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Pullman, Washington

I t’s one of the last classes of the semester, Criminal Justice Processes and Institutions, a course taught by Dr. Craig Hemmens in Wilson-Short Hall.

The topic of the recent murders in Moscow is brought up for class discussion.

For instance: What is legally on the table for the murderer when they’ve caught him?

Idaho has the death penalty; Washington State does not.

The murderer surely would have known this.

Ordinarily, Bryan would be front and center, speaking more than most of the others.

But one of Bryan’s classmates—someone who has four classes with him that semester and is used to listening to his monologues—notices that he doesn’t speak at all. Not once in three hours. He’s got nothing to say on a topic that has the class revved up.

This is extraordinary, the classmate thinks.

The classmate assumes Kohberger is ill or tired or something. Ben Roberts, another classmate, remembers dimly that Bryan said he was extra short on sleep in December.

But it doesn’t occur to anyone that their homophobic, misogynistic classmate is anything other than deeply weird.

Ben wonders if Bryan is feeling the pressure of being the only one in their cohort from the East Coast, if he’s found it hard to adapt to Pacific Northwest culture.

“He is running into an entirely new group of people who are now his peers,” he said.

“He doesn’t have any seniority over anybody.

He doesn’t have any authority… He is trying to adapt to a new social structure on the opposite side of the country.

And the West Coast does things somewhat differently from the East Coast.”

Weeks later, Steve Goncalves—his blood boiling at the thought of “this Pennsylvania kid who came out here on purpose to kill us”—said something similar.

“I know my history… the East Coast feels like they’re the superior coast,” Steve said. But he’s determined not to let this atrocity undermine the very reason he moved his family here, his desire to provide a safe home for his family.

So his goal is to make absolutely sure prosecutors get a conviction so the world can see that Idaho is still the sanctuary he believes in.

“We have farm towns and trusting people,” Steve said. “But he underestimated us.”