Speaker 1: The relationship between the girl growing up and her father.
Speaker 1: That is what makes a woman attracted to a bad
Speaker 1: boy of any type.
Speaker 2: Did these girls brush him off and reject him and
Speaker 2: he felt rejected in want revenge? Or were they actually nice?
Speaker 2: Did they say hi to him and he suddenly said, oh,
Speaker 2: they love me.
Speaker 3: This is the Idaho Massacre, a production of KATI Studios
Speaker 3: and iHeartRadio, Season two, Episode nine, Obsession. I'm Courtney Armstrong,
Speaker 3: a producer at KATI Studios with Stephanie Leideger and Gabe Castillo.
Speaker 3: Last episode, we left off on a short conversation between Stephanie,
Speaker 3: journalist Connor Powell and data analyst Body Movin. They were
Speaker 3: talking about women who are deeply, sometimes obsessively, attracted to
Speaker 3: dangerous men behind bars. I continued the conversation with Body,
Speaker 3: asking her to describe what is going on online with
Speaker 3: women gathering professing their love for a Ques murderer, Brian Coberger.
Speaker 4: If you look at the photos the Bribe Brys are
Speaker 4: posting to the subreddit to Brian's Girls subreddit, they're very childlike.
Speaker 4: They make these edits of Brian with you know, hearts
Speaker 4: in the background, and one of them has an altar
Speaker 4: with candles and pictures. I think these people are doing
Speaker 4: it for shock value reasons, like they're lacking something at home,
Speaker 4: or some believe they can change a man as cruel
Speaker 4: and powerful as a serial killer, because they don't really
Speaker 4: have any real connection to men. You know, some people
Speaker 4: hope to share in the media, spotlight, maybe get a
Speaker 4: book and movie deal. A couple of these people have
Speaker 4: had their names in the paper now. So when I
Speaker 4: look at the and I read their subreddit, because I
Speaker 4: do read it, it's not private, I feel like a
Speaker 4: lot of them are just angsty young people who are
Speaker 4: lashing back at society in any way they can. I
Speaker 4: know that some people will disagree with me, and that's
Speaker 4: totally fine. It's just my opinion and my very uneducated opinion.
Speaker 4: But I'm very educated when it comes to that behavior,
Speaker 4: when it comes to troll behaviors, and it's it feels
Speaker 4: very trollish, but I think a lot of it comes
Speaker 4: down to a shock value. It's like when you're a
Speaker 4: teenager and you get a mohawk just to piss off
Speaker 4: your mom. It's kind of like that. And when you
Speaker 4: look at the memes and stuff that they're creating, a Brian.
Speaker 4: One of them put him in a barb meme and
Speaker 4: made him look like Ken. It's very immature. And when
Speaker 4: I say immature, I don't mean that their attitude is immature.
Speaker 4: I mean the edits they're making to these photos. And
Speaker 4: I just get a troll feeling from them.
Speaker 3: First of all, thank you for you know, giving a
Speaker 3: great picture of what's online. And yeah, it's I'm so
Speaker 3: curious to me, is there a context I'm not grocking
Speaker 3: with the barbies or I just.
Speaker 4: Think it's an immature kid, not necessarily a kid, but
Speaker 4: a young woman who lives in a fantasy world. Maybe
Speaker 4: she maladaptive, daydreams all day. And because there is this
Speaker 4: notion that she's going to have this perfect relationship with
Speaker 4: Brian Coberger. You know, he's not going to leave his
Speaker 4: socks on the floor. You know, he's behind bars. She's protected,
Speaker 4: she's not going to have to endure any day to
Speaker 4: day issues that most relationships have to, you know, go through,
Speaker 4: not going to have to There's not going to be
Speaker 4: any cooking or laundry. He's not gonna cheat on her,
Speaker 4: you know what I mean. Like it's the perfect boyfriend
Speaker 4: if you think about it, and he's famous on top
Speaker 4: of it, right. I do think that some of them
Speaker 4: do actually suffer from this paraphilia, though I really do,
Speaker 4: and the others their families need to get them some help,
Speaker 4: some mental health help, and I'm not qualified to speak
Speaker 4: about that.
Speaker 3: To better understand the phenomena, we reached out to board
Speaker 3: certified psychiatrist known as America's psychiatrist, doctor Krol Lieberman. Here
Speaker 3: the conversation Stephanie and I had with her.
Speaker 1: Hybristophilia is basically the love and sexual attraction to men
Speaker 1: who have committed crimes.
Speaker 3: Is hybristophilia? Is that a recognized psychiatric disorder?
Speaker 1: I mean it is a term that is recognized. There
Speaker 1: isn't a DSM diagnostic and statistical manual category for it,
Speaker 1: but more like a descriptive term than an actual separate diagnosis.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 1: In my book bad Boys, Why We Love Them, how
Speaker 1: to live with them, and when to leave them? I
Speaker 1: have twelve different types of bad boys that I describe,
Speaker 1: and the lethal lover is what I described as the ultimate,
Speaker 1: the worst type of bad boy. These are men who
Speaker 1: are in prison or who have committed crimes and the
Speaker 1: women who love them. In a general sense. You know,
Speaker 1: it comes from the relationship between the girl the growing
Speaker 1: up and her father. That is what makes a woman
Speaker 1: attracted to a bad boy of any type. And with
Speaker 1: the lethal lover type of bad boys, the fathers are
Speaker 1: particularly cruel and she grew up in a very dark, gloomy,
Speaker 1: dangerous household, very cold. And the way that the dysfunctional
Speaker 1: relationship with the father works is that it makes the
Speaker 1: girl growing up believe that she is not lovable. And
Speaker 1: there are many reasons why women are attracted to lethal lovers.
