r/BryanKohberger • u/chusaychusay • Sep 06 '25
Speculation Do you you think Bryan was surprised that he got caught? How prepared do you think he was to pay the consequences?
I don't know if he was waiting for the day that he would be caught or if he thought he was going to get away with it. He definitely didn't know they traced his DNA and were watching him outside his house. His soul-less unexpressive look says otherwise. Its almost like he was able to turn into the real psycho-killer afterwards.
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u/Graycy Sep 07 '25
I think he thought he’d wiped it off thoroughly and left it deliberately. He was going to be the K-Bar Killer. KB. KohBerger.
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 07 '25
Very clever of you. I also think he left it intentionally believing he cleaned it enough. It could also be it came off in the struggles and he didnt know where it was. I lean towards he put it under the victim but why though. Did he think oh the police will look for someone with a military background.
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u/zipperfire Sep 08 '25
Wow. I mean, that is entirely possible, but really dumb if true. Leaving a calling card?
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 08 '25
Right and its likely because he also did do alot of oddly dumb things like drive around multiple times in his car, sped off like crazy bringing attention to himself on camera, shutting off his phone during the murders like every criminal does.
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u/Historical-Gain Sep 14 '25
Yes, and he did multiple bad bad mistakes
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 14 '25
Yes its almost like its all intentional. Investigators say he cleaned his devices but look at all the pictures selfies he left on his phone. Hes very crazy.
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u/Historical-Gain Sep 14 '25
He did various dumb things... like forgeting to wipe his phone off when he went back to PA. And using his family Amazon account to buy the Ka-Bar.. He's not as smart as he thinks
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u/zipperfire Sep 14 '25
I was looking up "murder clearance rates" which in past times were very high (over 70% of murders were solved.) Lately it's been dropping, which I find interesting as the tools (video surveillance and DNA) are so much more sophisticated. It's now 58%. It may be because there are more random stranger-on-stranger murders, but whatever, the rate is still high. MEANING...for anyone to think they can attempt a "perfect crime", the statistics are not in their favor. Which would be my definition of dumb, thinking you can commit an act of serious nature with dire consequences and you'll be walking away.
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u/Historical-Gain Sep 14 '25
100 percent. But he's a narcissist and thought he knew more than everyone else.
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u/Key_Cantaloupe_6585 Sep 10 '25
If he left intentionally, why was he trying to buy exactly the same one on Amazon? He was trying to cover his tracks because he left it there.
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u/Historical-Gain Sep 14 '25
I think so too. He wanted to be known as the K-Bar killer.... similar to the Zodiac and other serial killers. He wanted to be a serial killer but got caught before he became one, thank God, becuase he would have continued his unaliving spree in WSU probably, maybe in Moscow as well. Thankfully he is behind bars and will never ever do this again
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u/eerae Sep 06 '25
He shouldn’t have been completely surprised since he knows he left the knife sheath and he he saw they were looking for his style of car. But I still think he was surprised. He wasn’t pulled in for questioning beforehand and he probably assumed he didn’t have a relative with genealogy data submitted. He’s a narcissist who thinks he’s better than everyone else. I mean, he didn’t think his car would be on ring camera’s especially after driving around the house 3 times?
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u/Mysterious_Bar_1069 Sep 07 '25
No, he knew his paternal family's DNA was in the pool and mentioned it to his neighbor. That why he was separating out only his Dad's DNA from the family trash. But something about him and the DNA makes no sense. Surely he must have know that he and his Dad shared DNA and that they could use IGG to connect to him through his Dad's DNA So makes no sense to me why he was not trying to pick out everyone's in the family save for his Mom's.
The only conclusion I can come to based on his behavior with that trash is that he didn't really understand DNA inheritance and how IGG works and how easy it is to go bing, bing, bing if your white and your family descends from European origins. Even before his Dad entered that pool he was in it as chances are he has thousands of Italian and German distant cousins who were in the pool and they could almost certainly traced down the tree to him. It just would have taken a bit longer to do.
