Case file 030Killers & PoisonersModern (1980–today)

Killer Crush and the Incel

The man accused of killing four Idaho students out of rage at women who wouldn't have him now gets love letters from women who adore him.

Aug 4, 202342 min
00:00 / 41:55
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In this episode

  • Why a man locked behind bars can feel like the safest partner a trauma survivor ever had
  • Stacys and Chads: the incel vocabulary that may explain who was inside that house
  • 16,000 members and a shuttered subreddit: the online shrine to "the divine masculine"
  • "Pappa Rodger": the online handle that may have given something away
  • What an FBI arrest in April 1996 has to do with a word nobody was using yet

“The word senseless gets thrown around a lot. But here it fits because nothing here makes any sense.”

The story

Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin were never supposed to be famous. In the pre-dawn hours of November 13, 2022, the four University of Idaho students were stabbed to death in their beds, likely while they slept, inside the off-campus house they rented in Moscow, Idaho. The man accused of killing them now sits in a jail cell facing the death penalty. He also has fans: women who adore him, and who believe it is their destiny to save him.

A town that seemed safe

Moscow has been called one of the best small art towns in America and one of the best college towns. It is walkable and friendly, with an award-winning farmer's market and a crime rate 82% lower than the national average. It was one of the last places anyone would expect a quadruple homicide.

The coroner said the weapon was probably a "pretty large knife." A social media video showed two of the victims at a food truck just hours before they died. For days the campus sat deserted and the murders went unsolved. Then authorities arrested 28-year-old Brian Kohberger in eastern Pennsylvania. Kohberger, a former graduate student in criminal justice at Washington State University, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of felony burglary, and was held without bail. Prosecutors announced they would seek the death penalty.

Love letters to a cell

Forensic psychologist Dr. Carole Lieberman, author of the bestseller Bad Boys, traces the attraction back to childhood. "It's like an addiction to heartbreak," she said. A girl who feels her father never found her lovable can grow into a woman chasing that same wound, hoping to rewrite the ending. Freud called it repetition compulsion, the urge to replay an old injury. Dr. Soman Doss, a forensic psychologist in London, adds that abuse survivors gravitate toward "what's familiar instead of what's safe." A man behind bars can't hurt anyone. The woman holds all the control, maybe for the first time in her life.

None of this is new. Charles Manson, Ted Bundy and Richard Ramirez all had admirers. Even Jeffrey Dahmer drew female fans, who somehow managed to overlook not only his cannibalism but his sexuality. What's new is the megaphone. More than 16,000 people joined the "Justice for Brian Kohberger" group on Facebook, one of many fan pages there. Reddit shut down a subreddit (a topic forum on the site) called "Bryan Kohberger's girls" for its creepy parade of fangirling and shrine-building. Posts hail Kohberger as "the divine masculine" and spin theories about a Deep State plot to frame him, a plot more tangled than Inception.

One Kentucky woman named Brittany became the public face of the crush, and the target of a pile-on. She committed no crime by falling for him. In Newsweek, Lieberman urged her to get therapy and find a relationship in real life, with "a real life boy, not Pinocchio." For Brittany and others like her, the crush became a crusade.

Stacys, Chads and a crime of passion

Before Kohberger was even arrested, Lieberman wrote in Newsweek that the killer was an incel, short for involuntarily celibate: a man who has been rejected by women all his life and has let the rejection curdle into rage. Two things tipped her off. The first was the savagery. When a father asked how many times his daughter had been stabbed, he was told "it isn't about stab wounds." The victims had been shredded. The second was who died: three beautiful, popular sorority women and the boyfriend of one of them. Incels call women like that Stacys, and call their boyfriends Chads.

Kohberger himself told someone after the killings that it looked like a "crime of passion." Lieberman agrees, though the passion was rage. She points to a middle-school girl named Kim who rejected him, a Barbie-like blonde who resembled Kaylee and Maddie, and she doesn't think the resemblance is a coincidence. He was rejected all through high school, and later at a bar he frequented in Pennsylvania. On one social media forum he called himself "Pappa Rodger," a nod to a notorious name.

