CNN: New York Times obtains chilling posts written by Idaho suspect

New York Times reporter Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs scoured through Idaho killings suspect Bryan Kohberger’s past internet posts. He discusses what he found with CNN anchor Erin Burnett.#CNN #News

Transcript

The New York Times obtaining chilling posts, it says are from the Idaho murder suspect Brian Kabaka as a teenager. Time sharing screengrabs of the post without front in which coworker reportedly says he feels no emotion, a little remorse. One says, quote, As I hug my family, I look into their faces.

I see nothing. It is like I am looking at a video game. OUTFRONT now, Nicholas Vogel Burrows, the reporter who broke this story. And Nick, I know that you identified and have now read through hundreds of messages from about a decade of time that you say were written by Koeberg or so.

This would go from the time he was a teenager all the way until now. Tell me more about what stood out to you in these posts. Yeah, so it begins with these posts on a forum website when he’s about 16 years old and he’s talking about feeling a range of mental health conditions

Or problems with his life. He talks about not being able to feel emotions, feeling like he’s detached, from the world. And as you mentioned, that when he hugs his own family, he sees nothing. He also describes looking at his life and going through the motions like it’s a video game,

And he’s really hard on himself saying he feels worthless, that he’s a jerk to people in his life and doesn’t feel bad about it afterwards. He also talks particularly about his dad saying he treats his dad like dirt even though he thinks of him as a good guy.

And it’s it’s this is all back when he’s in about high school in his later teen years. And what we know about his life after that is that he ends up becoming addicted to heroin around the time that he graduated high school in 2013. And he’s in and out of rehab.

But then what’s kind of interesting is is after that it seems like his life turns around somewhat. He goes to community college and gets start studying psychology and starts messaging other friends about saying he’s he’s interested in studying the minds of criminals. It seems like he’s found a passion of some kind

In psychology and criminology. Wow. And then he ends up going of course, as we now to across the country from Pennsylvania, where he grew up to Washington state last summer and starts a Ph.D. program in criminology there. So it’s amazing to see this. And you’ve had a chance to read all through this,

Which which has to be difficult. You say that one of his friends told you that coworker suffered from a neurological condition called a visual snow, where people basically, as you describe it, see scattered dots like sort of static on a on a television to people of a certain age.

One of the posts you shared with us says, and I quote, What you shared with us is as if the ringing in my ears and the fuzz in my vision is simply all the demons in my head mocking me. What else do you know about the context there?

Yeah, the visual snow is a really little understood condition. It’s like you said, it’s static in your vision, like old television. And it there’s really the causes still not fully clear, but it really can be debilitating for some people. You know, I want to be clear. It’s not a sign of mental illness

And it’s not something that anyone has said could explain these these heinous killings. But it’s something that he complained a lot about as a teenager, both to friends and on these online posts. And that was coupled with his complaints about life in general. All right. Well, Nick, thank you very much.

I appreciate your sharing your reporting with us and some of those posts is disturbing as they are as people try to understand this. Thank you. And on the back of Nick’s reporting, let’s now bring in Jim Fallon. He’s a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at UC Irvine.

So, Jim, you know, you hear Nick, The New York Times reporter talking about Coburg are suffering from a condition called visual snow and the Times, as he referenced this with the initials V. S in an online post that says, when I get home, I mean, to my family, this started when voice did

I felt no emotion. Is there anything you can tell us about this visual snow condition? Well, the visual snow is often associated with migraine. And it’s it’s thought to be generated by hyper stimulated neurons. The base of the temporal lobe. That’s where visual processing, a lot of visual processing occurs.

And so, yes, it’s it’s debilitating and almost nothing is known about it. But it is a syndrome that you know, it’s you know, you never hear about it being associated with murder or anything like that. Although if you read the rest of his post and it seems clear that he’s got

A depersonalization syndrome and which is a dissociative disorder, where you feel separated from yourself. And is that when you’re talking about, as Nick was just saying, you know, sort of when he looks at the faces of his family members, he just says he feels nothing. Is that that’s what you’re referring to?

Well, yes. You know, you have on the top of your head right here in the spiritual parietal cortex. You have a GPS system. But what it does is it puts together your whole world. It tells you where your eyes are, relationship to your head, but relationship to the world.

And then it adds an emotion to that. And all of that apparatus seems to be damaged. And so he doesn’t even connect with himself. So he doesn’t even have self empathy, which is extraordinary. All right. And this lack of empathy toward others in himself. You often see it in psychopaths.

I’m not saying he’s a psychopath, but it’s such a curious combination of things. But, you know, he was a heroin addict and the heroin can can trigger this dissociation, this depersonalization syndrome. It’s like you’re living in a dream where you’re watching yourself you can see this in schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder,

Different psychiatric disorders where people feel separated from themselves. You see in people who take hallucinogens. Yes. And they were they tried. And so you sit in dream states, we measure all sorts of dreams or you see this. And so anybody who’s had these strange dreams where they’re hanging over themselves or an Anastasia.

And so we people have experiences, but not all the time. It’s not they don’t feel that that it’s occurring 100% of the time. In his case, it seems and he’s living this all the time, like he’s in a dream state and a very disturbing, very disturbing state. Well, Jim, thank you very much.

He knows all the words. He knows he knows the he studied this. Right. That and that, I think, is the most bizarre part about it. Right. Is able to make that connection and able to study it all as well and choose that that entire path of learning. Thank you so much.

I appreciate your time, Jim.

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