| Edmund Kemper | |
|---|---|
Kemper's mugshot |
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| Background information | |
| Birth name | Edmund Emil Kemper III |
| Also known as | The Co-ed Killer |
| Born | December 18, 1948 Burbank, California |
| Conviction | Murder |
| Sentence | Life imprisonment with the possibility of parole |
| Killings | |
| Number of victims: | 10 |
| Span of killings | August 27, 1964–April 20, 1973 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | California |
| Date apprehended | April 20, 1973 |
Edmund Emil "Big Ed" Kemper III (born December 18, 1948),[1] also known as "The Co-ed Killer",[2] is an American serial killer who was active in California in the early 1970s. He started his criminal life by shooting both his grandparents when he was 15 years old.[2] Kemper later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. He then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities days later.
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Kemper was the middle child and only son born to Edmund Emil Kemper, Jr. (1919–1985) and Clarnell E. Strandberg (1921–1973). As a child he was extremely bright, but displayed sociopathic behavior from a young age, including cruelty to animals; he purportedly fatally stabbed a cat as a child.[3] He acted out bizarre sexual rituals with his sisters' dolls, was a pyromaniac, and showed signs of necrophilia.
Kemper had a close relationship with his father, and was devastated when his parents divorced in 1957, and had to be raised by his mother in Helena, Montana. He had a horrible relationship with his mother Clarnell, a violent woman who would constantly belittle and humiliate him. Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement, because she feared that he would rape his younger sister.[4] It is alleged that she had borderline personality disorder.[5]
In the summer of 1963, Kemper ran away from home and hoped to seek his father in California. Once there, he learned that his father had remarried, and did not want anything to do with his son; the senior Kemper placed his son in the care of his paternal grandparents – Edmund and Maude Kemper. His grandparents lived on a 17-acre (69,000 m2) ranch in the mountains of North Fork, California. Kemper found it unpleasant living in North Fork, especially because he disliked his grandmother.
On August 27, 1964, Kemper shot his grandmother while she sat at the kitchen table writing the finishing pages of her latest children's book. When his grandfather came home from grocery shopping, Kemper shot him as well.[1] Then he called his mother, who urged him to call the police.[1] When questioned, he said that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma," and that he killed his grandfather because he knew he would be angry at him for what he had done to his grandmother.
At age 15, Kemper was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital, where he befriended his psychologist and even became his assistant. As a result of testing conducted on him, he was revealed to possess an I.Q. of 136.[6] Kemper was released from prison in 1969, after serving less than five years. At the time of his release, he had grown to 6' 9", and weighed close to 280 pounds. Against the wishes of several doctors at the hospital, he was released into his mother's care. Kemper later demonstrated further to the psychologists that he was well — and to have his juvenile records expunged.
He worked a series of menial jobs before securing work with the State of California's Department of Public Works/Division of Highways in District 4 (now known as Department of Transportation or Caltrans). By that time, his height had reached 6'9" (2.06 m) and he weighed about 300 pounds (140 kg).
Between May 1972 and February 1973, Kemper embarked on a spree of murders, picking up eight female students hitchhiking, taking them to isolated rural areas and killing them. He would stab, shoot or smother the victims and afterwards take them back to his apartment where he would have sex with their decapitated heads and bodies and then dissect them.[7] He killed five college girls (four students from UC Santa Cruz and one from Cabrillo College). He would often go hunting for victims after arguing with his mother.
Kemper had managed to stay one step ahead of investigators by virtue of his being friends with many Santa Cruz County police officers. Edmund was a regular at a bar called The Jury Room,[8] which was a popular hangout with local law enforcement officers. None of his friends had any suspicions and freely discussed the case with him. However, his mother's death changed all of that.
On May 7, 1972, Kemper was driving in his car near the UC Santa Cruz when he picked up two 18-year-old hitchhiking students, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, who wanted to go to Stanford University. After a one hour journey he went to a secluded, wooded area near Alameda, where he stopped the car and choked and mortally stabbed his victims. Kemper brought the corpses to his mother's house and then in his own room, there he took some pornographic photographs of the dead naked bodies. After this, he tore the corpses apart with a knife and put pieces of flesh in a bag, which he later abandoned near the mountains. Kemper had oral sex with Luchessa's severed head and then threw the pieces of her body in a gorge.
On the night of September 14, 1972, Kemper picked up 15-year-old Aiko Koo, who had decided to hitchhike home instead of waiting for a bus. While keeping her at gunpoint, he stopped his car at the side of a road and strangled her to death. He placed her body in the trunk of his car and drove back to his mother's house. In his room, he proceeded to rape and dissect her body, as well as conduct several experiments on her corpse. He later dismembered her body and buried her severed head in his mother's garden as a joke, later remarking that his mother "always wanted people to look up to her." He buried the rest of her remains in the backyard of his mother's house.
On January 7, 1973, Kemper was driving around the Cabrillo College campus, where he picked up 19-year-old student Cindy Schall. He stopped his car in a secluded, wooded area, where he fatally shot her with a .22 caliber pistol, a S&W Model 41. He placed her body in the trunk of his car and drove back to his mother's house, where he dissected her in a bathtub. He kept the body in his room overnight until he removed the bullet from her head and decapitated her, burying the severed head in his mother's garden. He later proceeded to dismember the rest of her body and discarded the rest of her remains in a ravine.
On February 5, after an argument with his mother, Kemper left the house in search of possible victims. He later encountered 24-year-old Rosalind Thorpe and 23-year-old Allison Liu, who were on the UC Santa Cruz campus. According to Kemper, Thorpe entered his car first, which apparently reassured Liu to enter after her. Right after leaving the university grounds, Kemper fatally shot Thorpe and Liu with a .22 caliber pistol. He then wrapped their bodies in blankets, and placed them both in the backseat of his car. He drove back to his mother's house where he beheaded them, while his mother was in the backyard. He then sexually abused their bodies. The next morning, he dismembered the bodies of Thorpe and Liu, and discarded the remains off a seaside cliff.
On Good Friday of 1973, Kemper battered his sleeping mother to death with a claw hammer. He then decapitated her, then used her decapitated head for oral sex, before finally using it as a dart board. He also cut out her vocal cords, then put them in the garbage disposal. The garbage disposal could not break down the tough vocal cord tissue, then regurgitated it back up into the sink. "That seemed appropriate," he said after his arrest,[9] "as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years." His murderous urges not yet satiated, he invited his mother's best friend, 59-year-old Sally Hallett over to the house. When she entered the house, he strangled her to death, then left the house.
Kemper was driving eastward trying to leave California, but when word of his crimes hit the radio airwaves he became discouraged. He stopped the car, then called the police and confessed to murdering his mother. At this time, he did not speak of his crimes as the "Co-ed killer", and waited inside his car until he was arrested.
At his trial he pleaded insanity. He was found guilty in November 1973 of eight counts of murder.[1] He asked for the death penalty, but with capital punishment suspended at that time, he instead received life imprisonment with the possibility of parole.
At the time of Kemper's murder spree in Santa Cruz, another serial killer named Herbert Mullin was also active, earning the small California town the title of "Murder Capital Of The World." Also adding to the college town's infamy was the fact that Kemper's and Mullin's crimes were preceded three years earlier by multiple murders committed by John Linley Frazier, who murdered Santa Cruz eye surgeon Victor Ohta and his family. Kemper and Mullin were briefly held in adjoining cells, with the former angrily accusing the latter of stealing his body-dumping sites.
Edmund Kemper remains among the general prison population at California Medical Facility in Vacaville, California.[1] Kemper's next scheduled parole hearing will occur in 2012.