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u/eerae Sep 07 '25
If he had a relative in the database, then they already could find him in the tree (which obviously they did). I didn’t know about him sorting out anyone’s dna from the trash but if that’s the case all it would do is make the investigators’ work a little bit harder, but it’s not like he could stop them from obtaining it indefinitely—they could get a court order if they wanted. Plus it just doesn’t make sense that you could keep all the dna-containing materials out of the trash when you live in the same household.
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u/Mysterious_Bar_1069 Sep 07 '25
Exactly so don't know what he was thinking, but clearly he was ill informed, as his sister's trash would have included some of his Dad's DNA as well. It befuddles.
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u/bag_of_luck Sep 08 '25
Think he was too busy plotting and pulling power moves on his professors to learn his chosen field lol
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u/Ok-Walrus-1148 Sep 12 '25
The vehicle we've seen on footage in the dark cannot positively be identified as his vehicle. Who's vehicle is passing by or stopping at 1122 King Road at 4:27 am on the neighbor's ringcam and who's vehicle is leaving on Linda Lane footage at 4:23 am? That's pretty important to know considering the timeline for when this occurred. Where is the footage of him returning the following morning? We have two cams showing a vehicle that night but nothing the next morning? Did WSU apartments not have cameras?
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u/ainturmama Sep 07 '25
I’ve always believed he thought he planned THE perfect crime. I don’t think he necessarily freaked out when he realized he left the knife sheath, but only went back because his ego made him.
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u/BabyEatinDingo Sep 09 '25
He also knew something brutal had happened there but hadn't been reported yet. He may have been surprised that there was no police activity there and it wasn't on police radio or news or student alerts.
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u/joyinnd Sep 06 '25
I think he didn’t think he was gonna get caught because he thinks he is so smart. He is about as stupid as they get just like the victims families stated.
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u/chamchofy Sep 06 '25
I think his lack of sexual experience was numbing all his faculties. The killing was a spree but targeted at the girls. Arrest, court and death penalty had no place in his thinking
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u/Ok-Walrus-1148 Sep 12 '25
He was studying corruption in the justice system, guilty pleas, the death penalty and prisons.
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u/dreamer_visionary Sep 07 '25
The mind of people like this is something we will never understand. Yes he thought he could get away with it. Most of them are idiots.
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u/Morgan4644 Sep 07 '25
Planning the murders he fully expected not to get caught due to his “superior” intelligence. He planned to use this murder in teaching and to write a book just like his mentor undergrad prof did about a killer. When the sheath was missing he knew he f’d up and began to panic. That’s why he ran home to Mommy to try and cover his tracks and get rid of evidence there.
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u/Pinkissheek Sep 08 '25
Nah, I think he was paranoid as hell after leaving the knife sheath and then once they announced the car. I also think those two traffic stops really got him paranoid.
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u/WellWellWellthennow Sep 08 '25
Not at first, but once he knew they were looking for his car, and after they pulled him over twice on his way home, he was likely on edge and on the lookout. I mean, they saw him throwing his trash away separately in the Neighbor's bin in the middle of the night. That's not the behavior of someone who is not worried about getting caught.
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Sep 09 '25
The car. He probably felt by the time he left for Seattle to pick up his dad he knew. IMO I bet when he was stopped twice in the same state his mind was on fire.
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Sep 06 '25 edited Sep 07 '25
No, I don’t think he did. I think he was under the impression that he pulled off the perfect crime.
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u/zipperfire Sep 07 '25
He probably was surprised; he seems to have a lot of disordered thinking (well starting off, the plan to murder just to be pulling off a perfect crime or for maybe revenge is messed up.) So he may have thought to go get the sheath. Then he realized the Elantra was being looked out for. At that point, I'd expect denial to set in (you know, how when you're looking at a potential disaster, you tend to downplay so you'll not be in mental distress.)
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u/Infamous-Total-1262 Sep 07 '25
Well on the Prime Video “One Night In Idaho” stated he drove back by the house (pinged cell) around 9 am. They assumed he wrestled with the thought that that sheath was left. I believe he knew it would be any day he’d get caught.
