[ad_1]<\/p>\n
In June of 1993 I walked into a crowded classroom at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. \u201cDid you hear?\u201d a student blurted. \u201cThey caught a serial killer in Long Island! He was driving around with a dead woman in the bed of his pickup. Joel Rifkin. They weren\u2019t even looking for a serial killer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Students in the summer session of my criminology course fidgeted in their seats as I set down my textbook and chalk next to the podium. The class was full of criminology majors, enthusiastic junior profilers who embraced any excuse to avoid learning crime theory and research methodology and instead engage in a discussion on the motive and murder methodology of killers like Rifkin.<\/p>\n
Before there was CSI<\/em> and Criminal Minds<\/em>, there was Red Dragon<\/em> and Silence of the Lambs<\/em>. It seemed, in those days, that every student wanted to be an FBI profiler like Thomas Harris\u2019 Will Graham and Clarice Starling, facing down the notorious psychiatrist and murderer Hannibal Lecter\u2014who was, himself, something of a profiler. One dark-humored student even presented me with a movie-promo photo of Hannibal, an image of the killer behind bars but with a Sharpie tagline: \u201cJJC ALUMNUS.\u201d<\/p>\n Fast-forward 30 years, and I\u2019m still teaching criminology but also conducting research interviews with incarcerated offenders and serving as the in-house criminologist and legal analyst for television networks CNN and HLN. Sitting in front of my computer camera on Dec. 30, covering the Nov. 13 University of Idaho student slayings on live news for the sixth week in a row, I was thrilled to learn that an arrest had finally been made.<\/p>\n I was consternated in equal measure to discover that the accused killer, Bryan Christopher Kohberger, was a doctoral student in the department of criminal justice and criminology at Washington State University<\/a>. Hearing that Kohberger had graduate-level experience in my academic discipline, I was disheartened but not at all surprised.<\/p>\n During my 35 years as a criminology professor, I\u2019ve sometimes encountered the odd student who is overly preoccupied with studying homicide. Not just any murder, but premeditated violence of the chilling variety. Uninterested in the real causal variables behind most homicides\u2014domestic violence<\/a>, gang wars<\/a>, anomic societies<\/a>, drugs<\/a>, and the proliferation of guns<\/a>\u2014these students want to focus solely on the psychology of those rare mass, spree, and serial killers who are the stuff of James Patterson novels.<\/p>\n These profiler wannabes want to get inside the mind of a killer the same way that a squirrel is determined to crack a nut. There is an ominous shadow to these groupies\u2019 fascination with these aberrant criminals, an unfettered enthusiasm and malignant narcissism that contributes to their seeing themselves as experts on everything. At some level, one must wonder if they possess a deeply suppressed kinship with, and even empathy for, the perpetrators they analyze.<\/p>\n These students can be confrontational or subtle, but they\u2019re always preoccupied with the minutiae of the violent details and the staunch belief that they understand the killer in question better than anyone else does. They\u2019re eager to show off. The extreme profiler wannabes want to school me and their other professors with their encyclopedic knowledge of homicidal maniacs, offering long-winded commentary without asking a question, caustically dismissing everyone else\u2019s analysis of the criminal if they disagree. Their attitude is often righteous and self-aggrandizing, unmistakably condescending: I know what I\u2019m talking about. You don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n I walk away from these \u201cmurder junkies\u201d wondering if their arrogance is housed not in their mastery of criminology but in their capacity for crime.<\/p>\n (Due to the subject matter, I do want to flag here that the rest of this piece contains descriptions of violent crime that some may find graphic.)<\/p>\n While no definitive survey has been done on the relative type and volume of crimes committed by college students majoring in criminal justice and criminology, there have been many such studies done on college students, with students asked to self-report their crimes. The problem with self-report-based crime surveys of undergrads is that, like the National Youth Survey<\/a> administered to high school students, these surveys ask mostly about property crime and drug use, with few questions about assault, and none about rape and homicide.<\/p>\n The one self-report-based survey of criminologists<\/a> committing crime was conducted by Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University in 1998. His conclusion was that \u201cwe criminologists are to a degree, what we study\u2014i.e., we commit acts of crime and deviance. Many criminologists admit to having committed them \u2026 in the past twelve months, including many which are codified as \u2018serious\u2019 and \u2018harmful\u2019 in the criminal law.