“He seemed preoccupied”: Bryan Kohberger’s former student reveals Idaho murder suspect’s behavioral changes after killings

On November 13, 2022, criminology graduate Bryan Kohberger allegedly killed four University of Idaho students in the small town of Moscow, Idaho.

While the suspect is still awaiting extradition from a Pennsylvania facility to Idaho, where he will face judicial proceedings, a former student of his has spoken out about his unusual behavior in the days following the attack.

In an interview with CNN, Hayden Stinchfield, a Washington State University student who had Bryan Kohberger as a teaching assistant, said that the suspect seemed withdrawn in the days following the killing.

Stinchfield said:

"The couple times that he did come after, or around that time period, he had a little more facial hair, stubble, less well-kept. He was a little quieter."

Stinchfield also said:

"He seemed preoccupied."

Bryan Kohberger is currently in police custody. Authorities have not yet disclosed an alleged motive behind the incident.

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What was Bryan Kohberger like as a teaching assistant?

In the interview with CNN reporters, Hayden Stinchfield said that while he knew Kohberger to be a strict marker, this changed in the days following the killings.

Stinchfield said:

"He'd be grading you on what he ended up calling a 'higher standard'. But what it really felt like to us was he was grading us like he would have graded himself as a Ph.D. student... We were all annoyed by him."

As per ABC, Kohberger was such a harsh marker that a professor allowed students to argue with him about his grades in an open courtroom-style forum.

Stinchfield said:

"He brought in Bryan, and he was like, 'alright, go at him. And he had Bryan stand up. And a few people were on his side because they wanted to keep their high grades... but for the most part, it was like half of a 150-person class just asking these real critical questions."

He added that the situation even became somewhat tense.

"It wasn't like yelling or anything, but it was certainly conflict."

Stinchfield went on to say that after the Moscow murders took place, Kohberger became an unusually easy marker. He said:

"Around then, he started grading everybody just 100s. Pretty much if you turned something in, you were getting high marks and he stopped leaving notes."

He continued:

"The previous mental preoccupation that we had been noticing, where it was like he didn't really want to be there, that was at an all-time high. He just didn't look like he was doing great."

As per the Spokesman-Review, another of Bryan Kohberger's former students, Joey Famularo, said that the suspect always seemed quiet. He said:

"(He) always seemed a little bit on edge. We just assumed he was kind of shy."

The Moscow massacre is currently under police investigation.

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