Idaho murders sister interview: Bryan Kohberger’s family has been quiet since his arrest in the national sensational murder case involving four college students. His sister now expresses their grief and uncertainty.
Bryan Kohberger Sister Speaks On Idaho 4 Student Murder: A Crime That Shocked the Nation
Tragically, four college students were discovered dead in a residence close to the University of Idaho campus in the autumn of 2022. The news of their murders quickly traveled throughout the nation. Mel Kohberger, who was ready to start a new work as a mental health therapist in New Jersey, could not resist experiencing a sense of worry.
Bryan, her brother, lived within a fifteen-minute drive of the murder site. No one was wanted by the authorities. Bryan, on the other hand, was the kind to go for late-night runs when his door was unlocked.
She recalled warning him, “Bryan, you are running outside and this psycho killer is on the loose.”. Just watch out. Thanks for asking how he was doing; he’ll be OK, he told her.
The Arrest That Changed Everything
While her brother was spending the holidays with his parents in Pennsylvania in early December, Ms. Kohberger received a call from Amanda, her sister. Law enforcement agents had broken into the residence in the middle of the night, and put Mr. Kohberger in handcuffs.
“She was like, ‘I’m with the F.B.I., Bryan’s been arrested,’” Ms. Kohberger recalled. “I was like, ‘For what?’”
The response: “The Idaho murders.” For a short period, she wondered whether it was a hoax. Then a sensation of sickness overcame her.
Literally overnight, the mystery of who stabbed four young people to death in an ordinary neighborhood full of college students gave way to a new question: Why Mr. Kohberger, a reclusive but dedicated Ph.D. student who had been on a path to a career in criminology, may have mounted a silent and brutal attack on four students from another university who had no apparent connection to him. The arrest upended the life of the Kohberger family.
Public Scrutiny and Media Frenzy
The intense media attention and online speculation shaped the Kohberger family reaction as tabloids and amateur sleuths scrutinized their every move.
Tabloids stationed cameras outside their house, shooting photographs of Ms. Kohberger’s father cleaning up the damage after the police raid. Online sleuths analyzed video of Amanda appearing in a 2011 horror film that had also contained stabbings. Ms. Kohberger said she was offended by online statements from individuals who questioned if her family had known all along that Mr. Kohberger was the murderer.
“I have always been a person who has spoken up for what was right,” she remarked. “If I ever had a reason to believe my brother did anything, I would have turned him in.”
Years of Silence and a Decision to Speak
For the last three years, the Idaho murders family speaks out only now, after Bryan Kohberger guilty plea and four life sentences, having remained silent out of respect for the victims’ families.
For the last three years, the family has stayed quiet, avoiding interviews even as Mr. Kohberger pleaded guilty and accepted four life sentences. His parents and siblings wanted to do all in their ability to honor the victims’ relatives throughout the legal process, Ms. Kohberger said, and even today she voiced anxiety that she would say anything that may further traumatize them. Her family’s struggles, she repeated multiple times, cannot compare to what other families have faced.
And although the family still does not want to address the crime itself, Ms. Kohberger consented lately to tell part of their narrative, saying she thought she could bring out the truth about her family and what it has been like to be pulled into the core of a real crime epic.
Living in the Shadow of a High-Profile Crime
Family members of high-profile criminals have long battled to negotiate the collateral notoriety placed upon them. The Kohbergers found themselves not only quizzed by investigators but exposed to the scrutiny of an array of amateur sleuths, part of a true crime fever that has drawn millions of people together in Facebook groups, Reddit forums and YouTube channels.
When her brother was detained, Ms. Kohberger had been preparing to start a career as a mental health counselor, but her prospective company was so swamped with questions that she decided to relinquish the position. More recently, a book about the case surfaced on Amazon with an author labeled as “Melissa J. Kohberger,” implying that someone was attempting to earn money by selling a fraudulent version of her narrative.
“It’s confusing,” she remarked. “It’s painful. It’s like being victimized but not truly being a victim.”
Childhood, Family, and Values
Mr. Kohberger grew up in the Poconos in a household based on family. With readings of classics like “Little House on the Prairie” and teachings based in their mother’s Catholic background, Ms. Kohberger said she and her brother and sister had been infused with ideals of loyalty, self-reliance and putting the needs of others ahead of their own.
Some of her best childhood memories were the evenings when her parents, MaryAnn and Michael, ordered takeaway meals and woke up the children, spreading blankets out on the balcony. There, they all peered up at the sky, chatting about astronomy and the marvels of the planet.
Struggles, Addiction, and Recovery
Friends have noted how Mr. Kohberger had been overweight as a teenager, and had a standoffish disposition — something the family now feels was tied to autism. He faced relentless bullying, Ms. Kohberger said. He wrote online over those years of having little emotion, no sorrow and feeling as if he was “an organic sack of meat with no self worth.” Later, he sank into heroin addiction.
When he took Ms. Kohberger’s phone, and sold it at a mall to acquire more drugs, she said, her parents called the police. Ms. Kohberger said they were all frightened that he was on a route to an early death — as finally occurred with one of his pals.
But once he went through therapy, she added, Mr. Kohberger looked to be on a better trajectory.
Academic Ambitions and Family Pride
She and her brother both had an interest in crimes and psychology: She was pursuing a profession in mental health treatment. He started exploring a future in police, going on to study psychology at DeSales University in eastern Pennsylvania before being accepted into a Ph.D. program in criminology at Washington State University.
“We were all so proud of him because he had overcome so much,” she added.
He was still socially uncomfortable and might be harsh, she added. They regularly argued. Still, she stated she never saw him get aggressive. When she once attempted to push him out of the home after an argument, he de-escalated the situation by holding back her hands.
