Bryan Kohberger's Family Are Victims Too, BTK Killer's Daughter Says

The family of the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students are also victims, the daughter of the BTK killer told Newsweek.

Bryan Kohberger, a 28-year-old Ph.D. student and teaching assistant in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Washington State University, was taken into custody at his parents' house in Pennsylvania on Friday.

He agreed on Tuesday to be extradited to Idaho to face charges in the killings of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin. The students were found stabbed to death in a rental house in Moscow on November 13.

Kerri Rawson, whose father is serial killer Dennis Rader, told Newsweek that people "need to be supportive, not jump to conclusions and respect this family's right to privacy or their right to talk because they have both."

Kohberger's family has expressed sympathy for the families of the victims, but said they would support him and promote "his presumption of innocence."

"There are no words that can adequately express the sadness we feel, and we pray each day for them," they said in a statement.

"We will continue to let the legal process unfold and as a family we will love and support our son and brother. We have fully cooperated with law enforcement agencies in an attempt to seek the truth and promote his presumption of innocence rather than judge unknown facts and make erroneous assumptions."

Rawson said: "It's extremely rough when a family is innocent. In our case, my mom lost her husband, I lost my father and my brother lost his father. And in this case, the Kohbergers have lost their son in pretty much any way you can imagine losing somebody other than that they're dead."

Dennis Rader was arrested in 2005 and confessed to 10 killings in the Wichita, Kansas area between 1974 and 1991. He called himself BTK, which stood for "bind, torture, kill."

She said that almost two decades on, people still make accusations about what her family knew about her father's crimes.

"It's been almost 18 years since my father was arrested and people still accuse my mother of having hid things about my father," she said. "There's still those questions on social media...what were they hiding? Why did they not say anything? How did they not know these things were hidden in their house?"

Relatives of offenders often struggle with guilt, Rawson said.

"Like what did you miss? Especially as a parent, you want your kids to turn out okay, and be successful and productive," she said. "I do believe that if you can get the right kind of help for these predators, or people that are committing these crimes that sometimes you can prevent them, but sometimes you can't."

She also lamented the fascination people have with true crime, saying many often forget that there are real people who are affected by social media speculation.

"It's important for the general public to realize that there's real people involved here, real families, families that have lost young people... they'll be grieving the rest of their lives," she said. "And then Kohberger's family have lost a son, and have to deal with the ramifications of what he's done the rest of their lives.

"I understand how things become sensationalized or become entertainment, but there's real people that are daily being affected by this and will be for a very long time to come."

Rawson also said her "stomach turned" after learning of the connection between Kohberger and her father.

Before arriving in Pullman, Washington, last summer, Kohberger had graduated from a master's program in criminal justice at Pennsylvania's DeSales University. He also received a bachelor's degree from the university in 2020, the university said.

There, he was taught by Katherine Ramsland, a renowned forensic psychologist and expert on serial killers.

Ramsland spent years interviewing Rader behind bars and co-wrote Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer with him. She has not publicly commented on the case, and told Newsweek on Monday: "I'm making no media statements at this time."