The arrest of 28-year-old criminologist Bryan Kohberger in the Idaho student murders case came as a shock but “made sense” to a former high school administrator who kicked him out of a law enforcement vocational program, she said in a new interview.
Although program leaders were told that Kohberger’s dream in life was to join law enforcement, his struggles became apparent to them early on.
“It wasn’t gonna be an ending up in the police academy kind of thing for him,” Tanya Carmella-Beers, a former administrator at the Monroe Career and Technical Institute, a vocational high school program, told “The Idaho Massacre” podcast. “It was gonna be a little bit more of a challenge for him to get there.”
Bryan Kohberger enters the courtroom at the Latah County Courthouse in Moscow, Idaho on Friday, Aug. 18, 2023. He is accused of killing four University of Idaho students in November 2022. (August Frank/Lewiston Tribune)
While she said she couldn’t delve into specifics due to student privacy laws, she said students of the protective services program, the name of the institute’s law enforcement curriculum, were held to a high standard. If a student did anything that would get an adult fired from the profession, they were kicked out of the program.
“Ultimately what had him removed from the program, when I look back on it now, makes sense… the fact that he wanted law enforcement more than anything else in the world, if you look at it from just that perspective alone not knowing what I know… you’d be like, I’m so shocked,” she said. “In that respect I am, but I know another little piece, which is the piece that occurred at the school… so that makes sense.”
Although she said Kohberger took the program “extremely seriously,” a group of female students reported an issue to their teacher.
IDAHO STUDENT MURDERS: DEFENSE GRILLS EXPERTS ON KNIFE SHEATH DNA MATCH
University of Idaho student Madison Mogen, top left, smiles on the shoulders of her best friend, Kaylee Goncalves, as they pose with Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, and two other housemates in Goncalves’ final Instagram post, shared the day before the four students were stabbed to death. Suspect Bryan Kohberger was attending criminology Ph.D. classes at the neighboring Washington State University. (@kayleegoncalves/Instagram)
“A complaint was made, and the teacher reported it to me, and said, ‘You know, this is not something we can have,’” Carmella-Beers told the podcast hosts. “An investigation needed to be conducted. Other students were interviewed. Bryan was interviewed. And there comes a time when decisions have to be made, whether it’s the decision the student wants or not.”
The school cut Kohberger from the law enforcement program, and he transferred to the heating, ventilation and air condition track instead, for a year, before dropping out.
“I don’t think that maybe he necessarily grasped the depth and breadth of the issue at hand,” she said.
A yearbook photo of Bryan Kohberger in a high school law enforcement class doing a pushup. (Stephanie Pagones/Fox News Digital)
Carmella-Beers did not immediately respond to a message from Fox News Digital.
Despite getting kicked out of protective services, he would later list his time there on a job application seeking employment at the nearby Mount Pleasant High School as a part-time security guard.
Although district officials have declined to discuss potential disciplinary actions, his employment there ended in what public records indicate was a forced resignation.
On June 22, 2021, Kohberger acknowledged in writing that “I understand that if I do not resign, I have a right to a school board hearing to determine if I should be dismissed from employment with the School District.”
However, despite his job struggles and a battle with drug addiction, he went on to obtain a master’s degree in criminal justice from DeSales University and began Ph.D. criminology classes at Washington State University in the fall of 2022.
Bodycam video shows Bryan Kohberger interacting with a Washington State University police officer in October 2022, about a month before the quadruple stabbing deaths of four students at the nearby University of Idaho. He is accused of the slayings and is being held without bail on four counts of first-degree murder. (Washington State University Police)
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Before Thanksgiving break in his first semester, however, he is accused of carrying out a quadruple murder plot – massacring a group of students at a house just steps away from the neighboring University of Idaho campus.
A 4 a.m. knife attack on Nov. 13 killed Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.
Police in Moscow, Idaho, say they found a Ka-Bar knife sheath under Mogen’s body that had Kohberger’s DNA on it. Pennsylvania police arrested him at his parents’ house in the Pocono Mountains on Dec. 30. He waived extradition to Idaho and has been held without bail ever since.
A judge entered not guilty pleas on his behalf to charges of murder and burglary at his arraignment in May. His trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 2.
