Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / Serial Killer Documentary - Teen Killer： Brian Cohee Jr

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Serial Killer Documentary - Teen Killer： Brian Cohee Jr · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:08
Speaker 1: What's going.
0:12
Speaker 2: On, man?
0:14
Speaker 3: Okay, so parents have some concerns with some stuff they
0:17
Speaker 3: may have found in your room.
0:18
Speaker 4: What would it be?
0:22
Speaker 5: A human head and hands.
0:26
Speaker 2: To come face to face with somebody so young, it's
0:29
Speaker 2: kind of scary.
0:31
Speaker 6: The nature was extremely brutal.
0:33
Speaker 7: I cut open his belly to see his guts. They're
0:37
Speaker 7: really pink.
0:39
Speaker 8: Every murder is bad, but this one, it was particularly horrific.
0:44
Speaker 9: He found this easy to do and admits that.
0:48
Speaker 10: I was growling and making the animalistic noises.
0:56
Speaker 11: He seems to be completely detached from the fact that.
0:59
Speaker 12: This was a human being.
1:01
Speaker 13: To understand why somebody kills We have to understand their
1:05
Speaker 13: life story and the silent evolution of their thought patterns.
1:44
Speaker 8: I think a lot of people are familiar with Grand
1:45
Speaker 8: Junction because they've passed through here along the interstate. We're
1:52
Speaker 8: located in the high mountains of Colorado, halfway between Denver
1:56
Speaker 8: and Salt Lake City.
1:58
Speaker 2: It is, I would say, a safe place to live.
2:07
Speaker 8: Brian, since he was a small child, had grown up
2:10
Speaker 8: in the Grand Junction community. His family lived out in
2:13
Speaker 8: the Redlands area, which is a nice upper middle income
2:16
Speaker 8: area of our town.
2:21
Speaker 14: My name is Kellen Pfeiffer. I'm a former classmate of
2:24
Speaker 14: Brian Cohey. I grew up here in Grand Junction. When
2:28
Speaker 14: I was about eight, we moved up to the Redlands.
2:30
Speaker 14: And that's when I started going to Broadway Elementary, which
2:34
Speaker 14: is where I met Brian. Brian lived in a similar
2:38
Speaker 14: part of the Redlands to me. All the people knew
2:40
Speaker 14: each other. It was very nice living there. You always
2:43
Speaker 14: kind of felt supported. You kind of felt like you
2:44
Speaker 14: knew all your neighbors. It always felt like you could
2:47
Speaker 14: always reach out for help. People often brought each other cookies,
2:50
Speaker 14: treats for the holidays. So it felt very, you know, tight-knit.
2:56
Speaker 6: Brian Cohey's family seemed normal. They seemed like they had normal,
3:00
Speaker 6: steady jobs.
3:04
Speaker 8: His mom ran the daycare out of the basement of
3:06
Speaker 8: our home. His father worked in construction. His parents were separating,
3:14
Speaker 8: and they were living in two homes not very far
3:17
Speaker 8: from each other. He lived primarily with his mother, but
3:21
Speaker 8: he frequented his father's home.
3:26
Speaker 14: Brian's mannerisms in elementary school were a little bit strange.
3:31
Speaker 14: He seemed to exaggerate his movements a little bit. He
3:35
Speaker 14: spoke very loud, oftentimes would over-pronunciate his words.
3:40
Speaker 8: Brian Cohey's mother was reporting that he had mild autism.
3:44
Speaker 8: From the time he was very little, she was reaching
3:46
Speaker 8: out for help, trying to have him assessed and trying
3:49
Speaker 8: to get him the right help.
3:52
Speaker 14: I would definitely say that Brian seemed to lack social awareness.
3:56
Speaker 14: Oftentimes it felt like he didn't necessarily know where bounds
3:59
Speaker 14: were supposed to be, or maybe he felt like pushing
4:02
Speaker 14: on those bounds was the best way to get attention.
4:10
Speaker 8: By middle school and high school, the schools were interacting
4:13
Speaker 8: with the Cohey family about things that they were discovering
4:16
Speaker 8: that were disturbing. Brian Cohey, he was fixated on infamous
4:21
Speaker 8: people who hurt people, such as Hitler, Stalin. He was
4:28
Speaker 8: obsessed with crime scenes. He was obsessed with murder. He
4:33
Speaker 8: was obsessed with serial killers.
4:38
Speaker 6: It was apparent in talking to Brian's teachers that there
4:41
Speaker 6: was disturbing behavior, disturbing thoughts.
4:46
Speaker 15: What do you remember about Brian? Not much.
4:49
Speaker 1: Just I remember there was like a notebook that had.
4:52
Speaker 16: Some obviously concerning stuff talking about like serial killer statistics
4:58
Speaker 16: and stuff.
4:58
Speaker 15: I just seem to be kind of enamored with that.
5:01
Speaker 6: So famous serial killers and information about them?
5:03
Speaker 16: Yeah, like kill counts and just stuff like that. That's
5:06
Speaker 16: not entirely normal.
5:16
Speaker 13: I'm Kerry Danes. I'm a consultant forensic psychologist. How he
5:22
Speaker 13: is reading about serial killers, he's researching serial killers on
5:27
Speaker 13: the net, and he's doing all of this not through
5:31
Speaker 13: a lens of empathy. He's doing it through a lens
5:36
Speaker 13: of intellectual curiosity, and he's not empathizing with the victims.
5:42
Speaker 13: He is identifying with the killer. It's the killer and
5:48
Speaker 13: the killer's mindset and the killer's behavior that resonates with him.
5:54
Speaker 8: People came to know him as somebody with dark, dark humor.
5:59
Speaker 17: He'd make comments about the Holocaust, you know, wildly inappropriate
6:04
Speaker 17: all the time. He always looked for shock. He fed
6:08
Speaker 17: on that negative attention. I felt like he was bottling
6:12
Speaker 17: up a lot of dissatisfaction, because he was a really
6:18
Speaker 17: smart kid, very academically brilliant, but he was a little
6:23
Speaker 17: bit of a social outcast.