Speaker 5: Another reason why, in.
Speaker 1: General, is because they see the sad little boy inside
Speaker 1: and so they feel that they can not only tame him.
Speaker 5: But they can make him happy. They can fix him.
Speaker 1: And of course who needs fixing more than guys who
Speaker 1: have permitted crimes. And another reason why they're attracted to
Speaker 1: them is because they represent danger, and that's very powerful.
Speaker 1: It's an aphrodisiac when a man is dangerous. There are
Speaker 1: so many of these criminals behind bars who have so
Speaker 1: many women writing to them professing their love to them back.
Speaker 1: There was something just the other day about how one
Speaker 1: of the Boston bomber terrorists he has fifty thousand dollars
Speaker 1: or twenty thousand dollars some huge amount of money in
Speaker 1: his canteen in the prison that comes from women giving
Speaker 1: him money.
Speaker 5: I mean, he's a terrorist. He killed people.
Speaker 6: Convicted, I might add, it's not even up for conversation,
Speaker 6: like these are violent criminals, you know, because that's a distinction.
Speaker 6: But is there a big distinction between a bad boy
Speaker 6: who rides a motorcycle and seeks out at night and
Speaker 6: maybe is a little rough and tumble versus a straight
Speaker 6: violent criminal and maybe moreover, someone who's going to be
Speaker 6: behind bars till the end of days potentially? What is
Speaker 6: it about that being attractive? Is it the fact that
Speaker 6: they're so dependent on you and there's no competition, you
Speaker 6: know where they are at night? Are they just maybe
Speaker 6: more faithful because you know that they're locked in a
Speaker 6: cell for the rest of their lives.
Speaker 5: All of that.
Speaker 1: I mean, look Brian Coburger, for example, he hasn't been convicted,
Speaker 1: so yes, he might be in jail forever. And yet
Speaker 1: still there are all these women who are attracted to him.
Speaker 6: There are women that love him, that write him daily,
Speaker 6: that basically say that they see the little boy in him,
Speaker 6: just like you described. And look, he's a nice looking,
Speaker 6: well raised young man. What he's being accused of is
Speaker 6: wildly violent. So even if that's a TBD, and yes
Speaker 6: he has not been convicted and claims his innocence, but
Speaker 6: what if these are.
Speaker 1: Women who typically have not had much success themselves in
Speaker 1: their love life, and so part of them also identifies
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 3: We asked doctor Carol as she had experience with any
Speaker 3: other notorious men behind bars.
Speaker 1: When I was on Sally Jesse Raphael, the show was
Speaker 1: Women who Love Men in Jail, Men in Prison, And
Speaker 1: there were three or four different men, and then there
Speaker 1: were the women who loved them. And Richard Ramirez was
Speaker 1: one of the men, and he obviously he wasn't in
Speaker 1: the studio. They had him on camera from the jail.
Speaker 1: So for the other two men, each one had a
Speaker 1: woman who loved them. For Richard Ramirez, there were two women,
Speaker 1: and the thing was that neither one of them knew
Speaker 1: about the other. They thought they were going to marry
Speaker 1: Richard Ramirez, the nightstalker. The nightstalker, Yes, he had killed women,
Speaker 1: strangled them, raped them, all kinds of horrible things, but
Speaker 1: they wanted to marry him. So when they saw each other,
Speaker 1: they couldn't believe it. You write to Richard Ramirez, you
Speaker 1: talked to her what and they started fighting with each other.
Speaker 1: They started a brawl right there on the stage. And
Speaker 1: the gist of it was, why would you think that
Speaker 1: a man who had murdered, rape, strangled thirteen women at
Speaker 1: least would be faithful to you like he did all
Speaker 1: these other horrible things, and you think he's gonna.
Speaker 5: Be a good boy.
Speaker 1: You could trust him, he's gonna be a loving husband.
Speaker 1: I mean, it was so crazy that they just kind
Speaker 1: of assumed that they were it. There were tons of
Speaker 1: women writing to him, so they probably each thought they
Speaker 1: were the only one.
Speaker 3: I asked doctor Carroll about an open letter she wrote
Speaker 3: for Newsweek. It was addressed to a woman named Brittany
Speaker 3: Heislope who made it publicly known that she's in love
Speaker 3: with Brian Coburger and calls him, quote the perfect man.
Speaker 1: As you saw in my article in Newsweek, I wrote
Speaker 1: a letter to this woman, Brittany J.
Speaker 5: Heislope. She was the first one or the first one.
Speaker 1: That was known widely in terms of the lovers of Coburger,
Speaker 1: Brian Coburger, and so I wrote to her about that.
