having anything to do with.
00:01:34.080 As we bring you that story, we are thrilled to rely in part
00:01:37.140 on the fantastic writing and reporting by journalist and author Howard Bloom,
00:01:42.220 who covered the Idaho murders in great detail for Air Mail News.
00:01:46.040 Bloom's forthcoming book on the case will be published in the spring by HarperCollins.
00:01:49.760 Now streaming on Paramount+.
00:01:53.220 Someone is trying to frame us.
00:01:56.140 Until our names are cleared.
00:01:58.700 We're fugitives from interval.
00:02:00.480 Like Bonnie and Clyde with better snacks.
00:02:03.920 Espionage?
00:02:04.560 You still as good a shot as you used to be?
00:02:07.640 Better.
00:02:08.380 Is there love language?
00:02:09.600 We like to walk that fine line between techno-thriller and romantic comedy.
00:02:15.160 We make up our own rules.
00:02:16.940 NCIS Tony and Ziva.
00:02:18.660 Now streaming on Paramount+.
00:02:20.460 Brian Christopher Kohlberger is 28 years old.
00:02:26.060 But the quotes I read to you at the beginning of this episode
00:02:29.440 are from way back in 2011, when he was just 16.
00:02:33.740 It has been reported by multiple outlets, including Bloom in Air Mail,
00:02:39.020 that Kohlberger wrote often on an early social media platform called Tap-a-Talk.
00:02:44.840 He described a condition he had, or claimed to have, known as visual snow.
00:02:50.960 It's something I discussed with Bloom when he was a guest on the Megyn Kelly show in March.
00:02:55.680 Doctors can't even agree on whether visual snow is a psychological state or a disease.
00:03:04.340 And since they can't agree on what it is,
00:03:07.540 they also differ on how to treat it or if it can be treated.
00:03:11.320 The best sources I've found for any insight into this are really in novels.
00:03:18.540 Camus the Stranger opens up with a character who talks about feeling nothing
00:03:23.560 that eventually leads to a murder on the beach.
00:03:26.980 Sartre, in one of his novels, writes about a character that has the same sort of
00:03:32.780 disassociation from the world.
00:03:35.980 It's, you know, it's existentialism on one level,
00:03:41.900 and it's also dislocation from the world on another.
00:03:47.240 And if you, you know, if everything means less than zero,
00:03:50.740 as Elvis Costello sings, you know, then you can do anything.
00:03:54.560 Anything is unjustified because it doesn't matter.
00:03:58.240 From Bloom's reporting,
00:03:59.960 they are the raw, bedeviling forces that drove him, he explains, to contemplate suicide.
00:04:06.060 They are the painful demons, he wails to a friend,
00:04:08.380 that drove him to search for a sort of relief by mainlining heroin.
00:04:12.160 And at the root of all his swirling emotions he diagnoses in the online postings
00:04:17.760 with an unwavering certainty is visual snow.
00:04:22.240 Visual snow is a rare but very real and chronic neurological condition.
00:04:26.440 To those who suffer from it, the world is viewed through a glass darkly.
00:04:30.920 It's like looking at a television screen and the pictures fluttering.
00:04:34.300 The image is obscured by amorphous grayish waves and scattering flickering dots.
00:04:39.660 But is it a disease or is it a psychological condition?
00:04:44.340 Doctors, according to the sparse literature,
00:04:46.840 throw up their hands in frustrated confusion.
00:04:49.080 They just don't know.
00:04:50.820 And what can't be diagnosed is even more difficult to treat.
00:04:54.420 But for the teenage Brian Kohlberger,
00:04:56.600 if his online posts are any reliable guide,
00:04:59.520 visual snow had at times buried his existence
00:05:02.180 in an avalanche of despondency and desperation.
00:05:06.560 His posts were calls from the wild.
00:05:08.960 Some of Kohlberger's most telling teenage posts
00:05:12.420 give us a window into who he might become.
00:05:15.860 We have voiced them over here.
00:05:19.260 October 29th, 2010.
00:05:21.960 I have completely disconnected from reality.
00:05:25.300 I feel all the time that I'm living in my own reality.
00:05:28.600 It seems as if my brain chemistry is altered from this,
00:05:31.980 even though I am certain it's not.