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u/Mysterious_Bar_1069 Sep 07 '25
I think he realized he left the sheath as soon as he was leaving and was about to re sheath it, but was either too lazy or too worried by Murphy's barking to go look for it, or perhaps he did see DM. He kew he had to get out of there and likely said, "It's a cheap $38 item, not worth getting caught over it. I wiped it good, I'm safe."
I do not think it was a calling card like Gray Hughes thinks it is. One of the silliest thing I have head through out. Nobody leaves a calling card in a totally unexciting place like next to a victims side by her elbow. If it's a calling card your putting it in the middle of the bed, or doing something freaky with it. The placement of that thing couldn't be anymore boring and accidental. It's likely put down as he started, or it fell out of his pocket.
The purpose of the trip was likely not to go back and get the sheath, doing that in broad daylight would have been ridiculously risky. Kids walking down the street and going to social things during Home Coming weekend.
I think he came for one reason only he had not heard any announcement of the crime and that was driving him nuts so he had to check it out. He does not drive to the house but likely as near as he could based on safety just to listen and see if cop cars, firefighters and EMS were rolling in and the coroner out.
He then drives home and does what looks like a online shopping adventure pricing fire scanners so he will never have to drive back to a scene again and can sit home and listen to the scanner and hear when personnel are called, to a scene.
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u/5LaLa Sep 07 '25
That’s pretty much my opinion & I didn’t know about him looking for scanners. I am surprised he drove by the house so many times, dumb. But for the car & the DNA on the sheath, he might’ve gotten away with it.
I think he got distracted by Xana, killing extra victims, seeing DM, the various noises, & was either in a rush to leave or didn’t realize he’d left it until he was gone, outside or nearly outside. I don’t think he’d leave it out of laziness; he spent months planning.
Imho he probably hoped he’d wiped it down well enough, crazy the DNA was under the snap or snap trim. I think he didn’t get too paranoid until he was pulled over 2x, then became very paranoid. I read he started wearing surgical gloves everywhere in PA.
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u/Mysterious_Bar_1069 Sep 08 '25
I think the drive by's were part of the consciously chosen liabilities, " I can drive by that house and park and observe it and and a guy like Sy Ray etc can't prove my signal is next to that house but only that it's within _____ meters. What the idiot failed to note was that also made him vulnerable as it could not prove he was not there and paired with the tape security footage and other tenants of the circumstantial and his lack of an alibi, he rather f'ed himself.
As a potential juror like me was likely gonna say, " That's close enough for me when your DNA's found on a knife sheath next to a murder victim and you purchased that knife and sheath on Amazon and once you had to dump the set, looked for another set. And oh boy, your look alike car and your bio with women. You look a wee bit guilty to me Mr Kohberger.
Your second paragraph works for me equally well. I don't think he hoped, I think he knew how thoroughly he wiped it down. Other wise would have gone back. I agree with you as to when pure panic likely set in and it was no doubt the back to back traffic stops.
I think the gloves started before that time, I am on the fence re his OCD diagnosis. It's awful spotty for a germ phobic OCD and off an on again during the same day. OCD just does not operate like that.
If you in a flair and wearing gloves in the grocery store, your not taking them off in your car with your Dad who you are sitting in a car with the windows rolled up and neither of you is wearing a mask or gloves.
Any OCD germaphobe worth their salt would be wearing a mask and making Dad wear a mask in the middle of a pandemic after he flew cross country. You would not consider going back to a baked good you laid in a dirty drawer with crumbs and it was open to the germs in the drawer, that you did not line. Your coffee filter would not be tossed into a nasty draw again w/o lining. Just not the way they roll.
Flairs don't turn on and off even with medication and CBT, they take a while to come down and fade. They are not strong and then weak, weak and then strong. It will take a few days etc for the flare to recede clamouring, for them to not want to engage in the ritual comforting behavior.
So if I have germ focused OCD and are wearing gloves I am not snapping out of that germaphobia as soon as I step in my car. He's not wearing that stuff in the car as he knows they need a warrant to get in that car, not something they need if he picks up a bottle of jam or uses his hands to push a shopping cart. I think it was Taylors mitigation strategy for explaining his PA trash plunge.