\u201d<\/p>\n Robinson\u2019s study of 522 criminologists did ask about Uniform Crime Reporting<\/a> Index crimes such as burglary (22 respondents admitted to that crime), battery (25), rape (3), and robbery (2), but the more common crimes among criminologists were theft, DUIs, and adultery. The survey did not<\/em> include any questions about criminologists committing homicide, which brings us no closer to knowing whether the discipline attracts, renders, or hones the methods of murderers\u2014but his findings do suggest that criminologists are no different from the average Joe when it comes to committing lesser crimes.<\/p>\n When asked recently if he had ever had a criminology student graduate to murder, Robinson replied: \u201cI have had a few students in my 25-year career who ended up in trouble with the law. And I have had a few students who gave me the creeps, based on things they said to me in and out of class. But to my knowledge, I have never had a former student go on to commit murder.\u201d<\/p>\n I think deeply about this because the Sandy Hook shooter, Adam Lanza, was once a student at my <\/em>university. That hoodie-wearing image of Lanza that everyone associates with the 2012 massacre of 20 first graders and six school staff is his student ID photo from Western Connecticut State University. Lanza was not studying criminology, and I never had him as my student, but I asked other WCSU professors who had him in their classes what they remembered about him. Their answers were unsettling in an unanticipated way: Lanza was unremarkable, at best, and not on anyone\u2019s radar. There was no creep factor, no red flags, nothing that made him stand out. His grades were average; he never spoke in class, and eventually quit attending. Until Lanza opened fire on an elementary school, no one noticed him at all.<\/p>\n Kohberger, in contrast, excelled in his college studies and sought recognition. He received a bachelor\u2019s degree in psychology and a master\u2019s degree in criminal justice from DeSales University<\/a>, a private Catholic university in Pennsylvania, where he studied under the preeminent criminologist Katherine Ramsland<\/a>, author of more than 60 books and 1,000 articles on violent criminals.<\/p>\n Ramsland<\/a> (who is judiciously declining to comment on Kohberger at this time) has written extensively about serial killer Dennis Rader, known as BTK (for bind, torture, kill<\/em>). One thing we know, therefore, is that Kohberger would have studied the BTK<\/a> murders during his four years of criminal justice studies at DeSales.<\/p>\n Rader, who also earned a degree in criminal justice<\/a> (from Wichita State), began his 15-year trajectory of violence with the random mass murder of a family of four in their home. There was a sexual component to the crime in that even though the youngest victim was not raped, her pants were pulled down, and ejaculate was found<\/a> at the scene. Later, Rader would confirm<\/a> that this initial mass murder, the advent of his serial killing career, was based in pervasive sexual fantasy.<\/p>\n Although Moscow, Idaho, police have reported that there was no sexual assault of the four UI students who were savagely stabbed to death with a Rambo-style knife in mid-November<\/a>, psychologists would likely interpret the stabbing frenzy as picquerism<\/a>, in which stabbing with a blade is used as a substitute for phallic thrust in a sexually motivated attack. Any correlation between BTK\u2019s initial murders and the Idaho slayings is spurious at best, and yet the possibility provokes an obvious question: Could Kohberger\u2019s study of criminology have contributed to the psychopathology of this alleged killer?<\/p>\n Perhaps the most interesting report on Kohberger\u2019s time as a criminology student is that in April 2022 he administered a survey<\/a> to a Reddit forum of convicted criminals. The introduction states: \u201cIn particular, this study seeks to understand the story behind your most recent criminal offense, with an emphasis on your thoughts and feelings throughout your experience.\u201d (While the intro also indicates that he\u2019s asking questions under the auspices of DeSales University and that the survey has been approved by its institutional review board, the university has yet to confirm this.)<\/p>\n One<\/a> of his survey questions asked, \u201cWhy did you choose that victim or target over others?\u201d Another reads, \u201cAfter committing the crime, what were you thinking and feeling?\u201d To understand that these questions were authored by an accused mass murderer is undeniably creepy, but the most unsettling observation this provokes is that Kohberger may have been assessing criminal minds to fulfill personal predilections that had nothing to do with a research project.