Obsession
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This is The Idaho Massacre, a production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. Season 2, Episode 9, Obsession. I'm Courtney Armstrong, a producer at KT Studios with Stephanie Leidegger and Gabe Castillo. Last episode, we left off on a short conversation between Stephanie, journalist Connor Powell, and data analyst Body Movin'.

They were talking about women who are deeply, sometimes obsessively attracted to dangerous men behind bars. I continued the conversation with Bodhi, asking her to describe what is going on online with women gathering, professing their love for accused murderer Brian Koberger. If you look at the photos the BriBris are posting to the subreddit, the Brian's Girls subreddit,

They're very childlike. They make these edits of Brian with, you know, hearts in the background. And one of them has an altar with candles and pictures.

I think these people are doing it for shock value reasons. Like they're lacking something at home or some believe they can change a man as cruel and powerful as a serial killer because they don't really have any real connection to men. You know, some people hope to share in the media spotlight, maybe get a book or movie deal. A couple of these people have had their names in the paper now. So when I look at the briber eyes and I read their subreddit, cause I do read it.

It's not private. I feel like a lot of them are just angsty young people who are lashing back at society in any way they can. I know that some people will disagree with me and that's totally fine. It's just my opinion and my very uneducated opinion. But I'm very educated when it comes to that behavior, when it comes to troll behaviors. And it feels very trollish.

But I think a lot of it comes down to a shock value. It's like when you're a teenager and you get a mohawk just to piss off your mom. It's kind of like that. And when you look at the memes and stuff that they're creating of Brian, one of them put him in a Barbie meme and made him look like Ken. It's very immature. And when I say immature, I don't mean...

that their attitude is immature. I mean, the edits they're making to these photos. And I just get a troll feeling from them. First of all, thank you for giving a great picture of what's online. And yeah, it's been so curious to me. I was like, is there a context I'm not grokking with the Barbies or...

I just think it's an immature kid, not necessarily a kid, but a young woman who lives in a fantasy world. Maybe she maladaptive daydreams all day. And because there is this notion that she's going to have this perfect relationship with Brian Koberger, you know, he's not going to leave his socks on the floor. You know, he's behind bars. She's protected. She's not going to have to endure any day-to-day issues that most relationships have to, you know, go through.

There's not going to be any cooking or laundry. He's not going to cheat on her. You know what I mean? It's the perfect boyfriend, if you think about it. And he's famous on top of it. Right. I do think that some of them do actually suffer from this paraphilia, though. I really do. And the others, their families need to get them some help, some mental health help. And I'm not qualified to speak about that.

To better understand the phenomena, we reached out to board-certified psychiatrist known as America's Psychiatrist, Dr. Carol Lieberman. Hear the conversation Stephanie and I had with her. Hybristophilia is basically the love and sexual attraction to men who have committed crimes. Is hybristophilia, is that a recognized psychiatric disorder?

I mean, it is a term that is recognized. There isn't a DSM diagnostic and statistical manual category for it, but more like a descriptive term than an actual separate diagnosis. I mean, in my book, Bad Boys,

Why we love them, how to live with them, and when to leave them. I have 12 different types of bad boys that I describe. And the lethal lover is what I described as the ultimate, the worst type of bad boy. These are men who are in prison or who have committed crimes and the women who love them.

In a general sense, you know, it comes from the relationship between the girl growing up and her father. That is what makes a woman attracted to a bad boy of any type. And with the lethal lover type of bad boys, the fathers are particularly cruel.

And she grew up in a very dark, gloomy, dangerous household, very cold. And the way that the dysfunctional relationship with the father works is that it makes the girl growing up believe that she is not lovable.

