Inside the 'Incel Theory' of Idaho Murders: Did Bryan Kohberger Use Avatar of Mass Killer Online?

The highly awaited trial for the alleged killer of University of Idaho students Xana Kernodle, Ethan Chapin, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves was scheduled for August. 

But on Wednesday, July 2, in a surprise move, former PhD criminology student Bryan Kohberger admitted to the vicious stabbing murders that took place in an off-campus home in Moscow, Idaho in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022.

However, he has never publicly divulged why he went on the murderous rampage.

“One Night in Idaho: The College Murders,” a new documentary premiering on Prime Video on July 11, investigates Kohberger’s life, his interactions with women, and his reported fascination with serial killer Elliot Rodger — who has since become a figure in the Incel or involuntary celibates’ movement.  

Two former students who studied criminology with Kohberger at DeSales University in Pennsylvania described him as a loner who didn’t have very many friends.

“He was someone who traveled to school and then bounced,” Kohberger’s former classmate Josh Ferraro said in the four-part docuseries. “You didn’t really think too much of him, and you would try to get personal, and he wouldn’t give you much.”

“He never had any friends he really associated with,” another former classmate Brittany Slaven said. “I don’t think too many people paid much mind to him.”

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Ferraro said that while at DeSales, Kohberger took a class about serial killers and their motives, including that of Rodger — a 22-year-old virgin who fatally stabbed or shot six people and injured 14 in Isla Vista, California before killing himself in May 2014.

He had posted a video online about his plan to kill as revenge for being rejected by women.

“I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin,” he said in the video, per CNN. “I’ve never even kissed a girl…I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It’s an injustice, a crime, because… I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy and yet you throw yourselves at these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it.” 

Rodger said he planned to enter “the hottest sorority house” and “slaughter every spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside there.”

Rodger’s attack seemingly inspired Alek Minassian to run down 10 people, mostly women, on a Toronto street in 2018. According to the BBC, before his attack, Minassian posted on Facebook: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”  

Minassian was convicted of the murders in 2021, The New York Times reported.

In the docuseries, Kristine Cameron, administrator of the University of Idaho Murders Facebook page, said shortly after the murders a Facebook user named Pappa Rodger began leaving disturbing messages in their discussion group.

“Did the killer stop at 4 victims out of exhaustion, convenience, or lack of knowledge?” Pappa Rodger posted. “Did the killer shower at the crime scene afterward?”

Other posts included mentions of the fixed blade knife used in the crime and the discovery of a sheath left behind, though at the time no information about a sheath being left behind had been made public.

“After Bryan Kohberger is arrested, I start thinking, okay, Pappa Rodger, Elliot Rodger, if you listen to some of the manifestos of Elliot Rodger, he talks about hating all the girls from Alpha Phi, the same sorority that Kaylee [Goncalves] was in.”

Posts from Pappa Rodger stopped following Kohberger’s arrest, and the profile was deleted. Cameron believes it was Kohberger behind the screen.

“Bryan was interested in a lot of things that we learned, but he did have more of an interest in Elliot Rodger,” said Slaven, the former classmate. “I talked to other girls in the class where we were all bothered by what Elliot Rodger did, but Bryan did not seem bothered.”

Ferraro referred to Kohberger as an “oddball” in the docuseries. “He is smart, but he’s like a robot,” he said. “Purely based off the fact of his social inability to perform in a normal human manner, I can absolutely see someone like him being involved in something like this.”