The weird part

Brian Kohberger is accused of slaughtering the kind of popular young women who would never give him the time of day, and now that he's behind bars, women are writing him love letters.

The supreme gentleman

That name is Elliot Rodger, who killed six people in Isla Vista, California, in 2014 before killing himself. He left behind a 107,000-word manifesto and a YouTube video in which he promised to punish women for not wanting him and called himself "the supreme gentleman." The International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague later called his crimes "misogynistic terrorism," and the U.S. Secret Service labeled them "misogynistic extremism." In the online chat groups where incels egg each other on, Rodger is a hero. Lieberman argues that Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, fit the profile too. He had no relationship history and no sexual history, and the one woman who kissed him soon broke it off. Nobody had the word incel when the FBI arrested him in April 1996.

Kohberger spent a lot of time on Instagram. He followed all three of his female victims and kept sliding into Maddie's DMs, the app's private direct messages. She ignored him, the way women are taught to ignore strangers writing "hello, pretty, hello, beautiful." Ignore it and he'll just go away. Not this time. Lieberman also points to evidence that he returned to the scene hours after the killings: "incels like to be known for when they kill people or when they have a conquest like this."

Why, not who

At his arraignment, Kohberger declined to enter a plea, so a not-guilty plea was entered for him. His trial was set for October 2, 2023, but that date was widely seen as a placeholder. In a death penalty case, the cell phone data, forensics and DNA all take time to process. A plea deal that takes execution off the table is considered the least likely outcome.

No verdict will bring back Kaylee, Xana, Maddie or Ethan, and no verdict will make sense of what was done to them. Brittany isn't the first woman to believe her love can redeem a killer, and Kohberger isn't the first incel accused of turning his grievance into bloodshed. People will spend years asking who Brian Kohberger is. The better question is why he is.

The transcript

Chapters & full transcript5,967 words
Chapters
  1. 00:10Four names, one quiet town
  2. 05:36The addiction to heartbreak
  3. 11:21Shrines, crusades and a pile-on
  4. 18:15Stacys, Chads and rage
  5. 23:12The supreme gentleman's shadow
  6. 37:31A trial date, and the question why

This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio and may contain errors. Times are approximate, since ad breaks can shift them by a minute or two.

00:02

Madison, Mogan, Maddie, Kaylee Goncalves, Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin. We shouldn't know their names. They weren't supposed to be famous, especially not this kind of fame. The kind of fame that comes from a bewildering tragedy, from an act of violence so extreme and seemingly so random that there just isn't any way to make sense of it and forget making peace with it.

00:30

That's not possible. The man who took those four lives is in a jail cell. He's facing the death penalty. And like other cold-blooded killers before him, he has adoring fans, women who love him and are convinced that it's their destiny to save him. It's been called one of the best small art towns in America. It's also been called one of the best college towns in America.

01:24

Walkable, friendly, with an award-winning farmer's market and a crime rate 82% lower than the national average. It's the kind of place you might like to live, the kind of place you'd feel good about sending your kid off to for college. It's one of the last places you'd expect to be the site of a grisly, horrifying, quadruple homicide.

01:48

But on the morning of November 13th, 2022, Moscow, Idaho joined the ranks of other idyllic corners of American life where the unspeakable has happened. In the pre-dawn hours on that tragic day, four college students were brutally slain inside the home they were renting. The four University of Idaho students found dead in an off-campus house last weekend were stabbed to death in their beds, likely while they were sleeping.

02:21

That's according to the coroner. Police in Moscow, Idaho have not identified a suspect or found the murder weapon, but the coroner said it was probably a, quote, pretty large knife. Their loss has been devastating and they were bright lights in our community and are deeply missed and remain in our thoughts and our prayers.

02:39

We've been working with Moscow police since we were notified on Sunday of the crime. We've helped with, um, we've helped when asked and continually pushed for information whenever possible knowing that we cannot interfere with the important work and good investigations that are occurring. We just want justice for these victims.

03:03

More than four days since the gruesome murders at a house off campus at the University of Idaho, the town of Moscow remains in shock. The campus is deserted. The murders are still unsolved. This social media video shows two of the victims at a food truck just hours before they died. Today, the county coroner released the cause of death.

