ID - 4 Univ of Idaho Students Murdered - Bryan Kohberger Arrested - Moscow # 64

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BK chose heroin...he's a drug addict who moved near Moscow and became fixated on a house of four innocent promising, friendly, non herion addict college students. I don't care what problems BK had prior to moving to Pullman. He was well enough to relocate and well enough to drive a car.
RBBM
I think this is very important to remember & consider.

Yes, he has a concerning medical history (if Tapatalk is true) & perhaps even a psychiatric one, but he was still functioning at a high enough level to successfully complete ADLs (activities of daily living), attend classes, etc.

Focusing on his more than adequate level of functioning is especially important if his defense uses medical & other challenges he has experienced to mitigate his planning & choosing to act on that plan.

These are not crimes of sudden passion. They are not happenstance. They are calculated & premeditated. (ALL MY OPINION ONLY)

Kaylee might be enjoying backpacking in Europe right now; Maddie might be hanging out with her boyfriend & his family; Ethan might be practicing his golf swing; and Xana might be visiting her sister in Pullman were it not for BK's choices.
 
...

What I want to know is what prompted them to escalate to 911?

JMO. Speculation.

I am speculating as well. But I don't see the two survivors spending much time on their phones before the 911 call.

Don't college students usually need to urinate when they first wake up, just like everyone else? (This is particularly true if one has been out drinking the night before, but I don't know what the survivors did on the night before the murders. I'm not accusing them of breaking laws.)

IIRC, the middle floor bathroom adjoined X's room and the bathroom door was only inches or a couple of feet from her bedroom door. Unless the intruder closed X's door carefully before he left, I doubt (survivor) DM could have used the bathroom without seeing some small part of the inside of X's bedroom.

Given the slaughter in X's room, I suspect anything DM saw caused an immediate escalation of concern.
 
BK chose heroin...he's a drug addict who moved near Moscow and became fixated on a house of four innocent promising, friendly, non herion addict college students. I don't care what problems BK had prior to moving to Pullman. He was well enough to relocate and well enough to drive a car.
He was supposedly addicted to heroin years ago. Is there any proof that he was still taking it?
 
Sometimes, all a person has is their career, and being confronted publicly can rock their foundations.
RSBBM
Snipped and bolded by me for focus.

JMO. Maybe he was triggered by being admonished by his supervisor over the harsh grading situation.
On top of all the stressors of being a Ph.D. student and TA and the Visual Snow syndrome primary and secondary effects.
The balancing act seriously failed.
Not making excuses for behaviour, or justifying any actions, just thinking towards motive.

@Imogenia (I appreciated your whole post, I am roughly a quarter way through Killing for Company, I had to stop due to finals and term papers due before Christmas and then got hooked on WS before back to classes and assigned reading this week. You have reminded me to take time for 'hobby' reading, even though I keep buying more).
 
I ask again -- where is the source confirming BK was at risk for losing his TA position, or was being penalized for the low grade he assigned his students? Thanks in advance!
What’s up?
The OP made it abundantly clear that it was speculation based in experience and plastered the posts and replies with JMO IMO.
 
Their was a Pi Phi party that Kaylee wanted to go to. Maddie and Xana are both in Pi Phi sorority. There has been no mention at all of a party at their house with 150 people the night before until the TV show last night. That explains all those cups and dishes stacked up in their kitchen.
Were there two parties?


Mom - Kaylee just left home, she just left on Friday.. she left on Friday morning to go to a Pi Phi party and she had just bought a brand new Range Rover and she just.. she contemplated all day long, back and forth, whether she should go home because she just really wanted to show it to Maddie and some other friends and whatnot. And, she's just like 'mom, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna go to the Pi Phi party and I'm gonna.. Maddie's gotta see my new ride' and I'm like 'for sure', like I mean, it was nice, it was really nice. She'd just bought it that day, all her own, and I talked to the girls on... she had a fun time on Friday night, both of the girls, and then both of the girls texted me on Saturday.
 
I might have to challenge you (nicely! :)) on him being "well enough to drive a car". He really didn't drive all that well IMO, and was pulled over a fair amount. So while I get what you were saying 'He's "well enough" to drive a car'... he certainly didn't 'drive a car very well'. ;)

All MOO!
He was no Ricky Bobby that’s for sure!
 
What’s up?
The OP made it abundantly clear that it was speculation based in experience and plastered the posts and replies with JMO IMO.
I don't recall the original source saying that BK's TAship was in jeopardy. Of course, it may have been, the prof may have said so, or maybe BK just feared that his position at WSU was at risk.

In any event, essentially reprimanding--even if it wasn't stated as such, it was a public humiliation--an employee in front of 150 colleagues, clients or however one thinks of undergrads, was cruel.