That absence of a violent background was one reason the family found it so disconcerting to discover that Mr. Kohberger was accused of such a horrific act.
The Days Before the Murders
In the days before the attack, the family had assembled for Christmas. Ms. Kohberger recalls being pleased to see her brother back home in Pennsylvania, and embracing him firmly. To meet the rigorous diet he now followed, his mother had cooked him vegan cookies for the holidays. They played TV party games.
One night, when Ms. Kohberger was cleaning up in the kitchen, a sharp edge of foil injured her finger to bleed, and her brother, initially expressing revulsion at the sight of blood, helped clean the wound and wrap it with a bandage.
During those days at home, Ms. Kohberger said, she recalled him just briefly referencing the Idaho killings, indicating that detectives were still seeking for the murderer.
Investigation and Surveillance
In a University of Idaho murders update, investigators appealed to the public for help identifying a white Hyundai Elantra seen near the victims’ residence.
Investigators, after passing weeks without identifying a suspect, had appealed to the public in early December and asked assistance discovering a white Hyundai Elantra of a model year between 2011 and 2013 that had been spotted circling around the victims’ residence on the night of the deaths. Ms. Kohberger, knowing that her brother had driven a white Elantra back from school, said she had momentarily wondered whether they were searching for the same model, but then found that his was from a different year — 2015.
Unknown to the family, detectives had selected Mr. Kohberger as a suspect within days of his return to Pennsylvania. They were already surveilling the residence.
In the early hours of Dec. 30, 2022, when Mr. Kohberger and his parents were alone in the home, police officers came in with rifles drawn, smashing glass and rushing to throw him in handcuffs.
Evidence Presented in Court
In court, law enforcement authorities alleged that Mr. Kohberger’s DNA was recovered on a knife sheath that had been placed near to two of the victims. Amazon records indicated he had bought the identical kind of knife.
And then there was the white Elantra – detectives verified that the automobile observed near the murder residence matched the kind he drove.
Remembering the Victims
Ms. Kohberger said her mother has been praying everyday for the relatives of the victims. Ms. Kohberger herself has inserted the names of the victims — Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin — and their birthdays into her digital calendar so that she would receive reminders about them.
During holidays, she said, her family has felt anguish that Mr. Kohberger could not be with them, but then she would think about the victims’ families and the pain they must be facing.
“The idea is making me so emotional that I can barely speak to you about it,” she remarked in tears.
Voices From the Victims’ Families
Steve Goncalves, the father of Ms. Goncalves, said he felt compassion for Mr. Kohberger’s sisters and the scrutiny they had suffered in recent years. But he said he still had lingering doubts about what Mr. Kohberger’s parents could have known or suspected.
True Crime Culture and Public Judgment
The explosion of true crime Idaho murders discussion online intensified speculation and deepened the pain for both families involved.
As the criminal case advanced, the Kohberger family was upset by the considerable conversation surrounding it. Mr. Kohberger’s dispassionate characteristics, which the family ascribed to his autism, were something many viewed as proof of his being a monster. (Research has not shown any compelling causal correlations between autism and violent crime.)
There were suggestions that he had connected with several of the victims on social media or had gone to a restaurant where two of them had worked, but detectives ultimately disregarded such assertions.
All of the attention, Ms. Kohberger said, made it impossible to conceive that her brother could ever receive a fair trial, and she could see that the wild conjecture around the case felt painful to the families and friends of the children who died. Once an obsessive true crime fan herself, she now looks back on it with sorrow.
“It’s human nature to be curious about darker things,” she remarked. “That’s how we keep ourselves safe. But I believe we should strive to join together for a genuine crime culture that is significantly more protective and sensitive to the families of the victims.”
Maintaining Family Bonds
The family has sought to help Mr. Kohberger. Since his arrest, they have conducted frequent contacts with him, avoiding talks about the facts of the case. Ms. Kohberger said she has kept him informed on life back at home, and he sometimes chats about his new interests in psychology — the Myers-Briggs personality assessment and the “bicameral mind” idea, in which the two sides of ancient human brains worked separately.
For his birthday, Mr. Kohberger requested his family to bake a cake that he believed his sister Amanda would appreciate. He requested Mel to blow out the candles.
Guilty Plea and Sentencing
Through it all, they have attempted to reconcile the son and brother they loved — and still do — with the guy presented by prosecutors and the police, the man who pled guilty to murdering four young people with no apparent cause.
During Bryan Kohberger sentencing, the family struggled to reconcile the man they loved with the crimes described by prosecutors.
When he entered the guilty plea in July, his parents attended, with his mother crying in the front row.
Weeks later, when he was sentenced, Ms. Kohberger had wanted to attend, but she remained home to care for her father, who had acquired heart issues. They watched the hearing together on television.
Some of the victims’ family members, given an opportunity to address the court, poured their wrath at Mr. Kohberger, who sat primarily in blank-faced quiet. “You’re definitely a demon from hell,” one family member declared via a lawyer. “The truth is, you’re as dumb as they come: stupid, clumsy, slow, sloppy, weak, dirty,” added another.
The court noted that he could not find any redeeming trait in Mr. Kohberger “because his grotesque acts of evil have buried and hidden anything that might have been good or intrinsically human about him.”
The Drawing and a Final Gesture
Through it all, Mr. Kohberger sat with his hands in his lap, nothing in front of him save a pen and a piece of paper that looked to have a little sketch on it. On the internet, several of the amateur sleuths following the events zoomed in to inspect the drawing, suggesting that it seemed to be a black heart.
“Bryan Kohberger keeps creepy drawing close during sentencing for quadruple killing,” a tabloid headline stated.
In actuality, Ms. Kohberger claimed, it was a heart encircled by brilliant colors that she herself had sketched for her brother. Even if she could not be there in person, she added, she wanted him to know that he was loved.