In the past two months, a homicide in Idaho, USA, has aroused the interest of countless people.
It is weird, ruthless, cold-blooded, and has a textbook version of the criminal growth path.
When the doctor of criminology, who is addicted to academia, picks up a butcher knife to practice his knowledge, a cruel and absurd murder occurs...
Four victims were Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
They are all University of Idaho students in their early 20s.
Among them, Madison and Kelly are good friends who have known each other for many years, and Xana and Ethan are a couple who have just fallen in love, and the relationship between the four is good.
(Madison and Kelly)
(Shana and Ethan)
Because of the average dormitory conditions, Madison, Kelly, and Xana rented a house not far from the university.
It was a small three-story white building with six bedrooms, two on each floor. The girls often party inside, and once reported noise pollution by neighbors, and the police visited the door twice to warn them.
It looks pretty safe here, but in hindsight it doesn't.
The surrounding houses are scattered, and the nearest neighbor is quite far from the small white building. At night, the area is darkly lit, and without street lights, it is impossible to see who is doing what.
(Little White House at Night)
Perhaps the criminal also thought so, so he set his sights on the little white building.
On November 12, 2022, Madison and Kelly went to Hi Pi, a sports-themed bar downtown. Xana and Ethan get tired and go to a party organized by the campus fraternity.
By about 1:56 a.m. on the 13th, the four returned to the small white building one after another (Ethan is not a tenant, he just wants to live with his girlfriend), and the other two female tenants in the house heard their return.
For the next two hours, the young men did not sleep. Some people made 7 phone calls to their ex-boyfriends, some people made phone porridge with their boyfriends, and some people were hungry and ordered takeaway and received food at about 4 a.m.
(The person who was in the small white building that night)
After 4 o'clock, the little white building finally quieted down, and everyone seemed to be asleep.
At about 4:12, a female tenant sleeping on the second floor was woken up by a strange noise. She later recalled that it was as if it was Kelly and her dog barking.
She also faintly heard a phrase that seemed to be saying, "There is someone in the room."
The female tenant opened the door to check and found nothing, everything seemed to be an illusion. She closed the door, but after a while there were strange noises again.
(The street where the crime occurred)
When she opened the door for the second time, she heard crying in Shana's room, which she shared on the second floor, and a man saying, "It's okay, I'll help you."
It's a little couple arguing, right? The female tenant silently retreated back and continued to sleep.
At 4:17, crying, thumping and barking dogs appeared again in the house, which were recorded by security cameras near the small white building. The female tenant heard it, and she opened the door for the third time to check, and her hair stood on end in an instant.
A strange man dressed in black and wearing a mask walked towards her, and the man passed her and walked out through the sliding glass door. Police speculated that he might not have seen her.
(Criminal Brian Koberg)
The female tenant stood still, her body frozen from too much fear. After a while, she jerked herself into her room, determined not to go out again.
That man was the murderer of the night. For reasons that are not yet known, no one called the police until 12 a.m., and the police found Madison, Kelly, Xana and Ethan, sleeping on the second and third floors, all dead.
The killer slashed them with a knife, causing multiple fatal wounds to the chest. All died in bed, unbound and with no signs of sexual assault.
The surrounding walls were dripping with blood, even seeping outside the house.
(Blood seeping outside the house)
In Madison's bed, police found a brown knife holster, which was undoubtedly from the killer.
(Common knife sleeves)
The case shocked Idaho as well as the United States.
The brutal killing of four promising university students has left the local community terrified. Students at the University of Idaho chose to take an early vacation and fled back to their hometowns, and many professors canceled classes.
(Dead young man)
Police organized 130 law enforcement officers to investigate the case, first testing DNA on knife holsters.
If the murderer has a previous conviction, he only needs to match his DNA with DNA in the state's crime database to find out who he is. However, the murderer's past is very innocent and there is no result.
The police then went to check the surveillance video around the crime.
There was a white fifth-generation Elantra that looked suspicious, and from 3:29 a.m., the car passed the Little White Tower three times, and by 4:04, it was heading towards the Little White Building.
At 4:20, passers-by saw the car quickly leaving the complex.
(The trajectory of the car that night)
The time is right, and the shape is so strange, the person driving the Elantra is most likely the murderer.
Police encouraged the public to submit clues about the Elantra and, a few weeks later, they had a list of 22,000 suspicious Elantra vehicles.
After layers of screening, the police finally locked up a suspect:
Bryan Kohberger, 28, holds a doctorate in criminology from Washington State University.
(Brian Koberg)
Koberg is an academic elite with a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's degree in criminal justice, and entered Washington State University in August 2022 for a Ph.D. as a teaching assistant in the criminal justice department.
He lives on campus at UW, not in the same state as Xiaobailou, but the two places are very close, only 8 minutes by car.
Koberg's car is none other than the white fifth-generation Elantra.
Police pulled up cell tower records to find out where Koberg's cell phone was at the time of the murder. Coincidentally, from 3 to 5 a.m. that morning, Koberg's mobile phone was inexplicably disconnected and could not find its location.
By 9 a.m., Koberg appeared next to the small white building with his mobile phone, not knowing what he was doing there. The signal tower shows that he has approached the small white tower at least 12 times in the past six months.
