From "Idaho Murder Suspect Had Been a Student of the Criminal Mind/The arrest of a graduate student in the murder of four University of Idaho students eased fears but raised a troubling new question: What was the motive?" (NYT). Kohberger studied criminology and served as a teaching assistant.
January 2, 2023
"Students said [Bryan] Kohberger had a strong grasp of the subject matter but was a harsh grader..."
"... giving extensive critiques of assignments and then defending the lower marks when students complained as a group. Later in the fall, roughly around the time of the killings, [Hayden Stinchfield, 20, one of the students in that class] said Mr. Kohberger seemed to start giving better grades, and the assignments that once had his feedback scrawled across every paragraph began coming back clean."
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Harsh grader?
These kids should experience law school. Real grades. One exam. The way it should be.
I like very mich how the tags grading, murder are right next to each other. That's got to be intentional.
AHA! But, was he a Trump Supporter!
This is shaping up as Infinite Regress: study the subject —> become the subject. Was he sick before he entered this field?
They were "burdens" h/t Obama. Perhaps cannibalized for parts h/t Planned Parenthood. Under the ethical religion he found relief and utility through elective abortion. Through equity and inclusion, His Choice. That said, diversity [dogma] denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalizes color blocs, color quotas, and affirmative discrimination... a progressive path and grade.
There was a young boy some years back who was convinced by watching the television show Dexter that he was himself a serial killer who needed to murder someone to find release from his unbearable inner tensions. So that's what he did.
Spend enough time psychoanalyzing killers and murder itself may come to look like therapy -- the cure, rather than a result of the disease. That's very different from someone like Raskolnikov or Leopold and Loeb killing to prove that they are superior beings, though. It seems more like an admission of one's weakness than a proclamation of one's strength and uniqueness. Of course, it's possible that if he did this he was barely thinking at all.
Usually, they (whoever "they" are) close down the social media of someone accused of something like this. If I understand the situation correctly, reddit found that the had used reddit to find criminals to interview and they reposted his call for convicted criminals to interview. I didn't see any red flags there, though -- the prose of sociologists and grant-applicants conceals much more than it reveals.
Dave Begley said...
Harsh grader? These kids should experience law school. Real grades. One exam. The way it should be.
Speaking of law school, as it was back in the day anyway, wasn't Ted Bundy a law student at one point?
University of Idaho murders compared to Ted Bundy’s Florida kill spree
The disturbing killing of four University of Idaho students on Nov. 13 bears an eerie resemblance to two previous college town massacres– including serial killer Ted Bundy’s infamous sorority house spree over four decades ago.
Retired criminal investigator Matt Hogan told Fox News that the Idaho killings were “strikingly similar” to the events of Jan. 15, 1978, when Ted Bundy broke into Florida State University’s Chi Omega house in Tallahassee.
“Bundy had knowledge of the victims in the house, and it was a sort of frenzied attack with extreme violence,” Hoggatt explained...
Joseph Scott Morgan, a professor of applied forensics at Jacksonville State University, told Fox that the Moscow massacre reminded him of Danny Rolling, the so-called “Gainesville Ripper” who murdered five University of Florida students over four days in Aug. 1990.
“It involved knives, occurred in a college town but in off-campus houses, and Rolling went into these homes that had more than one occupant,” Morgan explained.
Idaho law allows death by lethal injection for murder. They have carried out an execution as recently as 2012.
Is it odd that we focus on the reason for killing the perpetrators motive, the connection (or not) to the victims, when a knife is used and not a gun? How would the reporting of this be different?
Wince @ 8:13: This talk of pattern killings is pretty depressing. But if indeed we are looking at a recurrent pathology (off-campus housing, burglary/covert entry, slash/stab) should we not ask the schools to prepare the students against the threat? How about requiring one less lecture on white guilt and instead offer an hour on self-defense?
