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Friday’s Final Word – HotAir
Poised and polished, she looked every inch the leading lady she once aspired to be.
In the weeks after her brother, Bryan Kohberger, committed his hideous crimes it emerged that Amanda had harbored ambitions of stardom in her youth, even winning a role in a schlock horror movie as a student.
Now, with Bryan set to spend the rest of his life behind bars, the director of that film has told the Daily Mail about Amanda’s involvement, saying, ‘I liked her very much.’
Dr Kevin Alexander Boon, who teaches English and media studies at Penn State Mont Alto campus said, ‘She was a wonderful person – I’m sorry that all this has happened, for the victims and her family.’
When Amanda turned up in Boise, Idaho on Wednesday, with her form-fitting scarlet dress, nude heels and highlighted hair tonged into loose waves, the rarely seen 37-year-old certainly made an impression.
Exclusive photos taken by the Daily Mail show her accompanying her mother Maryann into Ada County Courthouse in Boise, Idaho on Wednesday, to witness Bryan Kohberger receive four life sentences for the November 2022 murder of four University of Idaho students and ten years for felony burglary – to run consecutively.
Amanda and Maryann arrived at 7:40am, driven by Kohberger’s defense attorney, Anne Taylor. They pulled up at the side of the courthouse, away from the waiting media and crowds that had gathered in front of the courthouse.
The women walked up the side building’s side ramp, Amanda held her mother’s arm and hand tightly, a possible sign of the physical and emotional support she was surely there to offer her.
When Amanda (picture, left) turned up in Boise, Idaho on Wednesday, with her form-fitting scarlet dress, nude heels and highlighted hair tonged into loose waves, the rarely seen 37-year-old certainly made an impression.
In the weeks after her brother, Bryan Kohberger, committed his hideous crimes it emerged that Amanda, pictured with her mother, Maryann, leaving his sentencing hearing in Boise, Idaho, harbored ambitions of stardom in her youth.
Amanda held her mother’s arm and hand tightly, a possible sign of the physical and emotional support she was surely there to offer her as the women entered Ada County Courthouse through a side door
The hearing lasted just under three hours. Amanda and Maryann sat through 15 emotional – often angry – victim impact statements delivered by the friends and families of Kohberger’s four victims: Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin.
Kohberger barely glanced at his sister and mother where they sat in the front row of the public gallery.
Amanda looked straight ahead as the victims’s statements were delivered – rigid and unmoving. Her likeness to her brother was uncanny and her calm composure undeniable.
It was just after Kohberger was arrested that it emerged that Amanda had starred in a gory low-budget slasher film, in which hikers in the woods are stabbed to death in a frenzied attack.
The parallels with his crime were immediately, shockingly, apparent.
Dr Kevin Alexander Boon, who directed Amanda’s film, began working with 15 students back in 2009, spending two years writing a feature-length screenplay and preparing the shoot.
The students issued an open casting call for volunteer actors, who would spend 19 weekend days filming. Boon jokes that the budget was ‘less than most films spend on donuts’ – but he was thrilled with his students’ work.
‘Amanda showed up at the audition, did well, and was chosen,’ he explained. ‘She was very easy to work with, no complaints if we needed reshoots, and showed up for the premiere in 2011 and for all the publicity calls.’
He said he did not stay in touch with her, and ‘to the best of my knowledge’ she only made the one film.
‘Then she went back to her life,’ he added.
Kohberger barely glanced at his sister and mother where they sat in the front row of the public gallery to witness his sentence hearing
Left to right: Surviving roommate Dylan Mortensen, with victims Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen (on Kaylee’s shoulders) Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle and fellow survivor Bethany Funke. Mortensen and Funke both gave victim impact statements on Wednesday
Amanda is a graduate of Lehigh University. The picturesque campus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania boasts more than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students or ‘future makers.’
Amanda and her younger sister Melissa, 33, both went into social work: Melissa moved to Union City, New Jersey and became a therapist.
Amanda appears to have remained at their parental home in Chestnuthill Township, Pennsylvania, and found work in behavioral health rehab services at KidsPeace.
On its website KidsPeace describes itself as a private charity ‘dedicated to serving the behavioral and mental health needs of children, families and communities.’
It provides psychiatric hospital care as well as residential treatment programs, education services and a variety of foster care and community-based treatment programs.
Both sisters were fired in the spring of 2023, once their connection to the accused killer became clear. It’s not known if they have found new jobs.
The Daily Mail reached out to KidsPeace for comment and did not receive a response.
One of the sisters – it is unclear which – expressed her concerns about Kohberger whom, according to author and investigative journalist Howard Blum, she regarded as ‘problematic.’
Indeed, during his teenage years and up until the age of 16, Kohberger was a heroin user who stole Melissa’s cell phone to sell and buy his fix. He also robbed the houses of two of his friends.
Amanda, a former actress, portrayed ‘Lori’ in the low-budget thriller ‘Two Days Back’ in 2011 – with characters being stabbed and slashed with knives and hatchets
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Amanda was fired from her acting job shortly after Kohberger’s arrest in 2023
According to Blum, one of his sisters grew suspicious after he arrived home on December 16, 2022.
Speaking on a special edition of NBC’s investigative show, Dateline, Blum revealed that this sister had heard about the Idaho murders and suggested to their parents that they search her brother’s car.
By that time, it was widely known that police in Idaho were searching for a white Hyundai Elantra, the same car that Kohberger had just driven home across the country from Washington state to Pennsylvania.
His sister knew fine well that Kohberger’s home in Pullman, Washington was just ten miles from the murder scene in Moscow, Idaho.
She was troubled by this and by his odd behavior which included repeatedly wearing surgical gloves around the house.
She never took her concerns to the police, and the car – when checked – had been scrubbed clean.
Notably absent from the sentencing were Melissa and Kohberger’s father, Michael, 70, a maintenance man.
Maryann, a 65-year-old teacher, wept quietly throughout Wednesday’s session. She sobbed when Madison Mogen’s grandmother, Kim Cheeley, told how the ‘foundation fell out of our world,’ with Maddie’s death.
Then she spoke of her grief for the other victims’ families – an empathy she extended to the Kohbergers. Maryann ‘shuddered’ as Cheeley spoke.
Documents released in the aftermath of the sentencing have revealed just how close mother and son remain – with Kohberger, who had been held in Ada County jail, regularly speaking to his mother in lengthy phone calls.
The families of his victims were led from the courtroom after Judge Steven Hippler handed down his sentence – they walked out into the sunshine together.
But when Amanda and Maryann emerged at the courthouse’s side door, the composure had gone.
The strain and the heartache of it all was clear in Maryann’s eyes which she kept, for the most part, hidden behind large sunglasses. She looked wrung out with grief.
The women walked swiftly towards a waiting SUV around which several Sheriff’s Deputies stood guard.
Bryan Kohberger did not so much as glance at his mother and sister as he was led from the small fourth floor courtroom to being his term in Idaho’s Maximum Security Institution twenty miles away near Kuna, Idaho.
