If you fail in yer exam. You can always become a serial
killer
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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. Due to his imposing stature (he stood 6'9" and weighed over
300 pounds), his victims stood little chance of defending
themselves.
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[citation
needed].
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.[citation
needed]
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. 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.[citation
needed]
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.