It seems premature to speculate on Kohberger's motivation to murder when he hasn't confessed and no compelling evidence has been made public. We are encouraged to be watchful of quiet people who are too conscientious, particularly if their field is criminology.
It puts me in the mind of the totalitarian slogan from the movie Brazil.
"Suspicion breeds confidence."
I am not very concerned about the clever and random murderer. The "known wolf" and "released on bail" killers are a bigger concern because they reveal a defect in our institutions.
Yeah, Wince when I first heard about this I thought not of Bundy, but Danny Rolling.
"They were 'burdens' h/t Obama. Perhaps cannibalized for parts h/t Planned Parenthood. Under the ethical religion he found relief and utility through elective abortion. Through equity and inclusion, His Choice. That said, diversity [dogma] denies individual dignity, individual conscience, intrinsic value, normalizes color blocs, color quotas, and affirmative discrimination... a progressive path and grade."
This as baffling and indecipherable as the most recondite of William Burroughs' cut-up novels. Bravo.
"Mr. Kohberger seemed to start giving better grades, and the assignments that once had his feedback scrawled across every paragraph began coming back clean."
People are reading too much into things that probably don't matter. When I was a TA (organic chemistry lab), I put a lot of work into grading and commenting on lab reports, which included pre-lab questions. The scores tended to be low and the comments abundant, at first. Later, the students learned to produce better reports, so the comments became fewer and the grades higher as the semester progressed.
Lost in the news about the arrest of Bryan Kohberger is the story of University of Idaho professor Rebecca Scofield. She is suing TikTok content creator Ashley Guillard to clear her name after Guillard claimed in a widely-viewed TikTok video that Tarot cards identified Schofield as being involved in the murders.
Constructing the perfect crime? When first I read about the murders, I thought of Bundy. Perp's had enough time to cover his tracks effectively.
Beware that, when fighting monsters, you do not become a monster…for when you gaze long into the abyss. the abyss gazes also into you. - Nietzsche
So post-murder he graded more like a Harvard professor?
This is an odd one here in Idaho.
First of all, nothing but sadness and regret for the violent and shocking loss of four (young) people. Nothing can ease that.
Looking forward though: this one spins even more strangely that I suspect it does elsewhere (at the NYT or instance). Here in Idaho, Moscow is a remote place in a remote state - it's just off the center of everything. Not close to Boise at all and really not that close to Coeur d' Alene. And, the "gun thing" is the "gun thing" but this violence happened without them - even though they are both fretted about and cherished. Additionally, apparently this murder was committed by a Pennsylvanian (who wondered over the boarder from Washington - not by some weirdo north Idaho survivalist or bent out of shape Californian (the likely first thoughts by many I'm sure). And, you'd think there has to be more here as it's pretty hard to imagine anyone (gifted or not) getting in to a house of six people, then killing four of them with a knife and leaving unnoticed.
A bunch of sadness and confusion on this one - I suppose even after justice is done.
This as baffling and indecipherable as the most recondite of William Burroughs' cut-up novels. Bravo.
The Progressive sects offer religious sanction to abort human lives they deem a "burden" h/t Obama fully rationalized by hyper-intellectuals. Clinical cannibalism is a separable but joint enterprise in the performance of human rites that follows with social progress. So, the urbane abortionist followed the progressive path to reach its logical conclusion. Bravo, indeed.
In my history classes I graded pretty hard, and I always told those aspiring to law school that if they thought I was bad . . .
These murders do not resemble the Bundy Chi Omega murders. Bundy at that time was deteriorating mentally and went on to attack another woman, then a child. He had the bad judgement to kill in Florida where "Old Sparky" was still in use.
The criminology student sounds weird and this may be more of a Loeb and Leopold case. Of course we don't know about the evidence. The NY Times, as usual, used terrible judgement in printing the accusation by a lesbian classmate that he was "anti-LBTQ+." She gave no examples and refused a query by another reporter accusing her of "harassing" her.
Robert Cook said...This as baffling and indecipherable as the most recondite of William Burroughs' cut-up novels. Bravo.