6:26
Speaker 13: Kohi is really emotionally immature, but also you've got to
6:31
Speaker 13: understand that he does not understand the social world. He
6:36
Speaker 13: doesn't understand the nuances, of social interactions. He doesn't really
6:41
Speaker 13: understand the reciprocal nature of friendships. And he wants people
6:46
Speaker 13: to take note of him. But the only way that
6:49
Speaker 13: he's found that really he can achieve any sort of
6:53
Speaker 13: attention is by being shocking. And in being shocking, all
6:59
Speaker 13: it really reinforces to him is his difference from other people.
7:11
Speaker 6: Brian made a series of posts on Reddit that provided
7:14
Speaker 6: a lot of insight into his thinking and his motives.
7:19
Speaker 4: I saw my therapist today.
7:20
Speaker 18: We talked about how I manipulate others' feelings to see
7:23
Speaker 18: what makes them tick. That because I feel less emotion
7:27
Speaker 18: than others. I'm curious to see what regular amounts of
7:30
Speaker 18: emotion feel like. That I'm like a scientist and everyone
7:35
Speaker 18: else is my test subject. I test painful stimuli to
7:39
Speaker 18: elicit a reaction. I enjoy those reactions, the ones of
7:45
Speaker 18: pain and sorrow.
7:48
Speaker 13: The fact that Kohi is going on the internet and
7:50
Speaker 13: he's becoming more and more extreme in what he is
7:53
Speaker 13: posting shows that he is struggling himself in trying to
7:59
Speaker 13: understand this and he wants to test. Are there other
8:01
Speaker 13: people out there that feel the same kind of things
8:04
Speaker 13: to me? But of course the response is overwhelmingly negative.
8:07
Speaker 13: So that can only feed into this cycle of feeling low,
8:12
Speaker 13: feeling different, feeling other, and also feeling resentful of the
8:16
Speaker 13: world around you.
8:21
Speaker 14: It did seem like whenever a situation happened, maybe he
8:24
Speaker 14: didn't fully understand. Like if he had done something wrong,
8:28
Speaker 14: sometimes it felt like, you know, it was more funny
8:31
Speaker 14: than it was concerning to him.
8:34
Speaker 18: I was bored in school. So I made a mace
8:36
Speaker 18: out of tape and a pencil. I became manic again
8:41
Speaker 18: with no warning. I got the urge to hit a kid.
8:46
Speaker 18: When I hit him on the back of the head,
8:47
Speaker 18: he fell to the ground crying.
8:50
Speaker 4: It was entertaining, so I decided to mock him. It
8:52
Speaker 4: was very funny.
8:56
Speaker 12: I'm Dr. Julia Shaw, a criminal psychologist and author.
9:00
Speaker 11: What I think is most fascinating about the Brian Cohey
9:03
Speaker 11: case is that he seems to have what are called
9:06
Speaker 11: callous unemotional traits. CU traits, or callous unemotional traits, are
9:10
Speaker 11: when you don't feel the same feelings as other people
9:13
Speaker 11: and you don't have the same empathy. In the brain,
9:17
Speaker 11: callous unemotional traits are related to a part of the
9:20
Speaker 11: brain called the anterior temporal cortex. And what you see
9:24
Speaker 11: with people who are high in callous and emotional traits
9:27
Speaker 11: is this area that is responsible for suppressing callous thoughts.
9:31
Speaker 12: Is literally smaller.
9:33
Speaker 11: Being high in these traits makes you more likely to
9:36
Speaker 11: hurt other people, and it takes away a barrier that
9:39
Speaker 11: most of us would have to doing things like murder.
9:41
Speaker 14: It's really hard to know when someone's actually going to
9:46
Speaker 14: take something too far. You know, when something goes from
9:49
Speaker 14: being a joke that you say, you know, to get
9:52
Speaker 14: attention or to be funny to where that actually gets
9:55
Speaker 14: turned into something maybe a lot more, you know, deeper,
9:58
Speaker 14: a lot more scary.
10:08
Speaker 6: Brian Cohey had got his car stuck in the river
10:11
Speaker 6: and had made a call to his family for help.
10:13
Speaker 6: Police were notified also.
10:17
Speaker 11: Hey, partner, come on, talk to me real quick.
10:18
Speaker 12: Sure, I mean, I'm really cold. Is it okay if
10:21
Speaker 12: it's in here?
10:24
Speaker 17: That's fine.
10:25
Speaker 12: I did not know that.
10:27
Speaker 6: It seemed like a normal thing a teenager would get
10:30
Speaker 6: themselves into.
10:33
Speaker 11: Well, you're not hurt, right?
10:34
Speaker 2: You're okay? No, just a little cold is all.
10:36
Speaker 19: Just besides your pride a little bit? What were you
10:38
Speaker 19: doing down here, bud?
10:39
Speaker 1: Well, I felt like I needed to get out, like.
10:42
Speaker 5: And I figured, why not park here and just relax
10:46
Speaker 5: and think. And I parked on the boat ramp, and
10:49
Speaker 5: I thought it would be easy to get out.
10:51
Speaker 12: And it slid into the river.
10:52
Speaker 15: I was able to get out.
10:56
Speaker 6: Brian Cohey told officers that he was just hanging out
10:59
Speaker 6: when he had accidentally backed his car too far into
11:02
Speaker 6: the river.
11:02
Speaker 17: He was an.
11:05
Speaker 12: Inexperienced driver.
11:07
Speaker 1: Okay.
11:08
Speaker 2: Oh, yep.
11:10
Speaker 17: Teenagers.
11:11
Speaker 12: Does he need to stay here?
11:13
Speaker 15: I'm sorry?
11:13
Speaker 16: Is he free to go?
11:14
Speaker 12: I'm sure he'd like to go home and get warm.
11:17
Speaker 19: I'm sure he'd like to get some pants on.
11:18
Speaker 12: Yeah, right?
11:20
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's not a crash.
11:22
Speaker 15: Okay.
11:23
Speaker 3: This is stupid.