00:05:34.060 First, I felt very uninterested in the things I usually like to do.
00:05:37.060 But then it changed to the point I saw no reason for anything
00:05:40.520 and everything became boring to me.
00:05:43.480 It feel at times completely disconnected.
00:05:46.940 And as if I can't live like a normal person.
00:05:50.700 When I think about my future,
00:05:52.300 I think about how I will barely remember my mother and father, etc.
00:05:56.460 Because I have an altered memory and also have been unable to think of them
00:06:01.220 due to the 10 things I think about non-stop all at once.
00:06:05.960 Visual snow, altered brain, tinnitus, disappointment, regret, etc.
00:06:12.400 I think that possibly I could have brought this onto myself
00:06:17.160 from post-traumatic stress disorder or something similar,
00:06:20.060 but I can't tell what it is.
00:06:22.640 I remember how it was before and remember that I felt like it before. 0.99
00:06:26.560 It is all real bullshit.
00:06:28.960 If I have any chemistry change, 0.99
00:06:30.920 I have this detox program that can fix it.
00:06:35.140 May 12th, 2011.
00:06:37.380 I always feel as if I am not there.
00:06:40.780 Completely depersonalized.
00:06:43.000 Mentally, I experience fog.
00:06:45.420 Lack of comprehension at some times.
00:06:47.860 Feel like my life is a movie.
00:06:50.760 Depersonalization.
00:06:52.120 Depression.
00:06:53.820 No interest in activity.
00:06:55.660 Constant thought of suicide.
00:06:57.080 Crazy thoughts.
00:06:57.940 Delusions of grandeur.
00:07:00.000 Anxiety.
00:07:00.700 Poor self-image.
00:07:02.300 Poor social skills.
00:07:03.860 No emotion.
00:07:04.860 I feel like nothing has a point to it.
00:07:09.720 When I get home, I am mean to my family.
00:07:13.660 This started when VS, or visual snow, did.
00:07:17.520 I felt no emotion, and along with the depersonalization,
00:07:20.440 I can say and do whatever I want with little remorse.
00:07:24.820 Everyone hates me.
00:07:26.500 Pretty much. 1.00
00:07:27.860 I am an asshole. 1.00
00:07:30.460 July 4th, 2011. 0.99
00:07:32.080 I have had this horrible depersonalization go on in my life for almost two years.
00:07:38.520 I often find myself making simple human interactions, but it is as if I am playing a role-playing games, such as Oblivion.
00:07:46.580 I can see what is going on.
00:07:48.580 I am slightly into it, but I can pause the game and focus on my real life.
00:07:52.820 In this case, my life is the game, and my old self can be reached by pausing the game.
00:07:59.740 But how?
00:08:00.800 I often think of things that humans do.
00:08:03.820 Things I have done my whole life.
00:08:05.860 I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self-worth.
00:08:09.860 As I am starting to view everything as this.
00:08:12.220 Everything I have ever done makes no sense.
00:08:17.260 How did things get this way?
00:08:18.940 How am I wearing this shirt?
00:08:20.700 And who decided that humans shall wear shirts like this?
00:08:23.980 Are we all just advanced animals with possession?
00:08:26.960 Or is there more?
00:08:28.520 More that I can't see.
00:08:30.600 I can't connect.
00:08:31.740 I view everything as if I would if I was playing Oblivion.
00:08:35.640 Pointless and full of nothing.
00:08:37.520 Out of reality.
00:08:38.300 I'm moving out of my house.
00:08:41.320 My last holidays were already lived.
00:08:43.500 But where was I?
00:08:45.060 As my family group hugs and celebrates, I'm stuck in this void of nothing.
00:08:49.920 Feeling completely no emotion.
00:08:52.620 Feeling nothing.
00:08:54.160 I feel dirty, like there is dirt inside my head.
00:08:57.540 My mind.
00:08:58.760 I'm always dizzy and confused.
00:09:01.700 I feel no self-worth.
00:09:03.720 I am intelligent, but I feel the opposite.
00:09:06.300 I say things I don't mean.
00:09:08.300 The last holiday in my house.
00:09:09.900 The house I grew up in.
00:09:11.260 The house I once contributed to.
