(snipped by me)
(bolded by me)
According to the July 3, 2025 episode,
Special: True Crime Legend Dr. Ann Burgess on Bryan Kohberger, of the Surviving the Survivor podcast:
(bolded by me)
So Katherine Ramsland won’t be able to clarify her definition of “self-reflection” at this time.
However, it might be helpful to explore a bit of context provided by a July 2 New York Post
article that recaps Dr. Ramsland’s NewsNation interview:
(bolded by me)
Ramsland based her statement about Kohberger’s intellectual capacity on her experience as his professor and advisor at DeSales, starting in the fall of 2018 when he was an undergraduate.
She said the following about BK as a student:
I realize many here have no interest in understanding the forensic psychology of Bryan Kohberger, but that is literally Dr. Ramsland’s job.
She explains the usefulness of her research about serial killers such as BTK, as well as other serious offenders, in the A & E piece,
Exploring the Mind of BTK: Dr. Katherine Ramsland on the Benefits of Getting to Know Dennis Rader:
(bolded my me)
Dr. Ramsland wants BK to be her research subject, not her bosom friend. She must approach him or any other research subject intellectually and dispassionately so that her own emotions are not manipulated by her subject. She had lots of practice doing this with Dennis Rader.
If BK agrees, Ramsland might better understand his “criminal type” so she can, as she told NewsNation, identify warning signs, developmental trajectories and other triggers.
To do this, she doesn’t need BK to be humble, courageous or empathetic. She only needs him to be intellectually self-aware. He demonstrated this self-awareness of his own mental state in his teenage Tapatalk posts, and he likely studied psychology and criminology so he could understand why he felt and thought the way he did.
With their shared vocabulary of forensic psychology, Ramsland may guide BK to recount his descent into madness and villainy.
Perhaps she’ll discover that he turned to the dark side when he started abusing heroin. As revealed in the July 3 New York Post article by Vicky Ward linked earlier in the thread, Kohberger started stealing and lying at this time to fund his heroin habit.
Ramsland may also discover that BK was radicalized soon after, at age 19, when Elliot Rodger became an incel phenom.
Tragically, BK may have been saved if he had been honest with his parents about his struggles instead of typing into the Tapatalk void, if he had deepened his ties with his childhood friends instead of pushing them away with drug use, or if he had met with his priest for moral guidance instead of studying the criminal mind.
But we need people like Katherine Ramsland to study the criminal mind, including the tainted mind of BK, to help us understand how to prevent another young man from following such a dangerous path.
IMOO