What Bryan Kohberger Wrote About His Own Lawyers

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today. This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:15)
I thought we could stop talking about this guy a long time ago, but apparently not. Bryan Kohberger now says, it wasn't me, it was somebody else, it wasn't me. I've been railroaded, my attorney sucked, and he's, I mean, he's looking for the last lever to pull, and he has essentially pulled it. Bryan Kohberger, as you may remember, stood in an Ada County courtroom and said the word guilty four separate times, one for each of the University of Idaho students he admitted taking the lives of. Thirteen months later, he's now filed to take it all back, and somehow in his mind, he thinks that just writing this out on a piece of paper and calling the New York Times is what's going to do it. Well, we're certainly talking about it, aren't we? Whether or not that actually means anything legally is a whole other conversation. Writing that his actual innocence is his truth, his truth. I love it when people have their truths.
Joining us to break all of this down, psychotherapist Siobhan Scott, who spent her career inside how people build and rebuild the stories they tell about themselves. And that sentence is where we are starting. Robin Drake, retired FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program.
Also with us, hi, I'm Tony. I'm a podcaster. That's my credential.

**Robin Drake** (1:38)
I just love Siobhan on Wednesdays. She wraps us in the greatest blanket of understanding of others.

**Tony Brueski** (1:45)
So do I. This is one of my favorite, one of my most favorite conversations of the week.

**Robin Drake** (1:50)
And we need her today for the darkness recovering. Thank God we're covering Kohberger first. This little lightness of idiocy and some jocularity from the moron he is before we move on to the horrendous pain.

**Tony Brueski** (2:03)
Obviously, I mean, obviously it's all horrendous pain. But at this point, Kohberger is almost just laughable with the things that come out of his mouth. It's like if there's anything left out of this, it's comic relief from an idiot. And in a little bit, we're also going to talk about Lindsey Clancy as well and where that case is at in the trial. And it will bring us all down before we continue.

**Robin Drake** (2:23)
And in most of these cases, we always got to make sure we give props and compassion to the victims of Kohberger. But at the same time, though, and he kind of grabbed a spotlight and you mentioned this in one of your pieces, Tony, from the streaming that was coming out talking about the victims. But I do like that he's put himself back up there for the Consolvises to go at him again, because anytime they can take some swings at him, I think it's good.

**Tony Brueski** (2:52)
He kind of put a string back on his head and put on the pinata costume and went back up.

**Robin Drake** (2:56)
It's like, oh, okay. You take it on the wrong family, brother.

**Tony Brueski** (3:00)
Let's look at how he warded it. Because this is not necessarily, we're not talking about the legalities or anything. We're talking about the brain behind this, how he got to calling the New York Times and writing this letter. That's what I'm really curious about. He wrote that his actual innocence is his truth. That's part of the verbage that he used and all sorts of verbage and we'll get into that in a little bit too. That's a man building a room to stand in. So which are we dealing with here, Siobhan? A liar that's trying to run a play on this?
Or is this a man who is genuinely rewritten the file on his own head and he believes that he didn't do this?

**Siobhan Scott** (3:47)
Could be some of both.
I seriously doubt that he has convinced himself he didn't do it. But my guess is he's crafting a story that makes him feel better about himself. And it's obviously BS. But in some way, it allows him some sense of comfort, some sense of, well, it wasn't really my fault I did it, or these other factors weren't looked at. And of course, to those of us who can look at the objective truth, that's absurd. But it's all self-serving.
The guy is hyper-focused on details. We know that he had all these obsessive tendencies. And is he trying to pull that in because it gives him a sense of control. And he does clearly, being locked up the way he is, he doesn't have a lot of control over things. And so this is meeting some kind of psychological need for him to feel important, to be in control again. And it gets him attention, which, you know, these kind of guys love attention.