And there are many reasons why women are attracted to lethal lovers. Another reason why in general is because they see the sad little boy inside. And so they feel that they can not only tame him, but

They can make him happy. They can fix him. And of course, who needs fixing more than guys who have committed crimes? Another reason why they're attracted to them is because they represent danger. And that's very powerful. It's an aphrodisiac.

when a man is dangerous. There are so many of these criminals behind bars who have so many women writing to them, professing their love to them. In fact, there was something just the other day about how one of the Boston bomber terrorists, he has $50,000 or $20,000, some huge amount of money in his canteen in the prison that comes from women giving him money. I mean, he's a terrorist. He killed people.

Convicted, I might add. It's not even up for conversation. Like these are violent criminals, you know, because that's a distinction. But is there a big distinction between a bad boy who rides a motorcycle and sneaks out at night and maybe is a little rough and tumble?

versus a straight violent criminal and maybe moreover someone who's going to be behind bars till the end of days potentially what is it about that being attractive is it the fact that they're so dependent on you and there's no competition you know where they are at night are they just maybe more faithful because you know that they're locked in a cell for the rest of their lives

All of that. I mean, look, Brian Koberger, for example, he hasn't been convicted. So yes, he might be in jail forever. And yet still there are all these women who are attracted to him.

There are women that love him, that write him daily, that basically say that they see the little boy in him, just like you described. And look, he's a nice looking, well-raised young man. What he's being accused of is wildly violent. So even if that's a TBD and yes, he has not been convicted and claims his innocence, but what if? These are women who typically have not had much success themselves in their love life.

And so part of them also identifies with him. We asked Dr. Carroll if she had experience with any other notorious men behind bars. When I was on Sally Jesse Raphael, the show was women who love men in jail, men in prison.

And there were three or four different men. And then there were the women who loved them. And Richard Ramirez was one of the men. And he obviously he wasn't in the studio. They had him on camera, you know, from the jail. So for the other two men, each one had a woman who loved them. For Richard Ramirez, there were two women. And the thing was that neither one of them knew about the other. They thought they were going to marry Richard Ramirez.

The Night Stalker. The Night Stalker, yes. He had killed women, strangled them, raped them, all kinds of horrible things, but they wanted to marry him. So when they saw each other, they couldn't believe it. You write to Richard Ramirez, you talk to him, what? And they started fighting with each other. They started a brawl right there on the stage. And the gist of it was,

Why would you think that a man who had murdered, raped, strangled 13 women at least would be faithful to you? Like he did all these other things and you think he's going to be a good boyfriend? You could trust him? He's going to be a loving husband? I mean, it was so crazy that they just kind of assumed that they were it. There were tons of women writing to him, so they probably each thought they were the only one.

I asked Dr. Carol about an open letter she wrote for Newsweek. It was addressed to a woman named Brittany Highslope, who made it publicly known that she is in love with Brian Koperger and calls him, quote, the perfect man.

As you saw in my article in Newsweek, I wrote a letter to this woman, Brittany J. Hyslop. She was the first one or the first one that was known widely in terms of the lovers of Koberger, Brian Koberger. And so I wrote to her about that.

I'll read you some of the things that I wrote. Okay, so she describes herself as feeling lovesick about Koberger when she wrote letters to him on Facebook. You know he's your one true love and your love is very real. This is what you think. You feel he's lonely and sad in jail and that no one understands him like you do.

You want to rescue Brian. You feel he's been misunderstood all his life. You know what that feels like because you've been misunderstood too. You want to believe he's not guilty. Have you thought about the fact that he may have other women writing to him too? Other women who have fallen in love with him like you?

You might never know about this until you've wasted years pining for him. So then I conclude by saying, get some psychotherapy and work on your feelings of not being lovable enough. But with therapy, you'll discover that a man who is already out in the real world will make you happier and you deserve it.

It turns out, Kohlberger was not this woman's first time experiencing obsessive feelings for an incarcerated man. In fact, Dr. Carroll has spoken with the mother of a man Brittany Highslope used to visit while he was in prison.