03:22

They were all murdered, um, through stabbing with some kind of a, probably a larger knife. Identified as freshman Ethan Champin, his girlfriend, Xana Kernodle, Kaylee Goncalves and Madison Mogan. It's being called a crime of passion. The killer or killers used an edged weapon such as a knife. Authorities say a suspect in the brutal killings of four University of Idaho students has been arrested in Eastern Pennsylvania.

03:49

Authorities arrested 28 year old Brian Christopher Kohberger in Pennsylvania today in connection with the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students. 28 year old Brian Kohberger has been held here at the Monroe County Correctional Facility since his arrest early Friday morning. Now he is facing four charges of first degree murder and one count of felony burglary and he is set to appear before a judge here in Pennsylvania tomorrow afternoon.

04:14

Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty against Brian Kohberger, the man accused of murdering his daughter and three other students at the University of Idaho. It's a relief. I'm glad that we're in a situation of strength and the evidence is there and we feel that we can, you know, they can go forward with this. 28 year old Brian Kohberger, a former graduate student in criminal justice at Washington State University, is being held without bail at the Lauda County Jail in Muscow, Idaho.

04:53

Charged with four counts of first degree murder and one count of felony burglary, Kohberger has not yet entered a plea in the case. Prosecutors have announced they will seek the death penalty. And as Kohberger sits in his cell awaiting trial, he's at the center of two perplexing and bizarre phenomena. One, the adoration and infatuation of female fans.

05:18

As crazy as that sounds, right? No matter how groomed the dating scene is, surely we can do a little better on Hinge or Bumble than an accused killer. And two, Kohberger is an incel, as in involuntarily celibate. Let's start with Kohberger's lovestruck fans. According to forensic psychologist Dr. Carole Lieberman, the fascination some women have for men who've committed violent and unspeakable acts goes much deeper than physical attraction or misguided sympathy.

05:53

Lieberman has written numerous articles and books, including the bestseller Bad Boys. Why we love them, how to live with them, and when to leave them. She's often tapped as an expert witness in criminal trials. She also writes a fascinating column for frontpagedetective.com called Inside the Criminal Mind. It's like an addiction to heartbreak.

06:18

And it starts, you know, with, as I said, with the father and being heartbroken that you don't feel that your father loves you enough or doesn't find you lovable. And that heartbreak, you get addicted to that and you find a bad boy or two who will repeat. It's Freud's repetition compulsion, meaning that you were wounded by something that happened to you in your childhood and you keep on being attracted to that same kind of situation to replay it because you're hoping that it's going to, you can make it come out with a happier ending this time.

06:58

But of course, you know, unless you've gotten therapy in between, you can't make it come out to a happier ending. It's easy to sit and scroll your phone or watch the news and sit in real judgment of the women who send love letters to people like Brian Kohberger. It's nothing new. You've seen it over and over again from Charles Manson to Ted Bundy, Scott Peterson to Steven Avery, the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Eric, Dylan Roof, Nicholas Cruz, David Berkowitz, Chris Watts, Richard Ramirez, even Jeffrey Dahmer had his cohort of female fans who somehow managed to overlook not only his cannibalism, but his sexuality.

07:41

Like, girl, that dog don't hunt. Dr. Soman Doss, a forensic psychologist based in London, shares Lieberman's view and says that a history of trauma can be the driver of this most peculiar fixation. He said, these women have either been physically, sexually or emotionally abused. They tend to gravitate towards what's familiar instead of what's safe.

08:04

We see this phenomenon in victims of abuse. And while it may seem to make no sense for a woman who's experienced trauma and abuse to seek out a violent partner, Dr. Doss suggests that these kinds of relationships actually feel safe. The object of their affection, however horrific as crimes, is tucked away behind bars.

08:27

According to Dr. Doss, this gives these women control of the relationship, an experience that is both new and empowering. And if we're honest, doesn't the idea of rescuing a lost soul, of being the hero of that story, have an incredibly magnetic pull? For some people, anyway. There is a big pull of the wounded. You know, we see women see bad boys as wounded, you know, these poor little wounded birds.

