For most people in Palouse, Washington, John Snyder was just the friendly professor you might bump into at the local bar. He was the type who would spend three decades fighting for justice as a public defender, then settle into academia to pass on what he knew to the next generation.
But in the fall of 2022, Snyder found himself in the orbit of evil. His teaching assistant in Washington State University’s Criminal Justice and Criminology Department was Bryan Kohberger — the man who would soon be arrested for the brutal stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students.
At the time, Snyder thought he was just saddled with an arrogant, socially tone-deaf graduate student. “I quickly figured out he was a bit of a douche,” Snyder said. “And within a few weeks I realized this was going to be an exceptionally long semester.”
“The Terrier Routine”
Kohberger had been randomly assigned to Snyder under a new system that no longer allowed professors to pick their own assistants. When they first met, Snyder thought he was “a little odd,” but hardly alarming. In academia, eccentricity was normal.
But it didn’t take long for Kohberger’s quirks to turn sinister.
He skipped classes, arrived at inconvenient times, and loitered in Snyder’s office late into the evening, rambling about trivialities. Snyder began calling it Kohberger’s “terrier routine” — following him down the hall, yapping endlessly, refusing to let go.
Kohberger once even bragged about beating a parking ticket, dragging Snyder to the scene like an amateur lawyer. Snyder told him bluntly: people who think they’re smarter than the courts always lose. Kohberger didn’t listen.
One female student, unnerved by his demeanor, emailed a friend: “My class’s TA looks like a murderer.”
The Nightmares Begin
In November 2022, the quiet college towns of Moscow, Idaho, and Pullman, Washington, were rocked when four University of Idaho students — Madison Mogen, Kaylee Goncalves, Ethan Chapin, and Xana Kernodle — were found brutally stabbed to death.
For weeks, Snyder brushed off the crime as a horrifying but distant tragedy. Then, on December 30, 2022, the custodian at WSU told him the police had sealed off the basement of the criminology building. Moments later, Snyder’s phone rang.
First his brother-in-law, then his son, then Moscow police — all with the same shocking news: his teaching assistant, Bryan Kohberger, had been arrested for the murders.
The horror wasn’t that Snyder had missed the warning signs. It was that he had dismissed them as merely annoying. “I actually considered him a wimp,” he admitted.
Face-to-Face With a Killer
Police later revealed that Kohberger had kept lists of women’s names, one of whom Snyder personally knew from the department. He couldn’t help but shudder at what might have been.
Snyder was left reeling. “It was the assault on why I do what I do,” he said. For decades, he had fought to give disadvantaged people a chance — to show them a path beyond their mistakes. Kohberger was different. He wasn’t a troubled kid who made bad choices. He was a man who studied criminology not to serve justice, but to perfect his own crimes.
The Aftermath
The shock of being linked — however indirectly — to a mass murderer took its toll. Snyder reached out to university support programs, only to be told the hotline could schedule an appointment in two weeks. It was the stream of students stopping by his office that finally reminded him of the purpose behind his work. “That was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced,” he said.
Still, the experience has haunted him. His wife, who once recoiled instinctively upon seeing Kohberger follow him down the hall, told him she’d never felt that kind of chill before.
Snyder knows the world will remember Kohberger as a killer. But he also wants it remembered that, for those who brushed shoulders with him, the monster wasn’t obvious. He looked like a misfit grad student. He sounded like an irritating co-worker.
That ordinariness, Snyder believes, is what makes him so terrifying.
Carrying the Torch
Now in his mid-60s, Snyder is preparing to retire. He says it’s not just Kohberger — decades in the trenches have worn him down. But he hopes his students will carry forward the principles that guided his career: fairness, decency, and the belief that even in darkness, people can be redeemed.
Except for Kohberger. “He chose to dive into the abyss,” Snyder said flatly.
For Snyder, the real horror isn’t just that his teaching assistant turned out to be a murderer. It’s that someone who should have been a seeker of justice instead became its destroyer.