This was a man who was accused of killing somebody. And she gave him money, she put money in his canteen. In the end, after a few months, this young man told his mother to tell her to stop, you know, writing to him and coming to visit him and all that. She didn't stop after the mother told her to stop. And so one time when she was visiting him, the next time he told her that she had to stop. I mean, in other words, the mother said she was even too crazy.

for my son, even with all the perks, you know, the nice letters, love you, blah, blah, blah, and the money and all, he couldn't deal with her. You know, he, it's so ironic with Brian Koberger because throughout his life, he has been rejected time and time again, starting in middle school,

This got worse in high school. It's so ironic because now that he's in jail, now he has all these women throwing themselves at him. His reward, so to speak, is getting all these women who he never got before to write him love letters and want to marry him and all of that. Is there any part on the women's part of being wrapped up in sort of the notoriety

That's a part of it too. Yes. Sometimes women want to marry the man because if they did, you know, had a jailhouse wedding, there would be tons of media and they would get to be as famous as the man. Are you familiar with the online group of the Bri Bri's or Brian's Girls?

It seems to me it's like a group mentality, all of these women professing their love and putting together pictures of the accused in altar scenarios or with hearts all around him. And I was curious from sort of a psychological perspective of are these women, do you imagine they're egging each other on? Do you imagine that it's competition between them?

Well, it's interesting, you know, because that's a little different than what I was describing with Richard Ramirez.

Now, in the group, Brian's girls, it's kind of interesting that they, I mean, I guess they're finding companionship or support in the fact that other women are so entranced by him too. And I'll bet you, though, that each one of them, I'm sure they've been writing to him, not just, you know, not just in this group. Each one of them must think that Brian really loves them, that they're his, he,

She's his girl. These girls may be writing all these things online and we can talk about him. Yes, isn't he adorable and blah, blah, blah. But each one is probably thinking or at least hoping that they're the one he really loves.

There was one, and this was reported on the news, a woman in the group, I believe she's the leader, the founder of the group, she physically carved Brian Kohlberger's entire name and his initials into her skin.

That is definitely sick. I mean, that is definitely goes beyond just loving, you know, a bad boy. I mean, some of these women are actually mentally ill. Some of them take it beyond the edge and they do have some kind of mental illness, but

They could be borderline or they could be manic depressive, bipolar, but have some kind of diagnosable mental disorder because that I mean, that's supposed to show that she loves him the most. Right. Look, I love him more than you girls. Look what I did. You know, I'm the real one.

that his real love and all that kind of stuff. He needs mental health help. She needs to be in therapy, just like I recommended to Brittany Highslope. That girl definitely needs to be in therapy. Is there anything else you'd like to share?

I'll just say that if you are a woman who is thinking about writing letters to or becoming in love with or wanting to marry one of these criminals, think twice. Realize that this is a reflection about yourself and your insecurity and your relationship with your father and get therapy instead of writing letters. Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in a moment.

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The women we've been speaking about are looking in on the accused, hoping to be part of his world, while simultaneously posting outwardly on social media so everyone will know they are the ones in love with an alleged murderer. From looking at this psychological perspective, we switch the lens to a pop culture perspective and look at how those influences might possibly imprint on a murderer.

How does the presentation of violence in horror movies mirror back what's going on in our own worlds? As for accused murderer Brian Koberger, there's a much-reported-on example that starts very close to home.

Brian Koberger's sister was an actress and she was in this movie called Two Days Back. And the loose timeline story plot on that is that co-eds go out into the woods and not all of them return. In fact,

Several of them meet their untimely death in very scary ways, including with a knife and a hatchet. And it's a slasher flick. And just looking at the timeline, that particular movie that his older sister was in was released on November 18th, 2011.

And the murders happened, as we know, on November 13th, 2022. But what we're really trying to pinpoint here is something that we've been learning about, which is kind of about these social imprints that may be set into somebody's mind

that similarly how police investigators and detectives create a wall that has the facts and how this piece of evidence was found here and then this piece of evidence was found there. Those are the facts. And then sometimes there's a psychological profile that looks at certain imprints of a person's life and to see if that tells a story. And

Obviously, in no way are we saying that Brian Koberger is guilty of the crimes that he claims his innocence for to this day and has not been found guilty yet. But in the spirit of just unpacking what imprints maybe would have shaped a potential killer's mind, is there any crossover there? So we brought in pop culture expert Doron Ophir.