09:03

And so we want, it brings out sort of a maternal or nurturing kind of part of our personality. But yes, there are degrees of that. You know, I've been watching, I'm talking about, I've been watching the Netflix of Jeffrey Dahmer. Did you ever see that? Yes. Yes. Paul Dahmer. And I think I'm on, I think I've seen four of the ten so far.

09:32

And it is so amazing. It's a, they've really done an excellent job. And it is so amazing how, even though you know, before you watch one minute of it, you know the horrible things that he did, right? Killed all these guys and ate some of them and, you know, he was just brutal and horrible and had no remorse. So you know all that.

09:57

Well, actually in the movie, in the movie, well, it is a movie. In this dramatization, he did have some remorse, but in any case, when you see the childhood that he had, it's like you can't help in a way be drawn into thinking, well, you know, the poor boy, his mother was crazy and a drug addict. And she left him alone when he was 17 and because his parents got divorced and his mother just took off and his father didn't even know that she had taken off.

10:33

And she was, he was left alone in this house and you kind of, and then you see different things that happened to him and all that. And you can't help but feel sorry for him, even though, you know, he, he perpetrated all these horrible crimes. And so, you know, I mean, I don't know that that's bad. I mean, in a sense, can you really, we're human.

10:59

And so we can feel for people who have tragedies happen to them and then they end up going down the wrong path. You can go back a long way, notorious names like John Dillinger and Al Capone, and you'll find they had worshipful pen pals while they did time in the penitentiary. But social media has changed the game in a big way.

11:25

There are over 16,000 members of the Justice for Brian Kohberger group on Facebook. And that's just one of many fan pages on the site. Reddit shut down the Bryan Kohberger's girls subreddit for violation of their moderator code of conduct. While that particular subreddit didn't boast an enormous membership, it made up for that by being an extra creepy parade of fangirling and weird quasi-religious shrine building in Kohberger's honor.

11:56

One Kentucky woman in particular, Brittany, well, I don't want to use her last name. You can easily find it in a Google search. It's not like there's any way to protect her privacy at this point. It's just in my other life, I'm a social worker. I have compassion for Brittany and others like her. She's committed no crime in crushing on Kohberger.

12:18

Yeah, it's gross and inexplicable, but the woman needs help, not a dog pile from the true crime industrial complex, no matter how well intentioned. I hope that makes sense. So we have decided to withhold her name from this podcast for what little that's even worth. Social media gives people like Brittany something the old prison pen pal situation couldn't, a public forum in which to both express her feelings for Kohberger and to advocate for either his innocence or the damage done to him by society.

12:53

It becomes a crusade as much as a crush. What's more intoxicating than a righteous crusade? And what better place to recruit fellow crusaders than Facebook? Unfortunately, social media cuts both ways and people like Brittany can be instantly and loudly condemned. Not surprisingly, that's how it's played out for her. It certainly has made it easier for these people to be vilified because, you know, people did write on her Facebook all kinds of mean things like, but you know, when people don't understand something, they're too ready to vilify it.

13:32

I mean, I'm not saying I'm not endorsing it, but, you know, yeah, I felt sorry for her. In fact, in what I wrote for Newsweek, I wrote about how she should get therapy so that she could then understand how to make more satisfying relationships in real life, you know, with a real boy, a real life boy, not Pinocchio, right?

13:55

I mean, social media, there are some really good things about it, but yes, it really kind of messes with our heads in a lot of ways. I mean, not just in terms of falling in love with men in prison, but just, you know, people who, for example, put doctor there photos and stuff like that and giving everybody an erroneous sense of what is really attainable and making people feel bad about themselves and all of that.

14:32

So, yes, and yes, also in terms of connecting, not necessarily to somebody in jail or prison, they aren't usually allowed to go on social media. Gossip is a hardwired human behavior. And long before social media, we had other gathering places to swap stories, share news and weigh in on the choices our neighbors were making.

14:53

But social media has a way of lending credibility to even the most outlandish takes because we tend to believe what we see and hear. And if we see and hear it often enough, it can develop the patina of truth. After all, wasn't it in our news feed? And let's get real and admit that most of us spend very little time fact checking and researching. Our lives are a nearly overwhelming cacophony of noise and pressure.