00:09:13.180 The house I once fell at home in.
00:09:15.740 Is past.
00:09:17.040 As I hug my family, I look into their faces.
00:09:19.500 I see nothing.
00:09:21.240 It is like I am looking at a video game, but less.
00:09:24.280 I feel less than mentally damaged. 0.70
00:09:27.000 It is like I have severe brain damage.
00:09:29.720 I am stuck in the depths of my mind, where I have to constantly battle my demons.
00:09:36.380 Am I here, or am I fake?
00:09:38.500 I feel myself slipping away.
00:09:41.220 I hear screams faintly, but I constantly battle away from it.
00:09:47.700 What if I let go?
00:09:49.300 Where would I be?
00:09:50.780 Would I ever come back to reality?
00:09:52.120 I try to remember where I originated from, but I can't.
00:09:57.500 I barely remember my childhood.
00:09:59.880 I often fear being 80 years old and having faint memories of my parents.
00:10:04.220 Everything I missed out on.
00:10:06.180 I think about my father.
00:10:07.720 What a good man he is.
00:10:08.700 How I treat him like dirt, because I have this condition, and I can't take it.
00:10:13.040 I might spiral out of control and lose myself in the void.
00:10:16.240 I can't let it all go.
00:10:17.720 All of these regrets I predict for my future self.
00:10:21.080 All of these thoughts of remorse.
00:10:23.400 I got this when I was in my stage of discovery. 1.00
00:10:26.580 Now I look in the mirror, and I see this sickly, tired, useless, and stupid man in the mirror. 1.00
00:10:32.980 He is a complete disgrace. 1.00
00:10:35.360 He doesn't even deserve to live. 0.99
00:10:38.240 I remember when I was 15, I would wander alone at 2 a.m.
00:10:43.040 Everything was so generic.
00:10:44.820 Nowhere felt like home.
00:10:46.640 I saw things that were not there.
00:10:49.960 A different reality.
00:10:52.400 I felt eerie and alone.
00:10:54.720 I died during those nights.
00:10:56.060 I felt like a criminal.
00:10:57.560 But where was my record?
00:10:59.540 I can't talk about flinching now.
00:11:01.840 I used to be this healthy, blonde-haired boy with blue eyes.
00:11:05.360 And in a few years, I have darker hair and darker eyes.
00:11:09.340 Half the body weight.
00:11:12.000 Where did I leave off?
00:11:14.200 I try to sleep.
00:11:15.660 I try to clear my head, but the pressure won't go away.
00:11:18.740 The pain and depression won't leave.
00:11:20.440 Being me is this horrible disease that I was given.
00:11:25.300 I think of this as I succumb to sleep, but I see a large intensity of black, yellow, white fuzz.
00:11:32.540 It makes my mind fizzle, and I can barely keep in the bounds of reality.
00:11:36.860 It is as if the ringing in my ears and the fuzz in my vision is simply all of the demons in my head, mocking me.
00:11:46.260 I fall asleep, but I wake up quickly to bloody screams.
00:11:49.800 Is any of this here?
00:11:51.300 Am I brain damaged?
00:11:52.440 No.
00:11:53.720 Then why am I like this?
00:11:55.380 I have these thoughts all in my head.
00:11:57.960 I search for someone to relate to me.
00:12:00.800 Everyone looks down upon me.
00:12:03.460 No one can relate.
00:12:05.540 As I try to read, suddenly my eyes look right through the words.
00:12:09.820 When I look up, I see blue dots near the center of my vision.
00:12:14.320 When I feel slightly calm, it gets hard to breathe, and I see bright dots in my vision.
00:12:19.760 Nothing I do is enjoyable.
00:12:23.380 December 19th, 2011.
00:12:26.540 I have had this for over two years, and I have had it bad in every single way.
00:12:32.600 Not one night have I slept normal since, and I feel like I'm trapped here.
00:12:38.040 I have been able to block it out for a while now, but I realize what is wrong, and it suddenly
00:12:43.300 becomes unbelievable.
00:12:45.700 I'm desensitized in every way now.
00:12:49.040 People say there are supposed to be the years I enjoy and cherish.
00:12:52.660 Well, I can't say I cherish these days.
