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Ashley Banfield
Hey everybody, I'm Ashley Banfield and this is Drop Dead Serious. Today's episode is all about some pictures. So if you're listening on the podcast, I recommend you go to YouTube and take a look at the pictures because some photos of Brian Coburger as a teenager have surfaced on Reddit and I have spoken with sources who went to school with him who say, that's him, that's it, they're legit. What a, what a difference a decade and a half can make. He is literally double the person that he is now back in high school, meaning he's probably lost half of his weight and become that much thinner that you wouldn't recognize them. And with all that weight loss, something else must have happened because the personality that you're about to hear from one of his schoolmates from back in the day and the description that she gives of who he was back then compared to what we know of him now is night and day. It is not the same person. Something happened either with his heroin use. Something happened with his weight loss. Something happened, you know, as he processed his life from high school and through college. But he is, he is definitely a transformed, different person altogether than, than who he was and what his high school mates remember him as and knew him as back then. So it's kind of crazy. I do this other show called On Patrol Live. I fill in for Dan Abrams and one of the staff members on the show, as I was filling in last weekend, came up to me and said it's good to see you again. Her name's Mandy. And she said, you know, I don't know if I ever told you this, but I went to school with Brian Coburger, to which I caught my breath, brought my jaw back up off the floor and said, mandy, you need to talk to me on Drop Dead Serious. And she agreed. And on the day that we are talking, these photos have surfaced. So it's sort of great kismet that we can talk about these photos, what she remembers of this kid, because they are definitely the kid she went to school with. And all of the things since what it was like to hear this news, to hear that name, to know that you're connected, your school is connected, your town is connected, your friends are connected, and then to sort of think back to the guy she knew compared to the guy she's learning about now. This heart, horrific serial killing, monster spree, killing, however you want to refer to him, and processing all of that. And it's sort of a fascinating road that we haven't explored a lot because, look, I'm going to say right now, all of the sympathies go to the families of the four kids who were lost, right? The Mogans, the Gonzalves, the Kernodles and the Chapins. They are suffering the worst in all of this. There are the surviving roommates. They are suffering, their families are suffering. And there are the Coburgers. Like, everybody wants to vilify them, but you've got to remember who they are in all of this. They didn't do this. They're not the killer. This guy did it on his own. He was a grown ass adult, 30 years old, now 28 when the killings happened. And yet there is this association that for some reason the Internet wants to give the Coburgers, like they're somehow complicit. They are not. And so it is interesting to plumb the reactions, the ripple effects, the effects on this family and by extension, the old friends, the high school friends, the. Even the kids who just knew him, knew of him, the school itself, the town. Anyway, that's where I'm going with this episode today in talking with Mandy about who he was back then and how she's processing all of this with her friends. Mandy, this is so weird because we're work colleagues, you know, our. You and I see each other a couple times a year. And you shocked me the other day when you said, you know, I went to school with him.
Mandy
What?
Ashley Banfield
So I couldn't wait to talk to you on this podcast. And we have a really great community in the drop dead serious, you know, podcast world. And I know that they'd want to hear all of your thoughts about knowing one of the most frightening serial killers. Well, I guess you could call them a spree killer, but of all time, what it was like to find out about this, what your thoughts were, what your friends thoughts were, how you guys all reconnected over this. Not only that, but comparing the person that you've been hearing about now with the person that you knew, you know, back in high school. So let's just start with the pictures themselves and, and go over these pictures and, and what they kind of invoke for you, because I think this is kind of the first time that you're really seeing them, like all within the last couple of minutes. So let's pop the first picture up in the series of. Of shots. Does this invoke anything? I mean, when I looked at this, it gave me the chills because I only know the coburger of recent and I can't get over those eyes. But what does this photo speak to you?
Mandy
That one kind of seems like a sad. Seems like he's sad.
Ashley Banfield
Is that the person you knew? Did you ever get the feeling in high school that that quiet kid was a sad kid?
Mandy
We just, it was always. Again, he was younger than me, so it was, it was more, it was more. So I spent more time with his sister and he was always, he was always just so quiet. We never got the sense that there was something wrong. You know, sometimes when, when things like this happen and people come out and they say, oh, he was quiet. But yeah, that kind of makes sense because he did this, this and this. You know, we didn't have that. Like, we, we grew. We grew up in a community where everybody knew everybody. And when this came out, it was very. It was very shocking to a lot of us. It was very like, wait, what? It wasn't very. It wasn't a. Oh, that kind of makes sense for us.
Ashley Banfield
Did you. Did you immediately upon hearing the name Brian Coburger is the one arrested for the horrendous quadruple murder in Idaho? Everybody in Idaho in the community there was saying, who? He's not connected to us. Did you suddenly call old friends or old connections from high school and just sort of connect with them to say what the actual f. Yes, we did.
