Dead girls.

THEY say you cannot tell if a man is a murderer simply by looking at his face. In the case of Bryan Kohberger this may not be the case. Kohberger was recently charged with the murder of four University of Idaho students in their off-campus apartment in Moscow, Idaho. In nearly all the photos taken since his arrest, Kohberger's eyes look flat and dead if there was no soul behind them at all.

His arrest comes after over a month of gruesome details of the crime that took place in the early morning hours of Nov 13, 2022. Around noon that day, the police department in the tiny university town of Moscow, Idaho were called to an off-campus apartment shared by the five female students. When they got there, they found a terrifying scene. The two surviving girls who had called the police were hysterical, one fainted and had to be revived by the police and the other could not be understood. It was only when the police entered the home and went through its three floors that they saw that four students, three girls and one boy, had been stabbed to death.

The days until Kohberger's arrest were harrowing ones for the students at the University of Idaho - a low-crime environment where police mostly deal with underage drinking and loud parties. The parents of many students were so horrified that they drove to the campus and picked up their children before the semester was over. With a killer on the loose, it appeared to be the smart thing to do.

In the meantime, everyone from psychic mediums to astrologers to amateur internet sleuths got into trying to solve the case. It was only when Kohberger was arrested at his parent's home in Pennsylvania, thousands of miles away from Idaho, that speculation about who had killed the students finally came to an end.

Victim-blaming is endemic. Had the girls locked all their doors? Were they being careful in making sure no one was following them?

The details in the probable cause affidavit released to the public are bone-chilling. It reveals how cell phone data allowed the police to conclude that the girls who were killed were deliberately targeted by Kohberger. (The sole male victim happened to be staying over for the night.) Kohberger's cell phone pinged near the girls' home at least 12 times between August and the November killings. Most of these instances were in the late evening or early morning. It can be assumed from this that Kohberger was watching and stalking the students from outside their home for months...