The true crime ecosystem had been wildly speculative-one might even say deranged -in its attempt to understand the motivation behind Bryan Kohberger’s killing of four University of Idaho students in 2023. Although the defendant has recently admitted to the massacre and has been sentenced, he has never revealed his motivations. As the saying goes, nature abhors a vacuum. This is especially the case when faced with such an inexplicable and seemingly senseless spasm of violence that destroyed four young lives. Enter True Crime bloggers with their sincere, but in my view, misplaced attempts to fill the void and give voice to likely intentions and drivers of Kohberger’s deadly actions. The speculation has been wanton and almost totally without a factual foundation. Some bloggers, for instance, claimed that Kohberger had a fascination with pornography that somehow led him to kill the students. But research indicates that a lot of men, and increasingly women, are porn-enthusiasts, some with a fetishistic preoccupation. But such obsessive fantasizing doesn’t prompt premeditated murder. Others speculated about him being withdrawn and socially isolated, with limited social skills. That could be true, maybe even likely, but that provides no basis for understanding why he committed these heinous acts. One must always consider the base rate, or the frequency of a behavior occurring among members of an identified group. So, for instance, what is the percentage of socially isolated and unskilled men who randomly commit mass murder? It is tiny, so it’s ruled out as a risk factor for such an offense.
Was Kohberger a member of the Incel media community? Was his deadly explosion the result of sexual frustration? Maybe he erupted in a misogynistic rage? Again, the police found no evidence to suggest that he harbored a chronic resentment and disdain for women. And what about the fact that one victim was a male?
It was speculated that Kohberger was obsessed with one of the victims and contacted her on Instagram. This was an incorrect assertion made by her distraught family, as the authorities have found no such evidence.
After an exhaustive investigation by police and prosecutors, no definitive motive was identified, and no evidence of a personal connection between Kohberger and any of the victims was found. His personal history does not include any major risk factors, such as prior violence, serious mental disorder, or prior criminal activity that would have portended a potential deadly wickedness. The police found no evidence of a sexual element to the murders.
Kohberger was a PhD student in Criminology with a special interest in serial murders. Some speculated that his interest in serial killers reflected a pre-existing thirst to kill. Alternatively, he might have been seduced and infected by exposure to the deranged minds of those he studied. Again, all this is an interesting speculation, but essentially meaningless because there is no evidence to support any of these theories. Always think base rates! How many scholars studying serial killing have perpetrated mass murder?
Knowing so little about the case and with so much unfounded speculation, I’m hesitant to contribute my two cents to the confusing maze of guesses about Mr. Kohberger and his motives for such brutality. Many in the true crime community have done so and have been far off. Even more troubling, some innocent people linked to the case have been stalked, and some have been unfairly speculated about as potential suspects.
This endless theorizing about Mr. Kohberger derives from an understandable urge to develop a logical explanation for such aberrant violence. What makes cases like this so baffling is that, when a violent and aberrant act is committed by someone for no apparent reason, an idiosyncratic internal logic is typically at play. An objective reason for the action is not easy to identify or comprehend by the examination of external events. As a forensic psychologist, I have evaluated 1000s of defendants, some of whom committed heinous acts of violence. On the other hand, as a psychoanalyst in private practice, I have listened to many patients who have never committed an act of violence, but have expressed violent thoughts and impulses, even murderous ones. What were the determining motivations and psychological factors that led Kohberger into the former group?
Grounded in my experience as both a forensic evaluator and psychoanalyst, I suspect that, given the premeditated viciousness of the killings, Mr. Kohberger has a personality disorder and was driven by an internal fantasy life that was violent and privately festering for a long time. It’s why the killings seemed to express a personal rage, because in some ways, the murders were psychologically personal. His inner imaginary life was likely the genesis of his interest in serial murders.
However, and this is a significant caveat, verification of my thoughts would require direct access to the defendant and conducting an in-depth psychological examination. Alternatively, a careful review of the existing evidence, along with clinically-oriented interviews with family, friends, and others, could prove very effective. I performed that type of analysis in three episodes of the documentary, Plan to Kill, which is a series about defendants who had no criminal or psychiatric history, and no prior history of violence, yet committed acts of exceptionally violent, premeditated murder.
Bryan Kohberger’s developmental history, with its familial, social, and biological dimensions, has shaped his lived experience, his internal emotional life, and his imaginary world. Access to the personal and particularized psychological information I described above could lead to an understanding of his motivations, including the inclinations that drove his seemingly inexplicable brutality.
