This was an insight we didn’t expect. Ever since Bryan Kohberger changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced for the brutal murders of those four University of Idaho students, we’ve gotten a lot of new info. But this is different.
The NY Post published an interview with one of Kohberger’s professors at Washington State University on Monday, and the perspective is truly unique. See, the author of the piece has known the professor for some time, so he was in the unusual position to speak to a character witness from before the murders!
Back then, Brad Pearce writes, he just knew his drinking buddy HATED his new TA this semester. John Snyder did not often have bad things to say about students, apparently, but this one was “an a**hole” as he put it.
Then the murders, just a half hour away, rocked the small community. And a month later, the other shoe dropped for Snyder. The man they’d arrested for the crimes was his TA. Whoa.
Related: The Gruesome Theory Behind Why Kohberger Disfigured Kaylee Goncalves
Speaking to Pearce again after all this, now that it’s not going to hurt any case against him, the professor opened up about exactly what his experience was with Kohberger. When he first met him, it wasn’t hate at first sight:
“He was a little odd, but a lot of people in academia are odd.”
But pretty quickly he was making the women in his classes uncomfortable. One female student emailed to a friend:
“My class’s TA looks like a murderer.”
Wow.
Life With Kohberger
Snyder said he usually tries to get the most out of TAs by getting lots of work out of them in the areas where they were talented — while helping them in the areas they were weaker:
“Bryan quickly disabused me of the idea that I would get a sufficient amount of work out of him, and I quickly figured out he was a bit of a douche. And within a few weeks I realized this was going to be an exceptionally long semester.”
“A bit of a douche.” Didn’t expect that. But Kohberger was some unusual (and annoying) mix of off-putting and incessant:
“He rapidly developed the habit of coming in at the end of the day, when I clearly wanted to go home. He would start talking about inane, stupid and immature things… I quickly realized this was a technique where he felt like he was in control as long as he was wasting my time.”
He recalled how the 30-year-old “would follow me down the hall yapping, and I started calling it his ‘terrier routine.’”
Ugh. Sounds like he was an emotional vampire in addition to everything else!
He told a story about Kohberger talking his ear off about how he had a plan to get out of a parking ticket… He even convinced Snyder to go to the “scene” to confirm his story. But he was totally in the wrong, having parked in a clearly marked space he shouldn’t have in a lot he didn’t have a permit for in the first place! The criminology professor tried to explain to this upstart that defendants who think they know more about the law than everyone else tend to face rude awakenings. Kohberger didn’t listen. Clearly, right?? This guy thought he could literally get away with murder!
One more fascinating anecdote? Once Kohberger followed him all the way to his car when his wife was giving him a ride. And the waiting Mrs. recoiled from him instinctively! Snyder said he’d never seen her do that before. Damn, he just really gave her the creeps, we guess!
The Other Shoe Drops
Snyder was in his office on December 30 when suddenly he learned police were in the building doing a search. He and a custodian were trying to figure out whose office they could be searching when it hit him — what if his a-hole TA was the murderer??
It didn’t take long once the news was out for everyone he knew to start calling him. We guess he’d vented to a few of his friends and family already that semester!
He didn’t know much more than anyone else, though the cops did tell him one thing. Kohberger had a list of women’s names. One of the women was a colleague in the criminology department. Chilling. Thankfully everyone was extremely supportive. Makes sense considering being around that guy was a torment they’d all shared.
BTW, the prof says the most disturbing thing to him about having a fledgling murderer in his department? The idea someone might study criminology to try and get away with crimes:
“It was the assault on why I do what I do: promote justice and fairness, to find honor where there isn’t any, to teach people to be decent human beings, and to realize that life goes on, and to let people who had not experienced respect from the system know that the power to move past their troubles is inside them.”
But Kohberger didn’t want to move past troubles. He wanted to spread that dark around. Oof.
[Image via Ada County Sheriff’s Office/Kaylee Goncalves/Instagram.]
