Well, we got a minute. I'm going to buy that truck I've been wanting. Wait, don't you need, like, weeks to shop for a car? I don't. Carvana makes it super convenient to find exactly what I want. Hold up. You're buying a car on your phone? Isn't that more of a laptop thing? You can shop wherever you want.
I like to do my research, read reviews, compare models. Plus, Carvana has thousands of options. How'd you decide on that truck? Because I like it. Oh, that is a great reason. Go to Carvana.com to sell your car the convenient way.
Welcome to Terry's Toddler's Daycare. It's a safe nurturing environment to drop off your kids during the day. The business is advertised as in-home licensed child care, classroom, preschool curriculum, incredible play yard, and focused on social and emotional development.
Some parents, they love the idea of having someone have an in-house daycare. It feels cozier. It's going to be less of a change for their children when they're suddenly placed in like a sterile feeling facility. They don't like the idea of that. Other parents, they don't like in-home daycares. They think it's too much of a risk. Honestly, I think it's a personal preference. But it seems like the ones who like Terry's toddlers, they have nothing but good things to say about the whole place.
Terri Cohey is a middle-aged woman in Colorado. But if you just talk to her on the phone, if you just hear her voice, if you just experience her energy levels, and even just the way she carries herself, she seems decades younger. You would honestly never believe that she has two sons that are in high school. She feels so young and vibrant, and she's so good with the kids. So on the weekdays, parents drop off their kids Monday through Friday, and then they pick them back up from Terri's house.
And a few of the most important things when you're running a reputable daycare is one, you got to make sure that you're good with children. You got to make sure that no child gets hurt in your care. And two, you have to be consistent with your schedule. A daycare is only great when you can rely on it. Imagine a daycare that's constantly calling the parents to say, oh, sorry, I can't take your child today.
March 1st, 2021, parents get a call from Terri Cohey. She sounds upbeat, energetic, but not in the happy way. Almost like she's stressed out and on a mission. Hi, there's been a family emergency. Please come pick up your children right away. They're safe. They're not hurt, but please do hurry.
Parents rush to Terry's house and they see her helping the kids out. They're putting on their shoes, saying bye to them. And she seems like she's trying to act normal around the kids. But it is very clear. Terry Cohey is not here right now. Her mind is elsewhere. And they've never seen her like this. When was this? In the middle of the day, just like noon. Okay, so midday. Yeah. And Terry is barely registering anything that the parents are saying to her. Once every child is picked up from the home,
Terry waits. Suddenly, it's very calm in the house. Her husband, Brian Sr., is home. Her two teenage sons, Brian and Andy, are also home. And the three guys, the dad and two sons, they're outside in the front yard talking, just chatting about life. I mean, what kind of family emergency is this? Terry's just in the house waiting. She keeps peeping out the window. How are they still not here? I mean, wasn't her call urgent enough? On the list of priority emergency calls, hers would be at the top, no?
About an hour ago, she had placed a frantic phone call. 911, this is John. What's the address of the emergency? Hi, there's an emergency. I found something in my son's closet wrapped in a plastic bag. Is your son there right now? He just pulled into the driveway. Can you please just come? Hurry. Terry likely was watching two things at once.
She was watching the front yard where her son is standing. Her son has no idea that she knows everything that he did. He has no idea that she found his trophies in his bedroom. He has no idea that she called the cops on him. So she's watching him. And then she's watching the sink, the kitchen sink that is covered by a blue towel. Underneath it, there is a decapitated head and a pair of severed human hands.
We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mango to support the Blanchet House, a non-profit in Oregon that offers food, shelter, and aid to all those in need of a safe place. They make sure that everyone who walks through their doors is nourished and supported with compassion and dignity. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mango's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators. We'd also like to thank our listeners for your continued support as we work on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes.
As always, full show notes are available at rottenmanglepodcast.com. Now, a handful of disclaimers for today's case. As with any mental illness, the perpetrator's autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, and his major depressive disorder, they do not represent everyone else who has similar diagnoses. I also want to make it very clear that throughout this case, there is different verbiage that is used, and sometimes it is outdated, incorrect, and just like outright insensitive.
but only for direct quotes will we be keeping those words. They do not represent the vocabulary of the RM team. For example, the perpetrator refers to the diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder with the outdated incorrect term of Asperger's syndrome. I will not be modifying any direct quotes just to reflect our beliefs and standards. So I just want to make that disclaimer. Some Reddit quotes and transcripts have been shortened for the purpose of clarity for today's episode. So with that being said, let's get into it.
How quickly do you think a car sinks to the bottom of the Colorado River?
Okay, it depends on a few things. First of all, how deep is the water? The deeper the water, the more pressure there's gonna be, and the more pressure, the quicker the water is forced into the car. But also, how quickly does the car hit the water? If the car is hitting the water with any sort of high speed, it's gonna sink faster. The body parts are gonna warp on impact with the water, so there's gonna be cracks that are forming. The car is gonna fill up with water quickly, and it's gonna sink like a rock.
But what if you just slowly drive into the shallow embankment of a river and the waters are calm, it's shallow. How long does it take? I mean, it's going to take a minute. The car has air inside. If it's all sealed, it kind of acts like a small boat with a leak. Very slow sinking. And once you realize nobody's even inside the car and at risk of getting hurt, the whole thing just kind of looks ridiculous. Yes.
a car just floating in the shallow Colorado River, just bobbing around in the embankment. It looks like it's just slowly driven into the water at a leisurely pace. And you just want to go literally, why? Like, who would do that? How did that happen?
The two police officers get there and it's pitch black outside. It's 3 in the morning and there's just a car apple bobbing around in the river. There's another SUV parked and a woman in a white puffer jacket walks out. She seems less annoyed about the car being in the water. In Korean, we have a word called 'Oi-eop-seo'. It means it's so ridiculous that all you can do is laugh. It's not even funny. It's not even lighthearted. You're just like, I don't even know what to say. That's the energy she has.
She's the mom of the silly teenage boy who accidentally let his car drift into the river. And it's honestly just kind of goofy. The two officers, they're staring at each other, then they're staring at the car. Do you think we can call a tow for that? I don't know, because then he would have to get in the freaking water then. The mom walks up and she seems high spirited. I mean, the best way I can describe her is she seems like the cool mom.
She tells the officers that her name is Terry Cohey and I called Black's Towing, but I only have 10% battery left on my phone. They want me to text a photo of the car and I'm like, oh my God, oh good Lord. She informs them that her husband and her teenage son, yeah, the owner of the sinking ship car, okay? They're in the SUV right now, staying warm.
Her son is actually in the vehicle when it slid into the river. Yeah, so he's staying warm in front of the heater because it's below freezing. It's February in Colorado and it happens to be 3 a.m. I mean, it's 34 degrees outside. You can see their breath when they talk. The officers, they walk over to the car to talk to Brian, the son.
And he looks, I mean, even he looks embarrassed because the whole situation is kind of silly. Yeah, I've only had my car for about a year, year and a half. And it's a nice car too. And you say he's a high schooler? He just graduated. He's 19.
Brian's mom chimes in. Yeah, we made him wait until he was almost 18 before he had his driver's license because we didn't want him to have any accidents like they do when they're like 16, 17 years old because that's when they do all the stupid things. But stupidity doesn't have an age limit, I guess.
And the cops all start bursting out laughing with the family and they get to work. All of them, the cops, the family, they're all calling different tow truck companies. Problem. One, nobody wants to get up and leave their house at three in the morning to tow a car. And two, nobody wants to get into the water at three in the morning in almost freezing weather to tow a car.
So the parents offer to try and hook it to their SUV and pull it out themselves, to which the cop is like, I mean, I mean, I'm not going to tell you guys you can't get your own car out of there. But I just worry that the risk is somebody is going to get an injury and we're going to have a whole other issue or somebody gets into the water and then can't get out. But look, the car's not going anywhere. And if it does, we know which way it's going. It's not going to do anything anymore. Like it's not going to do any more damage than what it's already doing. So let's just leave it for now.
The mom smiles. Right. Teenagers, you know. Which is exactly what this looks like. A teenager making an incredibly dumb mistake that his parents will probably hold over his head for the foreseeable future. Even when he's introducing his future partner to the family, they're going to tell them about the time that he sank his car into the river. So he drove the car everywhere.
off the road into a lake that's just like oh we're about to find out it's even dumber than that so the officer walks up to the passenger side of the suv that is not in the water just to clarify and brian the 19 year old is sitting in the passenger seat his dad is in the driver's seat and his mom is outside the car standing next to the cop
Brian can't get out of the car because he's not wearing pants. They got wet from when he was in the sinking car and he took them off and now he's just covering himself with a coat. And he's just trying to answer all the officer's questions. The dad clarified with the police. Yeah, our son just called us 20 minutes ago and said, Dad, I parked at the boat ramp and I messed up. I tried to get out of the car and it slid down. The officer looks over at Brian, scans him up and down. Well, you're not hurt, right?
Do you know what a boat ramp is? If you go to like one of those more like relaxed embankment areas of a river, they have a slope. It's like cement and it slides all the way down. So if you have a pickup truck and you get your boat hooked up to the back, you reverse your boat into it and it slowly hits the water.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it gradually gets deeper. Yes. So you're not just like pushing your boat and it splashes into the water. Yeah, like a little kiddie pool. Yes. So he's saying that he parked his car just to enjoy the river, the side of the river. He parked it on that slope and his car could not get up.
That's weird. And it just slowly slid down. Okay. The officer is like, well, you're not hurt, right? No, just a little cold is all. Just your pride's a little hurt, huh? They all burst out laughing and Brian is shaking his head at himself. But honestly, like again, the whole thing is goofy. Yeah, my pride is hurt and I'm probably out like $7,000. Okay. Well, all right, man. Well, do you have your driver's license on you by any chance? Yeah, thankfully. And what were you doing down here, bud? Well,
Well, I just, I felt like I needed to get out. Like I figured why not park here and just, you know, Brian, the 19 year old, he's staring out into the river and he looks like he's coming to this realization that one minute he was pretending to be this main character blasting music near the river. And now he's pantless in front of an officer. So everybody's just laughing. The whole energy is very goofy. Mistakes happen. You're just here to relax a little bit.
Yeah, just relax and think. And I parked on the boat ramp and I thought it'd be easy to get out. But then when I tried to, it just didn't work. So he made like a huge mistake, right? And the parents are really nice about it? Yeah. I mean, I think they're upset, but I think it's so ridiculous. It's hard to...
come on, you just drowned a car. Are you kidding me? That's true. That's not my parents' energy if I did that. Yeah, they seem pretty okay. They seem pretty accommodating. Okay. So the officer is like, well, we're on the boat ramp. Did you park exactly? Were you down the hill a little bit more? Yeah, just a little bit. And then I got out and when I got back into the car, I tried to put it in drive and it didn't go up. So then I tried putting it into like the neutral gear, shimming it a little bit and that didn't work. Okay.
Wait, so was the car facing down at this point? Down towards the water? Or were you facing away from the water? I was facing away.
Which is kind of interesting because he backed into the water. Yeah. If you're going to park at a boat ramp, would you not want to park so you could see the water, even though it's pitch black outside? Would you not want to stare out into the dark river and contemplate, I don't know, your relationships while you listen to sad songs? Why even park in the boat ramp if you're not going to face the river? Even Brian's dad looks a little surprised. You back down?
Brian nods and his parents end up taking him home because he's pantless and cold and it's not like he can tow the car out there himself. And technically, it's not like he has to be there and sit in shame while he watches the car just get shorter and shorter and it just disappears into the water. What were you doing down here, bud? Well, I felt like I needed to get out. And I figured...
