This is Hidden Killers with Tony Bruske.

Here now, Tony Bruske.

You ever meet someone who seems like they've been practicing for prison their whole life?

That's a picture starting to emerge of Brian Coburger.

Not just the accused killer in the Idaho student murders, but a guy who may

have always been building towards this moment, obsessed with criminal psychology, isolated from

real connection, desperate to be seen, and now locked away with nothing but time, books, and the attention of a nation still trying to

figure him out.

In this episode, we're digging into some of the deeper psychological terrain, the failed

social attempts, the comparisons to Elliot Roger, the supreme gentleman label that floats

around in-cell forms, and were asking a blunt

question. Was Brian Coburger an in-cell or just a guy who couldn't connect and took it personally?

We're going to be talking to Howard Bloom, near Times best-selling author, whose deep reporting

on Coburger's background gives us rare insight into his

failed attempts to fit in. The pool parties, the awkward interviews, the internships that didn't

materialize, Robin Drake, former FBI Special Agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis

Program, breaking down how that kind of chronic rejection,

especially for someone obsessed with being exceptional,

can twist into resentment or worse, in a motive.

We don't stop there.

We ask the harder question.

Most people avoid.

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