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Dr. Katherine Ramsland was Bryan Kohberger’s professor before he moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he is expected to plead guilty to killing four University of Idaho students.
July 2, 2025, 11:33 a.m. ET
The news first came in a phone call. Dr. Katherine Ramsland, one of the nation’s most prominent experts on serial killers, got word from a colleague that her former student had been arrested in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.
It left her completely stunned, she said. And then she doubted it could possibly be true.
“I thought, ‘They have to have this wrong,’” Dr. Ramsland said in an interview. “This has to be wrong. It’s not the Bryan Kohberger that I know.”
At DeSales University, where Mr. Kohberger got a master’s degree in criminal justice in 2022, Dr. Ramsland is a professor of forensic psychology who has written extensively about high-profile murderers, including an examination of the serial killer known as B.T.K. Her books include “The Mind of a Murderer” and “How to Catch a Killer.”
Over the years, Dr. Ramsland said, she has always kept aware of the prospect that people might take her courses and learn the methods of serial killers in order to build on their own nefarious ideas. But she said in her time with Mr. Kohberger, she never had that concern.
“He was very polite, respectful, seemed genuinely engaged with the material as a potential researcher, teacher, somebody who was interested in a career,” she said.
After Mr. Kohberger’s arrest in December 2022, weeks after the murders in Moscow, Idaho, she expected he would clear his name. But then she found it odd that Mr. Kohberger was not offering an alibi. When one finally did emerge, more than a year after the case began, Mr. Kohberger said that he had been out driving around on the night of the killings.