00:12:54.880 These posts paint a picture of a severely depressed, disturbed young man, riddled with pain, feeling
00:13:03.640 himself, quote, slipping away from the bounds of normality, constantly burdened by visual
00:13:09.040 snow and the sound of screaming, torture.
00:13:12.760 And it wasn't just the posts on Tappatalk.
00:13:16.520 As Bloom lays out, there was also bristling anger uncovered by internet sleuths who have
00:13:22.340 traced his teenage email to a posting on SoundCloud.
00:13:26.140 Eleven years ago, Kohlberger's defiant moods took flight in a howling rap song.
00:13:32.180 You are not my equal. 0.98
00:13:33.700 You are evil. 0.99
00:13:34.660 But I'm the devil, he challenges. 0.99
00:13:36.900 Listen.
00:13:37.180 Of course, Bloom writes, these posts and lyrics are the work of a teenager.
00:13:53.060 More than a decade has flown by since they were written.
00:13:55.940 Nevertheless, perhaps the anguished posts and the ferocious song are also a warning.
00:14:01.660 Out of words come events.
00:14:03.380 The future cannot exist without having been envisioned in the past, and one more puzzlement
00:14:08.740 in this case must be confronted.
00:14:10.880 Are these teenage thought dreams the intimations of an adult's future?
00:14:15.820 During high school, reports suggest Kohlberger was a bit of a misfit and an outcast.
00:14:21.460 He was overweight, and according to friends who knew him at the time, he fell into drugs,
00:14:26.460 first marijuana and then heroin.
00:14:28.340 He began focusing on eating healthier, found kickboxing, began to lose weight in the process.
00:14:35.800 Here's high school friend Jack Bayless speaking to local NBC affiliate King5TV.
00:14:42.480 He was definitely heavier set, and that caused issues in school.
00:14:46.580 I believe it was the weight loss first.
00:14:48.480 Weight loss first, and I was, you know, I want to say 14 to maybe 16 in between there was the big weight loss.
00:14:55.360 I could be wrong on this, but I'm pretty sure that was what it was.
00:14:57.120 And then it was the drugs.
00:14:58.000 He got in drugs via an acquaintance of his.
00:15:01.920 It was definitely heroin.
00:15:02.980 It was pretty gnarly.
00:15:05.700 But Kohlberger was able to straighten his life out, or so it seemed.
00:15:09.540 Whether his internal anguish ever abated is a much trickier question, as we discussed with Howard Bloom.
00:15:17.980 Everyone has talked about how he seems to be planning the murders so carefully doing this and that.
00:15:24.840 I think he was really spending the past year at least trying to overcome all his internal demons to not try to find a way to prevent himself from killing people.
00:15:42.140 I mean, to this point, he's made a remarkable recovery from a young man, a teenager who used heroin.
00:15:49.600 He's gotten into a junior college and succeeds to get into college and winds up at a very reputable graduate school in criminal justice where he's a teaching assistant.
00:15:59.900 He's doing everything.
00:16:00.820 He's pushed his father out of his life.
00:16:03.200 Now he's taking his father back in the life.
00:16:05.680 They're going to make a cross-country trip home for Christmas.
00:16:09.120 He's doing all this.
00:16:10.220 And at the same time, he knows who he is and how he will always be an outsider.
00:16:17.580 And he's trying to find his way in, and he really can't.
00:16:22.660 I think that's also an untold story, part speculation at this point that we want to try to get more of come June.
00:16:32.500 This man who sees himself as someone more sinned against than sinning, and that his life is in his way a horror story.
00:16:45.340 It's also a tragedy, too.
00:16:47.580 After Kohlberger graduated high school, he went to college at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.
00:16:53.120 He got his bachelor's degree in 2020 and a master's degree in criminal justice in 2022.
00:16:58.480 One professor of his, Dr. Michelle Bolger, who advised Kohlberger on his master's thesis in the criminal justice department at DeSales University, she's very well respected, told the Daily Mail reporter he was a brilliant student.
00:17:11.780 Quote, in my 10 years of teaching, she raved, I've only recommended two students to a PhD program, and he was one of them.
00:17:20.240 He was one of my best students ever.
00:17:22.260 End quote.
00:17:23.120 The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel by Doug Brunt.
