(NewsNation) — Forensic science professor and former FBI agent Mary Ellen O’Toole told NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” that people “need to be careful” when speculating on the academic background of Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger and whether it had anything to do with the crime.
Kohberger was attending Washington State University as a Ph.D. student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the time of his arrest, investigators confirmed Friday. He also reportedly earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2020.
“We’re going to have to really dig a lot deeper, and again, into the personality to see if these degrees were a method for him getting into the mind of someone like this… Or if they actually had nothing to do with it,” O’Toole said. “So many students have those degrees in those backgrounds, and they’re the furthest thing away from being violent. So I think we still need to be very careful about extrapolating.”
If you have information that could be helpful to law enforcement, you can contact them at their Tip Line: 208-883-7180, email tipline@ci.moscow.id.us, or go online to fbi.gov/moscowidaho.