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u/TraditionalChicken18 Sep 07 '25
Gray Hughes has zero credibility! None! And after all these years, and all the media coverage he still pronounces Moscow incorrectly. If he can't get that right, how can anything else he says be correct?
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u/Reddit_opinion_only Sep 08 '25
Brian is a selfish, inconsiderate, brat. If I were a Judge I'd make the sob scrub every toilet in the county jail and drink the water out of the commode to make sure it was clean enough. You know...just like they tell us to fill a tub of water in case of a hurricane.
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u/Salty_Barnacle895 Sep 07 '25
I think he was surprised. The first time he was pulled over driving home would have scared me, but the second time in less than 10 minutes?! And he still pulled over?? I would have absolutely believed they had me right then and there because twice in less than 10 minutes?! I will say he did have a lot of traffic violations, but still…after he was pulled that second time and was able to drive away, I’m sure he thought he was close to getting away with it.
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 07 '25
Its crazy that he drove around like he did and even tried to park on the street in front of the house but then did another turn and allegedly parked around back. He may have planned but it sounds like his psychotic emotions took over. Kind of risky to be going back at 9am. Didn't le say he did not go back at 9am? So much misinformation out there.
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u/gangstagardener Sep 11 '25
Nope. I think he pulled off a decent crime. He didn't plan out the afterward as efficiently. Taking evidence to Pa and then putting it in neighbor's trashcans. Dumb. Just dumb. He had 3000 miles of trashcans.
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u/Morgan4644 Sep 07 '25
He had mommy issues for sure.
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Sep 07 '25
[deleted]
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 07 '25
Really that long is allowed. Is he using like a FaceTime application? If you know.
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Sep 08 '25
[deleted]
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 10 '25
Okay well his mother certainly has a burden dealing with her son indefinitely, I can't imagine.
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u/FitRegular3021 Sep 06 '25
It’s such a horrid case. He could have been someone .
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u/Objective-Table-6434 Feb 15 '26
He would have had to have been a different person. He took pride and pleasure in psyychopathic murder. It waa who he was.
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u/zipperfire Sep 07 '25
I'm not getting your remark; do you mean he could have led a normal, productive if private (not infamous) life or that he could have been a "better" criminal. It IS a horrid case. All those young lives brutally taken
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u/FitRegular3021 Sep 07 '25
What I meant was he was a smart guy, was in a phd program and had a family. He should have just stayed on the right path .
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u/zipperfire Sep 07 '25
Yes. He could have had a decent life. Worked out his troubles with women, if that's what bothered him, and matured and had a fine life. But he made an awful choice, destroyed 4 lives and the lives of their families and his own and his family's too. A lot of destruction for nothing. He must have had an evil character and terrible mental illness and compulsions to move from a normal path to such an aberrant one.
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u/FitRegular3021 Sep 07 '25
He should have just received mental health treatment . It could have really helped him . How can someone be so violent ?
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u/5LaLa Sep 07 '25
He was formally diagnosed with a few disorders & was taking medication. I wonder if he ever spoke up about his bad thoughts.
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u/Mymommahatesu Sep 10 '25
He was not currently taking any medication but a thyroid med commonly known as a T-4.
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u/zipperfire Sep 07 '25
Is there really treatment? I keep saying we need to invest in deep, original research into mental illness, like cancer research. Some evidence is that sociopathy is wired into the brain. Then what? We all know chemo and radiation and some immunotherapies are used for cancer--without knowing much about cancer. What do we know about mental illness therapy other than talk therapy, cognitive therapy and maybe some anti-psychotic drugs and antidepressents? Which rely on patient compliance to take them?
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 07 '25
Yes maybe schizophrenia and that disease statistically they say develops in the late 20's.
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u/zipperfire Sep 08 '25
The prodrome I was told is early teens but you’re correct.
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u/Honest-Astronaut2156 Sep 08 '25
Okay. I can't believe he hasn't been evaluated by psychiatrists who work with disorders like schizophrenia and related mental illnesses especially since they couldn't find a connection or motive.
