Serial Killer Edward Kemper

He kicked off his famous serial killing spree by murdering his mother and paternal grandparents.

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California, on the 18th of December, 1948, to Clarnell and Edmund Senior. He weighed an astonishing 13 pounds at birth, which was an unusually large size for a baby.

The relationship between his parents was extremely violent and tumultuous. He was the only son and the middle child of three.

Kemper’s father stated that living with his wife Clarnell was worse than "Suicide missions in wartime . He said the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with [Clarnell]" and that she affected him "more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did."

It’s almost incomprehensible the tortures the young boy endured at the hands of his parents. The abuses he endured may or may not be the trigger for his life as a serial killer.

Early on, he exhibited antisocial behavior, such as cruelty to animals; at the age of 10, he buried a pet cat alive, then dug it up, decapitated it, and mounted its head on a spike.

Kemper later stated that he derived pleasure from successfully lying to his family about killing the cat. At the age of 13, he killed another family cat when he perceived it to be favoring his younger sister, Allyn Lee Kemper (b. 1951), over him; he kept pieces of it in his closet until his mother found them.

Kemper also had near-death experiences when he was a child. Once, his elder sister tried to push him in front of a train. Another time, she pushed him into the deep end of a swimming pool, where Kemper almost drowned.

Kemper had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him. After his parents divorced, he was forced to live with his mother. He referred to her as a "sick, angry woman.” She was thought to have Borderline Personality Disorder.

In August of 1964, at 15, Kemper got into a heated verbal argument with his grandmother Maude while sitting at the kitchen table.

Enraged, Edmund stormed off and retrieved his grandfather’s .22 rifle. He positioned himself at a vantage point adjacent to the porch window. Then he slowly lifted the rifle to the window sill, aimed towards his grandmother, and fired.

The first bullet struck his unsuspecting grandmother in the back of the head. He fired two more shots in quick succession, which struck her in the back. Just in case she wasn’t dead, he dropped the rifle, entered the kitchen, and picked up a butcher knife. Then he dragged his grandmother’s lifeless body into her bedroom, where he proceeded to stab her three times. He then murdered his grandfather, who returned home from the grocery store.

When he was later asked why he’d murdered his grandparents, he said, ‘I just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma.’

After he murdered his grandparents, court psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. He was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security facility in San Luis Obispo County that houses mentally ill convicts. It is one of the largest mental health facilities in the world.

Released on parole

Kemper was released on parole on his 21st birthday. He flew under the radar for a couple of years, at one point even applying to be a state trooper . He was rejected because he was too big at 6 feet 9 inches and 300 pounds.

How did he manage to get released? According to Dr. Alfred Rucci, the hospital’s acting director at the time, it was because there are no certainties in psychiatry when it comes to predicting murder and violence by people who are considered criminally insane.

“Most of this work is a matter of an educated guess,” Rucci told the Los Angeles Times in May 1973.

Modern experts who’ve studied Kemper’s horrifying crimes have different viewpoints.

11-Month Killing Spree

He was released into the care of his mother Clarnell—who, by this time, had remarried, taken the surname Strandberg, and divorced again. Clarnell then resided in Aptos, California, a short drive from where she worked as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz *UCSC)

Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper killed eight people. He would pick up female students who were hitchhiking and take them to isolated areas where he would shoot, stab, smother, or strangle them. He would then take their bodies back to his home, where he decapitated them, performed irrumatio on their severed heads, had sexual intercourse with their corpses, and then dismembered them.

During this 11-month murder spree, Kemper killed five college students, one high school student (a 15-year-old girl), his mother, and his mother's best friend.

Kemper has stated in interviews that he often searched for victims after having arguments with his mother and that she refused to introduce him to women attending the university where she worked.

He recalled: "She would say, 'You're just like your father. You don't deserve to get to know them”.

While trying to understand his murderous spree. Psychiatrists and Kemper himself have espoused the belief that the young women were surrogates for his ultimate target: his mother.

His killing period covered the period of May 1972 to April 1973. As serial killers go, his time as a murderer was short, but he managed to cause great pain and suffering.

Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper butchered five college students, a high school student, his mother, and her best friend. He raped his first victim, had sexual intercourse with the bodies of his next five victims, and had sex with his mother’s head.

He severed the heads of all his victims except that of his mother’s best friend, whom he strangled on April 20, 1973, to support a made-up story that she and his mother had gone away on vacation together.

Kemper, who became known as the “Co-Ed Killer,” was arrested four days later after he drove to Pueblo, Colorado, and called the police from a phone booth to confess.

Kemper was also called the Co-ed Butcher, as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California.

Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, and dismemberment

Requested the death penalty

Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California then, and he received eight concurrent life sentences instead.

Since then, he has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Shortly after arriving at Vacaville. in 1973, Kemper was admitted to psychiatrists for re-evaluation. He was re-diagnosed with antisocial narcissistic and schizotypal personality disorders.

While incarcerated, the ‘Co-ed Butcher’ has reportedly been a model prisoner.

He has been active with Bible Study groups, has become an award-winner potter, and has even directed a books-for-the-blind program and narrated a number of the books himself.

Over the years, Edmund has been up for parole, but during each hearing, he expressed the belief that he should remain in prison for the rest of his life, stating: ‘I think I could handle parole… but I believe wholeheartedly that society is not ready in any shape or form for me. I can’t fault them for that.

He was denied parole in 2017 and is next eligible in 2024.