Bryan Kohberger officially pleaded guilty in court, admitting to murdering four University of Idaho students in November 2022. The government had plenty of evidence… but never a motive. So unless they force him to tell everyone, we may never know why he did it.
There’s been speculation that he became obsessed with serial killers as a criminology student, or that he was a budding serial killer. But while we’re entertaining theories, we might as well listen to an expert.
Dr. Carole Lieberman is a forensic psychiatrist. And she thinks it might come down to… looking. Speaking to DailyMail.com on Monday, she explained her view.
RELATED: Bryan Kohberger’s Parents Release Surprising Statement After Guilty Plea
The investigation revealed that Maddie Mogen was likely the intended victim. She and Kaylee Goncalves were sleeping in a bed together, and Kohberger went straight to the living room. It’s believed he didn’t intend to kill anyone else, but he encountered Xana Kernodle in the hallway because she was still awake at 4 a.m., having ordered the news from the door. He then killed her sleeping boyfriend, Ethan Chapin , who was sleeping in the living room with her. The two roommates, who had hidden in their bedrooms, were untouched.
So, if we believe he intended to kill Maddie—or perhaps Maddie and her best friend Kaylee—the question remains: why? Dr. Lieberman thinks it’s because of their appearance. They are very similar-looking girls, and she believes they evoked feelings of rejection that Kohberger had been dealing with since her early teens:
“It’s especially significant that Maddie and Kaylee resemble the blonde cheerleader who rejected him in high school. He took the anger he built over the years, toward that first love and every subsequent woman who rejected him, with every bloody edge of the knife.”
Yeesh!
Who is this blonde high school cheerleader?
That would be Kim Kenely . Kim contacted the FBI after seeing the suspect in the shocking Idaho murder case, someone who also scared her as a child. Her mother explained that Bryan would leave his love letters in her locker—apparently crushing on her for months:
“He would always say, ‘Oh Kim, I think you’re really pretty.’ As well as weird comments. She didn’t give him the time of day.”
Kenely’s mother admitted:
“When kids are little, they’re mean. They don’t say, ‘Oh my God, thank you, but no thanks.'”
Dr. Lieberman thinks Kohberger fixated on Maddie and Kaylee because he saw them as unattainable cheerleader archetypes.
In Dr. Lieberman’s view, Kohberger’s resentment built up as he continued to be rejected—in something of a vicious cycle:
“If he met a girl, they would be turned off by him. Not just because of his appearance and the fact that he was a little strange—they probably wouldn’t know exactly why—but because they could sense this anger and rage inside him. He already had this chip on his shoulder, and he was building up all this anger… which made it harder and harder for him to meet a girl he wanted.”
Kohberger reportedly went to the pizza place where they worked, and his phone was pinged near his home several times in the months leading up to the murders. And in recent weeks, an Instagram account apparently belonging to him had messaged Maddie and/or Kaylee multiple times, always simply asking:
“Hello, how are you?”
So he felt the same rejection over and over again, says Dr. Lieberman:
“This is an extended revenge on them and all the women who went before them who rejected him.”
This is all speculation, of course—though it comes from years of training and experience. But the document believes there is at least some evidence that the murder was fueled by intense rage:
“This bloody scene suggests it had to be someone very angry. And they used a knife, which suggests a very personal attack.”
Hmm. What do you think of this theory?
[Image via Law&Crime Network/YouTube/Maddie Mogen/Instagram.]
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