<\/p>\n Some other details surrounding Kohberger\u2019s alleged crimes also have me (and others) wondering whether he used his academic knowledge in the planning process. All accused people, including Kohberger, are entitled to the presumption of innocence. This tenet of our justice system is one which I, as a defense attorney, wholly support. The criminologist side of me, however, focuses on a Twitter posting from a witness at Kohberger\u2019s formal booking process, who said that the suspect reportedly asked<\/a> authorities, \u201cHas anyone else been arrested for this crime?\u201d<\/p>\n The probable cause affidavit<\/a> that was the basis for Kohberger\u2019s arrest was released on Jan. 5 and confirmed several anticipated sources of evidence. There was DNA at the scene and security camera footage of Kohberger\u2019s car in the area the night of the murders. But it also revealed several surprises.<\/p>\n The bombshell is that there is an eyewitness. One of the surviving roommates in the house actually saw, and probably heard, the murderer. Page four of the affidavit reads like a script from a horror movie: After being awakened by the barking of one victim\u2019s dog and the cries of another victim, the young woman opens the door to encounter a tall, athletic figure with bushy eyebrows, dressed in black with a face mask covering his mouth and nose.<\/p>\n The other interesting fact is that the killer left the leather sheath of a K-Bar knife in the bed of another victim. DNA from the snap on the sheath, processed through forensic genealogy<\/a>, is what led investigators to Kohberger. The third category of evidence is digital in nature, with camera footage of the suspect\u2019s car and cell pings from his mobile phone revealing a travel route that put him in the immediate area\u2014not only on the night of the murders, but at least 12 times in three months prior to Nov. 13.<\/p>\n Would someone with Kohberger\u2019s education in criminal justice and experience in private security (after high school, he worked part time as a security guard<\/a> for his local school district) be so careless as to drive his own car, carry a phone, and leave behind the murder weapon sheath with his DNA on it? And when a killer has dispatched four victims and happens upon a fifth person on his way out the door, he usually dispatches them as well in order to maximize his chances of getting away with it.<\/p>\n Kohberger\u2019s Pennsylvania attorney<\/a> is on record that his client \u201clooks forward to being exonerated<\/a>.\u201d Taken along with the accused\u2019s apparent inquiry while being booked for murder, these two statements beg the question as to whether he might be so well versed in the workings of the criminal justice system that he anticipated the possibility of arrest and set up these breadcrumbs of reasonable doubt in advance. Intelligent and organized murderers, knowing full well which typology of criminal they fit, often belie their predicted behavior patterns with calculated acts, like the carelessness described above, designed to throw off investigators. Murderers and rapists have been known to plant imported DNA evidence<\/a> (such as someone else\u2019s hair, blood, or semen) during their crimes as a red herring, believing that contra-indicating evidence linking the crime to someone else guarantees them a get-out-of-jail-free card.<\/p>\n One of Kohberger\u2019s former professors from DeSales described him as \u201cbrilliant<\/a>.\u201d Consider, then, the hypothesis that Kohberger is factually guilty. The question remains whether his penchant for forensic psychology<\/a> contributed<\/em> to the alleged murder. Did a fantasy for bloodletting predate his studies? Did his study of the criminal mind contribute to his decision to conduct a real-life experiment as to whether he possessed the capacity to commit a heinous murder\u2014and the wherewithal to get away with it? In short, assuming Kohberger is the murderer, was his passion for studying criminology a cause <\/em>or an effect<\/em>?<\/p>\n Mary Ellen O\u2019Toole<\/a>, a former FBI profiler and director of the forensic science program at George Mason University, is on record<\/a> as believing that Kohberger\u2019s interest in murder predated his criminology studies, stating<\/a>, \u201cWe\u2019re going to have to really dig a lot deeper into the personality to see if these degrees were a method, a means to an ends, for him getting into the mind of someone like this \u2026 or if they actually had nothing to do with it.\u201d O\u2019Toole added: \u201cSo many students have those degrees \u2026 and they\u2019re the furthest thing away from being violent.