POCONO MOUNTAINS, Pa. — A dense, gray cloud settled above Monroe County in the first days of February, blocking the sun’s attempts to break through. More than a month since the U.S. shifted its gaze to this rural region, a shame has fallen over its residents, the result of an incomprehensible crime on the other side of the country.
Situated below the forested hillsides in Brodheadsville lies the Pleasant Valley School District’s two-story brick campus, where Bryan Kohberger went to school and later worked. Two weeks after Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a quote from the holiday’s inspiration still featured on the district’s public message board: “Darkness cannot drive (out) darkness; only light can do that.”
In December, Kohberger was taken into custody in the cover of night. Instantly, a quaint community used to the calm of its remote geography became a new epicenter in the widening investigation into November’s University of Idaho homicides. The 28-year-old alleged killer hails from the area’s bundle of townships and was staying with his parents when law enforcement burst in and ended a seven-week manhunt.