Why not park here and just relax and think? And I parked on the boat ramp, and I thought it would be easy to get out. But when I tried to... Where did you park exactly? Were you down the hill a little bit? Yeah, just a little bit. When you got back in, go ahead. When I got back in, I tried to put it in drive, and it didn't go up. So then I tried putting it in low gear, shimmying it a bit. That didn't work. Were you facing down? No, I was facing up. You were back?
down. Yeah. If you guys want to stay warm, you're more than welcome to jump in that car and say where it's warm. Does he need to stay here? I'm sorry? Is he free to go? I'm sure he'd like to go home and get warm. I'm sure he'd like to get some pants on. Yeah, right? Yeah, it's not a crash. It's a simple mistake. Okay, this is stupid. Alright, I'm going to take him home and then we'll come back here and figure out what's wrong with the truck driver. Thanks.
Now, the parents, on the other hand, the Kohi parents, they drive back to the boat ramp to join the police after dropping Byron off. They need to make sure that their son's car gets out of the river. I mean, it's probably not salvageable now, but at least they can try and assist and figure out the insurance situation. And when the parents get back, the police were able to find a tow truck out there and they're pulling the car out the river. So the parents are sitting in the SUV, staying warm when an officer knocks on the window.
Hey, quick question for you. Terry, the mom, rolls down the passenger side window. Sure. So, the cop is telling her, so the back bumper, I don't know, you can probably see it from here. Both parents, they start kind of
They kind of stick their heads out and they're trying to look at the car that's being pulled out of the water. And Brian Sr., the dad, his mouth just kind of drops open in shock or surprise. There's a lot of red in the back of that car, dripping down it a little bit underneath the license plate, a little area there. The mom looks a little bit calmer, but she seems just confused. While the dad keeps looking from the cop to the car to the cop to the car and his mouth is open in shock,
Okay. A lot of red, which looks like blood. She literally says blood. Yeah. I don't know if your son hurt himself on his way out at all. I don't know. The dad butts in. He might have and he just didn't know it. I don't know. So when the car pulled out of the water, there's still blood on there. It didn't get washed off. No.
That's why I'm asking. I mean, I think that's a good question. He's at home, right? Your son? Maybe make sure that he's not got a cut or something or something on him somewhere that he's not aware of, maybe because his adrenaline was a little high, possibly. If you just have him do a little self-check, make sure he's OK. The mom is already on the phone. I mean, this is her baby boy, her first born son. Brian picks up the call and he's heard on speakerphone. Brian, are you OK? They see blood on the back bumper of the vehicle. Really? Yeah.
No, what? Are you sure you don't have any injuries? No, I'm fine, mom. There's blood on the car? We're not sure. It's red. There's something red underneath the license plate. Oh, shit. Oh, no, I'm fine. Right, okay, but you're not injured. You don't have any cuts? No, I don't know what could cause blood or whatever it is on the bumper. Okay, so you're not injured. No, mom, I'm not injured. Does he sound normal? Yeah.
I've got a quick question for you. Okay. So the back bumper, I don't know if you can probably see it from here, there's a lot of red on the back of that. Tripping down at all a little bit, underneath the license plate, a little area right there. Okay? Okay. A lot of red. It looks like blood. Blood? Yeah.
I don't know if your son hurt himself on his way out at all. He might have. He just didn't know it. I don't know. That's a good, that's why I'm asking. It's a good question. He's at home. We should make sure he's not got a cutter. Something out on him somewhere that he's not aware of. Maybe because his adrenaline was a little high. Maybe just have him do like a self check. Make sure he's okay. Brian, are you okay? On the back bumper of the vehicle.
Oh no.
They finish pulling the car out and while the blood is a little strange, it's not strange enough for the police to do anything. They release the car back into the family custody and in a few hours when the son comes up, the Kohi parents, they go out into the garage, they open up the trunk and there's a little bit of dried blood underneath the part where the trunk door closes, like the sealed part.
That is so strange. I mean, there would be a logical reason that their son would have blood coming out of the trunk, right? It's not so much blood, right? But just a little bit. Brian, what's with the blood? Brian explains, oh, don't be so spooked out. Remember how I took a special effects class over the summer to learn how they do special effects for the movies? I had a gallon of fake blood that movie sets use. That was in my trunk. I took it out a few days ago. It must have spilled a little bit on the way out.
That makes sense. Okay. Duh. Obviously, it's fake blood. Of course. Then when the sun came up, Brian's father went to take his son's car to the auto body shop to see if they could salvage at least some of the parts. But he first wants to clear out the car. So he checks the trunk. Nothing. He checks the back seat. Nothing. Then he goes to the passenger side. What is that? He reaches down and inside he finds a wallet.
That is so strange. He's a thousand percent certain that it's not his son's wallet. He keeps gathering a small pile of things to take out and he leans into the car and opens up the glove compartment. It is filled with water, but inside is a very large knife. You know those like 10 piece knife sets that you might purchase from the store for your new kitchen? It looks like the largest one out of there. And three pairs of vinyl gloves.
Why would Ryan need all of that? And fake blood for? What a weird combination of things. Was the dad alert at that point? A little bit. A little alarmed. Now, being a crime scene investigator is a very tough job. And this is not exactly the type of place a crime scene investigator wants to go to in the middle of the night. It's under one of those overpass bridges. Do you know what I'm talking about? The overpass bridges where the highway is running on top?
And then you've got like a little bit of roads underneath the bridge and then usually it slopes up where the bridge meets the land. You get it. It's not really the type of place that someone would stop to enjoy the view unless you have no choice. At the top of the inclined hill right up underneath the bridge is somebody's camp. Someone's shelter for the night. Even though it's late at night, you can hear cars on the top driving past and the air just feels very dusty and it smells like tires. It smells like rubber and gasoline.
And then the crime scene investigator stumbles on the first piece, a human arm. Chopped at the elbow, hands cut off, just the forearm. He keeps walking under the bridge. Another arm. This time it looks thicker, so it looks like it leads up to the shoulder. One might even assume, since this is not the type of place that you want to get out and spend time, maybe someone threw the body parts out the window as they drove past as a way of disposing them. But he keeps walking, and on the ground he sees something very red.
He walks closer and there is an armless, headless body of a man laying on the side. His stomach is cut open so the crime scene investigator can clearly see the victims inside. He noted they were very pink. There are angry slashes all over the victim's legs and the area where the victim's head was cut was a brutal cut. It did not look clean or quick. It looked painful.
Okay, okay, focus. This is his very first crime scene ever. What did the book say? What are the steps again? According to the Holy Grail book, Techniques of a Crime Scene Investigation, 8th edition, you must protect the crime scene. You must assume that the criminal has left clues or physical evidence behind. You must not destroy or change anything at the scene. Well, it's a little too late for that. He'd already shoved the man's corpse into his trunk.
He'd already broken the first few rules of being a good crime scene investigator. But you know what? Let's be real. You can't call yourself a crime scene investigator just because your mom bought you a book on it. Wait, so he's not a crime scene investigator. He's the killer. But he's also reading the book. He's obsessed with crime scene investigations.
I see. Now, there are roughly 900,000 new Reddit posts uploaded to the platform every single day. Some of them go viral, but most of the time they just get lost on the platform. Maybe one person sees it. Maybe two people see it. Especially if you're not posting on a popular subreddit or posting something that a lot of people are interested in. It's hard to get attention on your Reddit post.
And that is why I think a lot of people use Reddit like their own personal diary. They just post whatever alarming thought or feeling that comes to their mind because who's going to see it? Who's going to care? Who's going to call the police on me? But perhaps, maybe, the act of posting it publicly in and of itself is cathartic, therapeutic, putting every paranoid thought out into the universe for someone to see, judge you, and react to. Maybe it's an addicting feeling.
A Redditor by the name of ThatStinkyBoy posted,
That sometimes happens, so the idea seems reasonable, right? I know for sure that they don't care about me. They only keep me around because I have history with them, that the friend group wouldn't be the same without me. After all, I do bring life to it. It's not much at all without me in the group. They would even probably have me dead if it was their way. And with my family, I sometimes fear that they're going to physically abuse me despite what they say. I also worry that they will maliciously embarrass me occasionally.
I'm kind of angry now. My friends should get jumped for all I care. Fuck them. They don't even care about me. They hate me. As soon as high school is over, they're going to leave me and find someone new. Paul always fake laughs when I tell him a joke. Jake promises to come over and then avoids me. And Kelly constantly insults me. I should get injured to see if they show up for me. But I already know they wouldn't. My parents say that fearing my friends is delusional and a problem. And the thing is, they could though.
They could hurt me, but they don't. But they always could. And for that, I need to be careful. It got to the point where the Redditor was carrying around a kitchen knife with him everywhere he went because he was paranoid about his friends. And I would just say, just a healthy observation. I think at that point, the Redditor, Brian, it's time for Brian to make some new friends, don't you think? Mm-hmm.
Brian is sitting in front of two new potential friends. He doesn't really quite know it yet because it's his first time meeting them. He doesn't know if Pete and Lisa are going to be his friends. And he's just trying to tell them one of his best stories so far. You know, the one that his parents are going to make fun of him forever. The car river story.
The story of how he parked his car on the boat ramp leading into the river and then his car got stuck and then it wouldn't drive up and then it... He said, I tried putting it into full throttle. Ryan is using both of his hands to pretend like he's driving, turning a steering wheel, almost like he's playing Mario Kart. His potential new friends, Lisa and Pete, they're smiling. That's good. He's winning them over.
And that doesn't work. It doesn't work. My car doesn't have four-wheel drive, you know? Stupid me. Then I tried putting it into low gear. I'm trying everything at this point and it still doesn't come out. Then it slides into the river. My car slides into the river. Me inside. And the whole thing gets a laugh out of Lisa, which makes Brian feel good. So he keeps going. He's more animated. He's putting his whole body into the story. And it still doesn't come out. And then it slides into the river.
And Lisa's like, "Oh my goodness, my car is slid- me inside, like I said." And so I'm in the car, quickly being flooded with water. Okay, it's the middle of February. Lisa's nodding. It's cold at night. Yeah, in the river that's almost freezing. Oh my goodness, I'm drenched in water.
Pete and Lisa, they're both laughing. Brian's at ease. I mean, this is what it should feel like. Everyone hanging on to his every word. He's got this big smile on his face and he's sitting even more upright now. He's running his hands through his hair and he's smiling. I almost die, you know? And I need to act fast or else I'm going to die of hypothermia. I'm panicking a bit at this point and I'm thinking, this is what I'm going to be remembered for, dying of hypothermia. And I'm just like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Everybody's laughing and the energy in the room is really good. And Brian likes it. I mean, they're really into this story. They want to know more about him. They're confirming to him that he is interesting. Brian feels like they've been friends for years. It's almost like he forgets that they just met today and that there's a camera pointed directly at him from the corner of the room and that he is sitting in an interrogation room.
And the interrogators are laughing. That's so good. So what made you do it? Murder, that is. Brian leans back like he's been asked an interesting question at a dinner party. It's just a curiosity, more or less. I just wanted to see what it felt like to see what it felt like. Well, what did it feel like?
It was intense. It was like a rush of adrenaline. My whole body was shaking. Not like out of fear. It was like, it's just a pure, what's the word? Excitement, I suppose. Not excitement as in joy, just excitement as in increased heartbeat, sweating, that type of thing. It was just pure. So he's like so transparent about it. So transparent.
it's crazy that's crazy yeah like he doesn't register what he did was evil and wrong and messed up that type of feeling no he does oh he does he just doesn't care he absolutely knows it's wrong yeah like no fear no he's like i'm already caught i might as well tell a banging story um
No matter the age or personality.
