Why Did Bryan Kohberger Study the Real Killer Behind Ghostface?

Every Halloween, the Ghostface mask from the movie Scream is everywhere. But Scream writer Kevin Williamson was inspired by the Gainesville Ripper — real-life serial killer Danny Rolling — whose name later resurfaced in the Idaho 4 case, when Bryan Kohberger researched Rolling on Christmas Day 2022 after the murders.

In this episode of Criminally Obsessed, Senior Investigative Reporter Anne Emerson sits down with forensic psychologist Dr. John Delatorre to trace that line from Rolling to Scream to Kohberger. Dr. Delatorre designates Rolling, who pleaded guilty to murdering five college students, a sadistic psychopath shaped by a violently abusive upbringing, and finds it significant that Kohberger, as a criminology student, repeatedly downloaded full case files to satisfy intellectual and physiological interest, focusing on killers like Rolling and Ted Bundy whose methods he felt he could mimic.

The conversation then tackles the similarities between Rolling and the Idaho murders — college victims, large Ka-Bar knife, sliding glass doors and black ski masks. Dr. Delatorre contrasts Rolling’s access-driven killings camped behind a university with what he sees as Kohberger’s selective, targeted plan that devolved from meticulous to chaotic, driven by inferiority and anger.

Kohberger pleaded guilty to murdering Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin in November 2022. In July 2026, Kohberger filed a handwritten petition to withdraw his guilty plea.

Rolling was executed in 2006. 

Scream 7 was released in February 2026.

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