11:27
Speaker 6: The fact that Brian's parents were on scene and telling
11:30
Speaker 6: the officers what their son had done, apparently made a
11:34
Speaker 6: mistake as an inexperienced driver, did not raise any suspicions.
11:42
Speaker 14: What'd they say about us looking in the trunk?
11:44
Speaker 19: They're good with it.
11:45
Speaker 9: Okay.
11:47
Speaker 19: Hey, quick question for you.
11:48
Speaker 20: Sure.
11:49
Speaker 1: The back bumper, I don't know, you can probably see
11:51
Speaker 1: it from here.
11:52
Speaker 19: It's a lot of red.
11:54
Speaker 6: On the back of that, dripping down it all a
11:58
Speaker 6: little bit.
11:59
Speaker 19: A lot of red.
12:00
Speaker 5: Looks like blood.
12:03
Speaker 17: Blood?
12:05
Speaker 2: Yeah.
12:07
Speaker 11: I don't know, did your son hurt himself?
12:11
Speaker 12: Maybe just have him do like a self-check, make sure
12:13
Speaker 12: he's okay.
12:15
Speaker 9: Hello?
12:15
Speaker 12: Brian, are you okay? They've seen blood on the back.
12:19
Speaker 20: Bumper of the vehicle.
12:22
Speaker 12: Really? Yeah, did you get hurt?
12:25
Speaker 16: No.
12:27
Speaker 12: Are you sure you don't have any injuries?
12:30
Speaker 17: No, I'm fine.
12:32
Speaker 2: There's blood on it?
12:33
Speaker 20: No.
12:37
Speaker 6: Brian was very calm and cool when talking to his
12:54
Speaker 6: parents on the phone after police officers had noticed blood
12:56
Speaker 6: on the back of the car. He acted like nothing happened,
12:59
Speaker 6: there was nothing wrong, and he was very convincing.
13:04
Speaker 19: It's typical not here to dump a body.
13:16
Speaker 11: Hi, yes, I was just wondering if you could tell
13:19
Speaker 11: me who I could possibly talk to about filing.
13:22
Speaker 7: Maybe a report on someone that hasn't been seen for.
13:25
Speaker 17: A couple of days.
13:27
Speaker 2: Okay.
13:27
Speaker 6: Are you needing to file, like, a missing persons report?
13:31
Speaker 7: I think so.
13:33
Speaker 17: Mr.
13:34
Speaker 6: Barnes was reported missing by a friend of his who
13:36
Speaker 6: ran a local business. This friend would see him on
13:38
Speaker 6: a daily basis and noticed that he had not been
13:40
Speaker 6: coming around for a couple days, which made her concerned.
13:44
Speaker 6: One key connection that we found was a wallet belonging
13:46
Speaker 6: to Mr. Barnes had been located by Brian Cohey's father
13:49
Speaker 6: inside the vehicle, and that was submerged in the river.
13:53
Speaker 8: When they realized that a wallet that was associated with
13:56
Speaker 8: the boat ramp, some local people were literally walking the
14:00
Speaker 8: Colorado River looking for Warren Barnes. He literally shows up
14:05
Speaker 8: every morning, every day without bell, like at six o'clock,
14:08
Speaker 8: sometimes a little sooner.
14:09
Speaker 12: We always let him in before the customers. We give
14:11
Speaker 12: him free coffee.
14:12
Speaker 3: He's the nicest old man ever.
14:14
Speaker 20: I am Gail Gandy. I am the youngest niece of
14:23
Speaker 20: Warren Barnes. Uncle Warren is the seventh of nine children.
14:31
Speaker 20: He was definitely a fun uncle. He liked being around people.
14:35
Speaker 20: He really enjoyed country music. He definitely loved to read.
14:42
Speaker 20: My Uncle Warren would read books downtown. A local shop
14:47
Speaker 20: owner actually would give him a chair so he could
14:50
Speaker 20: sit out in the sun to absorb the sun and
14:52
Speaker 20: read his book and be out with the nature. He
14:55
Speaker 20: would help shop owners bring in boxes and stuff. And
15:01
Speaker 20: that's the weird thing.
15:01
Speaker 12: Is I said, I'll see you tomorrow. He said, I'll
15:03
Speaker 12: be here. I'll see you tomorrow.
15:05
Speaker 2: I don't, I don't know.
15:06
Speaker 3: I just have a really bad feeling because it's unlike him.
15:10
Speaker 4: We are investigating the missing person.
15:12
Speaker 2: Okay.
15:13
Speaker 12: I'm just going to keep looking.
15:14
Speaker 1: Until I hear from you guys.
15:16
Speaker 2: Okay.
15:16
Speaker 12: I'm too worried about him.
15:17
Speaker 15: So, all right.
15:18
Speaker 12: Thank you guys. Thanks for coming out and looking for him.
15:33
Speaker 15: No one wants to address the emergency.
15:36
Speaker 18: Hi, there is an emergency.
15:42
Speaker 2: I found.
15:45
Speaker 3: Something in my truck.
15:46
Speaker 10: Okay, what was.
15:50
Speaker 15: It?
15:59
Speaker 2: I'm Deputy Wick. I work for the Mesa County Sheriff's Office.
16:02
Speaker 2: I saw the call populating and the dispatcher, they'll take
16:05
Speaker 2: the phone call and then they start throwing in notes
16:08
Speaker 2: as they're developing the call and we can see those
16:10
Speaker 2: notes start coming in.
16:11
Speaker 5: My first response was.
16:32
Speaker 2: It's probably a Halloween costume or maybe it's animal parts.
16:42
Speaker 21: I was a patrol deputy at the time and I
16:45
Speaker 21: am now a sergeant. The reporting party had said that
16:49
Speaker 21: she had found what she believed was a human head
16:51
Speaker 21: and hands in her son's closet. So that's pretty much
16:55
Speaker 21: kind of what we had as we were headed out
16:57
Speaker 21: that way. So driving down here, it's just, what are
17:01
Speaker 21: we going to? What am I going to see? I
17:05
Speaker 21: can't just go in there and think somebody's guilty or
17:08
Speaker 21: pull my gun out. I have to let their actions
17:10
Speaker 21: dictate what my actions are going to be after that.