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Do you think you can estimate when a pot of boiling water in the kitchen is gonna bubble over? Do you think you can race to the stove in time to turn down the flame right before it spills? Like literally right before at that exact moment? Or is it just gonna simmer and simmer thinking that it's eventually gonna calm down on its own, but it doesn't and it just erupts? What's more likely to happen? That's what this whole case is about. Now,
Now, the interrogation room looks very small compared to Brian. He's six foot two. The minute that he walks in, the room starts feeling stuffy. Like whoever is going to be sitting in the room with him is going to be fighting for air is the feeling. He's six two. Six two.
Wow. He sits down and the interrogators make him wait for a few minutes before they come back in. It's likely that they're watching him through the cameras and they want to see his demeanor. Now, to give you some context, in the footage, Brian does shake his legs, drink copious amounts of water and bite his nails quite a bit.
In any other situation, that might be interesting body language that a lot of people would like to decipher that might indicate that someone is feeling very uneasy. But since Brian was diagnosed with autism, a lot of people in the community have stated that this is a very natural response to slightly to even high stress moments.
just any tense moments. So they're just releasing that energy through shaking their legs and biting their nails. And it's not necessarily that interesting or bizarre. Now, don't worry, I don't think that we need to dissect his body language to know that he's guilty. Because when the investigators walk in, they ask him, how did you get here? It's unclear if they're asking him his method of transportation or asking him as a way to see what kind of story he spins. Just they
And how did you get here?
He sits with Pete and Lisa, the two interrogators, and he walks them through the last few days of his life. And honestly, he walks them through his whole life story. At some points, it feels like he's savoring their reaction, watching their faces for some sort of horror or admiration. It's like he's reliving the crime.
And he looks at them and he asks, "What do you want to know?" I didn't quite understand the dates or what ended up to the body. You said you tried but it didn't work out. What do you want to know? Just start back at the beginning and go slow and tell me as many details as you can remember. So?
Because I mean, I'm already going to jail for the 15 years probably. I have no idea. Because... We're at the beginning. It's murder. I mean, I'm going to jail for 20, but I'm... Oh, I fight it. Okay. So what's important to me is to learn as much about you and what you did as I can. Well, the many details you can give me, the better.
English teacher Shannon Miller had this thing that she would do. She almost integrated public speaking into her class curriculum. She wants the class to get comfortable with giving speeches. She's got all the students go up and give a presentation to the class throughout the semester. And she tells them, this is not just about reading what you wrote on a piece of paper, but do an attention getter. Get everybody engaged in what you have to say. The day of class speeches comes around. Who wants to go first?
Brian raises his hand. Okay, Brian, everyone, Brian will be giving his speech. So listen up. Brian gets up and he whips out this crazy, weird Indiana Jones looking whip. It's long. It's white. It looks like it's made out of masking tape. It's like a sperm bat. That's the best way I can describe it. It's got a long white handle and it looks like a ball attached to the end.
Nobody knows where this guy is going with this, but I mean, I guess it's working because he's got their full undivided attention of the class. He walks up to the front. He starts slamming the bat down on the podium. And of course, everybody's hooked. Attention is got. He gives his speech and that's it. Brian leaves the class with his whip. And later that day, he beats a student with developmental disabilities with the bat.
There was a Reddit post titled Life Updates and Stuff, December, by that stinky boy, Brian Cohey. It's a detailed journal from starting from December 3rd, 2018. It reads, I was born in school, so I made a mace out of tape and pencil. However, later, I became manic again with no warning, and I got the urge to hit a kid named Tim. Fake name.
So I asked Greg, fake name, if I should and he said yes. So I obliged. When I hit Tim on the back of the head, he fell to the ground crying and it was so entertaining I decided to mock him. It was just very funny. All the jokes Greg and I made, I mean, it was so good. Eventually, my bat, the wife beater as I named it, was confiscated by administration. I was called into the office and everyone expressed that something was wrong with me because I expressed no remorse for the assault.
On the drive back home, my mom was shouting and screaming at me. I remember very well what she said. She said, "I would make you walk home, but you would fucking jump off that bridge, so I can't do that." And she said, "Do you want to go to prison? Because you'll be buttfucked there and you might like that." I had to write a letter of apology to Tim, the kid that I hit. I didn't care about him, so why should I put in the effort? So I copied and pasted an apology letter for a victim on a crime, and I made some edits to it. I had no intention of wasting my time on something so unnecessary.
And it worked, thankfully. And so far no one has known that it's fabricated. School is tiring though. I have a D- in AP US History due to never taking notes. I don't know why I don't take notes. Maybe it's because I lack the motivation? Or maybe it's because I'm too damn lazy. Probably the latter, but I'm not lazy enough to write this.
Last night was interesting. I couldn't stop feeling like something bad, something unstoppable would happen, like a gruesome injury occurring, a car crash in front of my house, or a family member dying. I've been not sleepy tired, but mentally tired. All the missing school assignments are draining, not to mention my mother when she's screaming at me, sometimes calling me a failure, other times asking me, what's wrong with you? Last night, I burned some things in my room.
Then I tried going to bed, but I was restless. I was hyper. Thoughts were racing through my head. I was obsessing over how I could make a Molotov cocktail instead of forest fire or burn a house down. I couldn't stop thinking about how I would do these actions. I soon became paranoid that the ashes of the things that I burned would set on fire again and that I would burn alive in my room. So I repeatedly doused the burned items with water over and over again.
After that, though, I felt like I was being watched through my bedroom windows, so I closed them. I locked them and shut the blinds.
Yesterday, my family and I went Christmas shopping. I bought mostly clothes. However, a large majority of my choices were refused by my parents. My mother refused to let me buy any shirt or attire with any amount of violence, swearing, or sexual content or dark comedy on it. For instance, I wanted a shirt that said, Alexa, give me a blowjob on the front, and she immediately refused. They also refused any camouflage attire I chose. I now feel depressed. I don't know why.
Oh well, it doesn't really matter. Brian's parents always knew, ever since he was very young, that there was just something a little different about Brian. I mean, it's kind of hard to avoid when he was a toddler. Most of the other toddlers, at least from what they knew and from what I know, they don't come home after a long play day, take off their shoes, and lick them clean.
I'm sure Brian's parents put barriers in place so that Brian doesn't lick his shoes clean every time they get home because that would be a massive health hazard. But it seems like he would just find anything else to do. He would bite and chew his fingernails and toes until the nail beds were so destroyed that he was at high risk for infections. Because once your nail beds have cracks in the skin, bacteria will infiltrate and just fester.
Brian's mom, Terry, brings him to a psychologist and Brian gets diagnosed with ADHD. He's five years old at this point and he gets put on medication. It seems like the extra attention, the medication, they help Brian. So for the next 10 years, people said that Brian was actually a very happy, joyful kid. He was very easy to raise until he turned 14. And then it's like some demon awakened inside of him. He just starts acting so strange. Counselors told the parents that
We believe he's exhibiting antisocial behavior. Brian would intentionally say things that he knew would emotionally rile other kids up, thinking it was so hilarious. He just wanted to get a reaction out of them. By 11th grade, a lot of the other students came together to tell the teachers, we just don't feel safe around him.
By high school, Brian was diagnosed with ADHD and autism. Now, he was kept on his ADHD medicine and was put on an antidepressant as well. He was also diagnosed with a depressive disorder. Now, sometimes evaluating a patient just requires talking to them casually. You just want to, as a counselor, right? They say that you just want to get a gauge on their interest and what kinds of topics they naturally gravitate towards. This is probably even more important when your patient is that young.
So one of Brian's counselors asks him, trying to get a gauge on his interests, but also how he perceives the future. Do you have any specific future goals in life? Something you really would love to see yourself doing, Brian? Brian responds by going on a tangent about how he really appreciates the life and career goals of Adolf Hitler, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, Ted Bundy and Joseph Stalin, who was the leader of the USSR at one point and killed like 6 million people.
He really likes their career paths. He thinks that they're admirable. When the only thing that all of them have in common was that they killed a ton of people. Another doctor diagnosed Brian with quote level one autism, which I don't think that psychiatrists use levels to describe or diagnose autism anymore. But I think that she was indicating that he had low support needs.
Others have described it as, quote, high functioning, though I think that's another term that the community wishes not to use to label the varying needs of people diagnosed with autism.
so it does seem like he is constantly going to different counselors and reaffirming his diagnoses now Brian does have quite a bit of friends he is not a loner by any means and his friends they're actually known as like the edgy group in school they don't really fit in anywhere else and they kind of congregated with each other and ended up becoming friends
Okay, let me just give you further context. I feel like you can tell a lot about someone by the types of memes they send people. It's a pretty direct reflection of what they find funny. Brian's humor is weird. One of his favorite memes to send his friends was a meme about IHOP. So it's four pictures in a grid.
And they tell a story. The first picture is a picture of IHOP, but it's been edited to read, quote, goth IHOP. The next photo is a stick figure laying in bed with a, quote, goth girl seductively dressed sitting on the edge of the bed with like half of her butt out. And the stick figure reads, where is my food? The goth girl caption reads, I am the food.
The third frame shows the stick figure in bed contemplating how to respond. Then the fourth figure depicts blood just smeared all over the bed and the decapitated goth girl's head laying on the edge of the bed. Because I guess he ate the rest of the body. The stick figure.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I mean, I think that gives you really good context on who Brian is because I feel like we already know someone like that, right? If you were to ask Brian, and somebody did on Reddit, if you were to ask him about his political ideologies and how they differ from others who share the same ideologies, if you asked me that, I don't even know how I would answer, okay? I think I'd be like, whoa, that is... I got to really think about that because I don't even know what that question means. But he would respond.
Well, my ideologies vary quite greatly. If I were a citizen, I would prefer a conservative Republican right wing system with few to no restrictions on citizens. The government is a removed entity in day to day life, i.e. completely free speech, complete economic freedom, social freedom, freedom in media, etc. Much more borderline anarchist.
But if I was a government official, I would very much prefer a conservative Republican right wing system with much more control over my citizens, much more of my hands over the economy, laws and people, media, etc. Much more borderline authoritarian. I think the aim of the answer is to sound smart and different and thoughtful and main character, but it's very contradicting. It seems like the only thing Brian cares about is freedom and power for himself.
Sometimes he would talk to kids about political ideologies, other times he would talk to his friends about "Hey, have you ever tried crispy meat bites? The snack?" "Uh, no?" "Oh, well it's really good. You should make some at home. The recipe is to get your family dog or cat, run them through a meat grinder, and then fry them up." Which like... okay.
Dark humor is not illegal. But even for the friend group, Brian is a bit strange. The friend group would joke, yeah, well, it's just Brian being Brian. That's just who he is, you know? Let's just try to accept it, I guess. But they all had this running inside joke. If one of us is going to be a killer, it's going to be Brian. But like, it's a joke, right? Friends joke around with each other. That's normal.
Teachers, on the other hand, they have way less leeway to be like, oh yeah, that student, he's probably just joking around. It's just his sense of humor. A lot of the teachers were alarmed by Brian's behavior, or at the very least, they're starting to get really frustrated by it. And it's increasingly getting worse and worse.
In history class, the students would all sit and watch a video about Genghis Khan. The lights are off. The projector is on. All the kids are excited because it's TV day. And out of nowhere, someone would break the silence and just scream out a string of Asian slurs. Rapid fire. Because it's Genghis Khan. Yeah. The teacher is like, what is going on? One time, Brian... Like what kind of slur? Is he making sense or he's just...