15:20

It's hard just keeping up with all of it. What a time to be alive. Am I right? But here we are casually scrolling Facebook or Twitter. I guess they call it X now, maybe liking a post about puppies. And there's a photo of Brian Kohberger being described as the divine masculine, along with what seems an entire community of people elevating the man to some sort of celebrity, if not godlike status.

15:49

There they are banging on about a conspiracy on the part of the Deep State or whatever to convict him of a gruesome crime he couldn't possibly have committed. And listen, the rhetoric goes way beyond innocent until proven guilty, way beyond it into territory more convoluted than the plot of the movie Inception. It makes your head hurt.

16:09

Yes, I know what you're talking about. It has to do with, yes, and you're not talking about, these are people, men and women, who have elevated him and who want to say that he's not guilty. And poor Brian Kohberger, you know, he's being railroaded and all of that. And it's not just or it's not primarily, it's not about women falling in love with him.

16:38

It's about people really saying that, trying to say that he's innocent. Now, these are the people who have had their own experiences where they have been the little guy, you know, David and Goliath. They can identify with that feeling of being railroaded, the feeling of the whole world's against you. They might have even had friends or family members or themselves gotten in trouble with the law, even if it's just a small jaywalking or something.

17:11

And they know that feeling of the whole big world is against you and so on. So they're trying to root for the little guy. And but it's gotten, it's blown up, you know, because this case is taking so long. I mean, you know, it's understandable and it's reasonable. He's facing the death penalty, so he should have as long as necessary to try to defend himself. But in the meantime, all these groups that you're talking about have been proliferating. And it's really, you know, gotten out of control in some because there's so much on social media, not just Facebook, but like like on Twitter or, you know, where people are posting things that they claim show that he's innocent.

17:59

You know, this is evidence, evidence that he is innocent because such and such, you know, people are posting things which really aren't accurate, but they're they're spreading this information that isn't accurate to try to defend him. There's something else about Brian Kohberger, something that feels uniquely of this moment in time, although there's nothing new about the phenomenon of a male unable or unwilling to for it, though, and a fresh rage that has found what looks like it's a perfect match in social media.

18:37

What's so interesting also, you know, I happen to be the first person I'm so proud of this because people have been copying me and pretending that they that they knew it all along. But anyway, at least I have it in print. Going back to good old Newsweek, it was an article in Newsweek where I said this before Brian Kohberger was even arrested, that he was an incel and that meeting, which means involuntary celibate, a man who has been rejected all his life by women, he who he wanted to date, who he wanted to have sex with.

19:21

And he has built up because of these rejections, he has built up a rage towards women. Now, the reason why I was able to say this, you know, I'm a forensic psychiatrist, so I know about these things. But the reason why I was able to say this right from the get go was because of two things. One, because of how bloody and vicious the scene was.

19:47

These four people were torn to shreds. And not just, you know, because one of the fathers asked, I think, someone who did the autopsy or knew about the autopsy, you know, how many stab wounds did my daughter get? And the person said, it isn't about stab wounds, like they were they were shredded. I mean, they might have said it a little more delicately, but that was the gist of it.

20:10

And so and there were four of them, four victims. And so anybody who could do that had to have had a lot of rage. And so I knew that. And the second part of it is who the victims were. They were these three beautiful, popular girls. And then the boyfriend of one of the girls. Now, incels have a term for these kinds of girls who are beautiful and smart and popular.

20:46

These girls were in for sororities and all that. Unattainable. The girls who would never go out with an incel, they call them Stacys. And the guys who are boyfriends of Stacys, they call Chads. So the killer was killing them. And so funny, because Brian Kohberger had said to someone after the crimes, he said, oh, I think it was a crime of passion.

21:17

And he was right. It was a crime of passion. You know, he was passionate about how enraged he was that these girls, we don't know for sure that he ever spoke to them. We know he followed them, at least some of them. But but the passion was, you know, how angry, how enraged he was towards them for not he knew that they wouldn't have given him the time of day.

