What Happened to Bryan Kohberger? Part 6: His Radical Transition
[Note: This part will make more sense if you read the earlier parts of this series, available here.]
Who Was Kohberger Before He Changed?
Those who knew him before his dramatic shift that started later in high school say they noticed nothing about him that could have predicted the murders he’s now charged with.
For example, the former friend on the Reddit thread writes of feeling “very blindsided [by the news]. I never saw him as ‘evil’ or anything. He mainly was socially awkward when I knew him.”
Another friend, Rick Pasqua, recalled, “‘I never got any bad vibes off him ever. Just a little awkward.’”
And a former childhood neighbor and mother of one of Kohberger’s classmates told the New York Post, “‘No bells ever went off.’”
Kohberger’s Tapatalk forum posts offer valuable insight into who he was as a young teen, in the earliest days of his shift. His written interactions with people in the forum generally were polite, though on occasion he could be vehement in pushing his opinions, using all caps to make his points.
And in these posts is evidence of what most would consider basic humanity, such as showing kindness to others. Some examples:
- Kohberger shared whatever he had learned with others in the forum, even offering to purchase a book on the anti-Candida diet and post its contents on the forum for those who couldn’t afford the cost (though he later said that he wasn’t able to buy the book).
- In defending his strong support for the diet, he posted, “I care about everyone here I wouldn’t tell you something unless i KNEW it was for sure.”
- On several occasions he tried to be helpful to other forum participants, e.g., advising someone not to try marijuana for visual snow because it would make things worse, suggesting to someone else that they might be taking too much gingko biloba, notifying another that going to the emergency room for visual snow likely wouldn’t help.
Kohberger also seemed to seek genuine connection with other people. However awkward he might have been in person, his posts express a fairly normal human desire to relate and belong:
- He asked if others experienced similar symptoms as he, and when several affirmed, he responded, “Thanks a lot guys! This helped me a lot.”
- In April 2011, he started a new thread titled, “Releasing a rap song for everyone with VS,” saying, “I want to express our struggles through rap, I think people should know.”
- In December 2011, he started a thread titled, “I simply don’t want to live anymore,” due to his symptoms. When someone responded with similar sentiment, he replied, “You feeling the same way makes me feel like someone is there, thanks for responding to me.”
- And in a post I discuss in the next section, he lamented, “I search for someone to relate to me, everyone looks down upon me, no one can relate.”
Thoughts and Behavioral Shifts He Did Not Want
A big clue about who Kohberger was can be found in his obvious distress about the undesirable personality traits he was developing. His posts clearly show he was bothered that they affected not only him but his relationships with other people.
On July 4, 2011, Kohberger wrote his longest post on Tapatalk, which I’m pasting in its entirety here. Why? Because the bits of it we see quoted in mainstream media fail to capture the full extent of his sincerity and anguish (note: all spelling and grammar errors are his own):
I have had this horrible Depersonalization go on in my life for almost 2 years. I often find myself making simple human interactions, but it is as if I am playing a role playing game such as oblivion; I can see what is going on, I am slightly into it, but I can pause the game and focus on my real life. In this case, my life is the game and my old self can be reached by pausing the game, but how? I often think of things that humans do, things I have done my whole life, I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self worth, as I am starting to view everyone as this. Everything I have ever done, makes no sense. How did things get this way? How am I wearing this shirt, and who decided that humans shall wear shirts like this? Are we all just advanced ANIMALS with possession, or is there more, more that I can’t see? I can’t connect. I view everything as I would if I was playing oblivion, pointless and full of nothing, out of reality. I am moving out of my house, my last holidays were already lived, but where was I? As my family group hugs and celebrates, I am stuck in this void of nothing, feeling completely no emotion, feeling nothing. I feel dirty, like there is dirt inside of my head, my mind, I am always dizzy and confused. I feel no self worth. I am intelligent but I feel the opposite. I say things I don’t mean. The last holiday in my house, the house I grew up in, the house I once contributed to, the house I once felt at home in, is passed. 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. I feel less than mentally damaged, it is like I have severe brain damage. I am stuck in the depths of my mind, where I have to constantly battle my demons, am I here or am I fake? I feel myself slipping away, I hear screams faintly, but I constantly battle away from it. What if I let go… where would I be? Would I ever come back to reality? I try to remember where I originated from, but I can’t. I barely remember my childhood. I often fear being 80 years old, alone, and having faint memories of my parents, everything I missed out on. I think about my father, what a good man he is, how I treat him like dirt because I have this condition, and I can’t take it. I might spiral out of control and lose myself in the void, I can’t let it all go. All of these regrets I predict for my future self… all of these thoughts of remorse… I got this when I was in my stage of discovery. Now I look in the mirror and I see this sickly, tired, useless and stupid man int he mirror, he is a complete disgrace, he doesn’t even deserve to live! I remember when I was 15, I would wander alone at 2 am, everything was so generic, nowhere felt like home, I saw things that were not there, a different reality. I felt eerie and alone, I died during those nights. I felt like a criminal, but where was my record? I can’t talk without flinching now. I used to be this healthy blonde haired boy with blue eyes, and in a few years I have darker hair and darker eyes, half the body weight. Where did I leave off? I try to sleep, I try to clear my head, but the pressure won’t go away, the pain and depression won’t leave. Being me is this horrible disease that I was given. I think of this as I succumb to sleep, but I see a large intensity of black/yellow/white fuzz; it makes my mind fizzle and I can barely keep in the bounds of reality. It is as if the ringing in my ears and the fuzz in my vision is simply all of the demons in my head mocking me. I fall asleep, but I wake up quickly to bloody screams. Is any of this here? Am I brain damaged? NO?! Then why am I like this? I have these thoughts all in my head, I search for someone to relate to me, everyone looks down upon me, no one can relate. As I try to read, suddenly my eyes look right through the words,when I look up, I see blue dots near the center of my vision. When I feel slightly calm, it gets hard to breath, and I see bright dots in my vision. Nothing I do is enjoyable. I am blank, I have no opinion, I have no emotion, I have nothing. Can you relate?
Kohberger clearly was aware of something altering his mind, and he fought it — though that resistance proved futile. Look closely and you’ll see a pattern emerge as he despairs two distinct shifts:
- the loss of his essential self, including his morals, and
- a new, unwanted presence affecting his mind and behavior.
The first point sounds like disconnection from his soul. And the second captures his references to demons, which might not be just metaphoric. I’ll discuss both of these points in the next two parts of this series.
That long Tapatalk post describes a pivotal juncture in Kohburger’s life that would play out over the next few years, likely completing sometime while he was in college — if the stories we hear in the news from his former DeSales University classmates about his hostility and other unsettling behavior (including staring at women) are any indication.
A juncture marking what? His transition from a socially-awkward person with health problems desperately seeking help, to something more like a host for a malevolent force.
This shift included changes to his appearance as he lost half his bodyweight in less than two years and darkening of his hair and eyes that even he found disturbing.
His personality changed, too: Recollections of classmates and friends from high school reported a new hostility coinciding with his rapid weight loss. As reported in a New York Times article, Thomas Arntz cut off his friendship with Kohberger in 2014 after he turned “‘meanspirited’” and physical, noting that “‘over time it got so, so bad that I just shut down when I was around him.’”
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