00:17:29.760 It's officially a New York Times bestseller, as well as an Apple Book of the Year, an Audible Book of the Year.
00:17:35.440 It's even been optioned for a movie.
00:17:38.000 Rave reviews from The Times, The Journal, Publishers Weekly, and more, calling Diesel a wildly enjoyable ride.
00:17:44.520 It is a page-turning thriller about the greatest caper of the 20th century, all involving a man whose name you likely see at the gas station every day, but probably had no idea, was at the center of one of the greatest mysteries of all time.
00:18:00.460 Don't miss out on the book everyone's talking about.
00:18:02.940 It will make the perfect gift, The Mysterious Case of Rudolf Diesel.
00:18:07.800 Here's more from those who knew him, including friends and classmates.
00:18:18.860 He wanted to do something that impacted people in a good way.
00:18:25.500 People were not his strong suit.
00:18:27.120 And I think through his criminology studies, he was really trying to understand humans and try to understand himself.
00:18:35.360 I think a lot of people who were close to him are feeling this massive amounts of guilt.
00:18:41.940 Why didn't I see it?
00:18:43.900 Did I miss something?
00:18:45.640 Where did it go wrong?
00:18:46.960 He seemed very comfortable around other people.
00:18:49.060 He was fairly quick to offer his opinion and thoughts, and he was always participating fairly eagerly in classroom discussions.
00:18:56.260 Does anything else come to mind that Brian said to you in the past that today you think might be of interest?
00:19:02.940 There was a comment that he made, and it was just kind of a flippant guy talk thing.
00:19:08.840 At one point, he just idly mentioned, you know, I can go down to a bowl or a club and just have pretty much any lady I want.
00:19:16.320 Looking back over the last four months is that I feel like there should have been signs that I should have seen, and I didn't.
00:19:24.500 I was blindsided.
00:19:28.100 While Kohlberger may have bragged about his luck with the ladies, no girlfriend has emerged at all from any point.
00:19:36.820 One woman posted a TikTok about a date she says she had a single date with Kohlberger, which did not go well.
00:19:43.880 We matched on Tinder.
00:19:47.480 We talked for a couple hours, and then he was like, hey, you want to go to the movies with me tonight?
00:19:52.060 And I was like, sure.
00:19:53.200 We ended up going back to my dorm, and he kind of invited himself inside.
00:20:00.040 He kept trying to touch me, not, like, inappropriately, just, like, trying to tickle me and, like, rub my shoulders and stuff.
00:20:08.820 And I was like, why are you touching me, or what are you doing?
00:20:12.680 And he would just, like, get super serious, and he's like, I'm not.
00:20:16.880 And I'm like, you are, though.
00:20:19.180 And he's like, I'm not touching you.
00:20:21.580 Kind of, like, trying to gaslight me into thinking that he didn't touch me, which was weird.
00:20:28.260 But then I was like, I'm just going to run to the bathroom quick.
00:20:31.460 And he was like, okay.
00:20:33.960 And then he followed me to the bathroom, which I thought was kind of weird.
00:20:39.120 So I proceeded to pretend to throw up to get him to leave.
00:20:44.440 He ended up messaging me on Tinder that he was going to go.
00:20:48.820 And I was like, awesome.
00:20:50.200 My plan worked.
00:20:51.300 And then about an hour later, he texted me and said I had good birthing hips.
00:20:57.520 Some who observed him in his role as a teaching assistant saw a man anything but comfortable.
00:21:03.920 When he was standing in front of the class, it was like he was, you know, in a box.
00:21:09.440 He was very, I don't know, uncomfortable, I guess.
00:21:12.220 Like, it felt like he was perpetually uncomfortable.
00:21:14.320 Though Kohlberger's online postings appeared to stop, those ones we went over when he was about 16,
00:21:23.000 his criminal justice studies brought more public outreach, like the Reddit post from his time at DeSales asking for research participation from criminals.
00:21:32.860 Some criminologists say it's pretty standard for the field to send things like this out.
00:21:38.540 But still, it's chilling when you know what he would later be accused of.
00:21:42.840 Hello, my name is Brian, he writes, and I am inviting you to participate in a research project that seeks to understand how emotions and psychological traits influence decision-making when committing a crime.