I am a horror fan. I like to compare the historical relevance of horror and how it affects society's deepest fears. And it's always been a reflection because what happens in our real world then inspires horror. And it's been going on, you know, since the 20s, the advent of film.

How so? During the time of post-World War I, it was the rise of German Expressionism. So that's when we got movies in the silent era that were like Nosferatu or The Cabinet of Dr. Kilgary, which explored themes of madness, existential dread, the unknown.

Horror has always gone into the darker themes. And if you look at classic horror movies like Frankenstein, it was the people that turned on the monster, but the monster wasn't the epitome of evil. And when you really look at decade by decade, you know, the 50s brought about like a Cold War paranoia and pop culture reflected that instantly. It caught up to it like in real time. And then the biggest movies of that decade were things like Invasion of the Body Snackers

or the day the earth should still and by the way this is a global thing this is not an american thing because you know japan released godzilla and that was you know until this day these are icons of pop culture heroism and fear now you get into a whole other era when you get into the 60s and we start dealing with like the civil rights movement and social and evil

And look, that's where I started getting involved. Because when I first saw Night of the Living Dead, I was really stunned by that movie. Because first of all, it was George Romero invented the concept of the zombie in film. It was a terrifying portrayal of this other and this idea that, you know, people come back to life and they're here to kill you and eat you. But it was really an allegory because that's a movie about racism. So it's a reflection in horror.

And that was the first movie to really show very graphic violence, you know, and it reflected social instability and the questioning of authority and norms. And it was in 1960 that we got the first real Hollywood serial killer with Anthony Perkins in his portrayal of Psycho.

which was kind of the first time that American audiences had to face the idea of mental illness and the idea of psychopathy, which really has stayed with us since. We got into religious-themed horror, like The Exorcist and The Omen, which, by the way, The Omen is my favorite horror movie of all time. But that was also the birth of the real slasher movies, although Psycho is considered a slasher movie, but you never really saw, you

You never saw the violence. It was perceived. And that's what made it so terrifying. So Roman Polanski used Rosemary's Baby as sort of a view, a capitalist theory. Because the truth is, is that Rosemary's Baby, although dealing with Satanism and the fear of women and birth and non-control of their own body, it also exhibited the betrayal of the people that she loved most for economic gain.

because her husband sells around that. Again, this is going to be all spoiler alerts. For fame, by the way, he sells her out so he can be famous. That's such an interesting theme that we're kind of seeing there a little bit for the first time. Well, it deals with the idea of capitalism.

And simultaneously, because socially women are now becoming standing on their own in the world of feminism and abortion is the topic and the freedom of sexuality after the 60s and the free love movement, the religious kind of connotation is that morals were gone. So you then experienced the birth of the slasher movie, the real slasher movies. And it starts with Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

And Tobey Hooper terrified the world with that. Now, that was also loosely based on a real story. So that was loosely based on the serial killer, Ed Gein.

you know, who's murdered people and he wore their skins, which that theme gets repeated over and over again, including Silence of the Lambs. So you're seeing a pattern here of how audiences want to escape their internal fears or see their internal fears projected on a big screen where they can process it, which is very similar of why true crime and the realism of fear now works because people can't

process it in their brain or imagine the horror of it until they see it. And then once they see it, it becomes less afraid because they can process how to deal with it if it ever comes knocking. At this point in time, movies still had the Motion Picture Ratings Association had a lot of control. So they were rating movies to stop kids from watching it.

But that really lost power with 1978 and the birth of Michael Myers and Halloween. And when you deal with that, now you're dealing with the concept of true evil in a child form that becomes an adult. And his whole reason for killing is

goes back to this moral compass. Why was he killing co-eds? Why was he killing high school kids? Why was he killing women in particular and going after the main character? And the immediate follow to that was Friday the 13th. Now, the original Friday the 13th isn't Jason Voorhees, but it is the concept of kids at a summer camp,

losing their morals, not paying attention to the children, going off into the woods and having sex and running around in crop tops. And the girls are very promiscuous and they are killed for it.