17:17
Speaker 21: As we're approaching, I'm going to gauge what type of reaction,
17:21
Speaker 21: what type of cooperation are we getting? Are they aggressive
17:26
Speaker 21: or calm people?
17:32
Speaker 3: What's going on, man? Okay, so parents have some concerns
17:42
Speaker 3: with some stuff they may have found.
17:43
Speaker 2: In your room?
17:44
Speaker 4: Um, yeah, I believe so.
17:47
Speaker 3: And what would it be?
17:51
Speaker 5: A human head and hands.
17:55
Speaker 21: Are we dealing with somebody that has a mental illness
17:57
Speaker 21: that is hallucinating, seeing this, perceiving it, or... Is it
18:02
Speaker 21: something fake that he's made and he's playing a prank
18:06
Speaker 21: on mom? I wanted to verify, like, you said human
18:09
Speaker 21: head and hands. Are they real?
18:12
Speaker 3: Like, for real human head and hands?
18:14
Speaker 9: Yes.
18:15
Speaker 19: From?
18:17
Speaker 4: That fellow who went missing recently.
18:19
Speaker 3: Which fellow was that?
18:20
Speaker 15: Warren.
18:21
Speaker 21: Warren.
18:21
Speaker 3: And how did you end up with him?
18:24
Speaker 9: I murdered him.
18:25
Speaker 17: With what? A knife. Why would you have done that?
18:30
Speaker 12: I've always wondered what murder felt like.
18:34
Speaker 21: And now my brain is like, okay, we have something.
18:37
Speaker 3: Do you have anything on you that's going to cut, poke, hurt,
18:41
Speaker 3: stigmatize anything without reaching for nothing? Don't reach for nothing.
18:43
Speaker 15: My phone and my wallet.
18:44
Speaker 16: Okay.
18:45
Speaker 3: Well, I'm going to have you face that way.
18:46
Speaker 4: Put your hands on top of your head for me
18:47
Speaker 4: real quick.
18:47
Speaker 3: I just want to make sure you interlace your fingers
18:49
Speaker 3: for me real quick, all right?
18:50
Speaker 15: Okay.
18:53
Speaker 4: How did you come across the gentleman?
18:57
Speaker 2: I was driving.
18:58
Speaker 15: Uh-huh.
18:59
Speaker 5: And I saw a strange shape near the railway. So
19:01
Speaker 5: I parked my car and investigated it and I found
19:04
Speaker 5: it to be a man sleeping.
19:05
Speaker 11: Okay.
19:06
Speaker 4: Where's the knife at?
19:08
Speaker 15: It is in my sunken car.
19:11
Speaker 2: And at that point in time, with the information he
19:14
Speaker 2: was giving, the way he was answering, my brain started
19:18
Speaker 2: to shift from this isn't real to okay, so maybe
19:21
Speaker 2: he found a dead person to oh my gosh, I
19:25
Speaker 2: think this kid really killed somebody.
19:28
Speaker 15: When I killed him.
19:30
Speaker 5: I tried disposing of his body by putting it in
19:32
Speaker 5: the river, but I parked too low in the river.
19:35
Speaker 3: Where's the rest of his body at?
19:37
Speaker 2: Huh?
19:38
Speaker 4: Where's the rest of the body at?
19:40
Speaker 17: What parts?
19:41
Speaker 2: His family is there listening to everything he's saying, and
19:47
Speaker 2: he seemed unbothered and unconcerned with anything that was occurring.
19:53
Speaker 3: I'm going to have you walk over here.
19:55
Speaker 21: You're going to sit in the back of my partner's
19:57
Speaker 21: control car for a minute, okay?
19:59
Speaker 2: Okay. I referenced to Sergeant Stuckenschneider a motion which we
20:05
Speaker 2: used to handcuff, and he's primary deputy, and he said,
20:10
Speaker 2: you know, kind of gave me the head nod of no.
20:13
Speaker 2: We make those decisions based upon behavior, mannerisms, cooperation.
20:18
Speaker 15: How are.
20:20
Speaker 2: You?
20:20
Speaker 17: I'm good, sir.
20:21
Speaker 12: How are you? You said your name is Brian?
20:24
Speaker 15: I'm not feeling too well.
20:25
Speaker 2: You're not feeling too well?
20:26
Speaker 12: I've been very, very anxious.
20:29
Speaker 2: That's understandable. What we're going to have you do here
20:31
Speaker 2: is I'm just going to have you sit in the
20:32
Speaker 2: back here, okay? I'm going to turn on the air
20:34
Speaker 2: for you in a second. That way you're not too hot.
20:37
Speaker 12: Are you a hot-blooded or cold-blooded kind of guy?
20:39
Speaker 1: I am very cold-blooded.
20:43
Speaker 2: The way he said it to me, I took it
20:46
Speaker 2: as he wasn't talking about the temperature.
20:48
Speaker 1: So hop in here.
20:49
Speaker 12: I know you're tall, so it's a little bit of
20:50
Speaker 12: a tight squeeze. But like I said, I'll get that.
20:52
Speaker 15: Air in for you.
20:53
Speaker 14: Sorry about that.
20:54
Speaker 20: It's all right.
20:56
Speaker 16: I can't believe it.
20:59
Speaker 14: Oh, my god.
21:00
Speaker 12: It's kind of a time to not really know it, so.
21:13
Speaker 2: It was a very wild situation to watch unfold. It
21:18
Speaker 2: was kind of like their whole life was falling apart
21:21
Speaker 2: right in that moment.
21:23
Speaker 3: Can you walk me inside?
21:26
Speaker 21: So that's when I had dad take me inside so
21:29
Speaker 21: that I can verify for myself that what we have
21:32
Speaker 21: is an actual human head and hands.
21:34
Speaker 3: Can I go in there and verify here first?
21:36
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, please.
21:37
Speaker 11: We haven't seen it yet.
21:38
Speaker 15: OK.
21:41
Speaker 21: So as I'm going in the house, I'm expecting to
21:44
Speaker 21: see something.
21:50
Speaker 20: OK.
