tuannyriver

A coincidence of two horrifying events occurred this month. On July 16, a Wednesday, it was announced in Minnesota that David Brom would be released to a halfway work house after 37 years of incarceration. Brom had been convicted of murdering his parents and two younger siblings in the early hours of February 18, 1987 while they were sleeping. Sixteen years old at the time of the familicides, he was sentenced to four life terms with the possibility of parole after some 50 years.

On Wednesday July 23, one week after the news about Brom’s release, Bryan Kohberger was sentenced to four life terms without parole. Kohberger had previously admitted to murdering four college students in their sleep and during the early hours of November 13, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time he murdered the students.

I’ve followed the Kohberger case out of interest as a university professor. The deceased students were of the same age as most undergraduate students at Pepperdine. There appeared to be a lot of drama in the weeks leading to his arrest in Pennsylvania. Most of all, Kohberger was consistently silent since his arrest and did not remotely reveal to the court anything of note. Unsurprisingly, he declined to speak during the sentencing.

In contrast, my interest in the Brom case was personal. David Brom attended the same high school as I did, and he was in the same class as my sister. Moreover, his older brother Joe had been in my graduating class. Joe, however, was dismissed by the school and didn’t graduate with the class. He wasn’t living at home when his younger brother killed their family members. He visited his brother in jail later, but I’ve gathered that they were not in contact with each other after the trial. Joe later graduated from college, earned a master’s, and taught at a community college in Ohio for years. He was married and divorced, and had a girlfriend at the time of his death by cancer only in his mid-forties.

A first-year student in college at the time of the murders, I was completely shocked reading the news, just like everyone else. Soon, I was back to the busy life at college and in the seminary and hardly thought about it. At my sister’s graduation two years later, the valedictorian briefly mentioned the murders near the end of her highlights memories, something along the line, “And there was David Brom” that would be forever a part of the experiences of her graduating class.

An aside. The valedictorian was a Korean-born adoptee into a white family whose oldest son was another classmate of mine. This aside illustrates the world of my Catholic high school, which was small enough that everyone knew everyone, so to speak. To give another example, a younger sister of another classmate was friends with thirteen-year-old Diane Brom. They went to the same Catholic school, and she was naturally devastated by the death of her friend.

The months leading to the trial of David Brom were very tense and controversial. There were even anonymous threats targeting the presiding judge and pressuring him to steer the trial to a guilty verdict and to give the maximum sentences possible. A major point of contention was motive, as it was widely expected that a plea of insanity would be entered–and it was indeed entered.

Like the Kohberger case, the issue of premeditation was central to the case of the prosecutors. Although Bryan Kohberger did not get to a trial, the admission that he signed on July 1, 2025 gives a standard definition of first-degree murder: that he was responsible for “the willful, unlawful, deliberate, with premeditation and with malice aforethought, killing and murder” of the students.

This issue was much more contentious in the Brom case, and the people who made the anonymous threats (like many who didn’t make them) wanted to ensure that David Brom would be heading to prison rather than a psychiatric hospital. With this background, it is hardly a surprise that the news of his release was controversial.

By any measure, Brom was an exemplary inmate. Only once did he violate prison’s rules, and it sounded like a very minor one that happened in 1992, just a few years into his imprisonment. Here is a video of the parole hearing earlier this year that eventually led the parole board to the decision of release.

The above video has evoked thousands of responses. Most were either negative or very negative against the release. Overwhelming were the reactions in the negative, and you just have to read and determine for yourself the rationale and emotions behind them.

There was support for the release but it was far fewer and much more mute in the responses. It’s easy to note them because, well, there were so few. Here’s an example:

I was 4 in 1988 [and] I will be 41 years old next month he has in fact spent a life time in prison. This man went to jail and worked the system for rehabilitation thats how its supposed to be people… He was a 16 year old child when commiting this crime. Yes it was also but again his brain wasn’t even fully developed, 37 years and yet had only 1 violation for having to many people in his cell ,I will have to disagree with everyone of you when I say I think he deserved to be parole… and im always the person who say Why the F would they let these fools out.

It was, again, a minority opinion among the recorded reactions. In addition, several Republican lawmakers in Minnesota issued statements denouncing the decision to release Brom while at least one Democrat issued a statement more on the side of support.

A more measured response came from the sheriff of Olmsted County, who was a deputy when Brom killed his family members. Having reminded readers that Brom had benefited from a concurrent life term, the sheriff nonetheless affirmed trust in the system. Here’s a portion of his statement:

Mr. Brom is benefiting from leniency twice for mutilating four people: his family members, including his two younger siblings.  Diane and little Ricky could be parents and very productive members of our society but were never given the chance due to Mr. Brom’s selfish, immature, sixteen-year-old actions.    

To Mr. Brom’s credit and my understanding, he has done remarkably in the various prison settings and has reached an understanding of the seriousness of his crimes. Mr. Brom has apologized to everyone involved and is remorseful for his actions. I cannot stop what is already in motion, and I, we as the public, must trust the parole board’s decision and must hope Mr. Brom is ready for this transition in his life. I’m very pleased to hear that but it is still hard for me to accept and forget the sights and smells of what I saw that Thursday evening in 1988. 

Given this environment, Brom will surely lay low as much as possible. There is bound to be many people who will try to ask him for interviews and the like. In all likelihood, he will have to resist them in order to avoid another wave of negative reactions.

The coincidence of the two cases in the news made me think about them comparatively. I even wonder if there could be a short book written about these cases. There were similarities, perhaps superficial ones, about certain aspects of the crimes. But there were clear and large differences, including the relationship between each perpetrator and the victims. (Or, in the case of Kolberger, no relationship at all.)

For a book to be interesting, a deep comparison will necessarily analyze the differences as much as possible. Then the analysis would be related to broader trends and larger data from each era, regarding psychopathology and other issues such as familicide and stranger homicides.

Make what you will of this table of basic comparisons, and let me know if any other comparisons should be added.

	Bryan Kohberger	David Brom
Age at the perpetrator & victims at the time of crime	28 Either 2o or 21	16 41, 41, 13, 11
Education of perpetrator	Master’s in criminal justice (2022); doctoral student in criminology	High school student
Relation to victims	Four college students and strangers to him	Four family members
Site of crime	Off-campus rented house of three victims (and two other students)	His family house
Time of crime	Early morning hours & victims sleeping	Early morning hours & victims sleeping
Method of crime	Multiple stabs of victims with a knife	Multiple hits at victims with an axe
Sentence	4 consecutive life terms without parole	3 consecutive life terms + a concurrent life term, totaling 52.5 years before the possibility of parole
Time	November 2023	February 1988
Place	Moscow, Idaho	Rochester, Minnesota