Speaker 1: I'll read you some of the things that I wrote. Okay,
Speaker 1: So she describes herself as feeling love sick about Coburger
Speaker 1: when she wrote letters to him on Facebook. You know
Speaker 1: he's your one true love, and your love is very real.
Speaker 1: This is what you think you feel. He's lonely and
Speaker 1: sad in jail, and that no one understands him like
Speaker 1: you do. You want to rescue Brian. He's been misunderstood
Speaker 1: all his life. You know what that feels like, because
Speaker 1: you've been misunderstood too. You want to believe he's not guilty.
Speaker 1: Have you thought about the fact that he may have
Speaker 1: other women writing to him too, other women who have
Speaker 1: fallen in love with him like you. You might never
Speaker 1: know about this until you've wasted years pining for him.
Speaker 1: So then I conclude by saying, get some psychotherapy and
Speaker 1: work on your feelings of not being lovable enough. But
Speaker 1: with therapy you'll discover that a man who is already
Speaker 1: out in the real world will make you happier than
Speaker 1: you deserve it.
Speaker 3: It turns out Coburger was not this woman's first time
Speaker 3: experiencing obsessive feelings for an incarcerated man. In fact, doctor
Speaker 3: Carroll has spoken with the mother of a man Brittany
Speaker 3: High Slope used to visit while he was in prison.
Speaker 1: This was a man who was accused of killing somebody.
Speaker 1: As she gave him money, she put money in his canteen.
Speaker 1: In the end, after a few months, this young man
Speaker 1: told his mother to tell her to stop, you know,
Speaker 1: writing to him and coming to visit him and all that.
Speaker 1: She didn't stop after the mother told her to stop,
Speaker 1: and so one time when she was visiting him, the
Speaker 1: next time he told her that she had to stop.
Speaker 1: I mean, in other words, the mother said she was
Speaker 1: even too crazy for my son, even with all the perks,
Speaker 1: you know, the nice letters, love you, blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and the money, and he couldn't deal with her, you know.
Speaker 1: He It's so ironic with Brian Coburger because throughout his
Speaker 1: life he has been rejected time and time again, starting
Speaker 1: in middle school. This got worse in high school. It's
Speaker 1: so ironic because now that he's in jail, now he
Speaker 1: has all these women throwing themselves at him. His reward,
Speaker 1: so to speak, is getting all these women who he
Speaker 1: never got before to write him love letters and want
Speaker 1: to marry him.
Speaker 5: And all of that.
Speaker 3: Is there any part on the women's part of being
Speaker 3: wrapped up in sort of the notoriety.
Speaker 5: That's a part of it too.
Speaker 1: Yes, sometimes women want to marry the man because if
Speaker 1: they did, you know, had a jail house wedding, there
Speaker 1: would be tons of media and they.
Speaker 5: Would get to be as famous as the man.
Speaker 3: Are you familiar with the online group of the bride
Speaker 3: Ryese or Brian's Girls. It seems to me it's like
Speaker 3: a group mentality, all of these women professing their love
Speaker 3: and putting together pictures of the accused in alter scenarios
Speaker 3: or with hearts all around him. And I was curious
Speaker 3: from sort of a psychological perspective of are these women
Speaker 3: do you imagine they're egging each other on? Do you
Speaker 3: imagine that it's competition between them?
Speaker 1: Well, it's interesting, you know, because that's that's a little
Speaker 1: different than what I was describing with Richard Ramirez. Now
Speaker 1: in the group Brian's Girls, it's kind of interesting that they,
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they're finding companionship or support in
Speaker 1: the fact that that other women are so entranced by
Speaker 1: him too. And I'll bet you though that each one
Speaker 1: of them, I'm sure they've been writing to him, not
Speaker 1: just you know, not just in this group. Each one
Speaker 1: of them must think that Brian really loves them, that
Speaker 1: they she's his girl. These girls, may you be writing
Speaker 1: all these things online and we can talk about him. Yes,
Speaker 1: isn't he adorable and blah blah blah, but each one
Speaker 1: is probably thinking or at least hoping, that they're the
Speaker 1: one he really loves.
Speaker 3: There was one and this was reported on the news.
Speaker 3: A woman in the group. I believe she's the leader,
Speaker 3: the founder of the group. She physically carved Brian Kohlberger's
Speaker 3: entire name and his initials into her skin.
Speaker 5: That is definitely sick.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is definitely goes beyond just loving you know,
Speaker 1: a bad boy. I mean some of these women are
Speaker 1: actually mentally ill. Some of them take it beyond the
Speaker 1: edge and they do have some kind of mental illness.
Speaker 1: They could be borderline, or they could be manic, depressive, bipolar,
Speaker 1: but have some kind of diagnosible mental disorder. Because that,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's supposed to show that she loves him
Speaker 1: the most. Right, Look, I love him more than you girls.
Speaker 1: Look what I did. You know, I'm the real one,
Speaker 1: that his real love.
Speaker 5: And all that kind of stuff. He needs mental health help.
Speaker 1: She needs to be in therapy, just like I recommended
Speaker 1: to Brittany Heislope that that girl definitely needs to be
Speaker 1: in therapy.
Speaker 3: Is there anything else you'd like to share?