Sometimes he's making sense. Sometimes it's just like slur, slur, slur, slur. Like a poetic slur, I guess. Yeah. Wow. One time Brian walked into the school library looking for very specific books on topics that he wanted to read about in his free time.
Okay, what would you like to read? Well, he actually checked out a book about Son of Sam. You know, David Berkowitz, the New York City serial killer that would just go around shooting random people. And he would write letters to people saying that he was acting on behalf of a demon that was possessed inside of his neighbor's dog. That one. And then after that, he wanted to check out another alarming book about the Columbine shootings.
This was definitely alarming. Brian's English teacher walks up to another teacher after that day and she says to them, if any kid is going to shoot up our facility, it's that kid, Brian. Yeah, since the first week of school, all of Brian's teachers, they got together and they're just expressing their concerns about him. They all agree they need to keep a close eye on him. It's very apparent to them, even at this early stage, that he's a very troubled kid.
How scary is that for a teacher in a school setting to say that about a student? Like that is something else. They said all the flags are up. And this is really an understatement. In Brian's Reddit diary logs, he even wrote, I was looking at transcripts of the basement tapes of the Columbine shooters, which by the way, the basement tapes are homemade videos made by the two killers that were actually destroyed by law enforcement because of how vile they were.
But Brian continues, and I realized something. Me and my friend, redacted, our conversations are eerily similar to the ones in the basement tapes. Similar topics, war, violence, why we hate certain people, what we would do to them.
But the teachers, they hadn't seen Brian's Reddit and they still thought that his behavior is alarming. They bring in Brian, they bring in his parents to try and talk about it. And clearly, Brian's mom does not think it's that serious though. Because she runs a daycare called Terry's Toddler's Daycare out of their family home that she shares with Brian. She's been in the business for 10 years. And clearly, for whatever reason, whether you agree or not, it appears that Terry herself feels comfortable enough to keep Brian around young children.
And to be fair, according to Brian's Reddit diaries, because of all of his issues at school, licensing had to come to his mom's daycare in March of 2019 and determined that the daycare would not be shut down. She would have to make up a safety plan in case that Brian threatens her or the children.
Regardless, teachers think that Brian's mom had a bit of a way too relaxed attitude towards their concerns. Brian's history teacher said we weren't obviously the only class that he was having issues with. And I remember someone said that they met with his mom and she just kind of I think they said didn't really want to understand what was going on kind of thing. Like, what's the big deal? Like, she wasn't really like, yeah, this is serious. We need to get ahead of it.
there was another incident that brian got in trouble for where he brought in a weapon to school and terry was called in and she later explains the whole situation and i think this gives you an idea of terry's perspective she says well he got suspended for weapons there was another
boy who brought in the nunchucks to school on the school bus and Brian was like wow cool Brian was just asking him like can I check those out and he was like I'll bring you a set if you give me some candy so Brian gave him some candy and the next day the kid comes on the bus with two sets of nunchucks
One are glass and the other ones are, I guess they're like rubber. I don't know. I never actually saw them. He's like, I know I can't take the glass ones because I'd get in trouble for that. So he took the rubber ones and put them in his backpack. Well, I don't know if it was in his backpack or his jacket. There were some differentiating stories. So the teacher sees them and he said, what's that, Brian? And he's like, oh, nothing. You know, and so the administrator, you know, he was like, you know, we have a prohibited weapon on school grounds. And I'm like, OK, well, what about the other kids?
the one that brought the nunchucks. And they said, well, that kid doesn't have behavior issues like Brian. And I'm like, oh, so you're punishing Brian because he has behavior issues. I see. So Brian went through probation and he completed it successfully.
Rightfully or not, Brian's mom seems to feel like he's being unfairly targeted by the school. Brian's dad even complains, "He's got friends that he hangs out with, you know, respectable friends. Not those kind of friends. Clean, good friends, you know? The worst they do is play video games and drink too much Pepsi."
He might say a curse word once in a while, but no, he's never hit anybody ever. He got in trouble for throwing a tape ball at school three, four years ago. And I think they wrote him up for it because he hit somebody. But the football players can nail the guys with the football. But Brian, he just gets in trouble for a tape ball.
When was this message delivered from the dad? Was this after the murder? Was this prior to the murder? This was actually after the murder, but he does realize that his son is messed up. But the way he still talks about it is in this tone.
Yeah. And yeah, to a degree, maybe there was some of that. Maybe the teachers had an image of him already. They made up their minds and they acted accordingly. And maybe, maybe we could try and be understanding of the parents. Maybe they truly were blinded by their love for their son. I mean, everything can kind of be explained, right? Maybe he lightly tapped a kid with a masking tape bat and it wasn't even painful. And the nunchucks, that was a whole big misunderstanding. Everything was just kind of...
wrong place wrong time wrong person type of ordeal but how do you explain away a kill kit look i don't know what you expect to find in a teenage boy's backpack but it's definitely not this brian's mom was going through his room one day and she comes across a black backpack which is a little weird because it's not his school backpack meaning why does he have a second backpack she opens it up and it's got hammers shovels knives large zip ties duct tape a saw a kill kit
Instead of calling the police on their son, the Cohey parents bring an ultimatum. They say, Brian, throw the backpack away or else we're going to call the police. Brian throws it away and he was very upset about it. He said, that was $100 just down the drain.
Brian would argue that he just has a thing for finding out what makes people tick. So one day he knew a classmate of his had PTSD and he triggered her PTSD just to see how she would react. And he was suspended for the whole thing. He writes on Reddit, I saw my therapist today. It was a normal meeting for the most part. We talked about how I exhibit control freak tendencies that I manipulate others' feelings to see what makes them tick.
that because I feel less emotion than others, I'm curious to see what regular amounts of emotions feel like. That I'm a scientist and everyone else is my test subjects. I test painful stimuli to elicit a reaction.
i enjoy those reactions. the ones of pain and sorrow, i love the horrified expressions when people watch someone they love die, the utter shock and devastation on their faces priceless, and then you tease them about it, calling them weak for crying, saying the thing that they were crying over was worthless garbage.
I gave that girl a panic attack and you know I've known her. Her name is Ellie. Fake name. In short, she's weak emotionally, physically, and mentally. Any criticism and she gets defensive. Very sensitive. She carries around pictures of YouTubers she likes, jacksepticeye, Markiplier, basic white girl shit. She's also timid beyond belief and gets panic attacks. So I figured it'd be funny to give her one. I clapped loudly right next to her and she screamed in the hallway and fell to the ground crying.
It was funny, but my friends say it was fucked up what I did. It doesn't matter though. I had my fun. And besides, she usually gets over her panic attacks in five minutes, but no, apparently she had to go home for the rest of the day because of this one. She did that to spite me, that bitch.
Brian's mom did agree that he shouldn't have done that, but clearly he thought it was a joke. That's the energy she gives. It's like, obviously he shouldn't have done it, but he didn't mean that malicious intent. It was just a joke. What's crazy is that this whole situation with the boy he hit with the mace, the nunchucks, the girl he traumatized in the hallway, there's still surprisingly more.
Safeway is a giant supermarket chain in the US. It's just like your run-of-the-mill grocery store. I think on the East Coast, it's called Albertsons. So Brian, he starts working there as a bagger. So when you're checking out, he's going to be at the end of the little checkout lane bagging your groceries. And when there's not a lot of customers, he would run outside to the parking lot and start gathering up all the shopping carts in the parking lot and bring them back into the store so that when customers walk in, there's fresh carts to choose from to do their shopping. And he's going to be at the end of the little checkout lane bagging your groceries.
Well, one day, Brian's got a stack of shopping carts. They're like folded in on top of each other. So, you know, and they're locked in and it's like seven shopping carts stacked into another. He's bringing it back into the store where a 58-year-old woman is cleaning the shopping cart with an antibacterial wipe. Brian just rams seven shopping carts into her lower back and leg. Allegedly.
is what the lawsuit claims she also stated in a lawsuit that this has caused her to sustain permanent physical damages that's her co-worker his co-worker no a customer who's wiping off the the handle so she can start going shopping she is now suing brian and safeway and he's claiming accident he didn't even i don't know what he publicly claimed he probably said accident yeah
In another Reddit post, Brian talks about dating two separate people. It's very interesting to see how quickly he moves on. January 9th, 2019, he writes, I've been feeling bad lately. Me and this guy are dating, sort of. He loves me and I kind of love him, but I can't stop feeling like he hates me, that he pities me and he's tired of me.
I almost cried last night because of it. Sometimes I feel he really does love me. However, there is no gray area. Either he does or he doesn't, depending on where I'm at mentally and emotionally. Sometimes I feel like I should disappear, ghost, or otherwise leave for a small bit to see how he reacts, to see if he really does care about me.
Then just eight days later, January 17th, 2019, he writes, I'm quote dating this quote trans girl named Rose. Fake name. It's going really well. She's absolutely devoted to me and is madly in love with me and I love it. I do love her, but a lot of it I'm exaggerating to get an equal amount of love back. It feels great having so much romantic and sexual attention towards me. Like I'm satisfied by it.
A couple days ago, I told her about what I want her to be. After all, she was practically begging for me to tell her how to be more attractive for me. I love it when they're clingy and needy for me. But I think I went wrong because ever since, she's been a lot more distant. I think she's judging me, no doubt. I fear she may be too against me, but only time will tell. I think now I'll have her be more clingy and needy. I need to keep her no matter what. She is mine and mine only.
Side note, on Reddit, Brian also describes himself as a boyfriend and he posts one of those memes. It's like a cartoon drawing of himself and it says Brian boyfriend. And there's a bunch of descriptions around the cartoon basically saying this is what you get when you date Brian. It's supposed to be like quirky, chaotic, and he's supposed to make himself feel like this very cool, unique person. The descriptions read, whoa, did my hair catch on fire? Oh, well, let's just roll with it. When I'm dead, start a dumpster fire with my corpse.
quietly contemplates theoretical physics and astrophysics man andrew jackson was a cool dude killing natives and taking land that's life in caps nothing is stimulating enough then trump didn't do nothing wrong pretends to not care about what anyone thinks secretly craves external validation from others last night i researched military technology and how it works eat my fucking ass
drives 100 miles per hour in a residential street. And then the quirkiest of them all. It says, normal person making a bowl of cereal makes a bowl of cereal. Brian making a bowl of cereal runs into kitchen, slams open pantry, roundhouse kicks cereal box out of the pantry, sprints over to the cupboard, smashes the cupboard to pieces, picks up bowl from wreckage, tries to cartwheel to fridge, rolls on ground, summons milk through sheer screeching, mixes them into a bowl, flings bowl onto table, flops to chair before cereal bowl gets there, smashes face into bowl,
delicious i think that gives you a really good idea of who this guy is like i think that does more than any other description yeah but it also seems like january 2019 brian is obsessed with power power in his romantic relationships but also like a new fantasy he writes on reddit i have a new fantasy
Climbing to the top of a military or governmental organization and making sure I have supreme executive, judicial, and legislative authority. A dictator, you could say. I would off the competition by any means necessary. Even murder would be okay if it came to that. I would force those below me to be completely loyal to death.
even killing themselves if I told them to. If I took control of the military, I would commit many war crimes for fun. Torture, attacking the Red Cross, taking civilians, targeting them. Oh yeah. He said, why is it such a big deal to hurt or steal from others? It's what we're supposed to do.
