Idaho Professor Falsely Accused in Student Murders by TikTok Psychic

Rebecca Scofield, a University of Idaho historian who won a defamation case against a Texas TikTok psychic who baselessly accused her of helping murder four students, has described the toll of the ordeal in a new op-ed. She said fears for her children’s safety kept her awake at night, sometimes prompting her to stand guard while they slept.

Scofield, 41, first learned about Ashley Guillard’s unsupported videos on Thanksgiving, fewer than two weeks after the killings. Court testimony and filings offer a stark account of the fear and disruption that followed.

“I went and laid in my son’s bed because his bedroom is the closest to an entrance to our house,” Scofield testified at trial. “And I was so afraid for him, so I just sat there at the end of his bed all night and watched him.”

The situation intensified as the weeks passed and Guillard continued posting videos, Scofield wrote Monday in a New York Times op-ed.

“Over the next several weeks, while I was grieving with the rest of my community, this TikTok influencer uploaded over a hundred videos declaring that I had committed a quadruple homicide,” she wrote. “The videos got millions of views. I was overwhelmed with calls, messages, comments and emails, many of which were disturbing or threatening. And I could have been anyone.”

Unable to sleep, Scofield began walking the hallway near her children’s bedrooms at night. She stopped attending classes in person and shifted to remote teaching. Although she remained at home, she said the house no longer felt safe.

Guillard persisted despite a cease-and-desist letter from Scofield’s attorneys, public statements from Moscow police confirming that the professor was not a suspect, and the arrest of Bryan Kohberger in connection with the killings.

“I was not hit by a bus or punched in the face,” Scofield wrote. “Yet I saw up close how the online world can come to feel more real than the physical one. Even after the actual murderer was arrested and convicted, the accusations against me continued. And even though these outrageous claims were made online by someone I had never met, they were amplified by unsuspecting viewers and algorithm-driven platforms, and the harm seeped into every aspect of my life.”

Scofield also argued that major social media companies have too little accountability when their systems amplify claims that can damage people’s lives or expose them to defamation.

“We can try to hold platforms accountable for the harmful content they spread,” Scofield wrote. “A federal law, Section 230, protects online platforms from many defamation lawsuits, meaning that only individuals are liable for misinformation, even if a platform helped spread it. Proposals that would reform Section 230 range from adding exceptions for extreme cases to revoking immunity for social media companies altogether. If the companies making billions of dollars off these platforms won’t protect us, what other recourse do we have?”

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“We can sue,” she added, “and we can also share our stories.”

Scofield pursued both options. A federal jury awarded her $10 million in her defamation lawsuit against Guillard, a 41-year-old Houston woman who repeatedly posted videos accusing Scofield of directing the murders and having an extramarital same-sex relationship with one of the victims. Guillard offered no evidence for either claim and has appealed the verdict to the Ninth Circuit.

“I came to realize that all of us are responsible for the online world we inhabit, and all of us must fight its tendency to propagate lies,” Scofield wrote.

Scofield placed the problem in a broader historical context, noting that major advances in communication have repeatedly reshaped society. She cited the printing press’s influence on Christianity and argued that “the radio helped fuel the rise of fascism across the U.S. and Europe.”

“Digital platforms rewrite our reality in a much more profound way,” she wrote. “It takes a long time to uncover the truth through historical analysis, and even then, it’s often at best partial. Social media destroys that process. Even though many content creators hold themselves to high standards of research, they are not professionally beholden to official codes of conduct or review.”

Scofield and a spokesperson for TikTok did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Last year, Kohberger admitted to the murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20. All four were University of Idaho undergraduate students. The three young women lived in a rental home off campus with two other roommates, and Chapin was spending the night over with Kernodle, his girlfriend.

All four were killed in a 4 a.m. home invasion stabbing on Nov. 13, 2022.

In July, Kohberger petitioned the court in an attempt to take back his plea. He’s due to attend a virtual court hearing Thursday on a motion to have the judge taken off his case as part of that process.