Speaker 1: I'll just say that if you are a woman who
Speaker 1: is thinking about writing letters too, or becoming in love
Speaker 1: with or wanting to marry one of these criminals.
Speaker 5: Think twice.
Speaker 1: Realize that this is a reflection about yourself and your
Speaker 1: insecurity and your relationship with your father, and get therapy
Speaker 1: instead of writing letters.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for a break. We'll be back in
Speaker 3: a moment. The women we've been speaking about are looking
Speaker 3: in on the accused, hoping to be part of his world,
Speaker 3: while simultaneously posting outwardly on social media so everyone will
Speaker 3: know they are the ones in love with an alleged murderer.
Speaker 3: From looking at this psychological perspective, we switch the lens
Speaker 3: to a pop culture perspective and look at how those
Speaker 3: influences might possibly imprint on a murderer. How does the
Speaker 3: presentation of violence and horror movies mirror back what's going
Speaker 3: on in our own worlds. As for accused murderer Brian Coburger,
Speaker 3: there's a much reported on example that starts very close
Speaker 3: to home.
Speaker 6: Brian Coberger's sister was an actress and she was in
Speaker 6: this movie called Two Days Back, and the loose timeline
Speaker 6: story plot on that is that co eds go out
Speaker 6: into the woods and not all of them return. In fact,
Speaker 6: several of them meet their own untimely death in very
Speaker 6: scary ways, including with a knife and a hatchet, and
Speaker 6: it's a slash reflick and just looking at the timeline.
Speaker 6: That particular movie that his older sister was in was
Speaker 6: released on November eighteenth, twenty eleven, and the murders happened,
Speaker 6: as we know, on November thirteenth, twenty twenty two. But
Speaker 6: what we're really trying to pinpoint here is something that
Speaker 6: we've been learning about, which is kind of about these
Speaker 6: social imprints that maybe set into somebody's mind that similarly
Speaker 6: how police investigators and detectives create a wall that has
Speaker 6: the facts and how this piece of evidence was found
Speaker 6: here and then this piece of evidence was found there.
Speaker 6: Those are the facts, and then sometimes there's a psychological
Speaker 6: profile that looks at certain imprints of a person's life
Speaker 6: and to see if that tells a story. And obviously,
Speaker 6: in no way are we saying that Brian Koberger is
Speaker 6: guilty of the crimes that he claims his since four
Speaker 6: to this day and has not been found guilty yet.
Speaker 6: But in the spirit of this unpacking what imprints maybe
Speaker 6: would have shaped a potential killer's mind. Is there any
Speaker 6: crossover there? So we brought in pop culture expert Dorano Fear.
Speaker 7: I'm a horror fan.
Speaker 2: I like to compare the historical relevance of horror and
Speaker 2: how it affects society's deepest fears. And it's always been
Speaker 2: a reflection because what happens in our real world then
Speaker 2: inspires horror, and it's been going on, you know, since
Speaker 2: the twenties, the event of film. How So, during the
Speaker 2: time of post World War One, it was the rise
Speaker 2: of German expressionism. So that's when we got movies in
Speaker 2: the Silent era that were like Nosferatu or The Cabinet
Speaker 2: of Doctor Kilgarry, which explored themes of madness, extential dread,
Speaker 2: the unknown. Horror has always gone into the darker themes,
Speaker 2: and if you look at classic horror movies like Frankenstein,
Speaker 2: it was the people that turned on the monster, but
Speaker 2: the monster wasn't the epitome of evil and when you
Speaker 2: really look a decade by decade, you know, the fifties
Speaker 2: brought about like a Cold War paranoia, and pop culture
Speaker 2: reflected that instantly.
Speaker 7: It caught up to it, like in real time.
Speaker 2: And then the biggest movies of that decade were things
Speaker 2: like Invasion of the Body Snackers or The Day the
Speaker 2: Earth Shirt. Still and by the way, this is a
Speaker 2: global thing. This is not an American thing, because you know,
Speaker 2: Japan released Godzilla and that was you know, until this day.
Speaker 2: These are icons of pop culture heroism and fear. Now
Speaker 2: you get into a whole other era when you get
Speaker 2: into the sixties and we start dealing with like the
Speaker 2: Civil Rights movement is social and heaval. And look, that's
Speaker 2: where I started getting involved because when I first saw
Speaker 2: Knight of a Living Dead, I was really stunned by
Speaker 2: that movie because first of all, it was George Romero
Speaker 2: invented the concept of the zombie in film, it was
Speaker 2: a terrifying portrayal of this other and this idea that
Speaker 2: people come back to life and they are here to
Speaker 2: kill you and eat you. But it was really an
Speaker 2: allegory because that's a movie about racism. So it's a
Speaker 2: reflection in horror and that was the first movie to
Speaker 2: really show very graphic violence, you know, and it reflected
Speaker 2: social instability and the questioning of authority and norms. And
Speaker 2: it was in nineteen sixty that we got the first
Speaker 2: real Hollywood serial killer with Anthony Perkins in his portrayal
Speaker 2: of Psycho, which was kind of the first time that
Speaker 2: American audiences had to face the idea of mental illness
Speaker 2: and the idea of psychopathy, which really has stayed with
Speaker 2: us since we got into religious temitar like The Exorcist
Speaker 2: and The Omen, which, by the way, The Omen is
Speaker 2: my favorite horror movie of all time. But that was
Speaker 2: also the birth of the real slasher movies. Although Psycho
Speaker 2: is considered a slasher movie, but you never really saw
Speaker 2: you never saw the violence it was perceived, and that's
Speaker 2: what made it so terrifying. Roman Polanski used Rosemary's Baby
Speaker 2: as a sort of a view a capitalist theory, because
Speaker 2: the truth is is that Rosemary's Baby, although dealing with
Speaker 2: satanism and the fear of women and birth and the
Speaker 2: non control of their own body, it also exhibited the
Speaker 2: betrayal of the people that she loved most for economic gain,
Speaker 2: because her husband sells her out in that again, this
Speaker 2: is going to be all spoiler.