21:55
Speaker 21: I could tell right away as soon as I lifted
21:56
Speaker 21: up the towel.
21:59
Speaker 2: Yeah?
22:00
Speaker 21: It was indeed a real human head.
22:03
Speaker 2: Yeah?
22:06
Speaker 6: This is a home where Brian's mother ran a daycare.
22:09
Speaker 6: Several children were present on a daily basis. And to
22:14
Speaker 6: think there was a human head at hands inside the
22:16
Speaker 6: house was quite disturbing.
22:18
Speaker 3: 22, 42, are you clear for a call? Oh, yeah,
22:31
Speaker 3: you might want to call Investigations. So, oh yeah, he already,
22:35
Speaker 3: I asked him what was going on.
22:36
Speaker 1: He said, I killed the guy.
22:38
Speaker 3: I stabbed him.
22:39
Speaker 15: The head's in the sink.
22:40
Speaker 3: The body is in the river. Does it sound by
22:44
Speaker 3: my voice that it looks real?
22:47
Speaker 20: It is.
22:49
Speaker 21: Now we are actually verified that this is a murder
22:53
Speaker 21: and this is an actual person. Now I'm just calling
22:56
Speaker 21: the cavalry.
22:57
Speaker 11: All right, Brian.
23:01
Speaker 2: We're headed to the sheriff's office and your family's going
23:03
Speaker 2: to go with us, okay?
23:06
Speaker 12: I've got one male on board.
23:07
Speaker 15: We're en route to the office.
23:09
Speaker 2: Brian, I'm going to roll up these windows because the
23:10
Speaker 2: air gets really.
23:11
Speaker 1: Loud back there, okay?
23:13
Speaker 2: We do often try to keep people at ease as
23:17
Speaker 2: much as we can, even in situations where they've just
23:19
Speaker 2: confessed to murder. Brian was just that same even-keel demeanor.
23:27
Speaker 2: He did not show emotion one way or the other.
23:32
Speaker 2: When we arrived at the sheriff's office, we pull into
23:35
Speaker 2: the back area so I can walk him through into
23:38
Speaker 2: our investigations unit. I felt fully comfortable.
23:45
Speaker 12: He was still very polite.
23:46
Speaker 9: He didn't do anything that I thought was.
24:02
Speaker 2: Indicative of him trying to run or be violent.
24:05
Speaker 12: Take another left.
24:06
Speaker 15: Hard left.
24:06
Speaker 2: Right here. Right here.
24:08
Speaker 1: All right.
24:09
Speaker 2: I walked him into the interview room and told him
24:11
Speaker 2: he could have a seat and that somebody would be
24:13
Speaker 2: with him shortly.
24:17
Speaker 6: Even though Brian Cohey had confessed, we knew we had
24:19
Speaker 6: to gain some insight into his mental state and things
24:22
Speaker 6: that would lead us to understand his thinking.
24:26
Speaker 13: What are we dealing with here? Is this somebody who
24:30
Speaker 13: has acted on hallucinations, delusions? Is this somebody that is
24:35
Speaker 13: suffering with a mental illness?
24:41
Speaker 1: My name's Pete Berg.
24:44
Speaker 10: I'm an investigator with the Mesa County Sheriff's Office, and
24:46
Speaker 10: I interviewed Brian Cohey.
24:50
Speaker 1: And Well, this is Lisa.
24:58
Speaker 4: Hi, how are you?
24:59
Speaker 1: I'm okay, you?
25:00
Speaker 15: Good, thanks.
25:01
Speaker 9: I'm Investigator Norcross. I've worked with Investigator Berg for a
25:05
Speaker 9: really long time. Our job is to get the truth,
25:09
Speaker 9: whatever that truth is.
25:09
Speaker 1: When was your birthday, Brian? January 10th, 2002. And your.
25:18
Speaker 2: Address?
25:21
Speaker 15: Which one? Um, I mean, yeah.
25:24
Speaker 1: My first impressions of just looking at Brian, he looks
25:27
Speaker 1: like the typical 19, 20-year-old young person. Brian is well-spoken.
25:30
Speaker 15: He's a smart young man.
25:32
Speaker 1: He's cooperative.
25:33
Speaker 15: He's willing to sit and talk with us. And how
25:53
Speaker 15: did you get here?
25:55
Speaker 1: I murdered someone.
25:56
Speaker 15: Okay. But how did you get to my office?
26:01
Speaker 1: Well, the police drove me here from my mom's house.
26:05
Speaker 15: Okay.
26:06
Speaker 9: When somebody is very quick to say things like that
26:10
Speaker 9: and implicate themselves in serious crimes, that tells me I
26:14
Speaker 9: have someone who has a unique personality here, and we're
26:18
Speaker 9: going to want to talk to them a lot more.
26:20
Speaker 22: One of the things that I knew we needed to
26:25
Speaker 22: ask about was any type of mental health issues that
26:27
Speaker 22: he's either been diagnosed.
26:29
Speaker 1: With or he believes he has.
26:46
Speaker 20: When you say you have a major depressive disorder, I'm
26:50
Speaker 20: curious what those are.
26:52
Speaker 15: Well, actually, I have several.
26:54
Speaker 1: I have high-functioning Asperger's.
26:56
Speaker 4: Okay.
26:57
Speaker 1: I have.
27:00
Speaker 22: ADHD, a major depressive disorder. And they also said I
27:05
Speaker 22: was schizo-something. That isn't me misremembering. They just said you
27:09
Speaker 22: have your schizo-something, whether it be schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, schizopapal
27:16
Speaker 22: or schizoid disorder.
27:17
Speaker 1: They said I had something that was schizo.
27:22
Speaker 12: Can you imagine?
27:23
Speaker 13: At the age of 19, you've got this list of diagnosis,
27:28
Speaker 13: list of labels. Here are all the reasons why there's
27:32
Speaker 13: something different about you, there's something wrong about you. None
27:37
Speaker 13: of this is being addressed therapeutically, and he feels like
27:41
Speaker 13: a freak.
27:46
Speaker 19: It seemed like Brian had studied serial killers a lot
27:49
Speaker 19: to me, and he did want to be like those people.