21:43

So so it's kind of ironic that now that he allegedly did this crime, he is getting these love letters and so on. And plus now the girl who rejected him in middle school was this girl named Kim, who looked like Barbie, you know, blonde and attractive and so on. And who looks like Kaylee and Maddie. And I don't think it's a coincidence that he killed somebody who looked like the first girlfriend or the first girl who rejected him.

22:23

And he was rejected all through high school. He was rejected at this bar as it had more of a, you know, more recently at this bar that he used to go to in Pennsylvania and so on. So he has a lot of fuel for his rage. And it's just kind of ironic that only now, after he allegedly did this, he's getting other women to who he might want to who he would have wanted to go out with in real life, you know, if they and they probably wouldn't have given him the time of day in real life.

22:59

The incel, good grief, involuntarily celibate. And so getting laid is some sort of birthright. Excuse me if I find the whole thing exhausting and terrifying in equal measure. We have another mass killer, Elliot Rodger, to thank for mainstreaming the term. Rodger killed six people and injured dozens more in a spree attack in Isla Vista, California, in 2014.

23:25

Rodger took his own life after committing the crimes. Police found him inside his vehicle, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. But Rodger left behind two artifacts, a one hundred and seven thousand word written manifesto and a video he posted to YouTube. In that video, Rodger stated. For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection and unfulfilled desires, all because girls have never been attracted to me.

24:01

Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men, but never to me. I'm 22 years old and I'm still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for two and a half years, more than that, actually. And I'm still a virgin. It's been very torturous. College is a time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure.

24:27

Within those years, I've had to rot in loneliness. It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy. And yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman.

24:54

Hey, before you think, well, he was just crazy. The law enforcement community, both here in the U.S. and around the world, saw far more troubling pattern at work than just the maladjustment of one individual. In February 2020, the International Center for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague called Roger's crimes an act of misogynistic terrorism.

25:18

It was labeled misogynistic extremism by the U.S. Secret Service. Anyone spending any time on some of the social media sites, though, might just call it Tuesday. That's how rampant and common the rhetoric and hateful ideology of the incel has become on social media. So what is it about this current moment that has proved to be such fertile ground for an ideology like this to take root?

25:48

An ideology that has all the same markers as any extremist movement in groups and outgroups, crisis and solution strategies. Why are we here? Why now? Well, for one thing, social media, you know, there are these chat groups on social media for these men to air their grievances. During which they egg each other on, you know, they side with each other and they say, talk about all these horrible things that they would like to do to these women who rejected them.

26:31

And the others in this chat group go along and say, yeah, you know, yeah, you should do that. And I would do that. I would do that if someone did that to me, that kind of thing. And, you know, I just wrote a column on saying it was twin incels, Brian Kohberger and the Unabomber. The Unabomber was an incel. I mean, we didn't have that term or the term wasn't popular in any case at the time of the Unabomber.

27:04

So he wasn't, you know, called that in popular media. But really looking at his history, he didn't have a girlfriend. He didn't have sex with any women. There was a there was one woman who he went on a few dates with who kissed him. And then she didn't she stopped. She rejected him, too. She said she didn't want to go out with him anymore.

27:28

It might surprise you to hear Dr. Lieberman describe Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, as an incel. But all of the signs were right there in plain sight. No relationship history with women, no sexual history. We just didn't have the word incel in April 1996 when Kaczynski was arrested by the FBI. It took Elliot Rodger to make the term commonplace.

27:53

Elliot Roger has become like a particularly famous incel. And, you know, he's like they look up to like on chat rooms. Other incels look up to him. And, you know, these people, these men, if they they there is something sort of awkward about them, all of them. And which is why the women start to reject them. You know, it's not just that they aren't like they don't look like Brad Pitt.

28:25

You know, it's that I mean, not all of them are ugly. Certainly, Elliot Roger wasn't ugly. And but there's something some awkwardness that that turns women off. And and the thing is that once they start getting rejected by women, they become they project this awkwardness, this shyness, this feeling like, no, you're right.