But maybe it's not too late. Maybe Brian's counselor could help him. Brian rants on Reddit. I have a counselor, but she assigned me to someone else because I was beyond her skill set. I'm also going to a neuropsychological evaluation because of my irresponsibilities. I can't really use any of my friends for support because they would make fun of me.
Brian regularly visits multiple different counselors, but clearly things are not getting better. According to Brian, I went to my counselor recently and looking at my personal history, they said that I just don't give a shit anymore, whatever that means. They also said that I'm digging myself deeper and deeper and that I'm self-sabotaging, ruining things for myself. Not only that, but they said that my friend calling me a narcissist wasn't that far off. They also described me as, um...
I can't remember what it was, but I remember getting angry because they were lowering me to that. Look, everybody's against me and wants me dead and I can feel it. The feeling is everywhere. They're staring at me, thinking of ways to kill me and I can feel it. It's weighing down on my shoulders and I need to kill them before they kill me.
My friends and family and others, they view me as worthless when in fact, I'm smarter and destined for fame and power. They're weak and they're going to be forgotten. They want to ruin me and bring me down to their level. But that was just never going to happen because Brian was determined to go down as one of the greats. That was his plan.
And the greats to Brian include the likes of Charles Whitman, killer, who first murdered his mother and wife in their houses, then drove to the University of Texas in Austin and just started randomly opening fire on people. He killed 17 people and injured 35 more. And Sunghee Choi, the Virginia Tech killer who killed 32 and wounded 17. But it seems like Brian relates the most with Edmund Kemper.
We talked about him in one of the very first episodes of RM. I would really, I think I would like to revisit the case one day with a lot more of the more nuance. I hope I wish I had learned in the process. But Ed Kemper was a notorious serial killer. And he once said, when I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One side of me thinks I'd like to talk to her, date her. And the other side of me thinks I wonder what her head would look like on a stick.
Brian said he felt that. He would later tell interrogators, I mean, I feel that, you know? And for years, I just wonder what murder feels like because you read shit like Ted Bundy and the Zodiac Killer and they all say murder is the best feeling in the world. So I'm like, I'm going to try that. For some time, I've been wondering when it would happen. I always knew that I would be in this police building though, whether as a criminal or a police officer, I was going to be here.
And plus, for years, I was wondering what murder would feel like, because you read shit like Ted Bundy and the Zodiac, they all say murder's the best feeling in the world. So I'm like, I'm gonna try that.
Okay, you can do this. I know, I know. Carvana makes it so convenient to sell your car. It's just hard to let go. My car and I have been through so much together. But look, you already have a great offer from Carvana. That was fast. Well, I know my license plate didn't fit my heart, and those questions were easy. You're almost there. Now to just accept the offer and schedule a pickup or drop-off. How'd you do it? How are you so strong in letting go of your car? Well, I already made up my mind, and Carvana's so easy. Yeah, true.
And sold.
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Brian had an obsession with crime scenes, whether it was to study how not to get caught or to study how to commit a crime. I don't know. It's a little less clear at the time. Now, to provide a bit more context, Terry, Brian's mom, said his autism is the reason for his hyper fixations. So maybe she thought that he just had a hyper fixation on anything crime scene related at the moment. She would say, I mean, he has a little bit of a fascination with the morbid, but he was channeling it, I thought, into becoming a crime scene investigator. And she said, I don't know.
And wanting to help him navigate the hyper fixation into a safer, more productive territory, she buys him the book, Techniques of a Crime Scene Investigator, 8th edition. She told him when she gave it to him, Brian, let's channel all this morbid curiosity into something positive that you can affect the world with good change. And he said, yeah, mom, that's my plan.
I purchased this book for research for this case, and there are over 30 very graphic pictures of mutilated murdered bodies in the book Uncensored Real. There are pictures of murdered women whose private parts have been chopped off, completely mutilated. Pictures of women who have been dismembered and tortured. It is a lot. Like decapitated heads. Like it's a lot. So he probably loved it. He probably only looked at the pictures like it was a picture book for him.
And there was a rumor spreading around town that the cats were going missing. It's unclear how the rumor started, but one girl told a few people and those people told a few people. And she said that she lived near Brian in a neighborhood and cats were going missing. And I know it's kind of a stretch, but she felt like she felt like Brian was stealing cats in the neighborhood. She just had a feeling. Okay, well, why would he steal a cat? You tell me.
Nobody really knew for certain if it was true or not. It was just kind of a wild assumption to make about someone. But even Brian's friends, they knew his dark sense of humor and they thought, I don't know. One of his friends, Sean, a thousand percent believed it. He was like, absolutely. I know it's true for a fact. In fact, he killed one of my friend's cats. And the cat was really nice and very friendly.
Meanwhile, another friend, Kylan, she was not really listening to the rumors. She said, honestly, I don't know. I mean, I think I could believe it, but I don't want to because I'm a big animal lover. I just, I don't know. I just don't want to see my friend in that kind of light. Content warning, animal abuse.
Brian would later tell investigators that he tortured animals. He admits to finding a dead groundhog by the side of the road, and he skinned and attempted to make leather out of the skin. And cats, he said that he messed with cats. He said, I was thinking of killing people while I was killing the cat, but I wasn't acting on it. I only started thinking about seriously killing people after I killed the cat.
Reddit post, January 27th, 2019. Brian writes, I'm just now admitting this on here, but I killed a feral cat and mutilated it. Cats possess natural weapons. You know, their claws and their teeth are
Natural weapons. I used a pillowcase to stop it from retaliating on me. And then I tried snapping its neck and then strangulating it several times. After that failed to work, I used a nearby screwdriver to separate its neck vertebrae and damage its spinal cord. It was not dead, though. It worked. All it could do was hiss at me. Then I took it downstairs into my room, and then I assaulted the head and the neck, trying to damage it further, beating it with weights, hitting it against the ground.
I hid the body in a shoebox and then put it under my bed. Oftentimes over the next few hours I would go get the dead cat and feel its warmth and play with the limp body and later that night I used my knives to decapitate the head and then I put it into a separate box. I don't know why it was just very satisfying to decapitate it. Something so important and connected to the body being unconnected from its being. It was just so wrongfully good.
I was so excited. Excited in a good way. Thrilled. High on homicide, if you will say. I kept it for a few days in my room, but it started to smell. But knowing that I was hiding something awful while my parents and brother were none the wiser was satisfying. That I had that kind of power over them.
February 11th, 2019, Brian is suspended for making inappropriate sexual comments in school. Teachers had gotten together trying to put their foot down. They believed that Brian was a potential danger to the school, that he was at high risk of committing violent actions. But there was nobody in the school that could help him, nobody in the system that did anything. Brian even said, call me weird, but I think everybody has those thoughts, no? Of shooting up their school.
Whoa. You say that where? How? To who? To people. At school? Yeah. Oh my God. Brian writes on Reddit, I felt like people are watching me recently.
Sometimes I feel like the walls, the floor, and furniture have eyes, and they're watching me as I walk. In the dark, when I'm not looking, like right now, I feel like the eyes are watching me. Last night, I was so scared, scared of the idea of someone or something in my room watching me silently, creeping towards me to kill me. So for about 30 minutes, I laid in bed still, listening and watching carefully, waiting for any signs. I did not move.
In one of Brian's journals that was found later, there is a page that has a drawing of eyes. And the eyes are almost hypnotic and creepy. They have a cat-like shape to them, but the eyes, the eyeballs itself, are kind of in a spiral, just like the jigsaw eyes from the Saw movies.
On the page, there's also a list of words that it's likely he describes himself as these. A few of them read paranoid, narcissistic, megalomaniac, someone who's obsessed with power, cruel, sadistic, two-faced, depressed, impulsive, reckless, childish, remorseless, possessive, fearless, homicidal.
He also writes that he's born to raise hell in his journal. And one of the more alarming pages just has his name at the very top. It reads Brian Cohey and underneath it, Sir Jeffrey Dahmer, long legged wolf slayer, screamer of the cock. And he tries to create his own cryptic like the Zodiac Killer, where each symbol corresponds with a different letter.
So this is what's going on. And it's not like Brian's parents don't know. I mean, I don't know if they know the extent of what's going on, but they know that something's going on. And even though they're the only ones giving him any sort of benefit of doubt, he writes about his mom. My mom has been so unstable recently, crying and shouting near constantly, that bitch should just leave. That was February 2019. February 2021, two years later, police would show up at the house.
It's daytime when the police show up at the house. It's somewhat isolated and it's not in the middle of nowhere, but it's not your typical suburban home where you can see your neighbor's backyard from the side. The officers, they intentionally keep their sirens and lights off so they don't freak Brian out. When they pull up to the house, Brian, his little brother Andy, and their dad are standing outside. It seems like they're just having a normal conversation and then the cop gets out of the car.
What's going on, man? Brian's wearing a blue long sleeve shirt with jeans. He's got glasses on and he looks... Okay, honestly, he looks like the type of guy that your parents would want you to date in high school. He looks very responsible. What's going on, man? Brian says, not much. On Brian's right, it seems like his dad looks at Brian and tells him to cooperate. Brian is walking towards the cop. He stops, turns to his dad and says, cooperate? I'm gonna cooperate.
He turns back to face the cops. Okay, so Brian, your parents have some concerns about some stuff that may have been found in your room? Uh, yeah, I believe so. And what would it be?
Brian stares off to the side for a little bit, just staring at the road. But when the officer asks again, what would it be? What is found in your room? He cocks his head to the side, makes direct eye contact with the officer. His voice goes an octave lower and he stares straight at the officer. A human head in hands. Like for real human head in hands? Yes. From? That fellow who just went missing recently.
Which fellow is that? Warren Brown. Warren Brown? When did he go missing? The night of the 27th. Okay, and how did you end up with him? I murdered him. With what? A knife. And why would you have done that? I've always wondered what murder felt like. Okay, so parents have some concerns of some stuff they may have found in your room? Yeah, I believe so. And what would it be?
In the body cam footage, you can see Brian's mom just collapse on the grass outside.
She can't even get up from her knees. So far, she's the only one that's seen the head and hands so far. And she's just got confirmation from her son that they're real. He killed someone just because he wanted to feel like what it feels like. Wait, so the mother found the bodies, found the head and hand. So she told the dad that knows as well, but he didn't see it.
So that dad is just keeping the son stable outside. Because if he walks in, he's going to see the blue towel in the kitchen sink and then he might feel inclined to lift it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And nobody knows what's going to happen because he also has a shotgun in his room. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But at the beginning of the video, you said it took an hour. It took an hour. So they were just like lingering out there for an hour. For an hour. Yeah.
Oh my goodness. Brian's dad walks back into the house with the officer, leaving his son and wife out on the grass. And Brian is with a few other officers. He's also being placed into a patrol car to be taken into the station. And side note, that whole thing is controversial. Some people don't like the way that Brian was treated so nicely. He just admitted to murdering someone with a knife. He is not handcuffed. He's just like getting into the back of the cop car like he's being picked up by a friend to go eat Chipotle.
He turns to the female officer. How are you? I'm good, sir. How are you? You said your name is Brian? Yeah, I'm not feeling too well. You're not feeling too well? No, these past few days have been very, very anxious. That's understandable. So what we're going to do here now is I'm going to have you sit in the back here, okay? I'm going to turn on the air for you in a second. That way you're not too hot. Are you hot-blooded or cold-blooded kind of guy? I'm very cold-blooded.
I prefer cold. Well, no, actually, sorry. That would mean I'm hot-blooded. So you prefer the cold. Okay, fantastic. All right. So hop in the back. I know you're tall, so it's a little bit of a bit squeeze.
