Reply to NYT Times interview with Brian Kohlberger’s sister

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think we need to be open to the possibility that Brian Kohlberger is a true sociopath, and that the reason his family may not have realized he was dangerous is because he did a good job of convincing them that he was not dangerous.

A key piece of evidence here is that it's not just his family saying they didn't see this coming -- he had two successful, female professors in undergrad who were not only very impressed by him but one wound up recommending him for his PhD program and wrote a glowing recommendation. This woman was an expert in criminal behavior. If he convinced her, it's really not that much of a stretch to think he probably knew what to say to his parents and sisters to make them think he was okay or on the right path.

It appears his behavior became notably more aggressive when he started his PhD program, with his behavior towards students and colleagues.

Also there are these clues from his past. No history of violence at school or with the criminal justice system, but we know he was bullied a lot in school, that expressed in a journal at some point that he couldn't feel or would do things to try and make himself feel, and also that he developed a heroine addiction. All of this points to a psychology where he might have had deeply buried trauma and suppressed rage, that he may use risk-seeking behavior to try and trigger emotional responses or to "feel human", including heroine use, but he was a recovering addict and was not using heroine. Well, people like that tend to try and replace it with something else.

I think he is a sociopath but that he was also very intelligent and had a lot of self control which enabled him to fool his parents, his sisters, and his professors. An intelligent person who has these kinds of issues will learn exactly what other people want to hear from him. He will understand the script of the recovering addict or what he needs to say to a professor to explain why it took him longer to finish undergrad or what to tell his sister to explain away troubling behavior. And successfully convincing these people to trust him, forgive him, and support him might have built up his ego to the point of arrogance. From the outside this could look like a smart kid who got bullied in school finally overcoming his challenges and making good. His family saw him as, yes, someone with issues, but on an upward trajectory. And his success at DeSales would have confirmed that for them because the people there would be outsiders who had no reason to accept Brian or give him another chance. So getting these endorsements from professors and people saying he's smart, he has a good career ahead of him -- that would have been very convincing for his family, I think. Keep in mind he was only 28. He'd only had one major set back, his addiction, and it was easy to blame his issues on that. It's not like he was 40 and in and out of rehabs for years or had been in trouble with the law multiple times. He'd hit rock bottom but appeared to have recovered and be past it.

Then he got to Idaho and probably was feeling particularly confident and powerful, having convinced all these other people that he was doing well, even excelling. Which maybe led to overconfidence and overreaching, and his arrogant and aggressive behavior towards students and women in his department, as well as women socially. And he experienced multiple rejections, lost his TA position, was banned from bars, and had women refusing to speak to him or go out with him. And I do think this led him to "snap" so to speak. I know he's been diagnosed with autism but it sounds like he may have BPD and was engaged in splitting. Before Idaho he would have been in a manic phase and had beliefs in his own grandiosity, which to his family and others might have just looked like finally getting it together. And then he faced setbacks in Idaho and this flip and destroyed his sense of any self worth and the murder took place from the bottom of a deep well of depression.

I just think it's a mistake to think this guy who killed four total strangers out of nowhere had like a normal progression of mental illness that other people should have figure out and solved. I think he's a sociopath, like most mass killers. People who have more normal mental health problems like autism or depression or PTSD don't stalk and murder four strangers. I think his sociopathy actually partly explains the the people who knew him best before this happened didn't see it coming. He was smart enough to keep them from seeing the scariest parts of him, and his particular psychology was almost designed to conceal them from others.

I just don't see how you blame the family here, unless something comes out that he was abused or neglected as a kid. But in that case, it wouldn't be the sister who was culpable -- she'd likely be another victim of the same abuse and neglect. From what we know now though, he just sounds like a sociopath who maybe wound up on that path due to innate psychological traits.[/quote]

Criminologist/psychologist here.I believe he was just your classic case,garden variety psychopath. Most of them never go to jail and many of them never end up engaging in violence. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to predict who will become violent, even if you see the signs of psychopathy. I would also discourage throwing around a diagnosis like BPD- there is absolutely no evidence that he had borderline personality disorder.[/quote]

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