Speaker 6: Alerts for fame by the way he sells her out
Speaker 6: so he can be famous. That's such an interesting theme
Speaker 6: that we're kind of seeing there a little bit for
Speaker 6: the first time.
Speaker 2: Well, it deals with the idea of capitalism, you know,
Speaker 2: and simultaneously because socially, women are now becoming standing on
Speaker 2: their own and their world of feminism and abortion is
Speaker 2: the topic, and the freedom of sexuality after the sixties
Speaker 2: and the free love movement. The religious kind of connotation
Speaker 2: is that morals were gone. So you then experience the
Speaker 2: birth of the slasher movie, the real slasher movies, and
Speaker 2: it starts with Texas jamesaw Massacre and Toby Hooper terrified
Speaker 2: the world with that. Now that was also loosely based
Speaker 2: on a real story. So that was loosely based on
Speaker 2: the serial killer Ed Geen, you know, who's murdered people
Speaker 2: and he wore their skins, which that theme gets repeated
Speaker 2: over and over again, including Silence of the Lambs. So
Speaker 2: you're seeing a pattern here of how audiences want to
Speaker 2: escape their internal fears or see their internal fears projected
Speaker 2: on a big screen where they can process it, which
Speaker 2: is very similar of why true crime and the realism
Speaker 2: of fear now works because people can't process it in
Speaker 2: their brain or imagine the horror of it until they
Speaker 2: see it. And then once they see it, it becomes
Speaker 2: less afraid because they can process how to deal with
Speaker 2: it if it ever comes knocking. At this point in time,
Speaker 2: movies still had the Motion Picture Ratings Association had a
Speaker 2: lot of control, so they were rated movies to stop
Speaker 2: kids from watching it. But that really lost power with
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight and the birth of Michael Myers and Halloween,
Speaker 2: and when you deal with that, now you're dealing with
Speaker 2: the concept of true evil in a child form that
Speaker 2: becomes an adult and his whole reason for killing goes
Speaker 2: back to this moral compass. Why was he killing co eds?
Speaker 2: Why was he killing high school kids? Why was he
Speaker 2: killing women in particular? And going after the main character?
Speaker 2: And the immediate follow to that was Friday the Thirteenth. Now,
Speaker 2: the original Friday the Thirteenth isn't Jason Vorhees, but it
Speaker 2: is the concept of kids at a summer camp losing
Speaker 2: their morals, not paying attention to the children, going off
Speaker 2: into the woods and having sex and running around in
Speaker 2: crop tops. And the girls are very probiscuous and they
Speaker 2: are killed for it. And it's a reflection of the
Speaker 2: fears of that time because this was the first time
Speaker 2: women really controlled their own sexuality, and it was a
Speaker 2: weird signal that maybe you shouldn't maybe you should be
Speaker 2: afraid of this because it's immorl And now the creepy
Speaker 2: boogeyman in the woods that used to scare you under
Speaker 2: your bed as a child is judging you. And that
Speaker 2: was a really big leap. And when you started to
Speaker 2: see these movies, they also glamorized it because Jason became
Speaker 2: a hero to a lot of people. The Halloween costume
Speaker 2: of Jason became the number one Halloween costume, followed by
Speaker 2: Michael Myers, and societally, we now enter the eighties and
Speaker 2: the eighties become something completely different because we get inundated
Speaker 2: in the rise of consumer culture. The AIDS epidemic is everywhere,
Speaker 2: so fear of disease and pandemic. So it was really
Speaker 2: the next level of the explosion of the slasher films
Speaker 2: because Friday the Thirteenth came out literally in nineteen eighty
Speaker 2: and then you followed things like Nightmare and elm Street,
Speaker 2: which dealt with the psychological fears of damage, and that
Speaker 2: was in nineteen eighty four, and in a way weird way,
Speaker 2: it was also the birth way they started to blend
Speaker 2: horror and comedy to try and alleviate some of this
Speaker 2: fear and tension, which is why Freddy Krueger in Nightmare
Speaker 2: and Elm Street tended to be campy or funny, but
Speaker 2: the truth was he was terrifying as a movie monster.
Speaker 6: So any movie that Jamie Lee Curtis, for example, was
Speaker 6: in really did sort of speak to the idea of
Speaker 6: the popular kids, the ones that were enjoying life the
Speaker 6: most and living their best life, like those were the
Speaker 6: ones to go first. Is that accurate?