00:21:56.780 In particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.
00:22:07.300 In the event that your most recent offense was not one that led to a conviction, you may still participate.
00:22:14.320 What sort of questions did Kohlberger ask?
00:22:17.080 Here's what was uncovered from the survey itself.
00:22:20.580 Questions included the following.
00:22:22.840 Did you struggle with or fight the victim?
00:22:25.820 Did you prepare for the crime before leaving your home?
00:22:29.100 Please detail what you were thinking and feeling at this point.
00:22:31.620 How did you travel to and enter the location that the crime occurred?
00:22:35.000 After arriving, what steps did you take prior to locating the victim or target?
00:22:40.880 Please detail your thoughts and feelings.
00:22:43.020 Why did you choose that victim or target over others?
00:22:47.020 Before making your move, how did you approach the victim or target?
00:22:50.940 Please detail what you were thinking and feeling.
00:22:53.940 What was the first move you made in order to accomplish your goal?
00:22:58.020 Please detail any thoughts and feelings at this point.
00:23:00.920 Before leaving, is there anything else you did?
00:23:02.860 How did you leave the scene?
00:23:05.000 After committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?
00:23:09.560 After DeSales, Kohlberger moved west, a criminology doctoral student now at Washington State University.
00:23:17.600 He began the program in the fall of 2022, mere months before the murders in the neighboring state.
00:23:24.080 Almost immediately upon his arrival in Washington, he applied for an internship at the nearby Pullman Police Department.
00:23:32.940 In the application essay, which Idaho cops later shared, Kohlberger, with apparent self-affirming pride,
00:23:40.060 wrote that he had an interest in assisting rural law enforcement agencies with how to better collect and analyze technological data in public safety operations.
00:23:49.540 So what should we make of Kohlberger's interest in criminology and his attempts to work with local police?
00:23:57.160 It's a question I asked CIA officer and expert in deception, Phil Houston, earlier this year.
00:24:02.800 In my mind, this fits into the category of what we call countermeasure behavior.
00:24:09.320 So it's starting out, you know, very early.
00:24:11.820 What I mean by early is there's still months off from a killing.
00:24:16.260 But in his mind, he may well have had something in his mind that he was going to do that was bad.
00:24:22.900 So joining the police department or having some connection by the police department in his mind might very likely have served two purposes.
00:24:32.280 First of all, from the persuasion context, he's an insider now.
00:24:38.500 Why would anyone look at him, you know, immediately as, you know, the perpetrator?
00:24:44.420 And then secondly, if he's inside, it's possible he may get some access to what's going on in the investigation, to details of the investigation that may give him some more early warning if the police do start to, you know, zero in on him.
00:25:04.220 It does not appear Kohlberger ever landed that police internship.
00:25:10.160 However, he did have a meeting with the chief of police.
00:25:13.400 Inside Edition obtained an email exchange between Kohlberger and Gary Jenkins, the top cop in Pullman, Washington at the time.
00:25:21.600 Quote, it was a great pleasure to meet with you today and share my thoughts and excitement regarding the research assistantship for public safety, wrote Kohlberger.
00:25:30.500 Great to meet and talk to you as well, responded Jenkins.
00:25:34.220 Jenkins would go on to take a job as the campus chief of police at Washington State University, the force that would later help identify Kohlberger's vehicle as the one police believed was seen leaving the murder site that evening.
00:25:47.620 After the murders, Kohlberger may have returned to an old habit, posting about himself online.
00:25:54.720 You see, there was massive interest in this case online, and several reporters believe Kohlberger himself was among the crew on social media openly discussing the case.
00:26:05.240 One Facebook user named Papa Roger was a regular poster in a discussion group about the murders.
00:26:13.680 One of his posts seemed to indicate he knew something about the circumstances of the murder, or at least took a very lucky guess.
00:26:21.420 Quote, of the evidence released, the murder weapon has been consistent as a large fixed blade knife.
00:26:29.880 This leads me to believe they found the sheath, he wrote.
00:26:34.440 Quote, this was before there were public reports that police had indeed found the knife sheath inside that house.
00:26:42.880 Meanwhile, on Reddit, in the Moscow Murders Group, Moscow being the town where the killings took place,
00:26:49.540 one user named Inside Looking seemed to have inside details about the method behind the murders.
