The evidence in this case already seems pretty conclusive. If you missed the release of the probable cause affidavit in this case, there were several big revelations. First, one of the survivors in the house saw the killer leaving. He walked right past her and out the door dressed all in black with a mask over his face.

Second, police identified a specific make and model of car that was in the area that night and eventually traced that car back to suspect Bryan Kohberger. Further investigation showed Kohberger leaving his apartment in a nearby town the night of the murders. Then his phone was off for a couple hours while he would have been driving to the scene. Then his phone cam back on later showing him driving back home late that night by another route.

Third, a sheath for a knife was found at the crime scene which contained DNA that did not belong to the victims. Police tested it against DNA from Kohberger’s family home and it was a familial match (from his father).

All of that seems pretty convincing but none of it really explains a possible motive for the crime. This story about Kohberger’s self-described mental health issues seems to fill in that final gap. It seems he was aware that he felt no emotions toward others, not even his own family.

The new revelations about the suspect, Bryan Kohberger, come from posts he made on an online forum in which he discussed his mental health struggles, as well as from interviews with those who knew him and messages he sent to friends that were obtained by The New York Times…

“I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self worth,” he wrote in 2011, when he was 16, adding later, in the same post: “As I hug my family, I look into their faces, I see nothing, it is like I am looking at a video game, but less.”…

“Nothing I do is enjoyable,” Mr. Kohberger wrote. “I am blank, I have no opinion, I have no emotion, I have nothing. Can you relate?”

Kohberger complained about having a neurological problem/disease called visual snow which causes people to see floating dots like an overlay on their vision. The Times spoke to an expert on the problem who said its causes are not well understood.

In addition to his mental problems, Kohberger also had social problems in school. He was overweight as a child and was bullied by other kids. He eventually took on a strict diet to see if he could do something about his visual snow problem and claimed he lost half his body weight as a result. Even his friends at the time described him as awkward.

Later on, about the time he was graduating high school, Kohberger seemed to be more positive about his life and condition but it was also around this time that he became addicted to heroin, a habit he started with a friend who lived nearby. He eventually got clean and seemed to turn his life around.

“I only used when I was in a deep suicidal state,” Mr. Kohberger wrote in May 2018 to Mr. Baylis, with whom he had been friends since eighth grade. “I have since really learned a lot. Not a person alive could convince me to use it.” Mr. Kohberger followed up later that day, telling Mr. Baylis that he had been off drugs for two years and telling him to not mention his drug use again, according to screenshots of their conversation on Facebook Messenger.

He told Mr. Baylis at one point that he thought he had been depressed since he was 5 years old, for so long that he had “developed a weird sense of meaning.”

You get the impression that this is a kid who had serious problems from the start which were never really dealt with. Even when he claimed things were improving he was self medicating with drugs. Those old feelings of detachment from others must have returned and for some reason he gave in to them.

What’s still not clear is why he selected these particular students. So far as police can tell he didn’t know them. What led him to select this house on this night? Since he’s still claiming innocence, I’m not sure we’re going to find out. Maybe police will turn up some link even if it’s just a coincidental one, that can explain it.