He opens the door and climbs into the back of the patrol car. But like I said, I'll get that air on for you. Sorry about that. I'm not feeling too well. You're not feeling too well? No, these past few days, I've been very, very anxious. That's understandable. So what we're going to have you do here is I'm just going to have you sit in the back here, okay? I'm going to turn on the air for you in a second. That way you're not too hot. Are you a hot-blooded or cold-blooded kind of guy? I am very cold-blooded. I prefer cold. Well, no, actually, sorry, hot-blooded. So you prefer the cold. Okay, fantastic. All right.
So hop in here, I know you're tall so it's a little bit of a tight squeeze but like I said I'll get that air on for you. Sorry about that. Alright. The induction's been quite violent lately. How you holding up, Ryan? Okay. A bit thirsty? You guys have any water in your home? I can't make any guarantees we're going to be able to go in and get some but I will get some water to you as soon as I can, okay?
All right, Brian. We're headed to the sheriff's office and your family's going to go with us, okay? Meanwhile, in the house, the officer walks into the kitchen where Brian's dad points at the kitchen sink. I covered it up with a towel, okay? Because I didn't want him to see it. I didn't want him to run. I don't want him to look at it. The officer takes off the blue kitchen towel and inside...
is a white plastic bag. So he opens that up and it's blurred in the footage but inside is very clearly a decapitated head. The week leading up to the murder, Brian starts googling a lot. He's looking up extreme paranoia, schizoid and paranoid personality disorder, avoidant personality, Unabomber, bombs, how do people react to a home invasion, how do people react to being held at knife point, how deadly is a neck stab wound, how to cope with murderous thoughts, homicidal ideation, homicidal thoughts every day.
And then on February 26, 2021, he starts Googling serial killers. James Dale Ritchie, an Alaskan serial killer. Joseph Christopher, an American serial killer from the 80s. Andrea Yates, a mom who drowned her five children in the bathtub. He also Googled Las Vegas pickaxe caught on camera. How deadly is a pickaxe? Who would win, a human with an axe or a human with a pickaxe? How deadly is a pickaxe?
Is this really the best choice right now? The screen has the movie 1984 ready to play.
This is the movie based off of the George Orwell book, 1984. Which is a good book, yes. But I don't know if...
that's the best movie night with your family why not like a avengers movie or something but they watch it anyway because it's like you know if he wants to watch it just let him indulge he's 19 brian's always just had this weird sense of humor and taste he's always been interested in the morbid stuff he would always joke around with his dad hey dad wouldn't it be funny if you sold a lipstick with mercury in it to those beauty pageant queens and they got poisoned through the mercury lipstick because of their vanity and pride
His parents would tell him, no, that wouldn't be funny. And he would just brush them off. Yeah, it would be. You just don't get my sense of humor. You know what's crazy is because the way he delivers these information so nonchalant, so like goofy and upbeat, sometimes you just don't see it, right? I think that...
A lot of people, if you don't know him well, now, I don't know about his parents. I don't know about his closest friends, right? But I imagine if I went to the same school as him, I would maybe gauge him as being very insecure. Like he's trying to do so much. I would never think that he would be a killer. I would probably think, wow, he's so insecure. He's trying so hard to be edgy and like obnoxious. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was also a huge browser of the subreddit 50/50. It's called a "risky click subreddit" where the title will have a choice between two different things. It's either going to be an image of something pleasant or something really really bad, 50/50. And on Reddit, they have a blurred censored preview of the images. So you can kind of see the outline and colors of the picture. And technically, it's a 50/50 shot. Most of the time it's something bad.
For example, one title is 50-50 capybara sniffing an apple or rival cartel members decapitated head. I did click on the picture and it was a rival cartel members decapitated head. Another post on the subreddit reads 50-50 beautiful wedding cherry cake with a cool message or a car crash with a man's head cut in half hanging out through the window. Wait, so they can post these type of photos? I guess. Like uncensored? Uncensored, yeah.
spoiler it was a car crash with a man's head cut in half hanging through the window and brian commented on that post why the long face yeah so i guess he's just kind of edgy right that's what a lot of his friends said he just wants to always go with the against the flow his jokes are always in the realm of dark humor rarely did he ever make jokes that weren't somehow related to death or violence or destruction or breaking the law
For example, he just liked to shock people. For Halloween parties, he would go dressed as Jeffrey Dahmer. That was his favorite serial killer, which just adds another layer of twisted to it. Brian was nicknamed Dahmer in high school because he was genuinely that obsessed with Jeffrey Dahmer. Sometimes if they had these role-playing skits or plays or like improv moments in class where everybody had to pick a different identity or persona, Brian would be like, okay, I'm going to be Jeffrey Dahmer. And the teacher would be like, no, you're not. That's crazy.
This guy was known for loving Dahmer, wanting to be Dahmer, pretending to be Dahmer. He would show up to Halloween parties dressed as Dahmer. And by all accounts, it seemed like he had plans to become the next Dahmer. But he would do it wearing a Michael Myers costume.
a blue jumpsuit that he bought for Halloween to dress up as the fictional serial killer from the movie Halloween. And Brian would tell investigators, let's see. Yeah, it was the night of February 27th. It was a full moon. And I figured I can see so well. Why not drive around? And I'm in a bad state of mind at that time.
Brian doesn't really know if today is the day or not. For six months, it was never the day that he killed someone. So why would it be now? But he did feel like things were amping up, or at least that's kind of how he describes it. He said, for a two week period, there was a strong instinct for me to bite someone's throat and rip it out or bite a shoulder at least. And these intrusive thoughts were getting stronger and stronger. He said every time he would see someone, the first thing that would pop into his mind was envisioning that person being shot or stabbed.
Brian tells the interrogator, I have major depressive disorder, so I'm not thinking positively. And I'm cruising around for an hour, hour and a half, so I fill up on gas halfway through. And I'm eventually driving underneath the bridge near the sheriff's office. You know, like...
Brian grabs an Expo marker from the table and starts drawing on the whiteboard on the wall. And yes, you know, there is a whiteboard on the wall and the markers on the table. So it's natural to assume that, you know, one would use it to draw or write things on the wall. But the way that Brian is writing and explaining the location of this bridge, it's almost like he's giving a lecture. He's teaching somebody. He's a professor. So let's just say this is the office, right? And this is the parking lot. Take a turn. And here is the bridge. That one.
The interrogator is trying to stay on track. So you were at the bridge. Yeah, I was at the bridge. I was cruising. There was a road right underneath the overpass bridge and I was driving along and I see this shape here on the railroad track. And I'm like, oh.
Interesting. I go up and as I'm looking, I see a large thing wrapped in canvas and I'm like, that's a homeless person. So I got my knife. I put on three layers of gloves because plastic gloves can betray their users because they're very thin. And it is true that your fingerprints can bleed and you can leave prints behind. So a lot of people have, I don't know if I should say this, but they, this is commonly known. They put band-aids on their fingertips and then put them into plastic gloves or like the vinyl gloves.
And he says, I put on two, three on one hand. I took the knife. I pulled back the canvas and I stabbed the man in the neck. He was panicking at first in his old man voice. He was in his 50s. Brian starts chuckling because he just called the man an old man when he's really only in his 50s. Side note, the victim was actually 69. But the way that Brian is retelling the story, there's no fear, no panic, no stress. Just retelling this memory like it's a regular day for him.
I don't know why I just called him an old man. He was saying, what are you doing? What are you doing? Why? Why? And he does take on different voices, by the way, while he is describing the stories. It's very animated. That's crazy. And I just kept stabbing his neck. Yeah, I was. Is it okay if I do a demonstration?
Wait, so he suggests to do all that? Brian points at the ground and Pete, the interrogator, nods. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, go ahead. Brian points at the ground and says, this is him. He gets on his knees like he's straddling the victim. Then he brings up his right hand in like a fist holding a knife, imaginary knife. And he brings it up and down, up and down, up and down, quickly, frantically. And then he stops. And he gets up from the floor and just sits back down on the chair in the interrogation room like nothing just happened.
He was panicking at first in his old man voice. He was in his 50s. I know why I call an old man. He was saying, what are you doing? What are you doing? Why? And I just kept on stabbing his neck. I was, is it okay if I do a demonstration? This is him. I was straddled on top of him like this. And he couldn't fight back.
Brian continues, and he didn't fight back. It was actually surprisingly easy. I was barely breaking a sweat. And I thought, you know, homeless guy, that's going to be tough. But no, it was actually surprisingly easy. And during the time I was growling and making animalistic noises, Brian brings up both of his hands in front of his face like a wolf eating a piece of meat. And he's like, what? Okay. The investigator is staring at him. And why were you doing that?
I suppose it was a frenzy. I was so excited, so, you know, rushed up on adrenaline and everything. And I was like, whoa, his whole body. He starts shaking his whole body in his chair and he's laughing as he's doing this. And side note, something that he does is every time he laughs or he does something very animated, he looks at both the investigators, Pete and Lisa, almost checking to see if they're also responding well to his story and laughing with him.
Anyway, I paused and he said, why are you doing this? And I said, I've been wanting to do this for a fucking long time. Murder someone. Then I continued. The whole ordeal lasted about a minute, minute and a half. And when I was finished stabbing him, he took out his last breath like a grunt and his head was halfway cut off in stabs. All the while, no, actually, after I killed him, I just couldn't stop saying stinky, dirty, stinky, dirty, stinky, dirty, stinky. But I wasn't like smelling anything.
And why were you saying that? I don't know. Yeah, I suppose it was just me speaking out my mind at that moment. It was just pouring out of my mind. During the time I was growling and making animalistic noises. Why were you doing that? I suppose it was a frenzy. Okay. I was so excited, so rushed up on adrenaline. And he's like, why are you doing this? And I've been wanting to do this for a long time. And then I continued.
The whole ordeal lasted about a minute, minute and a half. And this area is pretty, I mean, you were worried, were you worried? It's pretty close to the road and stuff. Were you worried about someone seeing you or catching you? Well, it was around 11 p.m., so not many people were driving by. Were you worried about anyone seeing you? I was worried about one of them stopping.
And what did you think would happen if somebody... Well, if they looked, it'd be quite dark under there, so they wouldn't have seen the victim if they looked. But I think they would have seen me holding a bloody 12-inch knife. Brian starts smiling and chuckling, giggling at the thought of someone seeing him wearing a blue Michael Myers jumpsuit holding a bloody knife. Yeah, and then after that, I took off his clothes. I cut open his belly to see his guts. They're really pink. Yeah.
Oh, sorry, that was morbid. I saw his liver, his large and small intestine, and that's it. Some of it was, I don't know, I was thinking about taking out his heart. I was thinking about crushing the ribs and disemboweling him entirely. I cut him open, but his guts spilled out by themselves when I was dumping him. Anyway, then I cut off his head. I gave him a glass glow smile, otherwise known as the Joker smile when you cut from mouth to ear. And he also uses both of his pointer fingers to repeatedly show the motion.
I destroyed his eyes by stabbing them. And he puts his hand near his eyes and he's holding his hand like a fist. More as if he's holding a screwdriver and screwing a nail in. So I'm assuming that he stabbed and twisted the knives around. Then I cut off his hands. Brian starts making a stabbing motion and whispering. I cut off his hands.