00:26:55.840 Quote, speculation, it began.
00:26:59.640 Quote, killer parked behind the house, approached property through treeline, entered sliding door and left it open,
00:27:07.800 committed murders and exited sliding door.
00:27:10.780 One knife, according to the coroner's statement.
00:27:13.920 Time of murder, approximately 3.20 a.m. to 3.40 a.m., according to car fleeing scene and on camera on Highway 8, approximately 3.45 a.m.
00:27:24.800 vehicle left skid marks upon exit, end quote.
00:27:28.840 Since Kohlberger was arrested and held without bail, Papa Roger and Inside Looking have not posted on Facebook or Reddit.
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00:28:42.420 As one might suspect, Brian Kohlberger's troubles were not limited to his head.
00:28:47.900 His interactions with women were awkward and, at times, inappropriate, as we alluded to earlier.
00:28:55.040 There were reports of him getting kicked out of a high school vocational law enforcement program.
00:29:00.140 After complaints from several girls.
00:29:02.680 Creepy interactions with women in college. 1.00
00:29:05.700 And more recently, Dateline of NBC reported Kohlberger befriended a female colleague at Washington State
00:29:11.840 who contacted him after she thought someone had broken into her apartment.
00:29:17.340 Kohlberger helped her, reports NBC, by installing security cameras at her place.
00:29:23.420 According to Dateline, authorities believed it was Kohlberger himself who had broken into that apartment
00:29:29.120 and that he installed the cameras so that he would be able to spy on this young woman.
00:29:35.140 Or perhaps something even more sinister.
00:29:38.520 Former FBI criminal profiler Candace DeLong was a guest on this program in January 2023.
00:29:44.500 And she had this to say about Kohlberger and women. 0.98
00:29:47.460 One of the things I find interesting and possibly telling, a lot of female friends from high school, college, 1.00
00:29:59.340 and even recently in his grad program talk about him, various things to say.
00:30:06.420 No former girlfriend or former intimate person has come forward.
00:30:14.140 Possibly because, you know, it could be, oh my gosh, you know, was I wrong to be involved with this guy?
00:30:20.820 But I wonder if he simply hasn't had an intimate relationship, a romantic relationship.
00:30:31.260 And the reason I think that is, without question, this was a targeted murder.
00:30:41.760 And one of the victims, the two blondes, was brutalized, stabbed many more times than the other one.
00:30:53.460 I think she was probably the target.
00:30:56.300 One of the things that I think of regarding, pardon me, motivation is, was this motive?
00:31:05.880 There was no sexual assault, but there was certainly a display of anger and rage and possibly revenge.
00:31:17.580 There are many murders, and it's happening more lately, by men murdering women in this way, anger, multiple stab wounds.
00:31:30.520 It's not, it's rarely a gunshot.
00:31:33.940 It's a stabbing someone, of course, is in their face, personal, I hate you, I hate you, that kind of thing. 0.84
00:31:40.220 And that's what we see here.
00:31:43.180 So I am wondering if he, well, there's actually a term for it, Megan, and it's in cell, which stands for involuntarily celibate.
00:31:56.180 So, no lovers that we know of, never mind girlfriends, but what of his family?
00:32:01.960 His mother, Marianne, worked at the same local school district as his father.
00:32:05.480 She was an aide for special needs students.
00:32:08.940 He has two older sisters, Amanda and Melissa, the latter of whom was a mental health therapist.
00:32:15.460 Some reports indicate that both sisters were fired from their jobs after Brian's arrest.
00:32:20.980 And what about his father, the maintenance worker, the one who flew out to make that long trip across the country with Brian as the FBI was tracking him?
00:32:29.420 More here from my interview with Howard Bloom.
00:32:31.800 Here's his father, he's 67 years old, doesn't have a ton of money, clearly he's a janitor, he's been bankrupt twice.
00:32:40.360 He's going to fly out to, first you've got to go to Seattle, then you've got to fly on another flight into Washington, Pullman, go across country, and then you've got to quickly make a turnaround.
00:32:51.820 And he's looking, I think, and this is what people have told me, to try to get back, make amends with his son, say, you know, you were on the wrong path.
