Mega Edition: Bryan Kohberger And His Demeanor In The Days After The Murders (9/8/26)

In the hours and days after the November 13, 2022 murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin, people who encountered Bryan Kohberger at Washington State University later described behavior that, in hindsight, struck them as noticeably different. Students said Kohberger, normally an active participant in criminology discussions, became conspicuously quiet when the Moscow murders were discussed. One classmate told investigators that he stopped bringing his cellphone to class and instead used his laptop, while others remembered him appearing increasingly preoccupied, unkempt and disheveled, with facial hair growing in where he had previously been clean-shaven. Some witnesses also reported seeing scratches, cuts or bandaging on his hands around the period of the killings, although accounts differed about precisely when those injuries were observed and none of those observations, by themselves, established how the injuries occurred.His behavior as a teaching assistant also appeared to shift dramatically after the murders. Students who had previously complained that Kohberger graded harshly and aggressively defended his decisions said he suddenly began handing out extremely high grades, often giving students near-perfect scores without the detailed comments he had previously provided. One student described him as increasingly distracted and said his apparent mental preoccupation reached an “all-time high” after the killings. Other accounts were not entirely consistent: while some classmates remembered him becoming quieter and more withdrawn, another person told investigators that Kohberger began talking considerably more than usual and seemed as though he wanted to vent. None of those behavioral changes proved involvement in the murders, but after Kohberger emerged as the suspect, investigators interviewed the people around him extensively, and seemingly ordinary observations from the days and weeks after the killings became part of the broader effort to reconstruct his movements, appearance and state of mind immediately following the crime.to contact me:[email protected]