27:53
Speaker 19: I mean, it seemed like maybe they were his heroes.
27:55
Speaker 14: So my nickname in high school was Jeffrey Dahmer.
27:59
Speaker 22: Okay.
28:00
Speaker 1: I had a reputation that I would become a serial killer.
28:02
Speaker 2: Okay.
28:04
Speaker 15: Why did you have that reputation?
28:05
Speaker 7: It depends on how off-putting I was.
28:09
Speaker 1: In school, I was not social. I didn't like anyone.
28:13
Speaker 1: I would purposely make.
28:16
Speaker 10: offensive, crass, rude comments just to get a rise out
28:19
Speaker 10: of people. To ruffle their feathers.
28:27
Speaker 19: Most people obviously aren't going to jump from I've never
28:30
Speaker 19: done anything wrong to killing a person. They have a
28:33
Speaker 19: progression of leading up to now I'm killing people.
28:39
Speaker 15: Have you ever done it before?
28:41
Speaker 2: No.
28:42
Speaker 17: No.
28:43
Speaker 20: Okay.
28:43
Speaker 7: You got apps, right?
28:44
Speaker 21: Yeah.
28:44
Speaker 15: How about animals? Can you practice on anything?
28:47
Speaker 2: Yes.
28:59
Speaker 4: On October the 23rd, 2018, I killed a feral cat
29:03
Speaker 4: and mutilated it.
29:06
Speaker 1: Cat has quality teeth.
29:08
Speaker 4: It can hurt.
29:09
Speaker 10: So I herded the cat into the sleeping bag and
29:12
Speaker 10: beat it and strangled it and for a snap of
29:15
Speaker 10: its neck.
29:19
Speaker 21: I.
29:24
Speaker 4: Was so excited. Excited in a good way. Thrilled. High
29:28
Speaker 4: on homicide, you would say. Oftentimes, over the next few hours,
29:33
Speaker 4: I would feel its warmth and play with the limp body.
29:37
Speaker 1: I then decapitated the cat.
29:41
Speaker 10: Hit the body in a shoebox, hit the head in
29:44
Speaker 10: a wine cork box.
29:46
Speaker 1: I kept it for three days. Then it started to stink.
29:49
Speaker 10: And then I disposed both in the trash and got
29:53
Speaker 10: away with it.
29:55
Speaker 12: At the age of 16, he kills a cat.
29:58
Speaker 11: I think psychologically, that is... quite an extreme thing to do.
30:03
Speaker 11: It's also almost.
30:05
Speaker 12: The cliche of a serial killer.
30:08
Speaker 11: That is the kind of behavior that is associated with
30:10
Speaker 11: callous and emotional traits, with the inability to have empathy
30:14
Speaker 11: or sympathy for other creatures.
30:16
Speaker 12: Brian Cohey actually says about his.
30:17
Speaker 11: Own behavior that he was, in quotes, high on homicide. Now,
30:21
Speaker 11: what that suggests is that in the process of killing,
30:24
Speaker 11: while he is doing this, and also afterwards, arguably, that
30:28
Speaker 11: he is enjoying the adrenaline rush he's getting, and also
30:31
Speaker 11: that presumably he's needing more and more of it to
30:33
Speaker 11: get the same effect. And so that's what we see
30:35
Speaker 11: with his behavior is that he's graduating to increasingly violent actions.
30:45
Speaker 6: Brian Cohey had talked about killing a cat and keeping
30:47
Speaker 6: the remains in his house. He indicated that he gets
30:51
Speaker 6: some sense of excitement from this, and that might have
30:53
Speaker 6: been part of the reason why he kept a human
30:55
Speaker 6: head in hands.
31:04
Speaker 1: I was driving along, and I see a shape here
31:08
Speaker 1: on the railway track. So I'm like, oh, interesting. So
31:12
Speaker 1: I go up, and as I'm looking, I see a
31:15
Speaker 1: large thing wrapped in a canvas. And I'm like, that's
31:21
Speaker 1: a homeless person. So I grab my knife, I pull
31:26
Speaker 1: back the canvas, and I stab his neck. He was
31:30
Speaker 1: panicking at first in his old man voice. He was saying,
31:34
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What are you doing?
31:36
Speaker 15: Why that?
31:37
Speaker 1: And I said, I've been wanting to do this for
31:39
Speaker 1: a long time. And I just kept on stabbing his neck.
31:43
Speaker 1: I was looking if I do a demonstration. This is him.
31:48
Speaker 1: I was straddled on top of him like this.
31:51
Speaker 15: And I couldn't fight back.
31:53
Speaker 1: It was actually surprisingly easy. I was barely breaking a sweat.
31:56
Speaker 1: I thought, oh my God, he's going to be tough.
31:59
Speaker 1: But no, it was actually surprisingly easy.
32:02
Speaker 10: And during the time I was growling and making the
32:07
Speaker 10: animalistic noises.
32:10
Speaker 1: Why were you doing that? I was supposed to look friendly. Okay.
32:15
Speaker 5: I was so excited, so rushed up on adrenaline.
32:17
Speaker 20: Okay.
32:21
Speaker 22: After I killed him, I just couldn't stop saying, stinky, dirty, dirty, stinky, stinky.
32:28
Speaker 7: I stripped his clothes. I cut open his belly to
32:33
Speaker 7: see his guts.
32:36
Speaker 1: They're really stinky.
32:38
Speaker 7: Sorry, that was morbid.
32:40
Speaker 1: And then I cut off his head. And then I
32:45
Speaker 1: cut off his hands. And then I took.
32:49
Speaker 1: Put it in a leftover box.
32:54
Speaker 20: Uncle Warren was vulnerable without a home when I found
32:59
Speaker 20: out that he was murdered. It really hit hard, and
33:05
Speaker 20: I know I had a hard time just knowing how
33:11
Speaker 20: he passed. It was senseless.
33:16
Speaker 12: We were all shocked.
33:17
Speaker 2: We were just.
33:21
Speaker 12: It was very, very hard for all of us.