Then I cut off his hands and I put those into a plastic Ziploc bag. And then I cut off his right arm at the joint, like right below the elbow. And then at the joint at the shoulder. And then the other arm, I tried cutting it at the elbow. But then I tried cutting it like closer on the shoulder. But what happened was I accidentally broke his bone. Yeah. So one of the bones was just like poking out. I left that one partially cut and then dismembered the rest of it. And I tossed the arms around.
around like I took the right arm bit and I threw it out kind of like a frisbee I took the left arm bit threw it out so you might need to look a little bit further from like where the blood is when you go under the bridge well actually it was a general assault I was mainly targeting his neck because that's the most vulnerable area but I was also stabbing his head I mean anywhere in general really I stabbed his head multiple times
How about his chest and his stomach? His chest, yeah, I stabbed him once through the ribs. I sliced open his belly, I carved up his leg, I made several slices at his leg, actually. The interrogators wanted to know, did you practice on anything else? How did you know how to do it?
No, I just went along with the process. You know, the bones, I just pressed the blade down and went like right at the ligament. And he does this motion like, you know, when you peel garlic, you put the knife flat on the garlic and then you use your other hand to press it down. That's what Brian is saying. OK, and how hard was that to do? You know, to get them to actually not particularly hard. I was just more frustrated that I broke a bone. Why did you cut the arms off?
Because I always wanted to know what it felt like to cut up someone. Why did you stop at the arms? Because, well, that's it. Like, that's all I wanted to know. And what it's like cutting off a limb. And I'm just like, okay. And then I left the body there. And then I took the head, put it into a leftover pizza box from dinner a few nights ago. And as Brian is moving Warren's body around, he feels something in his pocket. And he reaches in and it's his wallet.
So he takes that, puts that into his passenger seat of his car. He tells the investigator, then I took the hands, put them in the back seat, drove home. I hit the hands and the head in my room. I cleaned the knife, threw away the garbage with his blood on it. And then the blood stained, like, um, well, it wasn't stained. Like my jumpsuit had splatters on it. I put it in the washing machine. And, uh,
Yeah, but no one stops and I'm just like, "Huh, proves the bystander effect." I noticed you had a cut on your hand. Is that from... Oh, that was when I was doing gas, when I filled up. I mentioned I filled up gas when I was driving around. I was driving around, I was on a quarter of a tank, so I filled up on gas. What happened was, because I don't want to be seen in a gas station with a knife poking out of my pocket, I put it in the car, the back seat floor.
When I'm done with it, I try and grab it, but my hand slips and grabs the blade. And as I pick it up, it slices these two fingers. Okay. Because a lot of times, if you're stabbed in the head, it'll slide. No, no. And they had a guard. It was one of those knives that was like... Where is it? Huh? Where is it? Yeah. My dad had it. Okay. He found it in my car. And then... Let's see. Yeah. And then, after that, I...
Okay. Okay.
Then, at this arm, I tried cutting it here, and then I tried cutting it here, but what happened was, accidentally broke his bone. This one, it was poking out. And so I left that one here, partially cut, dismembered here, bone sticking out. And then I left his body there, and then I took the head, put it in a leftover box from the dinner a few nights ago, and then I took the hands,
put him in the back, drove home, hid the hands and head in my room. So to clarify, he took three things from the crime scene, a decapitated head, a set of hands, and a wallet. Then he threw his jumpsuit into the wash to get rid of the blood, and he's laying there in bed trying to go to sleep, but he starts freaking himself out because he realized that there was a small hole at the pointer part of his middle finger, and he was nervous that that was a partial print on the body.
Were you worried about like leaving evidence behind of being caught? Oh, totally. He said, so I figured why not go all the way? I drove back in a different outfit, picked up his body, threw it in my trunk, surprisingly heavy, put it in my trunk and drove up to the Blue Heron boat ramp. I parked, you know, the ramp is quite steep and you need to have a four wheel drive to pull it out of it. And my cart isn't a four wheel drive. So I pulled in.
And I thought because I'm reversing, I could easily drive out. Anyway, so he reverses into the boat ramp. So the trunk is closest to the water, the river. He opens the trunk, pulls out Warren's body. He tells investigators because I don't want fingerprints on the body. I just try to move the body with my shoes. And then he motions a kicking thing while he's sitting like kind of it's like
A very disrespectful kick too, like you're kicking away trash. Yeah, that worked successfully. He goes out some part of the river and floats off. God knows where he is now. Would it still be a he if he's dead? Yeah, I'd start. Yeah. I drove back in a different outfit, picked up his body, surprisingly heavy, put it in my trunk, and drove to the Blue Cairn drop-off station. I parked...
So it's like this, right? So let's say this is ground. The ramp is quite steep and you need to have four-wheel drive to pull out of it. Okay. And my car didn't. I thought, so I pull in. I thought that I could drive out because I put it in reverse, A, so that it's easier to pull the body out, and B, because the back tires are provided for polishing for push-ups. Right. I open the trunk. I take his body out.
I put it in the water because I don't want fingerprints on a body. So I just try to move it with my shoes. That worked successfully. He goes out some part in the river and floats off. God knows where he is now. Brian snaps back into reality. Okay, yeah. God knows where he is now. I think my guess was that it would be discovered the morning or next morning. So I kept an eye out for any river-related activities. And I was figuring, you know, the police, they don't...
Well, this is not to be taken offense, but police, they don't really seem to care about high risk individuals, homeless people, prostitutes, etc. So I was deliberately looking for someone who lived that type of life and I found a homeless person. The original goal was to just leave him there, but I was worried about the fibers on my outfit and the fingerprint and all of that. That's where the river idea came from, because a river will wash away a lot of the evidence. Rivers are quite, um, quite, yeah. But obviously that was botched.
Yeah, and when I tried to inevitably drive out, my car didn't come out. My car was stuck. I was putting it into full throttle, you know, and that doesn't work. And it's just my car doesn't have four wheel drive. Stupid me. So I put it into low gear and I need to act faster. I'm going to die of hypothermia because I'm in the water at this point. And I'm like, oh, this is what I'm going to be remembered for. Dying of hypothermia and a botched attempt at hiding a body. And I'm just like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
So I go up the road and it's like 2 a.m. and I'm trying to flag down a car. One doesn't come by for like five minutes. Eventually it does. And it's an old high school friend. I don't know his last name. Yeah, no, this is wild. But another student from Brian's high school is driving past that area in that exact moment. His name is Kellen and he's with his grandpa. And he sees Brian freaking out, soaked from the waist down. And Kellen is like, wait, I know this guy.
They're not close. They are not friends by any means. Kellan's good friends actually despise Brian. One of them was on the same bus route as Brian and always told Kellan, dude, this guy won't shut up on the bus and he says the most inappropriate stuff. He's so obnoxious. So it just seems like Brian has a weird reputation. But I mean, what is Kellan going to do? Just drive away because he's annoying? So he pulls over. He tries to help Brian. Apparently, Brian has already called his parents to get him and he's freaking out.
Kellen said before Brian's family got there, he just kept pacing around saying, I'm fucked, I'm effed, I'm effed, I'm effed, I'm effed. And Kellen was trying to calm him down like, hey, it's going to be OK, you know. But Brian was just pacing like, I'm effed, I'm effed.
Lisa stops Brian's story with a question. Okay, did they believe you? Yes. So did the police.
Until they pulled it out of the river. Brian says, yeah. However, that what immediately caught the police's attention is blood from the body that was on the bumper. See, I was so I just forgot to wipe it off. I was so panicked that I wasn't thinking. And when they pulled it out, they immediately see blood on the bumper. But Brian starts giggling, thinking back to that. And, you know, the police, they're all thinking we really need to get into this trunk. Fools. There is nothing in the trunk.
Pete tries to go along to encourage Brian. Like this is all just a captivating, fun dinner party story. That night when Brian gets home, he starts messaging his friends on Discord and texting them about how he totaled his car in the river and he almost died from hypothermia. But Lisa and Pete, they want to know more about the head and hands found in his room. And they ask him, OK, then you said that you took was it the head and hands home? Well, there's a three rule for bodies. I call it the three rules.
Tell us about that. Three hours rigor mortis sets in, body stiffens. Three days the body starts to stink because of decomposition. Three weeks the body is starting to seriously decompose and three months the body is unrecognizable. Three years it turns into a skeleton.
May I ask how you know that? I've always had a fascination with forensics and with anatomy and physiology. That's the three rule for bodies, something I made up. That's something I don't want to sound like I'm inventing something, but that's why I coined the rule of three. Is it accurate? Then he asked them.
Yeah. Well, somewhat. Brian smiles and leans back in his chair. So you have the head and the hands at your house. The head, because it was starting to stink, I was planning on throwing it away, along with the hands. I was planning on buying an empty paint bucket, but put the head in it, seal it, and then throw it off some ditch, like 340 Broadway, that area where it's very hard to reach. The hands I could throw in a different spot, wherever. Okay.
And how long have you been planning or looking for someone to do this to before you found this guy? About a year. In your mind, you thought of a plan for the past year? Well, occasionally when you see girls walking down the street, you know, it's like the Ed Kemper thing where half of me says, well, I'm quite inept with women. And if I'm being honest, I'm not at Casanova. But half of me says I want to take that girl home and make her feel nice. And the other half of me, just like what Ed said, I wonder what her head looks like on a stick.
So occasionally when I'm driving down the road, if I see someone who catches my eye, I'm just like, "Oh, do you know who the person you killed was?" No, I took his wallet and I didn't look at it. I just picked it up, briefly scanned over it, put it in my car. Apparently it's a guy named Warren. My mom told me this before she found out that the missing person was Warren Brown, born in '63. He gets it wrong. His name is Warren Barnes. On top of that, he just seems very disinterested. Now, there were a lot of people who weren't disinterested.
She wasn't necessarily scared of him. She was just aware that he was there. She works at a gas station. Let's call her Shelly. And there was an older man with worn boots and a gray messy beard and a flannel old t-shirt just waiting outside the gas station before they open. And it's like pitch black outside because they open early. Like nobody's gotten a start to their day. It's only him outside.
She was aware of him because she works at a gas station. I mean, how could she not be a little bit alert? But he didn't feel threatening. He was in the parking lot waiting for her to open reading a book. And when the door swung open, he walked in and bought himself a coffee. And ever since that day, it was like clockwork. He was there every single day and he would buy a coffee, sometimes a donut.
If the gas station were a coffee shop where you write a customer's name on their coffee cup in Sharpie, his coffee cup would read Warren Barnes. And Warren Barnes had a schedule like clockwork. His next stop after Shell Gas was sometimes work. So he started working for a company called People Ready. You are an employee of gigs and you help companies find reliable workers for temporary positions. So he would help the sheriff's office with breaking down boxes. And in the springtime and summers, he would do lots of lawn work.
Warren was a valued worker. Like one of his biggest things was that he was incredibly punctual. But on the days that Warren was not working, he would find his way to a bridal boutique where they sell wedding dresses in town. And there would be a chair waiting for him. He would sit down on the chair outside next to the brick wall and he would just read.
He loved cowboy western mysteries and the locals in the community knew him as the reading man. He was just always sitting just past the bridal boutique, the other small shops right off main street in a chair that was only allowed for him.
Monique, the owner of the bridal boutique, had known about him for four years when the city removed all the benches for people who were unhoused from downtown. And Monique immediately set out a chair for this man because all he wanted to do was sit on a bench and read. It was Monique's late father's favorite chair. It was made out of bamboo and it had this very cushiony plush seat.
And if it was sunny, particularly sunny and warm, perfect napping weather, Warren, who is now late in his 60s, he would doze off with his book half open. And still, Monique recalled that she's never seen him not finish a book in a day.
Yeah, every day. He would sit behind the shop and just read religiously, or at least the days he wasn't working. Everyone in the community knew Warren. He was their reading man. He was comforting. According to local paper that did Boots reporting on the Grand Junction community, they said that Warren was known to never beg.