28:50

I'm not good enough feeling out to women because they expect to be rejected again. So it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And, you know, Brian Kohberger, you know, he's written. We think he's written on for years that he's been writing on social media. And there was something more recently. I mean, around the time or within within the year, let's say, of this of the Idaho four killing, he wrote a on a on a on a social media forum, a regular social, not a not an incel one that we know of yet, but on a regular social media forum, he called himself Pappa Rodger.

29:43

And and so that was a big clue. People sort of missed that. But that was a bit he was given that away, you know, saying that he identifies with Elliot Rodger. But as you know, not every woman with daddy issues or a complicated childhood becomes fixated on violent perpetrators. Not every man who experiences rejection early in his dating career becomes an incel.

30:11

Clearly, there are multiple other factors at play. Right. And in the case of accused killer Brian Kohberger, there's still unknowns. Some of which will probably come out during his trial, especially anything that the defense could argue as a mitigating factor. What kind of childhood he had in terms of what his mother was like to him, what his father was like to him, what his sisters were like to him.

30:37

I'm waiting for that. You know, I can't wait to sort of dissect that. But clearly there were problems in that home. We know that the father filed for bankruptcy twice. And he had he had jobs. But so it's unclear what he was spending his money on, like why why they went into bankruptcy. His his into his sisters are now one of them was an actress, but they both are now involved in some kind of a one of the psychologists or they're both mental health professionals.

31:15

Of a certain degree. And so it's hard. I mean, the only thing that we he was in high school and I guess in junior high school, too, he was fat. He was pudgy. Actually, he might have been in junior high school, but then he became fat. And then between his junior and senior year, he lost a ton of weight and he was he was exercising.

31:41

And also he was using drugs. But so he lost weight by his senior year. Of course, then he was a drug addict. But so clearly, you know, he's getting into drugs or even he's being obese. That shows something. You know, was he sexually abused by his father, for example? You know, people, kids who are sexually abused do often become overweight.

32:12

It's a way of not just kids, actually. People, you know, even women who are raped become overweight because unconsciously it's a way of protecting themselves from attack from the outside world. You know, trying to put that layer of protection around them. Dr. Lieberman and I talked about the anger that drives the incel ideology that drives the whole angry man phenomenon we're seeing everywhere on social media.

32:44

So much of the discourse around race, gender inequality, the economy even is laced with vitriol and fury. So much of it aimed at women. Lieberman sees it as a backlash, maybe an inevitable backlash against feminism and the Me Too movement. But she also sees men like Kohberger as thinking mostly on a very personal level, ruminating on their own perceived slights and injustices, what they're owed and what they've been denied.

33:17

In the case of the incel, the grievances are always aimed squarely at women. And let me just say, speaking as a woman, you do know that we're human beings, right? We're not commodities. We're not public utilities that you're entitled to access. But then I guess maybe you don't know that or you don't want to know that.

33:44

That's probably more like it. Like I said, what a time to be alive. Anyway, believe it or not, the whole incel ideology is soaked through and through with nostalgia. Incels at their core pine for some idyllic former time when men were men and women had few options beyond marrying young and remaining in those marriages no matter what.

34:08

In that bygone fantasy world, all men were entitled to sex. Women couldn't refuse. And looks and status were options, not necessities. In the game of landing a mate. I don't know that the men who are incels are thinking really on a societal scale. You're just thinking they want to get laid, you know? I mean, certainly they're affected by.

34:34

I mean, they're affected by how women have changed and how perhaps women wouldn't have been as cruel to them, rejected them as cruelly as they do today. But, you know, I don't think that they're looking at it necessarily as where it comes from, as the cultural changes. But yes, all of these cultural changes do play a part.

34:58

Now, getting back to the women who idealized these broken boys, these misunderstood men, you might be tempted to think, well, we're also disconnected now, addicted to screens, choosing to scroll our phones at home rather than getting out there in the world and meeting people face to face. No wonder lonely, vulnerable women like Brittany are drawn to guys like Coburger.

35:24

But no, human beings have always wrestled with loneliness and alienation, though it's fair to say that COVID served all of us up a supersized dose of both. Now throw in social media, a site like Instagram, where you can lose hours scrolling through images of the carefully curated lives of strangers. And Coburger spent a lot of time on Instagram.

