When the Night Comes Falling

The sole suspect charged in the gruesome slayings of four college students in Moscow, Idaho, Bryan Christopher Kohberger is, at the time of his arrest, a 28-year-old graduate student at Washington State University. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, Kohberger had a troubled adolescence, suffering from depression and substance abuse (heroin) in his late teens, along with a neurological condition known as “visual snow,” a syndrome that causes its victims to see static. Severely overweight, Bryan was relentlessly bullied at school and had few friends. After his arrest and probation for stealing his sister’s cellphone, Bryan made dramatic lifestyle changes, taking up weightlifting and boxing and losing over a hundred pounds. Determined to have a chiseled physique, Bryan resorted to plastic surgery to have the loose skin on his torso and abdomen trimmed and tautened. During this time, his personality also changed, and he became a bully: a trait he carried over into college and graduate school, where his one-upmanship, particularly against young women, bordered on abusive.

As the book opens, Bryan has held a TA position at Washington State for several months. Intensely focused on his doctorate studies (criminology), he idolizes one of his professors, the forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, whose deep inquiries into the criminal mind, especially that of serial killers, he seeks to emulate. He shows less interest in his students, however, and before the end of his first semester as a TA, the department fires him for his highhanded, unfeeling treatment of his students, a behavior that he arrogantly (and angrily) refuses to address. Though intelligent and driven, Bryan—by Blum’s account—shows a poor understanding of social cues and little capacity for friendship. The pool party he attends in Moscow in August 2022 is a case in point. Not wanting to sit alone like a “loser,” Bryan corners the party’s DJ and peppers him with technical questions, discomfiting the other man with his aggressive close talking. Bryan then coaxes two attractive women into giving him their phone numbers, perhaps only to prove to himself (and others) that he could do it. According to the women, he never followed through and called them, aside from some hangup calls that may or may not have been from him. Blum’s portrait of Bryan Kohberger suggests a cold, arrogant, competitive personality, one driven by a need to prove his superiority to others—perhaps as compensation for his years as a bullied, overweight teenager.

Michael Kohberger, Bryan’s 67-year-old father, was initially relieved when his teenaged son turned his troubled life around by getting off heroin and focusing on schoolwork. Proud of Bryan’s academic success and drive, he is less pleased with his field of study, since he questions whether anyone truly needs a doctorate to understand the “criminal mind.” A high school janitor who never attended college himself, Michael has a more practical view of higher education, feeling it should focus more on hard knowledge than on theory. Also, having grown up among small-time criminals, theoretical criminology may strike him as an unsavory career, particularly for his son, an unnervingly intense young man with few friends.

In the late fall of 2022, Michael’s nagging worries about Bryan have only gotten worse, which is why he has volunteered to drive his son all the way from Washington State University to the family home in Pennsylvania for winter break. Trying to identify his unease, he tells himself that the western states, such as Washington and Nevada, are “spooky” and unsafe, but his true fears about his son seem to be about something other than geography. During this long drive, Bryan’s squirrely behavior and explosive anger alarm him. Adding to his suspicions is the weirdly roundabout route his son has chosen, which will add at least a day to their journey. Whether he suspects Bryan of actual criminal behavior—such as the massacre in nearby Moscow—is unclear but worries about violent crime clearly haunt him during the long drive: When their car is pulled over twice for tailgating, Michael talks compulsively to the highway cop both times about a recent shootout in Pullman, Bryan’s college town. Though never having formally studied the criminal mind himself, Michael may nevertheless have more natural, homegrown insight into it than his son realizes.

The first two victims of the massacre in Moscow, Idaho, Kaylee and Madison were longtime friends who regarded each other almost as sisters. Both 21 years old at the time of their deaths, the two had known each other since the sixth grade, having both grown up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and attended the rigorous Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy. Kaylee, high-spirited and known as a daredevil, hailed from an affluent family with a large house on seven acres in an idyllic setting; Madison (or “Maddie”), whose working-class father was frequently in legal trouble over his substance use, had a less-than-stable childhood, even after her mother remarried. Imaginative and whimsical, Maddie took solace in a fantasy life, often pretending to be a fairy. Later, Kaylee and her big-hearted family provided another haven for her, inviting her on their lavish vacations to Belize, Cabo, and Waikiki. The two girls were soon inseparable, and Kaylee’s parents came to regard Maddie as another daughter. With their long blonde hair, attractiveness, and infectious smiles, they even looked like sisters.

At the University of Idaho, the two best friends joined different sororities, perhaps as a way of forging their own paths, just as college students typically seek out some distance from their families. Though both were excellent students, they pursued different majors, Kaylee joining the university’s College of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, and Maddie choosing to major in marketing. Toward the end of their junior year, in the spring of 2022, they excitedly signed the lease at 1122 King Road together, claiming the two third-floor bedrooms. Kaylee, who had arranged to graduate a semester early, moved out of the house before November; she had a job waiting for her in Texas and was planning to backpack in Europe over winter break. The only reason she returned to the King Row house on the fatal weekend of November 12 was to visit her best friend and show off her new purchase: a Range Rover Evoque. To celebrate their “reunion,” the two friends shared a bedroom that night: Maddie’s room. If Howard Blum’s theory is correct—that Maddie was the killer’s sole intended victim—then Kaylee was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.