As a Teenager, Idaho Suspect Said He Felt 'Little Remorse'

Online posts from Bryan Kohberger's teenage years portray an isolated, troubled youth who lacked emotion, including remorse, and felt like he was watching his life play out in a video game. The man charged in the stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students in November once posted that he thought constantly of suicide, the New York Times reports. "I feel like an organic sack of meat with no self worth," he wrote in 2011, when he was 16. "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," he added.

The comments were posted in a mental health forum in which Kohberger discussed with others his battle with a neurological condition known as visual snow syndrome. People with the condition see snow or static, and some say it's like living inside a shaken snow globe. It can also bring migraines and anxiety. There's no standard treatment, per the Cleveland Clinic. Kohberger, now 28, said that he lost the ability to feel emotion about the time his visual snow symptoms appeared in 2009. "I know it was something that really bugged him," a high school friend said. "He was basically to the point where he was neurotic about it." Kohberger also used heroin for a time, per the Times.

Kohberger, who has not entered a plea in the case yet, per CNN, talks about dealing with anxiety, depression, depersonalization, and other mental health issues in the forum. He said that he didn't deserve to live and that he thought he could do "whatever I want with little remorse." When he looked in the mirror, Kohberger saw a "sickly, tired, useless and stupid man," he wrote. "Nothing I do is enjoyable," he posted. "I am blank, I have no opinion, I have no emotion, I have nothing. Can you relate?" (More Bryan Kohberger stories.)