The phone's location is somewhat suspicious, but it's not strong evidence. The police returned to the knife holster again.
They uploaded DNA from the knife sleeve to Popular Family Tree.com, a vast library of genetic information that people use to find distant relatives and lost relatives. The results showed that the DNA matched multiple of Koberg's relatives.
(A few days after the crime, Koberg and his father were stopped for speeding and rear-ending.)
Police followed Koberg to his parents' house and stole the trash they had left outside the door. Comparing the DNA on the garbage with the knife holster, it was found that 99.9% matched perfectly.
Koberg was the killer of four college students.
When Koberg was arrested on December 30, his classmates, relatives and friends expressed disbelief. He has no reason to kill, he is a doctoral student appreciated by professors, with a bright mind and a great future.
What's more, he didn't know Madison, Kelly, Xana, and Ethan, who belonged to two universities and didn't have any intersection.
The victim's parents found it difficult to understand. Mr. Koberg's neighbors had some clues, saying Mr. Koberg had talked about the murder and, in a bystander's tone, said he thought it was a "crime of passion."
That is, Koberg has no reason to kill, he kills if he wants.
Police continued to dig deeper into the connection between him and the victim, and during this time, Mr. Koberg's high school classmates came forward and said they had seen the clue.
Koberg had a bad time in high school, and because of his obesity, he was often bullied until his junior year he lost 100 pounds and slimmed himself down to a bamboo pole.
They noticed the change in him, but his popularity did not improve. The slimmed down Koberg became very mean and violent, manipulating his friends with words and pinching each other's necks.
Privately, he began to smoke heroin, which was avoided by those around him.
After graduating from high school, Koberg went to a community college, where he told his friends that he had quit drug addiction and that his life was getting better. Everyone rejoiced for him, noting that all his energies and interests were focused on the study of criminology.
"Getting along with people is not his forte." An anonymous friend said, "I think he wants to understand human beings through criminology, and then understand himself." ”
While attending community college, Koberg posted on Reddit, inviting inmates who had been released from prison to share "all thoughts, emotions, and actions from the beginning to the end of the crime."
He was genuinely interested in criminals and once said that his dream was to study the psychology of well-known criminals. To that end, he also applied for an internship at the Washington State Pullman Police Department.
I don't know if this is considered to be a mad learner, in order to understand the mentality of criminals, he simply turned into a criminal himself...
Of course, it is more likely that he was not normal in the first place.
It was found that Koberg suffered from severe mental illness when he was young.
At the age of 16, he wrote on a mental health forum: "I felt like I was like a worthless bag of meat. When I hug my family, I look at their faces and I don't feel anything. It's as if I'm watching a video game, with even fewer emotions. ”
"Everything in life is meaningless in my eyes, all nothing, detached from reality. It's like playing a game. I felt like I was dirty, like I had soil in my head, and my head was always drowsy and confused. ”
"I often find myself doing simple human interactions, like I do with role-playing games; I can see what's going on in front of me and I'm a little engaged, but I can pause the game at any time and turn my attention to reality. ”
From the description, Koberg seems to have depersonalization disorder, that is, the feeling that the world is not real, as if living in a dream. Because everything is not real, the perception of the self disappears as if it does not exist.
Another disease that seriously affected him was snow opsinosis.
Koberg suffered from snow vision in 2009, and since then his vision has been blurred, and snowflakes have constantly flashed in front of his eyes. He said he was depressed since then and constantly thought about suicide.
By 2017, he said online that he had adapted, "I accepted the snowflakes in the vision... But that can also be a bad thing. ”
(On the right, what is seen by a snow sufferer)
A friend in high school said that Koberg had seen many doctors for treatment, and strictly controlled his diet in order to reduce symptoms, but the effect was not much. He was so concerned about it that he was paranoid.
Snow optic disorder is a visual disease that has nothing to do with spirituality. However, some researchers have pointed out that people with snow disorder have a higher probability of anxiety, depression and depersonalization than ordinary people.
The Idaho tragedy could be the madness of a mentally ill person, or it could be that Koberg's lawyers figured out a few words from years ago to get the judge to sympathize.
Whether it's simple madness, for the sake of academics, four lives can no longer be exchanged.
I hope Shana and Kelly can rest in heaven...
ref：
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/13/us/idaho-murders-bryan-kohberger.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/crime/idaho-murders-bryan-kohberger-affidavit-document-b2262254.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/idaho-murders-bryan-kohberger-accused-killer-friends-overweight-bullied-high-school/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab7e&linkId=196256262
https://slate.com/technology/2023/01/bryan-kohberger-university-idaho-murders-forensic-genealogy.html
https://nypost.com/2023/01/13/bryan-kohberger-said-he-felt-blank-had-no-emotion-as-a-teen-report/
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He is a perverted and antisocial personality himself, and chose criminology to satisfy his interests._Fighting
He would have sinned no matter what he learned.
The criminology major gave him knowledge and counter-reconnaissance abilities.
Pineapple Ventricles: The most terrifying thing is this kind of sober madman, and the serial shark case must first start from the psychological model, but this kind of person has no way to study his motives and the laws of crime...
Source: Those things in the UK