The man accused of murdering four University of Idaho students is said to have authored online posts years ago describing an inability to feel emotions, at one point writing that he could do “whatever I want with little remorse,” The New York Times reports.
“I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self worth,” Bryan Kohberger allegedly wrote as a 16-year-old in 2011, according to the Times. “As I hug my family, I look into their faces, I see nothing, it is like I am looking at a video game, but less.”
Kohberger, now 28, is facing four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary in connection with the deaths of Kaylee Goncalves, Maddie Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, who were found stabbed to death inside an off-campus residence on November 13 in Moscow, Idaho.
The Times said the posts were on Tapatalk under the username “Exarr,” which is the same username as an email address linked to Kohberger. The person who used that email account listed their residence as Effort, Pennsylvania, where Kohberger lived growing up.
According to the Times, the Tapatalk posts also contain information consistent with Kohberger being the author, such as references to his birthday and details that friends knew about him at the time.
In the posts, Kohberger reportedly said that he felt disconnected from people and shared various mental health struggles, including the “constant thought of suicide,” depression, anxiety, and an inability to feel emotion. Kohberger also described a neurological ailment, referred to as “visual snow,” which causes dots to obscure vision.
Kohberger allegedly wrote that when looking in the mirror, he would see a “sickly, tired, useless and stupid man” and did not feel worthy of living, according to the Times. He also wrote that he felt he had treated his father “like dirt” and said he considered his dad a good person.
The posts indicate that Kohberger began feeling a lack of emotion around the time the visual snow began in September 2009.
“Nothing I do is enjoyable,” Kohberger allegedly wrote, according to the Times. “I am blank, I have no opinion, I have no emotion, I have nothing. Can you relate?”
This past fall, Kohberger was a first-year criminology Ph.D. student at Washington State University in Pullman, Washington, about 9 miles across the Washington-Idaho border from Moscow.
Kohberger is being detained without bail. According to ABC News, a judge scheduled his preliminary hearing for June 26.
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[Feature Photo: Bryan Kohberger, left, who is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022, looks toward his attorney, public defender Anne Taylor, right, during a hearing in Latah County District Court, Thursday, Jan. 5, 2023, in Moscow, Idaho. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, Pool)]