00:33:02.080 I tried to set you right.
00:33:03.320 There was a great deal of antagonism between us, but now things are hunky-dory.
00:33:08.160 This is a bright future.
00:33:09.420 You're going to have a good playing job.
00:33:11.240 You're going to be a professor.
00:33:13.180 All things are good.
00:33:14.660 Little does he know, you know, what's going on in his son's world.
00:33:18.360 I think this trip across America, this father-to-son journey, is the center of its own interesting little drama.
00:33:29.360 That trip took Brian back to his childhood home and to the place where police would ultimately arrest him.
00:33:36.520 Reports were that upon making their dynamic entry, police found Kohlberger awake just before 1.30 a.m.
00:33:43.540 wearing rubber gloves and packing his trash into Ziploc bags.
00:33:47.280 He did not resist, and the police effected a search of the premises.
00:33:52.120 From his parents' home, police recovered a cell phone, a laptop, two containers of a green leafy substance, along with black face masks, a black hat, and several articles of dark colored clothing, along with a book with underlining on page 118, as well as a Glock 22, .40 caliber handgun, and empty magazines.
00:34:14.980 They also found a Smith & Wesson pocket knife and more.
00:34:18.720 Back at Kohlberger's student residence in Washington state, police searched as well, retrieving a stained mattress cover, a computer tower, various receipts, the dust container from a Bissell Power Force vacuum cleaner, a fire TV stick with a cord and plug, and what's described as one possible animal hair strand.
00:34:40.340 His childhood home and his graduate student housing both poured through by police looking for any clue as to why, how, anything tying Kohlberger to this crime.
00:34:52.820 The home of his boyhood unhappiness and the adult home to what seemed a new kind of grievance and a freedom now to act on it.
00:35:01.300 Retired FBI profiler, James Fitzgerald.
00:35:06.480 Ted Kaczynski was about the same age when he launched his first bomb in Chicago, and four of them right after that.
00:35:13.780 Some people, it takes longer to mature in terms of their criminal sophistication or devolve in terms of their psychological disorders, and I'm not clinically saying that.
00:35:24.840 So who knows exactly what happened? I think a big factor with BK is that I think he grew up in northeastern Pennsylvania.
00:35:33.780 I'm from Philadelphia originally. I know that area. He went to school a little bit away from there.
00:35:38.140 But look what he finally did at the age of 28 or so. He travels 2,500 miles across country.
00:35:44.380 He's far away now, finally, from the tentacles of his parents, of his familial upbringing, you know, the home, the neighborhood where he grew up.
00:35:52.880 And he may be thinking for the first time, I am finally on my own. I can do what I want.
00:35:58.200 I don't have any daily reporting or weekend reporting to any parents or authority figures.
00:36:03.120 This is my opportunity. It doesn't mean he moved out there consciously to kill four people.
00:36:07.520 It's just that it was a Jupiter aligning with Mars, with a few other planets in there, and of course, not in a good way.
00:36:14.880 We have really this, I say, hodgepodge or mishmash of all kinds of personality issues finally coming together for him.
00:36:22.600 And again, for some people, that happens in a good way.
00:36:25.000 You know what? I'm finally going to college. I'm finally going to join the military, graduate school, whatever.
00:36:29.800 This guy, it was about paying back sort of a, as we call it, you know, a grievance collector.
00:36:37.280 Some psychologists use that term.
00:36:39.180 All these grievances that build up, the foundations were laid brick by brick by brick, and it's finally hit sort of this crescendo in, of all places, Moscow, Idaho.
00:36:51.800 And this aligns at the same time, and these poor four victims are the ones to pay the price for his, the alleged grievances placed against him.
00:37:03.780 Grievance and perhaps the related emotion of envy.
00:37:08.900 We're going to get to that soon.
00:37:10.660 Of course, this all presumes that Kohlberger is in fact guilty.
00:37:15.280 But what if?
00:37:17.300 What if?
00:37:17.960 Next episode, the prosecution's case against Brian Kohlberger, plus Kohlberger's defense.
00:37:24.560 It may be better than you think.
00:37:26.380 We'll see you tomorrow.
00:37:31.500 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. 0.94
00:37:33.680 No BS, no agenda, and no fear.