Speaker 2: Well, they always said yes, that it was about the
Speaker 2: popular or the outsider's view in so that really I
Speaker 2: think the first movie that pops in my head when
Speaker 2: it comes to that is Carrie. Carrie was this innocent
Speaker 2: girl of a religious family that happened to have this
Speaker 2: telekinesist power, and it was the cheerleaders and the popular ones.
Speaker 2: And one of the most insane scenes in that movie
Speaker 2: was the bullying of Carrie in the locker room by
Speaker 2: the other girl, where she gets her period for the
Speaker 2: first time, and they pummel her withay the tampons and
Speaker 2: the humiliation of that, and so for her, Carrie is
Speaker 2: a movie of revenge. It's taking pain, the hurt and
Speaker 2: the rage and taking out on those that bullied her.
Speaker 2: Or you could also flip the script and say who
Speaker 2: she might have envied to be more like. So you're
Speaker 2: right about that. It was always the pretty, the beautiful,
Speaker 2: And yes, you're also talking about the other a campy
Speaker 2: comedy horror movie which which if you talk to modern
Speaker 2: day director as the reference was sleep Away Camp. And
Speaker 2: what's insane about sleep Away Camp in the eighties was
Speaker 2: that sleep Away Camp was the murders of those kinds
Speaker 2: of people, the popular, the sexy, the coach, the cheerleader,
Speaker 2: all of that. But the killer in that was a
Speaker 2: transgender and that is also sort of was referenced by
Speaker 2: ed Geen, the serial killer from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What
Speaker 2: became the pop culture teen sensation globally was the birth
Speaker 2: of the Scream franchise. Scream was a sort of horror
Speaker 2: comedy that was based on the tropes of all these
Speaker 2: other movies of who dies first, Which answers your question
Speaker 2: you know, it was always like the virgin survives at
Speaker 2: the end, and they kind of twisted that on its ear.
Speaker 2: And what's pretty interesting about the Idaho massacre is that
Speaker 2: it has certain similarities to the serial killer Danny Rollins
Speaker 2: of the nineteen ninety University of Florida killings in Gainesville.
Speaker 2: You know, he killed five co eds and he did
Speaker 2: it in a kind of a pornographic view of violence
Speaker 2: and torture, and the world stopped and were terrified by
Speaker 2: the concept that somebody could go and do this. There
Speaker 2: are similarities to that because we haven't had really a
Speaker 2: college co ed murder spree that was coming from a
Speaker 2: place of psychopathy. And that is probably what I think
Speaker 2: makes the Idaho massacre most like film Scream two takes
Speaker 2: place on a college campus. It's not directly about sorority murders,
Speaker 2: but it features a sorority setting, and you know, the
Speaker 2: subplot involves murder of sorority sisters.
Speaker 6: So if we were looking at Brian Coberger, because some
Speaker 6: of it a little bit, again not accusing anybody of murder,
Speaker 6: but there is seemingly a couple of touch points. One
Speaker 6: if what we have been told regarding Brian Coberger in
Speaker 6: his backstory air quotes is that he was bullied and
Speaker 6: he was sort of the outsider, and that likely his
Speaker 6: connection to the victims was one from a distance where
Speaker 6: maybe he was observing them and watching them as someone
Speaker 6: who was looking in and maybe looking in often, which
Speaker 6: has some creepy undertones to some of the movies that
Speaker 6: you've since brought up. And then just the idea of
Speaker 6: a slasher flick in general, it's pretty uncommon from what
Speaker 6: we've been told that in a sale would use a knife,
Speaker 6: for example, to murder, frankly, anyone, because a it's not exact,
Speaker 6: it's extremely messy as you could imagine, and requires a
Speaker 6: level of energy and for a very ordinary guy that
Speaker 6: seems hard to picture. You only see that in the
Speaker 6: horror movies. Where does he fit in this timeline?
Speaker 7: Horror?
Speaker 2: It mirrors society's deepest fears. Right, So, now, when you
Speaker 2: get into this story, if all of the things are true,
Speaker 2: first of all, personally, as an opinion, I don't really
Speaker 2: buy that any of it is excusable. And we now
Speaker 2: live in a society where people try and justify the
Speaker 2: actions of brutality and violence as warranted. In some way,
Speaker 2: I think that That is where we get into a
Speaker 2: situation of societal collapse. To be honest, because there are
Speaker 2: fine lines.
Speaker 7: There is right, there is wrong.
Speaker 2: Up until recently, I would say in the last fifteen years,
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years, we knew who the villains were.
Speaker 2: We knew who the monsters were. There is a throwback
Speaker 2: to what I brought up with Frankenstein. Where was Frankenstein
Speaker 2: truly a monster? But we're talking about psychopathy.
Speaker 3: Let's stop here for another break. We'll be back in
Speaker 3: a moment. Stephanie continues her conversation with pop culture expert
Speaker 3: Doronto Fear.