And it's a reflection of the fears of that time because this was the first time women really controlled their own sexuality. And it was a weird signal that maybe you shouldn't. Maybe you should be afraid of this because it's immoral. And now the creepy boogeyman in the woods that used to scare you under your bed as a child is judging you. And that was a really big leap. And when you started to see these movies, they also glamorized it because Jason became a hero.

to a lot of people. The Halloween costume of Jason became the number one Halloween costume, followed by Michael Myers. And societally, we now enter the 80s. And the 80s becomes something completely different because we get inundated in the rise of consumer culture. The AIDS epidemic is everywhere. So fear of disease and pandemic. So it was really the next level of the explosion of the slasher films. Because Friday the 13th came out literally in 1980.

And then you follow things like Nightmare on Elm Street, which dealt with the psychological fears of damage. And that was in 1984. And in a weird way, it was also the birth where they started to blend horror and comedy to try and alleviate some of this fear and tension, which is why Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street tended to be campy or funny. But the truth was he was terrifying as a movie monster.

So any movie that Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, was in really did sort of speak to the idea of the popular kids, the ones that were enjoying life the most and living their best life. Like those were the ones to go first. Is that accurate? Well, they always said yes, that it was about the popular or the outsider kids.

This view in. So that really, I think the first movie that pops to my head when it comes to that is Carrie. Carrie was this innocent girl of a religious family that happened to have this telekinesis power. And it was the cheerleaders and the popular ones. And one of the most insane scenes in that movie was the bullying of Carrie in the locker room by the other girls where she gets her period for the first time and they pummel her with tampons and the humiliation of that.

And so for her, Carrie is a movie of revenge. It's taking pain, the hurt and the rage and taking it on those that bullied her,

or you could also flip the script and say who she might have envied to be more like. So you're right about that. It was always the pretty, the beautiful. And yes, you're also talking about the other, a campy comedy horror movie, which if you talk to modern day directors, they'll reference was Sleepaway Camp. And what's insane about Sleepaway Camp in the 80s was that Sleepaway Camp was the murders of those kinds of people.

The popular, the sexy, the coach, the cheerleader, all of that. But the killer in that was a transgender. And that is also sort of was referenced by Ed Gein, the serial killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

But what became the pop culture teen sensation globally was the birth of the Scream franchise. Scream was a sort of horror comedy that was based on the tropes of all these other movies of who dies first, which answers your question. You know, it was always like the Virgin survives at the end. And they kind of twisted that on its ear. And what's pretty interesting about the Idaho Massacre is...

that it has certain similarities to the serial killer Danny Rollins of the 1990 University of Florida killings in Gainesville. You know, he killed five co-eds and he did it in a kind of a pornographic view of violence and torture.

And the world stopped and were terrified by the concept that somebody could go and do this. There are similarities to that because we haven't had really a college co-ed murder spree that was coming from a place of psychopathy. And that is probably what I think makes the Idaho Massacre most like film.

Scream 2 takes place on a college campus. It's not directly about sorority murders, but it features a sorority setting and the subplot involves murder of sorority sisters.

So if we were looking at Brian Koberger, because some of it a little bit, again, not accusing anybody of murder, but there is seemingly a couple of touch points. One, if what we have been told regarding Brian Koberger and his backstory air quotes is that he was bullied and he was sort of the outsider and that likely his connection to the victims was one from a distance where maybe he was observing them and watching them as someone who was

was looking in and maybe looking in often

which has some creepy undertones to some of the movies that you've since brought up. And then just the idea of a slasher flick in general, it's pretty uncommon from what we've been told that an assailant would use a knife, for example, to murder, frankly, anyone because A, it's not exact. It's extremely messy, as you could imagine, and requires a level of like energy to

And for a very ordinary guy, that seems hard to picture. You only see that in the horror movies. Where does he fit in this timeline? Horror, it mirrors society's deepest fears, right?

