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Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger spotted at feminist author Margaret Atwood’s 2018 lecture

Bryan Kohberger sat front row at a lecture by feminist author Margaret Atwood just a few years before his supposed ā€œincel complšŸŒƒexā€ allegedly drove him to kill four college students, a new photo reveals.

Kohberger, now 28, is spotted front and center at the 2018 event at Pennsylvania’s Northampton Community College, .

The Pennsylvania native is seen clutching a copy of ā€œThe Handmaidā€™s Tale,ā€ Atwoodā€™s best-selling 1985 dystopian novel set in a patriarchal, white supremacist society in which women known as ā™‘ā€œhandmaidsā€ are forced to produce children for the ruling class.

Kohberger was arrested at his parents’ home on Dec. 30, 2022, in connection with the Nov. 13 stabbing deaths of four University of Idaho students. He is set to stand trial on four counts of murder in October.

“He didn’t come here for the author,” John Kelly, a criminal profiler and psychoanalyst, told Fox News Digital of the Atwood lecture photo.

“He came here for the audience.”

Bryan Kohberger was arrested on murder charges in December. AP

Kelly notšŸ¤”ed that Kohberger is one of the very few men in an audience mostly made up of young women.

“In other words, he’s an incel, he doesn’t like women, but how come he still has to have some kind of distant relationship? I totally believe this guy was always looking,ā€ he explained.

The term “incel” is an abbreviation of ā€œinvoluntarily celibateā€ and is generally used to refer to men who struggle to establish romantic or sexual relationships. The identity is occasionally linked to misogynistic online forums and, in extreme cases, crime.

Kohberger was one of only a few male attendees at the event. TikTok / @fordyk

“This guy’s a ‘looker,’ all the way. He’s the kind of the guy who’s not gonna chat somebody up to try and get a date or something like that. He’s strictly, pretty much focused on looking,ā€ Kelly said of Kohberger, who was a student at Northampton when the photo was taken.

“He’s sitting in the front, he likes to ask or give the extravagant answers to the questions. He’ll answer them in a very upper-class way.”

Though investigators šŸ²havešŸ’§ remained tight-lipped on Kohbergerā€™s alleged motive for the grisly killings, some experts and former acquaintances have speculated that he struggled with feelings of rejection from women, and harbored sexist or even violent feelings as a result.

Former classmates say Kohberger was bullied throughout his adolescence. TNS

ā€œI think he may have developed a sort of incel complex,ā€ former FBI agent and securiź¦‘ty expert Pete Yachmetz told The Post shortly after Kohbergerā€™s arrest.

ā€œI believe a continued stabbing of a victim indicates ā€¦ an uncontrollable rage and extreme anger,ā€ he continued, noting that Kohberger has been described as ā€œsocially awkward with a long historyā™’ of interpersonal problems.ā€

Yachmetzā€™s assessment echoed that of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman, who that Kohbergerā€™s ā€œchoice of victims,ā€ or decision to target mostly female college students, convinced her ā€œheā€™šŸŒ s an incel.ā€

Police believe the four Idaho victims were targeted in their off-campus home.

At the time of his arrest, Kohberger was a doctoral student in criminology at Washington State University in Pullman, just 15 minutes from the off-campusšŸŽ house where the victims were slain.

Whią“œle WSšŸ„ƒU classmates remembered Kohberger as gregarious and sometimes aggressive, peers from his Pennsylvania hometown remembered him being ruthlessly bullied for his weight.

“I honestly think that’s what led up to this, because he didn’t get the proper help, and it was mainly females that bullied him,” high school classmate Sarah Healey told Fox News Digital.

The four students were slain in their off-campus house, which is now boarded up. Derek Shook / BACKGRID

One middle school classmate,šŸŒ  who asked to remain anonymous, that Kohberger was targetedšŸ… by the coveted popular crowd.

ā€œThe whole clique ļæ½ļæ½of popular girls made fun of him in school. They were the cā™šheerleaders and the ones that every kid had crushes on,ā€ they said.

Police now say that the four Idaho victims —Ā Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20 —Ā were fatally stabbed at their Moscow house in a targeted attack.

The probable cause statemenšŸ…·t in šŸŒŗKohbergerā€™s arrest warrant indicated that he visited the studentsā€™ neighborhood several times in the months before the murders.

Kohberger will go to trial in October. AP

“He saw these girls somewhere,” Kelly speculated.

“These types of guys would be looking, stalking, peeping at them through that hill out in the back there.”

Last month, it was reported that Kohberger also broke into a female classmateā€™s apartment šŸŒ and moved items around in the months before the killings.

He wasā›„ ulš’ŠŽtimately linked to the Moscow crime scene through DNA left on a knife sheath found under Mogenā€™s body.

“I just wanna hear this guy’s explanation on how his DNA ended up on a Ka-Bar knife sheath under Maddie’s body,” Kelly said of Kohbergerā€™s defense.

“He doesn’t have a shot in the world unless he has some kind of explanation.”

Kohberger stood silent at hisą¼’ arraignment in Latah County last month, and the judge entered ā€œnot guiltyā€ pleas on his behalf.

All four victims were honored posthumously at the University of IdahšŸ”„oā€™s spring 2023 commencement ceremony.