Bryan Kohberger’s former professor is making an unsettling confession.
Dr. Katherine Ramsland, a leading forensic psychologist at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, says she fears that some of the courses she taught Kohberger as an undergraduate and graduate student may have “inspired” him.
On Wednesday, Kohberger pleaded guilty to the murders of four University of Idaho students in a bid to avoid the death penalty. Kohberger fatally stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Ethan Chapin, 20, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Madison Mogen, 21, in their off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho in November 2022 while he was earning a Ph.D. in criminology at Washington State University.
“I have to look at the framework of what I taught and wonder, did I inspire him in some way?” Ramsland admitted to NewsNation in an exclusive interview published Tuesday. “But I can’t second-guess that because I may have inspired somebody else to become an FBI agent.”
When pressed by NewsNation about her fears of possibly inspiring Kohberger, Ramsland was candid.
“It’s terrible, very hard. And it’s not just what happened to the victims. I really thought Bryan Kohberger was a promising student who really could have made a mark in this career in a very positive way,” she said. “So, disappointed, angry, and, you know, very … shocked that this is who he turned out to be. And horrified for the victims and their families. Just horrified.”
Ramsland said she met Kohberger, now 30, in 2018, when he transferred to DeSales University as an undergraduate student who was majoring in psychology with a focus on forensics, which made Ramsland his adviser. She said that Kohberger took several of her classes as an undergrad and graduate student, some of which focused specifically on antisocial behavior, psychology sleuthing and analyzing the minds of serial killers.
She noted to NewsNation that her syllabus included her book, “Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer,” which she co-wrote with Rader and described to NewsNation as “intense.”
Ramsland said she remembered Kohberger as a “respectful, intense and curious” student, and that he didn’t exhibit “any red flags.”
Although Ramsland said that most experts who teach in her field are aware of the possibility that some students “might become offenders,” she said that the “vast majority of our students will not, and will instead go into a field like law enforcement, FBI, [or the] Secret Service.”
Despite this knowledge, Ramsland said she was still “completely floored” by his December 2022 arrest, and would be interested in studying Kohberger.
“I’ve been thinking about that for two and a half years. I would, this is my work. If he wanted to do that, I would,” she said. “And now, within the framework of this what we do — to try to look at developmental trajectories, the triggers — so that we can see the red flags faster, we can prevent people like this from wreaking the havoc that they do.”
She continued: “So if he wanted to do that, I know that he’s got the intellectual capacity to do it — to be self-reflective, to help think through how his life came to this. And, so, I would definitely do it if he were willing. It would be hard, but I think because I have so much material from him, I have questions for him that I think nobody else but me could ask.”