So now, when you get into this story, if all of the things are true, first of all, personally, as an opinion, I don't really buy that any of it is excusable. And we now live in a society where people try and justify the actions of brutality and violence as warranted in some way. I think that that is where we get into a situation of societal collapse, to be honest.

because there are fine lines. There is right, there is wrong. And up until recently, I would say in the last 15 years, 10 to 15 years, we knew who the villains were. We knew who the monsters were. There is a throwback to what I brought up with Frankenstein, where was Frankenstein truly a monster? But we're talking about psychopathy. Let's stop here for another break. We'll be back in a moment.

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Stephanie continues her conversation with pop culture expert Duran Ophir. We live in a time of social media where nothing is real. And every single scroll, every single post, every single TikTok or snap is fully produced and curated by the person posting it.

We all laugh when we take a selfie and we go, "Let me see it and don't post it without me looking at it." Right? And that's a very common trait. But when you're curating a fake world so that other people will see you in a certain light, it brings about envy. For somebody that can't differentiate between that, it becomes envy watching in. They'll say, "Oh, well, if you don't have haters, you don't have a life."

Well, yes and no, because the haters can become very dangerous and they don't see themselves and the rise of the end cell or that concept and the unattainability for men and women. Now, that is another question about gender here.

Women have always dealt with the concept of higher standards in media and pop culture. You know, they've always looked at fashion magazines and flipped through it and tried to see themselves as the models, which led to a lot of self-degradation. It's really roughly since the mid-90s where, well, I would say now that that's 25 years, but...

Where men have been highly sexualized, you know, with the birth of Abercrombie and Finch and all of those, you know, bags where it was all sexualized men and you would walk in the mall and there'd be a shirtless guy standing outside, like inviting you in. That then created the insecurity that women have felt for decades and decades and decades suddenly for boys.

They suddenly had to look at other males and realize where they fitted in the hierarchy of what is deemed as beauty and the crowd that they run in and who they're with. And an Instagram post where there's four guys in a pool with six pretty girls behind them, it elicits of why them, not me. It's such an interesting touch point because

It makes me think of a couple of things. One, if what Brian Koberger is being accused of is accurate, yes, he was allegedly pinging. His phone had been in and around that home many, many times leading up to the murders and thereafter. So it

It implies that he was standing outside, looking in from a distance under a streetlight, allegedly, as again, we would see in something very scary. It's the person of envying something that they maybe see. And maybe is it possible that the connection that he had to one or more of the victims was legitimately just through this lens of social media? You can see how that can happen.

we develop relationships with people because we see them often and we do not know them. It feels real. And if you're someone who doesn't have an understanding of social cues or other areas to fill that hole with real friends and family, that layer of isolation and lonesome behavior or loneliness is really dangerous.

I think that isolation, loneliness, mental illness, all plays a factor. But these concepts are not new. What I mean by I don't buy it, I buy it. I believe it. It's true. I don't think it's an excuse. I don't think that when you begin to frame the conversation around

and I'll keep it in pop culture terms, sort of the origin story, that it makes it okay. That's so fair. I think that if you were to cross-reference 100 people and talk to 100 people regarding their history, trauma is a permanent and pervasive fact in almost every one of the 100. Nobody lives an idyllic life. The concept of how one deals with their childhood trauma or psychological trauma or abuse, or even if it's just environmental trauma,

the way they handle it moving forward is a mark of maturity of evolutionary adulthood. And by minimizing that and saying, well, that's an excuse and that's okay. And it gives free reign for this. And we see this often from a pop culture perspective where again, the heroes and the villains are now being blurred where you have a

you know, in the DC comics and the superhero world, one of the most greatest psychological psychotic killers of all time is the Joker. And he's specifically a psychopath. He's written as a psychopath. Well, I thought that movie was actually pretty interesting. The Joker specifically, which is the Joaquin Phoenix portrayal of the Joker. And,

And it really does kind of give, exactly to your point, an origin story for this villain. I have to be honest with you, when this massacre first happened and Brian Koberger was arrested, we were just all like, what?