33:25
Speaker 11: I think in the heat of the moment of killing somebody,
33:27
Speaker 11: the reason why you might disfigure their face is to
33:31
Speaker 11: try and keep your high going. So if you have
33:34
Speaker 11: done this crime not out of any real reason other
33:38
Speaker 11: than because you feel like you want to know what
33:40
Speaker 11: it feels like to kill somebody, and if you're there,
33:43
Speaker 11: you might also then go, Well, I wonder what it
33:45
Speaker 11: feels like to gouge somebody's eyes out. I wonder what
33:48
Speaker 11: it feels like to cut someone's face. Now, of course
33:51
Speaker 11: that's all very extreme, but if you're already in that
33:53
Speaker 11: mode of trying things and seeing how they make you feel,
33:57
Speaker 11: that to me makes perfect sense that he would try
33:59
Speaker 11: lots of different things and go increasingly more severe with
34:02
Speaker 11: his actions. He's trying to maximize the emotional payoff of
34:06
Speaker 11: his murder.
34:09
Speaker 9: One of the things that makes Brian the scariest type
34:12
Speaker 9: of person is that he found this easy to do
34:16
Speaker 9: and admits that.
34:17
Speaker 10: The crime scene was located near the Justice Center, near
34:23
Speaker 10: the courthouse here in Mesa County, underneath a bridge.
34:43
Speaker 6: There was a location where homeless people do often stay.
34:46
Speaker 6: It's fairly secluded.
34:47
Speaker 15: There's an arm.
34:50
Speaker 4: There's another arm. There's another one.
34:57
Speaker 13: Right here's a leg.
35:01
Speaker 2: Could be the upper arm.
35:04
Speaker 6: This was a disturbing crime scene as there were human
35:06
Speaker 6: remains that were thrown around and discarded after the victim
35:11
Speaker 6: was dismembered.
35:13
Speaker 11: The most common reason for why somebody cuts somebody else's
35:16
Speaker 11: head off, after the commission of a murder especially, is
35:19
Speaker 11: to hide the body. And that is called a defensive strategy.
35:24
Speaker 11: So you have already done this and you're trying to
35:26
Speaker 11: defend yourself from actually having evidence against you. What we
35:30
Speaker 11: also have with Brian Cohey is an offensive strategy where
35:33
Speaker 11: he is decapitating somebody because he wants to, and he's
35:37
Speaker 11: mutilating the body because he's getting some sort of enjoyment
35:40
Speaker 11: out of it or a thrill.
35:42
Speaker 12: And so that is incredibly uncommon.
35:49
Speaker 15: When did you start thinking about killing people?
35:53
Speaker 1: Six months ago.
35:55
Speaker 8: The six months before the murder, Brian Cohey's parents found
35:58
Speaker 8: him with a backpack full of supplies. We refer to
36:01
Speaker 8: it as a kill kit.
36:06
Speaker 1: His parents discovered it. They were very, very concerned.
36:35
Speaker 8: And it did not make sense to them why he
36:38
Speaker 8: would have this kit. So they took it from him.
36:40
Speaker 1: He was trolling or lurking around town.
37:03
Speaker 8: Trying to identify what type of person he would ultimately kill.
37:08
Speaker 10: I was figuring the police don't, this is not to
37:13
Speaker 10: be taken offense, but police, they don't seem to care
37:17
Speaker 10: as much about high.
37:20
Speaker 1: Risk individuals, homeless people, prostitutes, et cetera. So I was.
37:26
Speaker 10: Deliberately looking for someone who lived that type of life.
37:28
Speaker 15: Okay.
37:31
Speaker 6: In early February of 2021, Brian was conducting searches about
37:34
Speaker 6: how deadly a neck stab wound would be, where homeless
37:37
Speaker 6: people sleep, and how people react to being held at
37:39
Speaker 6: knife point. Brian had also conducted internet searches related to
37:44
Speaker 6: river washing away evidence, and also how long does it
37:47
Speaker 6: take for a body to stink. It seemed like Brian
37:51
Speaker 6: was obsessed with committing a murder after looking at his
37:53
Speaker 6: internet searches.
38:01
Speaker 1: So any idea, like, the time of night when you
38:04
Speaker 1: started looking for this person? That night up in there?
38:09
Speaker 15: Which was 10 p.m.
38:12
Speaker 1: And what were you wearing? Well, you know the movie Halloween,
38:16
Speaker 1: Michael Myers?
38:17
Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
38:18
Speaker 1: For Halloween last year.
38:21
Speaker 10: I bought that as a costume to put on the
38:25
Speaker 10: mask in my room.
38:27
Speaker 2: OK.
38:27
Speaker 10: And, yeah, I just associated that piece of article of
38:32
Speaker 10: clothing with violence.
38:34
Speaker 1: That's what I was wearing it.
38:36
Speaker 17: That night?
38:37
Speaker 9: Yes.
38:39
Speaker 13: He's getting himself psyched up for this grand event. So
38:45
Speaker 13: it's almost like a kid playing dress-up This is an
38:49
Speaker 13: outfit that he associates with violence, and he's trying to
38:54
Speaker 13: get himself into character.
38:56
Speaker 10: He actually went home to bed, couldn't sleep, because he was.
39:01
Speaker 1: Afraid he had left evidence.
39:18
Speaker 8: And that's when he returned to the scene behind the
39:21
Speaker 8: Justice Center and ultimately took pieces of the body and
39:25
Speaker 8: disposed of the primary pieces of the body in the
39:27
Speaker 8: Colorado River, which is when his car got stuck in
39:30
Speaker 8: the river. The rest of his torso and legs were
39:35
Speaker 8: never discovered. I have never handled a murder case where
39:41
Speaker 8: a human body was murdered and destroyed after the murder
39:46
Speaker 8: in this way.
39:49
Speaker 6: There was more than enough evidence found in the home
39:51
Speaker 6: and at the scenes, in addition to Brian's confession, to
39:54
Speaker 6: determine that he was the person who had killed Warren Barnes.
40:07
Speaker 8: He was very much looking forward to the consequences that
40:11
Speaker 8: he knew were going to be coming. He just misjudged
40:14
Speaker 8: the amount of the consequences.
