Murder In Moscow: Bryan Kohberger, The New York Times And The Termination Letter

Washington State University had been investigating Bryan Kohberger’s conduct as a criminology Ph.D. student and teaching assistant during the same period in which the murders of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin occurred. Faculty concerns reportedly began early in the fall 2022 semester and included Kohberger’s interactions with professors as well as complaints from female students who said his behavior made them uncomfortable. In one reported incident, he was accused of following a woman to her car, although the university’s investigation did not find him guilty of wrongdoing over the complaints involving women. Less than two weeks before the November 13 murders, Kohberger was called into a faculty meeting to discuss mounting concerns about his conduct, and he had already been placed on an improvement plan after an earlier verbal altercation with a professor.

The problems continued after the murders, before Kohberger had publicly emerged as a suspect. WSU faculty ultimately decided in December to remove him from his teaching-assistant position and the funding attached to it, citing unsatisfactory performance and his failure to meet expected standards of professional behavior in his dealings with faculty. The disciplinary timeline was significant because it showed that Kohberger had been experiencing escalating problems in his academic and professional life before and immediately after the killings, independent of the criminal investigation that was closing in on him. None of the university complaints established a motive for the murders, and faculty members had not connected his behavior to the killings at the time, but the records added another troubling layer to the picture of Kohberger’s life in the months surrounding the crime.


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