Bryan Kohberger’s Former Teacher Reveals The One Question She Still Needs Answered

The nation is still trying to make sense of the brutal Idaho killings, and so is one person who never expected to be connected to the case at all: Bryan Kohberger’s former professor.

In a chilling twist nobody saw coming, criminology expert Dr. Katherine Ramsland has revealed she once taught the man now sentenced to life in prison.

Ramsland also said she’s still desperately searching for answers.

Ramsland has spent her entire professional life studying the darkest criminal minds.

Still, nothing prepared her for the horror of realizing one of her own students had become a killer. “I’m horrified that I had a student capable of such violence,” she admitted in a chat with the Daily Mail.

After learning Kohberger had been sentenced to life in prison for the vicious murders of four University of Idaho students, she says she was left stunned and heartbroken.

“I don’t know why he did it. I just can’t even speculate why,” she continued, emphasizing the victims’ families should remain the central focus.

“I think the most important thing is we have four families with murdered kids, and we don’t understand why this had to happen. I think they’re the focus, what they’re going through is horrifying. I hate that I am in any way associated with it,” Ramsland added.

Long before the headlines, Kohberger was a psychology major on the forensics track at DeSales University in Pennsylvania.

He graduated in 2022 with a master’s degree in criminal justice after studying under Ramsland, one of the country’s top experts on serial killers.

He took her courses on infamous murderers and real-life crime scene investigation.

After graduating, Kohberger moved across the country to begin a PhD in criminology at Washington State University.

Just five months later, in the early morning hours of November 13, he entered a home near the University of Idaho and brutally stabbed Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle, and Ethan Chapin to death.

Kohberger was arrested in December 2022 and later pleaded guilty to the murders. On July 23 of this year, he was sentenced to life in prison.

He has still never revealed his motive for the attack, and investigators have found no known connection between him and the victims.

Even though Kohberger hasn’t spoken publicly about his motives, chilling details from his past academic work started to emerge.

In one 2020 criminology essay, he described a woman’s murder in unsettling detail, which prosecutors recently cited as proof of how deeply he had studied crime scenes.

In another shocking moment, Kohberger posted a survey on Reddit asking criminals how they chose their victims and how they felt while committing their crimes.

Expert witnesses also said his electronic devices contained extensive research about famous killers.

Two former classmates told the Daily Mail they now fear his studies may have actively inspired him to kill.

However, as Ramsland cautiously explained, “There’s so much we don’t know.”

Ramsland’s own work on serial killers is highly respected. She even interviewed BTK killer Dennis Rader for five years and wrote a bestselling book based on their conversations.

However, being connected to Kohberger’s case has been uniquely painful.

She refuses to describe her direct interactions with him due to privacy rules but revealed her last contact with him came when he requested a letter of recommendation before the murders.

“Everything was wiped,” she said, referring to data on his phone that prosecutors say he tried to erase. “Was there stuff on his phone that would have revealed [something]? I don’t know.”

Ramsland also admitted she hasn’t spoken to Kohberger’s family and has no idea whether they would want to talk to her, though she left the door open.

“If they wanted to talk to me, I would talk to them,” she said, adding that she had talked with victims’ families in her BTK research.

She confessed she “hates the word closure” because there’s no such thing in cases like this. “There will always be a terrible hole,” she said. “There’s a lot of pain.”

Despite the emotional toll, Ramsland says she still hopes someone, possibly even herself, will eventually be able to study Kohberger in depth.

“I have said I want someone to study him — it doesn’t have to be me. I would love to know, because to be true to my profession, I would love to know more,” she stated.

When asked what she would most want to ask him, she didn’t hesitate, as she said, “What everybody wants to know, ‘Why did you do this?’ But that’s not how you approach it.”

She says that any real insight would only come after long-term conversations and the building of trust.

“If you want to know what was going on in any offender’s mind, it takes time. It takes a sense of trust. I spent five years with Dennis Rader,” she explained. “You have to be willing to listen, non-judgmentally, to build a sense that they feel safe saying it.”

For now, the question remains unanswered, and perhaps that’s what makes it even more terrifying.