Mandy
There were some friends that I reached out to immediately and said, oh my God, did you hear what happened? Did you reach out to so and so what happened? And yes, the group chain started immediately because, again, we do come from such a small town, so everybody who knows everybody. It's a small town where everybody shares the same last name. I shouldn't say that. Hold on. Let me not.
Ashley Banfield
But close enough, right? No, that's okay. That's okay.
Mandy
But, yes, we do come from such a small town where everybody knows everybody. So it was very shocking when we did hear Coburger. It was. It was instantly I said, oh, my God. I went to high school with. With the Co Burgers. I. The. Amanda was in my graduating class. So it was very, very shocking to all of us. Yes, for sure.
Ashley Banfield
What did. What did everyone say? Like, what was the basics of the conversations that you suddenly were all having? And this was like, December 30th.
Mandy
Everybody was shocked. There was no inkling of. Yeah, like I said, there was no. That makes sense.
Ashley Banfield
There was no thought that. Well, we all knew he was going to be right in the news in some way. We.
Mandy
Right. There was no thought that any of us would have. Would have ever imagined that something like this would have went down. No.
Ashley Banfield
Did you try to reach out to Amanda, his sister? Did you try to reach out to the family members that you. That you went to school with?
Mandy
I have not. No. I have personal friends who are personal friends with the families, and that they.
Ashley Banfield
Must have gone through the most unimaginable hell. I mean, they're sort of the forgotten victims in all of this. The Kohberger family. They did not do this. They did nothing. They were not complicit in this. This is Bryan Kohberger's doing. This is his monstrous mind at work. This was his monstrous hands at work. This was not his two sisters. This was not his parents. And. And they really suffered.
Mandy
They did. And my heart goes out to Amanda and his family. And, you know, it's. It's. It's very, very hard. It's. You know, the Co Burgers are left with. With the aftermath of what he. Of what he did. Like, his poor family now has to deal with everything that he. That he. That he did.
Ashley Banfield
What are they like, the coburgers?
Mandy
Amanda was a sweet, sweet girl growing up. She was. She was wonderful. She has a great. She's. She's. She's wonderful. So it's. It's. It's a shame that she's being drugged through the mud the way that she is. She does not deserve it at all.
Ashley Banfield
She lost her job. Right. She and her sister both were fired.
Mandy
So quickly, from what I understand, and it's very unfortunate. She does not deserve what's being what's happening to her, her and her sister. And I wish them nothing but the best. I hope that, you know, they, they can move past what's, what's happening to them. It's very unfortunate.
Ashley Banfield
I want to go back to some of these pictures from high school. You know, I had seen a couple pictures before, so I knew he was heavier and Looks like he's a lot heavier. He looks like he's half the size that he used to be. But this is the guy you went to school with? Like, this is the image. This is the person you remember? Yeah. Does it invoke any kind of memory or does it just sort of leave you flat?
Mandy
It just sort of leaves me flat, to be honest, because again, he, there was never any, you know, he never had anything towards women or anything towards anybody. He was just very to himself. He was very quiet.
Ashley Banfield
So that, that's what fascinates me because the person that we are getting to know as opposed to the person here, you know, from 15 or so years ago, is skinny and angry, rude, misogynistic and is belligerent, like, wants to be out front in class, wants to lecture everybody. Certainly not a quiet guy. So what do you make of that?
Mandy
I really don't know. I really don't know. I. It's. It's. Again, it was shocking. It was shocking to all of us. It's shocking now. It's.
Ashley Banfield
Makes no sense.
Mandy
No, it doesn't. It really.
Ashley Banfield
So he. It. In high school, you never got an inkling that he wouldn't look at girls or didn't like girls or used to talk amongst a group of kids that, you know, they were like. Well, for lack of a better term, we now call them incels, but might have been the group of incels. It wasn't like that.
Mandy
No.
Ashley Banfield
It feels like, you know, from your description of him, he just was that, that guy that faded into the woodwork.
Mandy
Yeah. And I, he, he, you know, he. I know I just keep saying it now and, and I, I'm sorry if I sound like a broken record. He really was just the quiet kid who just, you know, when he graduated high school, he, he became the. Excuse me. When he graduated high school, he became the security guard at the high school for a little bit there and he, you know, he stayed in town and that's what a lot of people, that's what a lot of people do in that town is they, you know, they graduate high school and they stay there. And we just thought he was just.
Ashley Banfield
The kind of non. Memorable, you Know, homogenous, kind of nondescript fella.
Mandy
Yeah.
