Professor feared Bryan Kohberger would sexually assault students

Telegraph

15 hours ago

A university professor warned Bryan Kohberger would sexually abuse students just months before he murdered four undergraduates, according to a police report.
Kohberger, a 30-year-old criminal justice student, was sentenced to life in prison without parole last month after stabbing and killing a group of University of Idaho students in November 2022 while they slept.
A Washington State University (WSU) faculty member who met the doctoral student at a criminal justice programme said she warned colleagues he would likely stalk or sexually abuse his students if he became a professor.
'He is smart enough that in four years we will have to give him a PhD,' the woman told colleagues, urging them to remove him from the course, according to a report by Idaho police.
'Mark my word, I work with predators... when he is a professor, we will hear [he] is harassing, stalking, and sexually abusing ... his students at wherever university.'
She told police that she was occasionally forced to intervene when Kohberger would block the door of an office where several female graduate students worked.
'I really need to get out of here,' she recalled hearing one woman say.
The WSU faculty member said she also believed Kohberger was stalking people, noting that an unknown individual had broken into a female student's apartment to steal perfume and underwear.
Others in the department thought he could become a rapist and speculated that he was an 'incel', she told the officer.
Kohberger was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences last month after he admitted murdering Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and Madison Mogen in a rental home near the University of Idaho campus.
All four victims were likely to have initially been asleep when they were attacked, according to a post-mortem. They were each stabbed several times, and some had defensive wounds where they tried to fight off Kohberger.
A fellow student also claimed that three weeks after the killings and before Kohberger was arrested, he praised the murderer and said they 'must have been pretty good'.
He also reportedly speculated that the deaths might have been a 'one and done type thing'.
She told police that Kohberger was disparaging towards women, enjoyed conflict, and liked to talk about his field of study: sexual burglary.
One instructor who worked with Kohberger said she began receiving complaints about him from students and staff on the same programme in August 2022.
In total, the university received nine complaints from faculty members and others about his 'rude and belittling behaviour toward women', according to a report from Idaho police.
One of his fellow students, who called a police tip line and reported seeing Kohberger with bloody knuckles shortly before the murders, said he also started looking dishevelled after the killings and stopped bringing his phone to classes.