35:51

He followed all three of his female victims, repeatedly sliding into Maddie's DMs. She ignored the messages. Having men you've never met messaging, hello, pretty, hello, beautiful, hello, my dear, is a common experience on Instagram. And ignoring it is what you're supposed to do, right? Ignore it and he'll just go away.

36:16

Not this time. Former FBI investigator Peter Yakmetz told the New York Post back in January of this year that Coburger may have been trying to assert some dominance when he allegedly stabbed Maddie, Kaylee, Zana and Ethan. The nature of the crime suggests to Yakmetz not just rage, but an uncomfortable anger, anger born of Coburger's long history of being socially awkward, a person who struggled and failed to fit in.

36:48

Dr. Lieberman also pointed to evidence that Coburger returned to the scene of the crime just hours after the four students were slain. She said, quote, incels like to be known for when they kill people or when they have a conquest like this. On the one hand, he wanted to commit the perfect crime and not be caught. But on the other hand, he did want to be caught and be proud, in a sense, of what he did.

37:13

End quote. Four college students gone, four families wrecked by this brutal, unthinkable loss. The word senseless gets thrown around a lot. But here it fits because nothing here makes any sense. As of now, Coburger's trial is set to begin on October 2nd, 2023. Since Coburger elected to enter no plea at his arraignment, a not guilty plea was entered on his behalf.

37:44

And since this is a death penalty case, it's anticipated that the October 2nd date is really only a placeholder. The actual trial is likely to be delayed. Think of the evidence that has to be processed, everything from cell phone data to forensics and DNA. And then there's always the possibility of a plea agreement being reached.

38:04

In this case, a plea of guilty in exchange for the death penalty taken off the table. The people close to the case say that this is the least likely of all possible scenarios. Regardless of the outcome of the trial, the devastating truth is that even justice for the victims and their families brings neither comfort nor closure.

38:27

It's valuable. It's necessary. But it isn't a magical balm for grief. No legal process can bring back Kaylee or Zanna or Maddie or Ethan. No verdict can ever make sense of Coburger's motives or actions. We'll never understand who he is or why he is. He'll join a long list of perpetrators whose actions make us question not just the individual, but all people.

38:57

Are we broken? How many other Coburgers do we pass every day in the grocery store, on the subway, in the hallways of school or at work? How many people in our own orbit are there who are functioning while inside some rage, some sharp, poisonous grievance seethes and seethes until it finds release in fury, chaos and violence?

39:27

Just as Brittany isn't the first woman who thinks her love can redeem a killer, Coburger isn't the first incel to consummate his obsession with blood and death. As the case goes forward, there will be a lot of questions about who Brian Coburger is. But I think the better question is why Brian Coburger is. Because if we don't start dealing with that, we're going to hear a lot more stories like this.

39:56

Next time on True Weird Stuff. A child knocks on your door asking for help. And of course, you want to help. Who wouldn't? But before you open the door, make sure that child is really a child. It's all in the eyes. We really appreciate it if you subscribe, rate and review True Weird Stuff. Hit our website TrueWeirdStuff.com for show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content.

40:28

Everything True Weird is waiting for you at TrueWeirdStuff.com. And follow True Weird Stuff on Instagram and Twitter. True Weird Stuff is a Now! Media production. Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia. The show is written and hosted by me, Sheri Lynch, along with my deeply weird director, Max Sweeten. Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser.

40:50

Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call. Our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr. Original graphics by Kevin Nash. Original artworks by Olivia Axland. True Weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash. Copyright 2023 Now! Media. All rights reserved. All wrongs remembered.

41:18

Special thanks to Carole Lieberman for joining us on this episode to learn more about her work or to buy her books. Because let's be real, if you buy her books on Amazon, you're helping Jeff Bezos plan his next trip to space because that's where all the money goes. While the authors of those books are lucky to see a whole nickel.

41:36

So buy the books from the author's website. Lieberman's website is www.drcarol.com. That's D-R-C-A-R-O-L-E dot com.

Creative Co-Conspirators

Special thanks
  • Carole Lieberman

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