40:21
Speaker 1: What did it feel like?
40:23
Speaker 15: It was intense.
40:25
Speaker 1: It was, um, it was a rush of adrenaline. It
40:30
Speaker 1: wasn't fear. It was just pure... What's the word? Um, excitement,
40:37
Speaker 1: I suppose.
40:38
Speaker 22: Not excitement as in joy, just excitement as in increased heartbeat.
40:43
Speaker 1: Did you enjoy it or not enjoy it?
40:45
Speaker 2: Um.
40:48
Speaker 1: Did I enjoy it? I think when.
40:54
Speaker 22: He says, I didn't enjoy it, but I didn't hate it,
41:01
Speaker 22: what he's trying to say is, I'm not a sadist.
41:14
Speaker 12: I didn't do this just because I get pleasure from
41:16
Speaker 12: hurting people.
41:17
Speaker 11: It's more that I did a thing because I thought
41:19
Speaker 11: it was interesting, and we know that he got at
41:23
Speaker 11: least a thrill out of it, that emotional slash just
41:26
Speaker 11: physical response that he was maybe struggling to get elsewhere.
41:31
Speaker 11: I think Brian Cohey killed Warren Barnes because he wanted
41:34
Speaker 11: to feel something. And notably, and this is where we
41:38
Speaker 11: get to those callous, unemotional traits, He seems to be
41:42
Speaker 11: completely detached from the fact that he has taken somebody's life.
41:45
Speaker 11: He doesn't have those feelings of remorse and guilt.
41:53
Speaker 19: After his interview, we took Brian back to the jail
41:55
Speaker 19: and as he was sitting in booking, he kind of
41:58
Speaker 19: grinned and said, I feel like Hannibal Lecter right now
42:01
Speaker 19: and kind of got a grin like he was a
42:03
Speaker 19: celebrity at this point because he had now killed somebody
42:06
Speaker 19: and got arrested. Because you don't hear about serial killers
42:09
Speaker 19: that don't get caught. So now he got caught and
42:13
Speaker 19: he's famous in his mind, I believe. But then it
42:15
Speaker 19: was almost like another part of euphoria of, and now
42:18
Speaker 19: I get to go to jail and tell people I'm
42:20
Speaker 19: a killer.
42:27
Speaker 6: Brian pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was
42:30
Speaker 6: looking at a life sentence.
42:34
Speaker 8: This crime sounds crazy. But just because it sounds crazy
42:42
Speaker 8: and is not expected, that does not make him insane.
42:48
Speaker 13: The plea of not guilty by reason of insanity was
42:52
Speaker 13: entirely dismissed because actually he had proven his legal sanity
42:58
Speaker 13: all the way through his police interview. He was not hallucinating.
43:03
Speaker 13: He was not struggling with paranoid beliefs. or delusions. He
43:09
Speaker 13: was fully in control of his behavior.
43:15
Speaker 6: I think the jury did have a hard time hearing
43:17
Speaker 6: the story of what happened to Mr. Barnes, that he
43:20
Speaker 6: was an innocent victim who did nothing to provoke the situation.
43:24
Speaker 6: I think it was a lot to handle for them.
43:28
Speaker 20: The fact that this monster would attack a 69-year-old man
43:38
Speaker 20: while he was sleeping. It was such a cowardly act.
43:43
Speaker 20: The judge said this was the worst crime he had
43:48
Speaker 20: ever heard in his lifetime on the bench. I know
43:54
Speaker 20: it shocked everybody. It wasn't just our family that was affected.
43:59
Speaker 20: It was pretty much everybody in this valley was affected
44:04
Speaker 20: by it.
44:06
Speaker 8: Ryan Cohey, who committed first-degree murder. Every murder is bad,
44:10
Speaker 8: but this one, it was particularly horrific. Ultimately, he's serving
44:15
Speaker 8: the appropriate sentence of life, life without parole.
44:20
Speaker 13: I think that Cohey killed Warren because he was feeling down,
44:26
Speaker 13: feeling lost, feeling that he couldn't relate to anybody in
44:32
Speaker 13: the world other than serial killers.
44:36
Speaker 11: I think there were two things going on when Brian
44:38
Speaker 11: Cohey murdered Warren Barnes.
44:41
Speaker 12: I think the first thing is he was thrill-seeking.
44:43
Speaker 11: He was trying to get a rush, and we could
44:45
Speaker 11: see that as a pattern of behavior where he perpetrated
44:48
Speaker 11: various violent acts over the course of his life, and
44:50
Speaker 11: they got more and more extreme.
44:52
Speaker 12: The other thing that I think was happening is.
44:54
Speaker 11: That we know that Brian Cohey had a fascination with
44:57
Speaker 11: serial killers.
44:58
Speaker 12: He would record their kill counts.
45:01
Speaker 11: He was fascinated by the fame that comes with killing people.
45:07
Speaker 11: And I think it's possible that he saw himself as
45:10
Speaker 11: someone who would fit that kind of label, that maybe that.
45:15
Speaker 12: Kind of fame would look good on him.
45:18
Speaker 13: This is somebody that is really struggling to experience any
45:23
Speaker 13: kind of emotion. He's so cut off from his own emotions.
45:25
Speaker 13: He doesn't have a language for his own emotions. You know,
45:29
Speaker 13: he's expecting to feel something. I think that a lot
45:33
Speaker 13: of things are best left as fantasies because the reality
45:37
Speaker 13: just doesn't measure up.
45:45
Speaker 20: Uncle Warren got the moniker the Reading Man because a
45:49
Speaker 20: lot of the downtown business owners saw him reading all
45:54
Speaker 20: the time. There is a a memorial downtown off of
45:59
Speaker 20: Main Street. I believe that we should remember my Uncle
46:02
Speaker 20: Warren being the kind, generous person that he was. Remember
46:08
Speaker 20: to take time just to go out and soak up
46:12
Speaker 20: some sun. Tomorrow may not come for you. Enjoy the
46:17
Speaker 20: little things in life and the here and now.