Speaker 2: We live at a time of social media where nothing
Speaker 2: is real, and every single scroll, every single post, every
Speaker 2: single TikTok or snap is fully produced and curated by
Speaker 2: the person posting it. We all laugh when we take
Speaker 2: a selfie, we go, let me see it, and don't
Speaker 2: post it without me looking at it, right, And that's
Speaker 2: a very common trait. But when you're curating a fake
Speaker 2: world so that other people will see you in a
Speaker 2: certain light, it brings about envy For somebody that can't
Speaker 2: differentiate between that, it becomes envy watching in you know,
Speaker 2: they'll say, oh, well, if you don't have haters, you
Speaker 2: don't have a life. Well, yes and no, because the
Speaker 2: haters can become very dangerous and they don't see themselves.
Speaker 2: And the rise of the en cell or you know,
Speaker 2: that concept and the unattainability for men and women. Now
Speaker 2: that is another question about gender here. Women have always
Speaker 2: dealt with the concept of higher standards in media and
Speaker 2: pop culture. You know, they've always looked to fashion magazines
Speaker 2: and flipped through it and tried to see themselves as
Speaker 2: the models, which led to a lot of self degradation.
Speaker 2: It's really roughly since the mid nineties where well, I
Speaker 2: would say now that that's twenty five years, but where
Speaker 2: men have been highly sexualized, you know, with the birth
Speaker 2: of Abercrombie and Finch and all of those you know bags,
Speaker 2: where it was all sexualized men and you would walk
Speaker 2: in the mall and they'd be a shirtless guy standing
Speaker 2: outside like inviting you in. That then created the insecurity
Speaker 2: that women have felt for decades and decades and decades. Suddenly,
Speaker 2: for boys, they suddenly had to look at other males
Speaker 2: and realize where they fitted and the hierarchy of what
Speaker 2: is deemed his beauty and the crowd that they run
Speaker 2: in and who they're with. And an Instagram post where
Speaker 2: there is four guys in a pool with six pretty
Speaker 2: girls behind them. It elicits of why them not me.
Speaker 6: It's such an interesting touch point because it makes me
Speaker 6: think of a couple of things. One, if what Brian
Speaker 6: Coberger is being accused of is accurate, Yes, he was
Speaker 6: allegedly pinging his phone, had been in and around that
Speaker 6: home many many times leading up to the murders and thereafter,
Speaker 6: so it implies that you know he is standing outside
Speaker 6: looking in from a distance under a street light, allegedly
Speaker 6: as again we would see in something very scary. It's
Speaker 6: the person of envying something that they may be see
Speaker 6: And maybe is it possible that the connection that he
Speaker 6: had to Wan or more of the victims was legitimately
Speaker 6: just through this lens of social media, you can see
Speaker 6: how that can happen. We develop relationships with people because
Speaker 6: we see them often and we do not know them.
Speaker 6: It feels real. And if you're someone who doesn't have
Speaker 6: an understanding of social cues or other areas to fill
Speaker 6: that hole with real friends and family, that layer of
Speaker 6: isolation and lonesome behavior or loneliness is really dangerous.
Speaker 2: I think that isolation, loneliness, mental illness all plays a factor.
Speaker 2: But these concepts are not new. What I mean by
Speaker 2: I don't buy it, I buy it. I believe it.
Speaker 2: It's true. I don't think it's an excuse. I don't
Speaker 2: think that when you begin to frame the conversation around
Speaker 2: and I'll keep it in pop culture terms, sort of
Speaker 2: the origin story.
Speaker 7: That it makes it okay.
Speaker 6: That's so fair.
Speaker 2: I think that if you were to cross reference one
Speaker 2: hundred people and talk to one hundred people regarding their history,
Speaker 2: trauma is a permanent and pervasive fact in almost every
Speaker 2: one of the hundred. Nobody lives an idyllic life. The
Speaker 2: concept of how one deals with their childhood trauma or
Speaker 2: psychological trauma, or abuse, or even if it's just environmental,
Speaker 2: the way they handle it moving forward is a mark
Speaker 2: of maturity, of evolutionary adulthood. And by minimizing that and
Speaker 2: saying well, that's an excuse and that's okay, and it
Speaker 2: gives free rein for this. And we see this often
Speaker 2: from a pop culture perspective, where again the heroes and
Speaker 2: the villains are now being blurred. Where you have, you know,
Speaker 2: in the DC comics and the superhero world. One of
Speaker 2: the most greatest psychological psychotic killers of all time is
Speaker 2: The Joker, and he's specifically a psychopath.
Speaker 7: He's written as a psychopath.
Speaker 6: Well, I thought that movie was actually pretty interesting, the
Speaker 6: Joker specifically, which is the Joaquin Phoenix portrayal of the Joker,
Speaker 6: and it really does kind of give exactly to your point,
Speaker 6: an origin story for this villain. I have to be
Speaker 6: honest with you. When this massacre first happened and Brian
Speaker 6: Coberger was arrested, we were just all like, what And
Speaker 6: that's the movie that kind of comes to mind is
Speaker 6: sort of is it the micro aggressions with mental illness
Speaker 6: and isolation? And you know, the Joker had been hit
Speaker 6: one too many times or overlooked one too many times,
Speaker 6: or left out of the conversation one too many times,
Speaker 6: and had had enough and had a wicked relationship with
Speaker 6: his mother or some sort of meaningful backstory that maybe
Speaker 6: not justified but explained his actions.