BUT, as someone with years of experience as a TA and as a professor supervising TAs, the degree to which student evaluations rule universities is both astonishing and appalling! (And I did my grad work and teaching at one of the most prestigious universities in the USA; I also, FTR, had very high numbers, which is how I kept my job.) Treating students as customers instead of protégées has had--IMHO--a deleterious impact on higher education everywhere!

Even though, in my experience, TAs are evaluated separately, students' feelings about TAs tend to spill over into evaluations of the professor. If s/he was getting complaints from scores, dozens or even just tens of students, I don't wonder that the prof was very concerned (which explains but does not excuse the solution s/he chose).

***

BTW, technically, a TA ("teaching assistant") usually holds classes of his/her own with smaller groups of students. (E.g., when I taught a class of 120-150, I had four TAs, each of whom taught 3 one-hour small group discussions per week.) A TA may also grade papers, run the AV equipment, etc., whatever the prof requires. (There are cases of abuse where TAs are treated as personal assistants, but this is very much against policy.)

A grad student who merely grades papers is often hired as a "Reader". This is true at UCLA, where I spent most of my academic career. I don't know how WSU classifies student employees.
 
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Possible ‘thud’ info… just to add to the mix

My home is a split level with wood floors. If you step too hard on the upper floor it can sound like a ‘thud’. The ground level and below ground level makes no noise.

Just something else to think about over the next few months while we wait for more real details to be provided. Lol
And something falling over, like a large book or whatever. Depends on the house and how individuals describe noises.

I live under a busy flight path, and my very old shower doors can sound the same as a flight going over the house (when they open/close) if I'm in the next room. Sounds are described by someone's experience.

I appreciate your insight regarding differences in flooring.
 
BK chose heroin...he's a drug addict who moved near Moscow and became fixated on a house of four innocent promising, friendly, non herion addict college students. I don't care what problems BK had prior to moving to Pullman. He was well enough to relocate and well enough to drive a car.

Doesn't everyone here agree that nothing in BK's background excuses the murders he allegedly committed?

I can't keep up with all the posts, but my sense is people are trying to understand why he did it if he did it.
 
I haven't posted in a while, but have been thinking about the case. The longer I think and have digested the case, it is my opinion at this time that BK intended to kill only one person that morning, and that was Maddie. Kaylee had moved out, so I don't think he expected her to be there. He'd been watching for some time, so I think he was pretty sure of their movements. I think he had somehow become obsessed with Maddie and chose her as a target. Perhaps he had propositioned her and she rebuffed him - she had a serious boyfriend.

I think he was surprised to find that she wasn't alone in her bed that night. I think he just felt he was going to go in there and do whatever, likely hold a knife to her throat and rape her. But his plan went awry. When confronted with two girls in the bed, he panicked and as they awoke, he decided to kill them.

I think he was going to leave after that, thinking he'd get away into the night. But Xana saw him so he went after her and had to kill her and Ethan as well. I honestly do not think he saw DM. He panicked and ran out.

The reason I feel this way is for a couple of reasons. First of all, most first time killers don't try to kill 4 people all at once. They would start out slow and work their way up. Also, if you are going to kill a whole bunch of people in one house, why stop at 4? Why not search every room and get them all? I think he meant to go in and harm and/or kill Maddie and the rest just happened.
I was telling someone the same exact thing yesterday. Agree with this 100%!
 
It seems obvious to me that they both fell asleep in their rooms. They had been to a football game and party all day and well into the night. They were likely intoxicated, exhausted and fell asleep. When I was a college student, I was up all night and slept all day. It is not a stretch to assume that they fell asleep about 4:00 - 4:30 am and slept until noon.

Exactly. Except per the PCA, we know DM woke up and was awake and seeing an intruder around 4:20 a.m. (Yes, it's hearsay at the moment as a legal technicality, but I think most of us believe it is what she told LE.)
 
IMO, what if there were one really really brilliant student who didn’t like BK and wanted to get back at him?

A brilliant student would be somewhat unlikely, as murdering four people to get back at someone you dislike is a huge, huge risk.

All versions, including a pact with someone to kill, look pretty sci-fi to me at this moment, because when it comes to murders, people tend to work either in big groups, or alone. Dyads exist, but more likely, the second person turns into a witness.

Except for some local dealers, I would not put it past them, but they usually won't kill four if they target one. JMO.
 
I know what both of you mean, and the TapATalk posts he made at such a young age are heart-wrenching. The possibly neurological or neuro-psychiatric clinical features he described sound truly dreadful, and, if they were unabated through all the important and increasingly stressful intervening years up until now, I think that things were just too difficult for him to continue masquerading as ‘normal’.

What do we do with him? Idaho does not have an insanity defence (or it may be thought that he is quite sane and fit to plead).

On Insanity.