And that's the movie that kind of comes to mind is sort of, is it the micro aggressions with mental illness in isolation and, you know, the Joker had been hit one too many times or overlooked one too many times or left out of the conversation one too many times and had had enough.

and had a wicked relationship with his mother or some sort of meaningful backstory that maybe not justified, but explained his actions. I do think that, you know, everybody wants to know the reason why. Why do people do what they do? Or is somebody born evil? Is somebody not? You know, I always have to look at everything through a pop culture lens. It really comes into the advent of social media. With social media as being so prolific, it's like these things, look, they fascinate.

fascinate us. We can't get enough of it. And so we have this fascination. We have this, as a society, we have this sort of morbid attraction to these things, which is why horror is sort of the number one entertainment resource. Cheap to make, millions view, they like the bad ones, they like the good ones, doesn't matter. That's your key in to any kind of

entertainment and then the proliferation of true crime over the last really 10, 11 years has been extraordinary. And strangely, women seem to be the highest consumers of that because they deal with trauma. They deal with genes. You know, it's funny. I had a conversation with a man one day who doesn't understand this concept. And I said, when you get in an elevator, anytime you get in an elevator, are you ever afraid?

And he said, well, why would I be? And I said, do you know that women, no matter who they are, wherever they are, when they get in an elevator and a man enters, it's not fear. It's an immediate alert for potential fear.

And men don't realize that that is something that women go through every day, walking through a parking lot. If a light goes out in a garage, when they get in their car, they check their backseat. And it's not because they're conditioned by crime shows. It's because it is a fact for them from childhood. And I think that's why women consume this, because they want to know. They want to know what to look for. They want to know how to protect themselves.

One question though. So does that mean just looking at that so well, I might add so well said is are women scared in the elevator because they've seen psycho too many times or because they've seen women being murdered?

endlessly in horror films or in scary movies throughout the times. And now true crime is having this surge because we've all lost our minds. Or is it because we really think it's important to share stories so that we can keep ourselves safe and look out for each other? And I believe you can protect yourself against the boogeyman if you don't know the boogeyman exists and that people don't heal alone.

Well, it's a reflection. It's a reflection of the times. I think that women feel like they're prey. And in a lot of ways, they are. I think it's ingrained in the DNA. And I think that it's correct.

And I think the fascination with true crime is a symptom of this. I'm a fan of true crime, but I tend to like the ones that deal with it in a subject matter that I can at least escape a little bit into the humor. Like, don't F with cats. I thought that the way that that was told was genius. In the most terrifying story of the most psychotic story

And by the way, another one who was influenced by pop culture because Luca thought he was Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. He basically embodied her character the way he imagined her to be. You're tapping into the concept of compassion and empathy for the vast majority. There are going to be people who will zero in and not hear the compassion and empathy and

be aroused by the concept. And that's the terrifying part, and that's where mental illness comes in. Now, if he was the main character from You, and he was stalking, and he felt like the outsider, there's five million ways to look at it. Did these girls brush him off and reject him, and he felt rejected and want revenge? Or were they actually nice? Did they say hi to him, and he suddenly said, "Oh, they love me."

So now you go into the two sides of psychology, which then becomes like, well, so you can't be nice to a person. You can't look at a person in their eyes. You have to avert them. But if you avert them, then are you attracting violence? So there is no right answer. The right answer is to identify the signs early. The responsibility of family, friends, teachers, peers to raise the alarm. More on that next time.

For more information on the case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kt underscore studios. The Idaho Massacre is produced by Stephanie Leidecker, Gabriel Castillo, and me, Courtney Armstrong.

Editing and sound design by Jeff Twa. Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Masker is a production of KT Studios and iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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