Ashley Banfield
So thinking about who we've come to know this, this personality that's just so off putting. Right. We've heard that he would skip or be late to female professors classes, but not male professors. He would dress down female students, he would cause many of them to cry and he caused professors to meet about him to say he's going to be a dude danger if we give him a PhD. It just sounds like, like it's 100% transformation from, from the kid you went to school with.
Mandy
It is. That's why it's so shocking to all of us who come from this small town that where did this come, where did this come from? Where did this come from? And I know that it's, it's so cliche to say, you know, things like this don't happen in this, in these small towns, but it really, we, it really took us all by storm. I, the people that I talked to, the circle that I'm in, we were all very, very shocked.
Ashley Banfield
Did you start thinking about it? Like, did you. When you heard all these details, you know, because clearly you're pretty connected to the story so you follow the headlines, maybe more than most. Right. But did you start thinking back, what did I miss? Were there red flags? Did you go over your, like your whole map of your mind from high school thinking where might this have all had its genesis? What was your thought process?
Mandy
I think at first I remember going through and seeing where he was in high school, because I remember again because we all grew up, it was such a small town and he was younger than me, so he was more closer to my sister's age. But again, Amanda was in my class.
Ashley Banfield
It was just cr.
Mandy
It was just so crazy. It really was like we. Because it was just so, it was just so crazy. It was just. I know I just keep repeating myself because it really was just so crazy to see such a big headline and then to see your high school on cnn because that's really what happened. We literally was breaking news. And my high school picture, my picture of my high school popped up on cnn and I was like, what is going, what is going on? So it was, it, it's just.
Ashley Banfield
Did you search your mind like constantly, like, what did I miss? What did I miss? What did I miss back then?
Mandy
I think we all did. I think we all at one point said, where. What could we have all not seen? But none of us, but none of us missed anything. Obviously we all missed something.
Ashley Banfield
But, but none of you even in all your chat sessions and, you know, your, your communications after the, after his arrest, you couldn't come up with anything that made sense?
Mandy
No, we can't. It's, it's so, it's so bizarre because again, he was, he was quiet and he was nice. His sister was great. His sister is great. She's. You know, there's. It's, it's. It's bizarre. It's. It's very bizarre.
Ashley Banfield
Mandy, knowing what we know now about Brian Coburger, there's some thought that he may have been bullied in school. Does that make sense, just knowing your high school culture, that he might have been, you know, relentlessly bullied? Maybe that triggered him.
Mandy
Bullying at my high school, unfortunately, was a problem. I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't. Bullying is a problem in today's culture and was back then. So I wouldn't put it past that. That could have been a problem for him.
Ashley Banfield
Did you ever hear of anything that. That related to him? Groups that. That didn't like him specifically?
Mandy
No, but again, again, like I keep saying, he was very, very quiet. But that could have, that could have attributed to him being very quiet. That he was.
Ashley Banfield
And it wouldn't be, it wouldn't surprise you, knowing the culture of your high school passes back then, that that could have been happening to him?
Mandy
It would not. It would not surprise me.
Ashley Banfield
No. And I don't give a pass to anybody. Trust me on. I was bullied. Therefore, I murdered four innocent kids in their bed. Like. But no, absolutely. We're just all grabbing at any sip of a straw that we can to figure out what turns someone from the quiet kid, a little overweight, with his backpack and his satin shorts, into one of the most infamous American killers of all time.
Mandy
Yeah, I, you know, bullying. Bullying was a problem for sure in my high school.
Ashley Banfield
But who knows if it affected him that much to.
Mandy
I mean, it's hard to say.
Ashley Banfield
What did you think when you saw Amanda and her mom in court behind Bryan Coburger for his sentencing?
Mandy
You know, I think it takes a lot. I think it took a lot of strength for the two of them to do what they did. I think. What do you do in that situation? To be completely honest, I think about so many things. You know, if, you know, they probably were there to not only support. Support their own family member who they are now losing. You know, people do forget that even though he create, he committed these heinous, horrible crimes, they are still losing a family member. So they are there for their family member. But they're also there for the victims. I believe that they were there to. To support the victims as well. So I think it took tremendous courage for the two of them to be there. And I. And I think that they, they should be commended for being there. I don't think that. I think that the, The. The pushback that they got for being there was. Was very, very harsh.
Ashley Banfield
Nobody's ever walked in those shoes. And then they feel like they're experts and they can be trolls online. You. You cannot imagine what it's like to hear news that just came out of nowhere. Oh, by the way, you're never going to have this one back for Christmas. You're never going to. It's not just that it would be easier if he was dead.
Mandy
Sometimes it's, you know, sometimes that's the easier route. Like, you know, that they're never coming.