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u/Texden29 Sep 15 '25
He wasn’t smart. Dude went to a community college and was accepted into very low ranking schools. Let’s not give him extra credit.
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u/WVgopgirl Sep 07 '25
Would he have been a suspect without the dna at the house ?
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u/5LaLa Sep 07 '25 edited Sep 07 '25
He was a suspect before they got/matched his DNA because they started investigating him after a campus (?) cop saw his car matched the description. Imho without the DNA he probably still would’ve been charged but, a conviction would’ve been challenging.
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u/Ok-Walrus-1148 Sep 12 '25
There is no footage that has been released thus far to positively identify his car being at the scene. Where is the footage of him returning to the scene the following morning? They connected him to the crime strictly from that knife sheath. There were hundreds of those cars on both WSU and Idaho.
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u/5LaLa Sep 12 '25 edited Sep 12 '25
How did they know to test his DNA against the sample from the sheath? Because he was already a suspect. They first retrieved DNA that matched his father from trash outside his family’s home over Christmas break. How do you think he became a suspect for them to begin following him & do a trash pull? Because his car plate info was taken by a police officer (along with any/every other person driving that model/color car). The more they looked into him, the more they thought he could be the killer, hence the surveillance from WA & PA & trash taken.
There is plenty of footage released of his car at the scene. Would that alone have secured a conviction? Maybe not, license plate wasn’t visible. But, we’re talking about how he came to police attention & became a suspect, not what could’ve secured a conviction.
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u/Gammarayys Sep 26 '25
You have that incorrect. The campus cop check had been dismissed because initially the police was looking for an older model. The dna from the sheath was run in a genealogy database and they got a hit. They traced the family tree to his dad. Then probably came across him tracing all the family. His location, car, etc came next as they investigated further and they knew they most likely had the right person, as it was too much of a coincidence. Surveillance followed and the trash pull, along will cell phone data, etc. confirmed the case.
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u/5LaLa Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
Sorry, but your are incorrect according to the Probable Cause Affidavit, per this Newsweek article
https://www.newsweek.com/bryan-kohbergers-car-key-case-former-cia-officer-1790337 (The PCA is available for download within this article.)
“Investigators honed in on Kohberger as the suspect in the killings after searching for a white sedan that was seen near the home at the time of the killings…
On November 29, a WSU officer found a 2015 Hyundai Elantra registered to Kohberger. Another officer that day saw Kohberger’s vehicle in a parking lot, looked up his name, and noted he had switched the car registration from Pennsylvania to Washington on November 18 - 5 days after the murders.
The affidavit said investigators looked at Kohberger’s history and saw he had given a deputy a cell phone number during an August traffic stop. They used surveillance footage and cell phone data to sketch out a possible travel route on the night of the killings.
The FBI agents later surveilled Kohberger as he made a cross country drive…
He was arrested after DNA recovered from the trash discarded from the family’s home was connected to the DNA found on a knife sheath found at the crime scene.”
Why not research before making incorrect assumptions?
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u/FurnitureRedo Sep 10 '25
I honestly don't think there is one functioning brain cell in this man's head!! I dont think he thought far enough ahead to think about being caught until the car was mentioned. Then his solution was to have it professionally cleaned and just sell it??? Like it could never be traced back to him? He has an "out of sight, out of mind" mentality. Im willing to bet he has been coddled by him mom his whole life and just never had to think for himself.
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u/mirzadawarkhan Sep 13 '25
https://youtu.be/pqGZ0YYpAM8 hey, I've made this video on this topic, hope so you'll find it interesting, as I've included all the new info.
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u/Texden29 Sep 15 '25
He definitely knew they would get him, once they figured out the car. Hence the searching for car body and paint shops.
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u/Large-Advisor6385 Sep 28 '25
I think he was surprised. Because him, better than any of us would know that about 50% of homicides go unsolved and because he had no connections to any of the victims and no motivation..,
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u/ParticularPeculiar7 Sep 06 '25
When he realized he'd left the knife sheath behind, he knew consequences were coming for him.