Just weeks before four University of Idaho students were slain in 2022, a Washington State University professor warned colleagues that Bryan Kohberger posed a serious threat.
Newly released police reports revealed that faculty and students filed 13 formal complaints about his sexist, predatory, and intimidating behavior.
Despite escalating concerns, Kohberger remained in the doctoral criminology program until he was arrested for the killings.
Complaints about Kohberger painted a portrait of a predator in the making
Image credits: WSU
One professor told investigators she feared Kohberger would eventually become a threat to students if given the chance to become a professor, according to investigative files made public by Idaho State Police.
“Mark my word, I work with predators, if we give him a PhD., that’s the guy that in those many years when he is a professor, we will hear is harassing, stalking, and se*ually ab*sing… his students at whatever university,” the professor stated.
According to the police reports, Kohberger blocked doors to offices where women worked, stood uncomfortably close, and stared at them in ways that left them feeling trapped.
Image credits: Getty / Pool
One graduate student remembered whispering, “I really need to get out of here,” while Kohberger lingered in the room.
Female students said he often made misogynistic remarks, arriving late to classes taught by women.
Some even kept a board tracking his disrespect. Complaints also described discriminatory comments that were homophobic, ableist, xenophobic, and deeply inappropriate.
Image credits: Getty / Idaho Statesman
A deaf classmate recalled him asking if she “would be comfortable procreating given the fact she had a disability.”
A divorced woman also recounted an instance when Kohberger reportedly told her that he didn’t date “broken women.”
An instructor also noted that she spent “a lot of time” speaking about Kohberger during disciplinary meetings, according to the New York Post.
Image credits: WSU
“The meetings focused around Kohberger’s interactions with fellow post-graduate students, in and out of the classroom, along with his behavior around some of the criminal justice professors,” the investigator’s report read.
Students felt so unsafe around Kohberger that they started taking precautions
By fall 2022, Kohberger had developed a reputation in the department as “being a d**k,” according to one doctoral candidate. There were also concerns that Kohberger was an “incel.”
Image credits: WSU
An undergraduate worker in the criminology office said Kohberger cornered her and repeatedly pressured her into conversations she didn’t want.
After he asked her on a date despite her saying she had a girlfriend, she started relying on her boss for rides home so she wouldn’t walk or take the bus alone, according to People magazine.
This resulted in at least one person in the undergraduate worker’s life expressing concern about “how many precautions she perceived were being taken because of Kohberger.”
Image credits: Instagram / kayleegoncalves
She also “recounted an incident in which her neighbor saw someone very close outside her window,” before realizing that Kohberger lived nearby.
Kohberger didn’t just terrorize his female classmates. A male student also recalled being “verbally kidnapped” into a three-hour conversation in a parking lot.
At the time, Kohberger reportedly bragged that he could “pick up any woman he wanted in bars and clubs.”
Concerns grew so serious that the university required all doctoral students to attend mandatory training for all graduate students about behavioral expectations.
That same weekend, Kohberger attacked and slayed Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Police reports suggested that WSU students and instructors didn’t initially suspect Kohberger
Image credits: Instagram / kayleegoncalves
Three weeks after the crime, Kohberger eerily told a fellow student that whoever committed it “must have been pretty good.”
He also speculated it might have been a “one and done type thing.”
Kohberger was later convicted of slaying Madison Mogen, 21; Kaylee Goncalves, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20; and Ethan Chapin, 20. The four were found st*bbed inside an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho, on November 13, 2022.
On July 23, 2024, Judge Steven Hippler sentenced Kohberger to four life terms without parole, plus 10 years for burglary. He was also ordered to pay about $250,000 in fines and penalties.
The release of these reports has only deepened questions about whether more could have been done about Kohberger when so many red flags were raised.
Netizens shared their thoughts about Kohberger’s professors’ comments on social media
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