Ashley Banfield
Like, it's, you know, horror that he's there and the. Probably the guilt that his parents and his sisters will go through. Like, do I have to get on a plane for six hours to go have a horrible visit behind glass, you know, once every. How often? Don't know. With my brother, my son, my child. Like, just imagine the pressure on them and the guilt that they'll go through as well.
Mandy
Yeah. Nobody.
Ashley Banfield
It's hard having these conversations, by the way, because all of my conversations have been about the victims and the family members because the trauma they're going through is like nothing that anyone will go through. It's just. This is yet another piece that very few people talk about.
Mandy
Yeah. Nobody understands because of course, the victim's traumas are what the victims go through and the victims families, we will never comprehend. We will never understand. Absolutely not. But I think it's worth noting that the. That Brian Kohberger's family also lost a son, also lost a brother, also lost somebody like Amanda. Amanda and her mother will never. Like they. They did lose somebody. I'm not saying that they're suffering in the same way. By any, by any means necessary, what you're saying.
Ashley Banfield
I think they also. Yes, they've lost that guy. Of course they can visit him in a prison, but they've got the added horror and humiliation of being associated like how people feel. So they're somehow complicit or they're somehow a part of this awfulness. Like this. Like, you went to school with a guy, big. You know, no one's ever going to associate you with his, his, his horrible actions.
Mandy
But they do associate his family right now. Now for the rest of their lives. They're not only associated with. They're associated with that. These poor girls. This poor girl lost her job like. Like, come on.
Ashley Banfield
And has that name. She's. She's got that name.
Mandy
So I think it's. I think the, you know, he. And looks. Looks just like him. Like, spitting image. I mean, you know, it's. It's got to be very, very hard. I mean, I commend her for handling it with such grace, for, you know, for handling it as well as she is and for not letting the Internet consume her the way I would let it consume me. If we're being completely honest.
Ashley Banfield
I don't know how I'd rather. There's no blueprint, right? There's no blueprint. There's no blueprint for the Gonzalez family, for the Chapin family, for the Mogan family, for the Kernodle family. There's no blueprint for them to process this bizarre thing that landed like an atom bomb in their life and their world and their love. There's no blueprint for it. And there's less of a blueprint for the other side of it because there's less attention given to people like the Co Burgers, you know, and then there are the trolls. It's new. It's a new layer in the last decade that's really, you know, evolved, sadly, that there's a. There's a troll environment that will attack families of the victims, believe it or not, families of the. The four kids and. And family members of. Of Brian Coburger.
Mandy
Yeah, it's terrible. It's. It's. It's. It's. It's terrible.
Ashley Banfield
You're such a sweetheart for talking to me and I look forward to seeing you again at the office, but I.
Mandy
Look forward to seeing you, Ashley. Thank for having me.
Ashley Banfield
I really appreciate your insight. I think we don't usually hear enough from. From people who, again, have these residual connections to massive, massive stories and, and crimes and. And it's a lot for. For people like you to process as well. And there's so much going on with the victims, family members and of course, Co Burger's family members that we. That we kind of forget that you're out here too.
Mandy
Yeah, no, of course. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Episode: Bryan Kohberger: Classmate of His Sister Remembers Him Before the Murders | INTERVIEW
Release Date: August 28, 2025
Host: Ashleigh Banfield
Guest: Mandy (former classmate of Bryan Kohberger’s sister, Amanda, and high school acquaintance of Bryan Kohberger)
This episode features an in-depth, sensitive conversation between Ashleigh Banfield and Mandy, a woman who attended high school with Bryan Kohberger's sister and knew Bryan as a younger classmate. The interview is prompted by newly surfaced photographs of Bryan as a teenager, contrasting his current infamous image with the person remembered by his classmates. The episode explores Mandy's recollections, the emotional ripple effects in their small community, and the tragic collateral damage suffered by families tied to notorious crimes.
"It was very shocking to a lot of us. It was very like, wait, what? It wasn't a. Oh, that kind of makes sense for us."
— Mandy, on hearing of Kohberger’s arrest (06:32)
"My heart goes out to Amanda and his family. They’re left with the aftermath of what he did."
— Mandy (09:41)
"He was just very to himself. He was very quiet."
— Mandy (11:04)
"It just sounds like it's 100% transformation from the kid you went to school with."
— Ashleigh Banfield (13:45)
"Bullying at my high school, unfortunately, was a problem. I'm not going to pretend that it wasn't."
— Mandy (16:54)
"I think it took a lot of strength for the two of them to do what they did...they are still losing a family member."
— Mandy, on Kohberger’s mother and sister in court (18:30)
"There’s no blueprint for them to process this bizarre thing that landed like an atom bomb in their life..."
— Ashleigh Banfield (22:41)