\u201d<\/p>\n Professors must take at face value the motives of a student pursuing a career in criminal justice. But if, following one\u2019s training and skills, or a gut feeling, you suspect something more, what should you do? The conundrum has surely left the crime experts and professors who taught Bryan Kohberger feeling not just horrified by the crime but plagued with self-doubt. It\u2019s not our job to diagnose, but in the face of such tragedy it is human nature to ask: How could I have missed that?<\/em> Professors and college administrators who tried, with varying degrees of success, to raise their suspicions about James Holmes<\/a>, Cho Seung-Hui<\/a>, and Jared Lee Loughner<\/a> would recognize that the process is difficult, if not futile.<\/p>\n There were signs with Kohberger, but they are so vague and commonplace as to be meaningless, none rising to the status of a major red flag in threat assessment. The slaying of the four UI students was technically a mass murder<\/a>, but nothing like the profiles used for campus shootings. From the outset, the psychology of the unknown murderer always seemed as if it would fit that of the rare hybrid killer<\/a>, a murderer who represents an amalgam of homicide categories and profiles.<\/p>\n These one-offs are extremely rare, but can be found in Richard Speck<\/a>, who stabbed and strangled eight student nurses in their dormitory apartment, one by one, over the course of several hours. Others would be Danny Rolling<\/a>, who stabbed five University of Florida\u2013Gainesville students to death in three incidents over four days, or Elliot Rodger<\/a>, the misogynist spree killer who stabbed to death two roommates and a friend before continuing his rampage on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus, injuring 14 people and killing six before taking his own life. They are defined as mass or spree killers, but what do they all have in common? They fit a fantasy-driven power-control profile of a serial killer<\/a>.<\/p>\n Power and control, where the perpetrator derives gratification from exerting control over a vulnerable victim, is the most common typology<\/a> of serial killing. Power is such a driving force in sexual assault that criminologists categorize rapists<\/a> as both power-compensatory and power-reassurance. In criminology, it\u2019s the need for power<\/em> that regularly surfaces as the lowest common denominator in our analysis of violent crime.<\/p>\n \u201cOne thing he would always do, almost without fail, was find the most complicated way to explain something,\u201d said Ben Roberts<\/a>, a fellow grad student in Kohberger\u2019s program, to a reporter. \u201cHe had to make sure you knew that he knew it.\u201d The accused murderer was described as \u201cawkward\u201d and \u201cdetached\u201d by other students<\/a>. The consensus was that Kohberger exhibited signs of impostor syndrome<\/a> so common to first-year Ph.D. students.<\/p>\n Deep insecurity may have been the root of Kohberger\u2019s need for recognition, an overcompensation for inner turmoil that manifested in heterosexist remarks<\/a>, harsh grading<\/a> of undergraduates, and scathing feedback on their papers. In an interesting turn, after the UI student murders took place, those same WSU undergraduates began receiving scores of 100 from Kohberger, with no additional comments offered. Perhaps a sense of control over some inner conflict had been regained.<\/p>\n On the first day of every criminology class I\u2019ve taught since 1988, to more than 6,000 students at five different universities, I have students take out a sheet of paper for a 100-percent anonymous self-reported survey of the worst crime they\u2019ve ever committed, and whether they were caught. It\u2019s an exercise in understanding the \u201cdark figure<\/a>\u201d criminologists talk about when explaining Uniform Crime Reporting statistics<\/a>, an effort to demonstrate how much crime is committed\u2014even by criminal justice students\u2014that goes undetected.<\/p>\n I assure that all answers will be shredded in front of them. The students are encouraged to be truthful and detailed, when possible, to add veracity to the exercise, and based on the consistent candor of responses received over the years, I have no doubt that students take it seriously.<\/p>\n There\u2019s the usual stuff: speeding and shoplifting, drug use and dealing, underage drinking and DUIs. In the realm of violent crime, the most common is aggravated assault by way of barroom fight. The surprises are poignant: prostitution to support a heroin habit, grand larceny to pay tuition, child abuse during postpartum depression, and then\u2014four admissions of murder.<\/p>\n These anonymous notes confessing to these homicides, for whom no one was arrested, have included explanations ranging from gang initiation to street-justice revenge. For every self-disclosed killing, there was always a postscript in which the student insisted that they were a different person at the time, that they learned from their crime and are now making good. \u201cI\u2019m here to turn my life around,\u201d one wrote.<\/p>\n