Even though it was fun to play with, I haven’t thought about the cut-up machine in years.
https://www.languageisavirus.com/cutupmachine.php
Harsh graders are usually secret psychopaths. Lenient graders are full of sunshine.
Michael K said...
These murders do not resemble the Bundy Chi Omega murders.
People forget that Bundy was a serial killer here in Washington state long before he moved to Florida. He was active in Republican politics - I talked to him on the phone a couple of times to coordinate getting materials to his boarding house; he never attempted to meet me - which tells me that he was a brilliant sociopath - He never killed anyone if there was the slightest risk of a connection - those that attended his classes or that he met casually with others.
Whew that Rolling dude was a case. Nice home life his father produced.
Used to work with a guy whose USMC father spent WWII in the Pacific, storming beachheads. Night terrors occurred, only tapering off as he approached senility. The kid was a little twisty, but normative. Moscow murder's story has to be whacked!
In 1990 five University of Florida students were killed in a couple of days by a drifter. It took five months to track him down. Everyone seems to have forgotten this case and its similarities.
Ted Bundy was active in Republican politics?
Well, nobody's perfect.
I first thought of Richard Speck.
I have read that Moscow house was a party house. Police had been called to address noise complaints where no residents were present at the house. They spoke to the responding police on the phone.
Killer might have attended a party or two. Possibly to gain floor plan info and/or establish a DNA presence for later activities? The house layout was unconventional to say the least.
> In my history classes I graded pretty hard
My grading philosophy (math) was that if a normally talented student worked hard, they would get a B, B+. A's were for the talented who worked hard. I once gave out 4 A's in a complex analysis class, best group of students I ever had.
I could have made it easy on myself and given multiple-guess tests by dodging the core/gen-ed requirement of written essays, or just grading lighter, but I was a glutton for the pain. That was only possible because I only taught as an adjunct every few years; I could not have made a career of it, which I already knew.
Some students appealed their grades to me, and I made some legit adjustments, but too many came forward whining about how they had studied SO hard, and had always made straight A's, and just didn't see how . . .
One young lady was ready to blame me for keeping her out of law school next autumn, and wanted to take the matter to a higher authority. I regraded her final exam and gave it a lower grade, and told her I was ready to go forward.
>>I first thought of Richard Speck.
I was in grammar school in Chicago at the time. The trial was just before I graduated. The murder location was on the southeast side, near Pullman. It was quite the story.
--gpm
I first thought of Richard Speck.
A friend of my family was Chief of Homicide at the time. Here is his story.
After all these years, I still have the occasional nightmare about being late for my Civ Pro final. Lets stop with the law school exam talk it’s giving me PTSD.
If I were writing these events as a novel, the arrest of Kohberger would be a red herring orchestrated by a clique of his aggrieved woke criminology students. Using hairs and fibers meticulously harvested from the classroom, they used one of their members working as an intern at the Moscow PD to plant evidence at the murder scene.
Was it out of pure malice? Or were they trying to protect someone?
Of course, life is not a novel.
A friend of mine once had a Sunday dinner with George Howard Putt, who later was briefly famous as The Memphis Maniac.
Said he never spoke a word and never looked at you, IIRC.
I don't remember most of these famous killers everyone is mentioning, but I do remember several James Patterson novels which amount to 'how to' instructions to carry out killings like this. 'Kiss the Girls' is one I remember, there are others. Reading stuff like this creeps me out and I stopped doing it. However, it has resulted in my being especially careful about personal security of myself and my family members.
Seriously, what would a hyper-intellectual, with a probable Twilight faith, subscribes to a secular, ethical religion, a class-disordered ideology, with diversity enhancements, and popular sanction do to test the limits of equity and inclusion? We know what Gosnell did. We know what Sanger did. We know what Mao did. We know what Hitler did. What affirmative action would Kohberger take with political and popular religious sanction of his Choice?
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