The arrest of a graduate student in the murder of four University of Idaho students eased fears but raised a troubling new question: What was the motive?
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More anecdotes about what Bryan Kohberger was like as a classmate:
Mr. Kohberger grew up in suburban eastern Pennsylvania, attending Pleasant Valley High School in Brodheadsville, where former classmates and peers recalled that he had an analytical mind but could sometimes be cruel. Thomas Arntz befriended him while riding the school bus around 2009. He said that their friendship ended in 2014 after lighthearted “ribbing and jabbing” between friends turned “meanspirited,” with Mr. Kohberger sometimes putting him in a headlock hold.
“Over time it just got so, so bad that I just shut down when I was around him,” said Mr. Arntz, now 26. “I eventually just had to cut ties with him.”
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Mr. Kohberger was a quiet person who liked to work alone but came across as smart, said Brittany Slaven, who took several classes with him at DeSales. She recalled an instance in one of Dr. Ramsland’s classes when students were asked to look at photos of a crime scene and figure out what happened; she said Mr. Kohberger was quick to come up with ideas.
He seemed to show a particular interest in crime scenes and serial killers, Ms. Slaven said.
“At the time it seemed as if he was just a curious student, so if his questions felt odd we didn’t think much of it because it fit our curriculum,” she said.
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Another student said Mr. Kohberger seemed interested in the thought processes of criminals while they committed crimes and less interested in the social factors that might lead people to do them, saying that he believed some people were just bound to break the law. The fellow student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared that speaking publicly could jeopardize his safety, described Mr. Kohberger as the black sheep of the class, often taking contrarian viewpoints and sometimes getting into arguments with his peers, particularly women.
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The classmate recalled one instance in which Mr. Kohberger began explaining a somewhat elementary criminology concept to a fellow Ph.D. student, who then accused him of “mansplaining.” A heated back-and-forth ensued and the Ph.D. student eventually stormed out of the classroom, leaving behind her laptop and coffee, he said.
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Mr. Kohberger was also a teaching assistant in a criminal law class during the fall semester, said Hayden Stinchfield, 20, one of the students in that class. He said that Mr. Kohberger often cast his eyes down while speaking in front of the students, not looking at the class directly, giving the impression that he was uncomfortable.
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Students said Mr. Kohberger had a strong grasp of the subject matter but was a harsh grader, giving extensive critiques of assignments and then defending the lower marks when students complained as a group. Later in the fall, roughly around the time of the killings, Mr. Stinchfield said Mr. Kohberger seemed to start giving better grades, and the assignments that once had his feedback scrawled across every paragraph started coming back clean.