He never hassled anyone, he didn't speak unless spoken to, a head nod would usually suffice for hello, and if a friend passed and bid him a good day, his answer was always, and you also. The whole time he and Monique were friends, Warren never asked for anything, and he denied all food and aid. He was private, but it seems that at the core of it, he just didn't want to be anyone else's burden.
Monique would constantly double check that he had a place to stay at night, especially in the winter, and he would assure her, of course I do, I'm okay, even if he was sleeping under the bridge. Because he also knew that Monique would have rented him out a room if she found out. Anyone in the community would have. To the rest of Grand Junction, he was the reading man, but to Monique, she called him the bird man. So he would sit out there, and every lunch he would buy a Subway.
And he would eat all the important parts, then tear off half of his bread and give it bit by bit to the birds. Monique said, there's not many people that I can say that would do something like that. To have so little and still half of it to the birds. I'd say, I'll see you tomorrow, Warren. Have a good night. And he'd say, and you also. Until one day, Monique set out her favorite chair for Warren and he never showed up. Meanwhile, March 1st,
19-year-old Brian Cohey is Googling how to wipe data from Android phone because he had taken pictures of Warren's dead body. Does a river wash away evidence? How to dispose of organic material. When he's done with that, he goes into his calendar app and marks a new event for the day of February 27th. He marks it first. People suspect he was expecting more, but that was the last day Warren Barnes was seen alive.
Near the end of the interrogation, the officers asked Brian if he enjoyed it, enjoyed killing. And Brian said, did I enjoy it? He leans back in his seat as he whispers to himself, did I enjoy it? It's very clear that he's reliving the murder. There's a long pause as he thinks about it, about 16 seconds. 16 seconds is a very long time. He finally responds, just neutral for the whole thing. I did enjoy it, but I didn't hate it.
He was also asked if he was inspired by other serial killers like Ted Bundy, Ed Kemper, and the likes to which he responded. I wasn't necessarily inspired. It was just more so, if these people can do it, so can I. By the way, can I use the restroom? Some netizens note that it is very strange that he has to use the restroom after he basically relived the murder that he was asked if he enjoyed it, leading some netizens to believe that there in fact was a sexual component to the kill.
After the interrogation, when Brian was being led to be booked, he smiled at the officer escorting him and said, I feel like Hannibal Lecter right now. Another fictional cannibal.
Brian Cohey pled not guilty by reason of insanity. One thing to note that is very important is that someone can have severe mental health issues and still be legally sane. In Colorado, in order to be found not guilty by reason of insanity, you must prove the defendant was incapable of distinguishing between right from wrong at the time that the crime was committed. Now, side note, Brian's attorneys try to do the most bizarre thing ever. So this is going to be tried in the criminal court system. They want, they filed a motion to move it to the juvenile court.
He was 19 when he committed the crime. Like that's not how it works. You don't just get to be like, oh, well, he's a little young.
Now, just a few things to note. Brian did mention in the interrogation that a mental health counselor once told him that he had schizo something. That's a quote. He said, they just said that I had schizo something, whether it was schizophrenia, schizoaffective, schizophenol, or schizoid disorder. They said that I had something that was schizo. They also said something along the lines of like, you have symptoms of a schizo disorder. Whichever one that was, they didn't specify, but I was just like,
Okay. The police, they had to ask more questions. Do you feel like you have that? I don't know. Impossible to tell. Self-diagnosing is foolish. Yeah, but do you, schizophrenia is pretty clear because people recognize they have a different personality in there, which is incorrect. I don't know why the police said that. He says, I don't have any hallucinations. I had delusions, I guess. Years ago, I thought I was obsessed with people staring at me. I felt people watching me from every window. The birds were looking at me, watching me, the furniture. That was a delusion, I suppose.
But you don't have times where you feel like another personality is in your body? No, that's disassociative identity disorder. Schizophrenia is, well, no, what I'm asking, Brian, is do you have multiple people talking to you at the same time? That type of thing. No, no one was talking to me.
During the interrogation, Brian denies having hallucinations and psychosis. He also admits to taking measures to hide the crime and he expresses regret, not for taking a life, but he said, if I knew I was going to prison for 15 to 20 years, I would not have killed someone. Yeah. Okay. So this is very interesting because he's actually facing a lot longer than that. It's not like he was even a minor when he committed the crime. So I don't know where he got that bold guesstimate of 15 to 20 years.
Very strange. It's also argued that Brian was on a very low dose of antidepressants, but a few months before the murder, the murder took place February 2021. His dosage was upped. Yeah. But when Brian's doctors took the stand, they stated that Brian showed zero signs of psychosis, hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and he never spoke of hurting himself or anybody else for that matter. Brian's family doctor even saw Brian three days before the murder because he had this boil under his right armpit like an abscess.
And he did not note or pick up on any strange behavior from Brian. The doctor stated definitely not psychotic at the time that he came in for his boil, three days before the murder. Terry and Brian Sr. genuinely seemed heartbroken that their son had killed someone.
When they were first brought into the police station, the day they found the head and hands, Terry, the mom, sits down and she's a wreck. She's a mess. It's clear that she's trying to cope with everything. And it's very heartbreaking when you just look at the footage. Now, Terry tells the investigator about Brian's obsession with crime scenes. And she says a lot of obsession with preservation of on crime and crime scenes. And so he's just talking about going into the military in the fall. And when he gets out, having your job.
I guess he was talking about becoming an investigator. That's what she said? Yeah, and she like is very enthusiastic. She's like very depressed and it's like he was talking about going to the military and then now he... I guess the plan was having your job. The investigators also asked her about potential animal abuse. Brian himself admitted to killing a cat for fun, but it seems like that they really had no clue. She said, oh, no, like he...
He loves our dogs. He's very affectionate with our animals. Just last week, he watched Silence of the Lambs, but I was like, well, he's 19. They probably all watched it. I've watched it. It doesn't make me a serial killer. He watched the Zodiac Killer over the summer a couple times.
What about other kids in the neighborhood? He didn't really, you know, he had a couple of friends that he's had since elementary. But, you know, he had a morbid sense of humor and would make jokes that I'd say, Brian, that is not funny. He'd go, yeah, it is, Mom. You just don't get my sense of humor.
Brian's dad said we had him go to counseling. You know, we were just kind of concerned about that He made jokes about making nooses and doing this and that and I don't know We just played it off as normal talk, but i'm like, you know, brian We wouldn't you know, but I didn't know the depth of the water. I don't I don't understand. He's obviously sick He's obviously very sick because you would notice weird things about him just some days He'd get cold just he looks at me and he's got this cold look on his face
but Brian's dad does seem to be going through it he's kind of curled himself into a ball in the interview room and he says so I don't know what's going to happen now I don't know how we got to get some type of advice or find out what to do because you know my wife she's got her own business here and I have my own business and I carry the same name as my son and now as soon as it's going to be all over the papers Brian Coe killed someone right now and we can't do anything we can't go anywhere I'm not working anymore she can't have any more kids anymore it's
for the daycare. It's all, everything's over. I mean, it's all done now. It's done. Our lives are totally over. During the trial, they came to support their son. They,
They still testified technically against him, I guess, but Brian even scowled at his dad when he was on the stand. But Brian's mom begged the court to show Brian mercy and asked for better mental care and said that the odds were stacked against Brian from the get-go. She said Brian is not the sum of his mental defects and his actions, and he can one day have a positive impact on society. She said he was a child who had the odds stacked against him from the beginning, a child who was loved, a child who was prayed for, a child who struggled for his entire life with emotions.
Brian does not think and feel like the rest of us. There are arguments on whether or not the parents could have foreseen something happening with Brian. I mean, I don't think anyone expects them to know what day he's going to do something or that he's going to murder and decapitate a man. But it's very clear that his behavior was only escalating. Brian's history teacher, Jeremy, said we weren't obviously the only class that was having issues with him. And again, the mom just kind of brushed it off.
A friend of Brian's mom said, it seems like Terry, the mom, chalked it up to the school unfairly targeting her son. She said Terry had this binder of all the conflicts that she had with the school district. So apparently she said that, you know, when Brian was younger, he was bullied a lot and the school's district did nothing about it. But later, Brian is now having behavior issues from his probably bullying trauma and he gets singled out as the bad guy.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe Terry felt like for some reason that the schools just never liked Brian to begin with. I have no idea. But while Brian's parents seem surprised to a degree, the school teachers do not. All of them said, I was not surprised at all. His journalism teacher said, I mean, I've been doing this for 23 years and I know you can't get a gut feeling, okay? But it's just, I just always felt uneasy around him. Like there was, you know...
And he just needed a lot more help than we could offer him in a public school setting. And so when I saw that on the news, I hated to see it. I wasn't necessarily surprised. But yeah. Wow. Another teacher stated, no, I wasn't surprised. I was just more let down by the system because we had called it out that he needed help. And he had all these kinds of red flags that were going off. And it still happened.
One coworker from Safeway, where Brian worked part-time as a bagger, stated that Brian became more talkative in the months leading up to the murder. He also talked about how he didn't have any friends. So she was trying to cheer him up and she told him, well, we're your friends. Me and all the other coworkers were your friends. And he responded, yeah, out of pity.
One of Brian's friends testified at the trial, and she basically, even during her police interviews, said, well, he never talked to me about killing a homeless person specifically, but he definitely talked to me a lot about killing. And I was actually surprised because I figured that if he was going to do something like this, it would be on a much larger scale. Like, I thought he would, I don't want to sound vulgar, but I figured if he was going to snap, it would be like shooting up a store or something like that. Oh my goodness.
And he mentioned like he didn't like his neighbor. So I thought maybe something would happen there. So I was actually really, really surprised that he had killed someone. But also I was really surprised that it had only been one person. Even later in psych evaluations for the trial, doctors asked Brian how he felt now after the murder. And he responded, yeah, it just kind of happened. You know, it's a thing that happened. It sucks, but it happened. And they asked, what about it sucks? And he said, because I'm locked up now. I can't see my friends and I really miss video games and the Internet.
February 3rd, 2023, Brian Cohey Jr. was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Brian's mom shouted at Brian, I'll visit you as soon as I can, baby, when he was sentenced, and it's alleged that he did not even look at her. Terry, the mom, seems to be coping in her own way. She's got her emotional support animal to keep her company, and it's believed, I don't know how true this is, that she has started a YouTube channel.
The YouTube channel is called, quote, the Brian Cohey story. I don't know if it's her, but the bio reads, the heartbreaking story of Terry Cohey, the mother of Brian Cohey, who murdered at the age of 19 and would have likely gone on to become a notorious serial killer. These are Terry's words, Terry's story told in installments. It currently has zero videos up as of right now.
Now, interesting thing to note, Brian made multiple comments that he targeted vulnerable people, people he thought that would not be missed and would be easily forgotten. But Warren now has a permanent memorial, a metal life-sized recreation of Warren's favorite chair in front of the bridal shop.
And it was important for the community that only Warren sits there. So they all put a stack of books on the seat and their pages blow in the wind. And the book at the top on the stack has on its spine, they wrote, and you also. Warren will never be forgotten, but Brian will be.
As of right now, Brian has been in a close security level prison for about three-ish years and he will stay there until he dies. May he live a very, very long life. And that is the story of Brian Cohey Jr. and Warren Barn. What are your thoughts? The interrogation video went viral and it just, yeah, I mean, I don't even, I don't even know what to say. What are your thoughts?
Leave it in the comments and please stay safe. And I will see you guys on Sunday for the next one. Bye.