Serial Killer Expert Reveals How Bryan Kohberger 'Completely' Fooled Her

Newsweek

03-07-2025

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources.
A renowned expert on killers who once taught Bryan Kohberger - who has admitted to the brutal stabbings of four University of Idaho students - said he had "completely" fooled her.
Katherine Ramsland, who taught Kohberger at DeSales University, spoke publicly about her former student for the first time in an interview with NewsNation on Tuesday night after it emerged that Kohberger was set to plead guilty to the murders in a deal to avoid the death penalty. She had not spoken out until now as she had been expected to appear as a witness in Kohberger's trial.
Ramsland - who worked with BTK serial killer Dennis Rader to co-author Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer - told NewsNation's Brian Entin that she would be interested in working with Kohberger.
"I want to understand how he was able to completely fool me," she said.
Newsweek has contacted Ramsland for further comment via email.
Katherine Ramsland speaking in 2016 at Penn State Berks.
Katherine Ramsland speaking in 2016 at Penn State Berks.
Lauren A. Little/MediaNews Group/Reading Eagle via Getty
Why It Matters
Kohberger, 30, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to charges that he murdered Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Madison Mogen, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. The four students were fatally stabbed in a rental home near the university's campus in Moscow, Idaho, in the early hours of November 13, 2022.
The slayings had sparked a massive search for the perpetrator. Kohberger, then a Ph.D student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University in nearby Pullman, Washington, was arrested at his parents' home in Pennsylvania weeks after the murders. Investigators matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
He was then charged with four counts of murder and one count of felony burglary. When asked to enter a plea in 2023, Kohberger stood silent, prompting a judge to enter not-guilty pleas on his behalf.
His trial had been set to start in August, but Kohberger agreed to the plea deal after his attorneys tried - and failed - to get the death penalty taken off the table in the pending trial. The deal has divided the victims' families, with some supporting it while others are furious that it will allow Kohberger to avoid the death penalty.
What To Know
Ramsland said she met Kohberger in the fall of 2018 after he started a four-year program at DeSales University as a psychology major on the forensics track.
"He selected the forensic track which made him an advisee for me," she said. "He seemed like, eager to be in the classroom. He was polite, he was respectful, intense and curious and there was no reason for me to think that he was anything other than someone who was really interested in this potential career."
She said there wasn't anything that "stood out" to her and she didn't observe any "red flags."
"He was always really quite respectful and grateful," Ramsland said. "He would thank me for things. He was attentive. He would do the work. I didn't have any concerns.
She said she taught him in four classes, including an introduction to forensic psychology and one on death investigation. She also taught him in a class on behavioral criminology and another called "Dangerous Minds: The Psychology of Anti-Social Behavior."
"We all, everyone in this field, forensic psychology and criminology, know that we could have students who might become offenders," she said.
"But we also know that the majority, the vast majority of our students will not, and will instead go into a field like law enforcement... We know that there's always a risk that we're attracting somebody who wants to do something terrible hoping we wont ever have that but in my case, I did."
She went on: "I think just the idea of wanting to study offenders and what their thought process was, how they felt about their crimes, wanting to study that and then finding out if this is a person who then is now saying he's guilty of doing these things. I have to look at the framework of what I taught and wonder, did I inspire him in some way? But I can't second guess that because I may have inspired somebody else to become an FBI agent. And unfortunately, in this field, that's what we live with."
Ramsland said she had thought Kohberger was "a promising student who really could have made a mark in this career."
She added: "I thought that so I was disappointed, angry and... shocked that, you know, this is who he turned out to be, and horrified for the victims and their families."
Asked if she would want to study Kohberger, Ramsland said: "If he wanted to do that, I would... this is what we do, to try to look at developmental trajectories, the triggers so that we can see red flags faster, we can prevent people like this from wreaking the havoc that they do."
She added: "I know he has the intellectual capacity to do it, to be self-reflective, to help think through how his life came to this. And so I would definitely do it if he were willing. And it would be hard but I think because I have so much material from him, I have questions for him that I think nobody else but me could ask."
What People Are Saying
Asked about Kohberger having her "fooled," Ramsland also said: "Well, I study the ones who are really good at it because I want to really try to understand what can we see in the constellation of behaviors that will tip us off easier because people who are really good at passing as normal and keeping their dark side hidden can fool people, can fool all the experts, for a long period of time. I think anybody in my field will tell you they can be duped by a really skilful predatory type of person."
Prosecutors wrote in a letter to the families of the victims: "This agreement ensures that the defendant will be convicted, will spend the rest of his life in prison, and will not be able to put you and the other families through the uncertainty of decades of post-conviction appeals."
The Goncalves family, who opposed the plea agreement, said in a Facebook post on Tuesday: "While we are cognizant that some may have wanted the plea, the prosecution relayed to us it was NOT a majority vote that was the deciding factor in offering this plea. At a bare minimum, please - require a full confession, full accountability, location of the murder weapon, confirmation the defendant acted alone, & the true facts of what happened that night. We deserve to know when the beginning of the end was."
Mogen's father Ben Mogen, who is supportive of the deal, told CBS News: "We can actually put this behind us and not have these future dates and future things that we don't want to have to be at, that we shouldn't have to be at, that have to do with this terrible person. We get to just think about the rest of [our] lives and have to try and figure out how to do it without Maddie and the rest of the kids."
Martin Souto Diaz, an attorney for the Kohberger family, said in a statement on behalf of the family, provided to CBS News: "In light of recent developments, the Kohbergers are asking members of the media for privacy, respect, and responsible judgement during this time.
"We will continue to allow the legal process to unfold with respect to all parties, and will not release any comments or take any questions."
What's Next
Kohberger is due to be sentenced on July 23.