Speaker 2: I do think that, you know, everybody wants to know
Speaker 2: the reason why why do people do what they do?
Speaker 2: Are is somebody born evil? Is somebody not? You know,
Speaker 2: I always have to look at everything through a pop
Speaker 2: culture lens. It really comes into I've bene of social media.
Speaker 2: With social media as being so prolific, it's like these things, look,
Speaker 2: they fascinate us. We can't get enough of it, and
Speaker 2: so we have this fascination. We have this as a society.
Speaker 2: We have this sort of morbid attraction to these things,
Speaker 2: which is why horror is sort of the number one
Speaker 2: entertainment resource, cheap to make millions of view. They like
Speaker 2: the bad ones, they like the good ones, doesn't matter.
Speaker 2: That's your key into any kind of entertainment. And then
Speaker 2: the proliferation of true crime over the last really ten
Speaker 2: to eleven years has been extraordinary, and strangely, women tend
Speaker 2: to be the highest consumers of that because they deal
Speaker 2: with trauma, they deal with genes. You know, it's funny.
Speaker 2: I had a conversation with a man one day who
Speaker 2: doesn't like understand this concept, and I said, when you
Speaker 2: get in an elevator, anytime you get in an elevator,
Speaker 2: are you ever afraid? He said, well, why would I be?
Speaker 2: And I said, do you know that women, no matter
Speaker 2: who they are, wherever they are, when they get in
Speaker 2: an elevator and a man enters, it's not fear. It's
Speaker 2: an immediate alert for potential fear, and men don't realize
Speaker 2: that that is something that women go through every day
Speaker 2: walking through a parking lot, if a light goes out
Speaker 2: in a garage, when they get in their car, they
Speaker 2: check their back seat. And it's not because they're conditioned
Speaker 2: by through crime shows. It's because it is a fact
Speaker 2: for them from childhood. And I think that's why women
Speaker 2: consume this, because they want to know, They want to
Speaker 2: know what to look for, they want to know how
Speaker 2: to protect themselves.
Speaker 6: One question, though, so does that mean just looking at
Speaker 6: that so well I might ed so well said, is
Speaker 6: are women scared in the elevator because they've seen Psycho
Speaker 6: too many times? Or because they've seen women being murdered
Speaker 6: endlessly in horror films or in scary movies throughout the times?
Speaker 6: And now true crime is having this surge because we've
Speaker 6: all lost our minds? Or is it because we really
Speaker 6: think it's important to share stories so that we can
Speaker 6: keep ourselves safe and look out for each other. And
Speaker 6: I believe you can't protect yourself against the boogeyman if
Speaker 6: you don't know the boogeyman exists, and that people don't
Speaker 6: heal alone.
Speaker 7: Well, it's a reflection. It's a reflection of the times.
Speaker 2: I think that women feel like they're prey, and in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways they are. I think it's ingrained
Speaker 2: in the DNA, and I think that it's correct. And
Speaker 2: I think the fascination with true crime is a symptom
Speaker 2: of this. I'm a fan of true crime, but I
Speaker 2: tend to like the ones that deal with it in
Speaker 2: a subject matter that I can at least escape a
Speaker 2: little bit into the humor, like Don't f with Cats.
Speaker 2: I thought that the way that that was told was
Speaker 2: genius in a the most terrifying story of the most
Speaker 2: psychotic killer. And by the way, another one who was
Speaker 2: influenced by pop culture, because Luca thought he was Sharon
Speaker 2: Stone in basic instinct, he basically embodied her character the
Speaker 2: way he imagined her to be. You're tapping into the
Speaker 2: concept of compassion and empathy for the vast majority, there
Speaker 2: are going to be people who will zero in and
Speaker 2: not hear the compassion and empathy and be aroused by
Speaker 2: the concept. And that's the terrifying part. And that's where
Speaker 2: mental illness comes in. Now, if he was the main
Speaker 2: character from You, and he was stalking and he felt
Speaker 2: like that outsider, there's five million ways to look at it.
Speaker 2: Did these girls brush him off and reject him and
Speaker 2: he felt rejected in want revenge?
Speaker 7: Or were they actually nice?
Speaker 2: Did they say hi to him and he suddenly said, oh,
Speaker 2: they love me. So now you go into the two
Speaker 2: sides of psychology, which then becomes like, well, so you
Speaker 2: can't be nice to a person. You can't look at
Speaker 2: person in their eyes. You have to avert them. But
Speaker 2: if you avert them, then are you attracting violence? So
Speaker 2: there is no right answer. The right answer is to
Speaker 2: identify the signs early, the responsibility of family, friends, teachers,
Speaker 2: peers to raise the alarm.
Speaker 3: More on that next time. For more information on the
Speaker 3: case and relevant photos, follow us on Instagram at kat
Speaker 3: Underscore Studios. The Idaho Masker is produced by Stephanie Leideger,
Speaker 3: Gabriel Castillo and me Courtney Armstrong. Editing and sound design
Speaker 3: by Jeff Torois, Music by Jared Aston. The Idaho Mascer
Speaker 3: is a production of Katie's Studios and iHeartRadio. For more
Speaker 3: podcasts like this, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 3: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.