Before the flashing lights and the headlines, the Kohbergers were just a quiet Pennsylvania family.
Then one December night, the world changed — and so did their last name.
In this Hidden Killers special, Tony Brueski explores the human cost of infamy through the story “Growing Up Kohberger.” What happens when your sibling becomes the nation’s most hated man? What happens when your last name turns radioactive overnight?
Through documented accounts, psychological research, and parallel stories from other families of killers, Tony examines what experts call courtesy stigma — the inherited guilt of proximity. He explores the moral injury of love and revulsion colliding, and the silent trauma of “ambiguous loss,” where the person you love is alive but gone forever.
This isn’t about the crime — it’s about the quiet aftermath. A mother trembling in court. Sisters deciding whether to change their names. A family learning to breathe again in a world that won’t forget.
Because the hardest sentence isn’t always served by the guilty. Sometimes it’s carried by the ones who have to keep living under the same name.