Denis Nilsen (ex army and former policeman) strangled a series of vulnerable homeless young men in his 1980’s London flat, then sat with them, enjoying having someone with him of an evening. Sometimes he lay with them, seeing something profound in the picture made.

Thereafter came the boiling of skilfully dismembered body parts and disposing of some down the drains.Dyno-Rod was called as the street drains became badly compromised and the smell was bad. The police were summoned as the numerous lumps of flesh, at first thought to be chicken, were deemed possibly human in origin.

Nilsen cooperated meekly with the police as they took him away.

Brian Masters wrote Nilsen’s story in his prize-winning ‘Killing for Company’, which included the trial. The opposing legal teams instructed their own psychiatrists, who presented diametrically opposed diagnoses. Where, Masters asked, is the highly prized objective psychiatric diagnostic truth? Was Nilsen insane or not?

Nilsen was adjudged not insane and died in prison a guilty man a few years ago.

Masters wrote that anyone who sits eating toast prior to dashing out to work at the unemployment office, while a human head is yet again boiling on the stove, is insane in his soul.

The book is frequently urged to be read by those studying psychiatry, and the backlash from some professionals could be, according to Storr (top psychiatrist), due to resentment at a different academic pointing out some uncomfortable truths.

Psychiatry does not have the answer to everything. Notions of the devil were interestingly explored in the book also. If he exists, he will be adept at presenting evil as attractive, while cleverly convincing many that he is but an imaginative construct, used by the guilty as an excuse for their own wholly human evil behaviour.

This ‘insanity of the soul’ (or whatever it is) I think needs to be expertly studied if it is to be understood.

Maybe more specialised brain scans will demonstrate brain lesions that can, (in a future time), be treated. Obviously, it would be better to prevent another young person progressing down this route.

It seems to be that some young men have difficulties living on their own, while simultaneously experiencing promotion problems at work because of their ‘awkward personalities’, as well as not being able easily to strike up informal rapport leading to romantic relationships.

In these two cases at least it would appear that external work stressors might have caused them to ‘snap’ and embark on murderous rages, the young and innocent being the victims.

Maybe we have to be more gentle when confronting people with perceived faults.

Sometimes, all a person has is their career, and being confronted publicly can rock their foundations.
M. Scott Peck, author of the RoadLess Traveled, was derided for his groundbreaking, pioneering book, The People of the Lie.
I believe it to be a must read for navigating through the worst.
An excerpt from the Introduction:
This book has been most difficult to write for many reasons. Preeminent among them is that it has always been a book in process. I have not learned about human evil; I am learning. In fact, I am just beginning to learn. One chapter is entitled "Toward a Psychology of Evil" precisely because we do not yet have a body of scientific knowledge about evil sufficient to be dignified by calling it a psychology. So let me add another note of caution: Do not regard anything written here as the last word. Indeed, the purpose of the book is to lead us to dissatisfaction with our current state of ignorance of the subject.
 
I now agree with everyone that stated early on, after the arrest, that this murderer will go all-in with a trial. Initially I thought that if there was a damaging case, he would take a deal.
 
And something falling over, like a large book or whatever. Depends on the house and how individuals describe noises.

I live under a busy flight path, and my very old shower doors can sound the same as a flight going over the house (when they open/close) if I'm in the next room. Sounds are described by someone's experience.

I appreciate your insight regarding differences in flooring.
Thank you. Thank you for your insight as well.
Your experience I can relate… my dad was in the United States Air Force. Even different types of planes can each create different sounds.
I currently live approx 10 miles from an Army Depot and they detonate to eliminate old equipment etc. and every blast causes my windows to rattle, and yes that’s 10 miles away.

I agree with you 100% that sounds, descriptions of sounds etc mean different things to each person.

Edit: I just did a check on distances…Correction- the Army Depot is 10 miles away but the actual blast site is only 2 miles away
 
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Doesn't everyone here agree that nothing in BK's background excuses the murders he allegedly committed?

I can't keep up with all the posts, but my sense is people are trying to understand why he did it if he did it.
I do believe that as the PCA indicates, he would have chosen to deliberately commit those horrible murders.
 
A brilliant student would be somewhat unlikely, as murdering four people to get back at someone you dislike is a huge, huge risk.

All versions, including a pact with someone to kill, look pretty sci-fi to me at this moment, because when it comes to murders, people tend to work either in big groups, or alone. Dyads exist, but more likely, the second person turns into a witness.

Except for some local dealers, I would not put it past them, but they usually won't kill four if they target one. JMO.

I'm not picking on the OP, the following applies to all of us!

Though not a lawyer I worked at law firms for decades. Every lawyer I know says we all watch too many crime shows on TV! Such shows have plots where the first suspect is always innocent and the most unlikely POI is always the culprit.

Those of us who have been jurors have had to avoid thinking of fictional narratives as part of our "general experience".
 
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