Idaho murder suspect Bryan Kohberger was an ‘alpha’ bully

Accused quadruple murderer Bryan Kohberger was an obese, heroin-addicted bully who sought to be the “alpha” among his pals, they recalled in new interviews.

“It almost seemed to me he had a desire to be the alpha,” Army veteran Thomas Arntz, 27, told the Idaho Statesman of the man he grew up with in Pennsylvania.

“He always wanted to be dominant physically and intellectually.

“He had to show that he was smarter and bigger than you, and try to put me down and make me feel insecure about myself,” said Arntz, who ultimately completely cut ties with Kohberger eight years ago.

“So much of that was a torment and I didn’t want to be around him anymore.”

Arntz remembered the now-28-year-old suspected stabber as growing up desperately wanting to be a cop despite weighing more than 300 pounds.

After his junior year in high school in Brodheadsville, Kohberger started running and taking kickboxing classes every day, losing at least half his body weight, the friends said.

He lost so much that he needed surgery for the loose skin, and developed an eating disorder that left the vegan hospitalized, his pals told the outlet.

It also made him all the more aggressive, said Arntz, who previously shared the same info with the FBI.

“For no reason, he’d try to grapple me and put me in headlocks when I didn’t want to. He tried to portray it as just boys being boys, but that’s not the way I ever took it,” he recalled.

As he alienated his circle of friends, Kohberger took up with a new crowd heavily into drugs, the former friends said.

“Honestly, I feel he was looking for validation, and that’s why he fell into that crowd,” Arntz’s 29-year-old sister Casey told the Statesman.

“And honestly, it’s why he fell into the whole drug scene.”

At least two of those friends later overdosed and died after a string of drug busts, the report noted.

“I think drugs goofed [Kohberger] pretty bad,” another one-time high school pal, Jack Baylis, 28, told the paper.

“He was having a time. He’d tell me, ‘I’m clean now, I’m totally clean now,’ and he’d have bleeding track marks” on his arms.

One of his then-drug buddies, Rich Pasqua, 31, previously told Fox News that the accused murderer “was a big heroin addict.”

“He didn’t have many friends, so he would do anything to fit in,” said Pasqua, who now works at a rehab clinic.

Kohberger also spent time in rehab, according to Casey Arntz, who shared a message from 2013 — the year Kohberger graduated — accusing him of tricking her into driving him around when he was secretly buying heroin and needles.

“He literally used me to get it,” she told the Statesman. “I was freaking out and not happy I had heroin in my car and didn’t even know.”

Once clean, Kohberger reportedly told friends that he “only used” heroin when “in a deep suicidal state.”

“At some point, he said, ‘Don’t ever bring it up again. We’re past that,’ ” Baylis told the Statesman.

Despite the heroin use and bullying behavior, Kohberger’s behavior never suggested he would one day be accused of the high-profile murders of University of Idaho students Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20.

“No bells ever went off,” said Barbara Tokar, 58, a neighbor of Kohberger’s childhood home in Pennsylvania whose daughter was also one of his classmates.

“It makes me sick in my stomach. You never know. You just never know.”

While a criminology student at Washington State University — just 10 minutes’ drive from the murder scene — Kohberger was busted at his family home after driving back to Pennsylvania for the holidays.

He was quickly extradited to Idaho, where he remains in custody charged with the four murders.

“For the community here, it’s devastating,” said John Gress, who was the principal of Pleasant Valley High School when Kohberger graduated in 2013.

“Out of all the schools, out of all the areas, why? It’s disappointing, and I don’t know if we’ll ever find out why.”