Bryan Kohberger’s former friends tell how he became addicted to heroin because he wanted ‘validation’
Bryan Kohberger is accused of murdering Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kerndole and Ethan Chapin last November
Former friends of the Idaho university murder suspect Bryan Kohberger have spoken out about the accused killer’s struggle with heroin addiction.
In an interview with the Idaho Statesman, high school friends and acquaintances of Mr Kohberger addressed previous reports that he was bullied because of his weight.
They told the newspaper that Mr Kohberger found in marijuana a way to cope with the constant targeting that he suffered as a teenager before he escalated to heroin addiction.
“I feel he was looking for validation, and that’s why he fell into that crowd,” Casey Arntz, who went to the same high school as Mr Kohberger, told the Statesman. “And honestly, it’s why he fell into the whole drug scene.”
Mr Kohberger stands accused of murdering University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kerndole and Ethan Chapin in an off-campus rental home in Moscow on 13 November. The 28-year-old was arrested on 30 December at his family home in Pennsylvania, where he had been spending the holidays.
He is now in custody at Latah County Jail in Idaho, awaiting his 26 June preliminary hearing for the quadruple slaying.
Ms Arntz recalled an instance in which Mr Kohberger asked her to drive him to pick up needles for his aunt because his car had broken down. In reality, Mr Kohberger was buying drugs from a dealer, Ms Arntz claimed.
“He literally used me to get it,” she added. “I was freaking out and not happy I had heroin in my car and didn’t even know.”
Around that time, Ms Arntz’s brother Thomas Arntz says that Mr Kohberger had a personality shift. He lost weight, became dependent on drugs and would allegedly try to play mind games with Mr Arntz to make him feel inferior.
“He always wanted to be dominant physically and intellectually,” Mr Arntz told the Statesman. “He had to show that he was smarter and bigger than you, and try to put me down and make me feel insecure about myself. So much of that was a torment and I didn’t want to be around him anymore.”
Mr Arntz added: “It almost seemed to me he had a desire to be the alpha ... For no reason, he’d try to grapple me and put me in headlocks when I didn’t want to. He tried to portray it as just boys being boys, but that’s not the way I ever took it.”
The addiction rapidly escalated, with Mr Kohberger withdrawing from college to go to rehab.
Among the revelations in the Statesman article is that Mr Kohberger developed an eating disorder that required hospitalisation and a tummy tuck surgery to remove excess skin — it had been previously reported that he lost weight but not to that degree.
Mr Kohberger was eventually able to resume his education.
He studied criminology at DeSales University – first as an undergraduate and then finishing his graduate studies in June 2022.
While there, he studied under renowned forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland who interviewed the BTK serial killer and co-wrote the book Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer with him.
As a criminal justice PhD student at WSU, he lived just 15 minutes from the victims over the Idaho-Washington border in Pullman. He had moved there from Pennsylvania and began his studies there in August, having just completed his first semester before his arrest.
Mr Kohberger was linked to the murders through DNA found on a knife sheath left behind at the scene, cellphone data and surveillance video of what prosecutors believe to be his white Hyundai Elantra leaving the scene after the slayings.
One of the victims’ surviving roommates was also able to partially describe the killer to investigators after she came face to face with him in the aftermath of the murders.
The murder weapon – a fixed-blade knife – was not recovered during the searches and it is still unclear where it may be.