Edmund Kemper

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women, including his own mother, and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", 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, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism.

Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight concurrent life sentences. Since then, he has been incarcerated at California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Early life

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California, on December 18, 1948. He was the middle child of three children and the only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper (née Stage, 1921–1973), a native of Montana, and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. (1919–1985). Edmund Jr. was a World War II veteran who, after the war, tested nuclear weapons at the Pacific Proving Grounds before returning to California, where he worked as an electrician. Weighing 13 pounds (5.9 kg) as a newborn, Kemper was a head taller than his peers by the age of four.

In his youth, Kemper performed rites with his younger sister's dolls that culminated in him removing their heads and hands. On one occasion, when his elder sister, Susan Hughey Kemper (1943–2014), teased him and asked why he did not try to kiss his teacher, he replied, "If I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first." Kemper recalled that as a young boy, he would sneak out of his house armed with his father's bayonet and go to his second-grade teacher's house to watch her through the windows. Kemper stated in later interviews that some of his favorite games to play as a child were "Gas Chamber" and "Electric Chair", in which he asked his younger sister to tie him up and flip an imaginary switch. He would then tumble over and writhe on the floor, pretending that he was being executed by gas inhalation or electric shock. In later accounts, he also noted that he was molested by his cousin and older sister, and physically abused by both his parents.

By his own account, Kemper came close to death several times as 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 close relationship with his father, and was notably devastated when his parents separated in 1957 and divorced in 1961. Kemper's parents, Clarnell and Edmund Jr, had an acrimonious relationship. Clarnell often complained about her husband's "menial" electrician job. Edmund Jr. later stated that "suicide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with [Clarnell]" and stated that she affected him "more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front."

After his parents' divorce, Kemper lived with his mother Clarnell in Helena, Montana. Kemper had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who he claims frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him.

Kemper exhibited antisocial behavior such as cruelty to animals. At the age of 10, he buried a family cat alive, then dug up its body, 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 which he thought favored his younger sister over him; he kept pieces of its body in his closet.

Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would harm his sisters, and stated he was "a real weirdo" in a phone conversation to Kemper's father, unaware that her son had been eavesdropping. She would often smack him for the slightest act of insubordination.

Kemper claims that his mother refused to show him affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay". Kemper also claims that she told the young Kemper that he reminded her of his father and that no woman would ever love him, though Kemper also complained that his mother was always trying to get him to go out with girls. Kemper later described her as "big, ugly, and awkward" and as a "sick, angry woman". Others have postulated that she had borderline personality disorder.

At the age of 14, Kemper ran away from home to his father in Van Nuys, Los Angeles. Once there, Kemper learned that his father had remarried and now had a stepson. Kemper stated that his father "cared more for his second family than he did for us."

In different tellings, either Kemper's father or his mother shipped him off to live with his paternal grandparents, who lived on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on Road 224, about two miles west of the town of North Fork. Kemper described his grandfather as "senile" and said that his grandmother "emasculated" him.

First murders

On August 27, 1964, at the age of 15, Kemper killed his grandmother Maude Matilda (Hughey) Kemper (1897–1964) with a rifle after an argument, shooting her once in the head and twice in the back, then stabbing her several times. When Kemper's grandfather Edmund Emil Kemper Sr. (1892–1964) came home, Kemper fatally shot him in the driveway. Kemper phoned his mother, who told him to call police. Kemper did so and waited for police to arrive.

Kemper told police that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma", and later said he killed his grandfather because he would be angry with Kemper. Kemper's crimes were deemed incomprehensible for a 15-year-old to commit, and 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.

Imprisonment (1964–1969)

At Atascadero, California Youth Authority psychiatrists and social workers disagreed with the court psychiatrists' diagnoses. Their reports stated that Kemper showed "no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre thinking." They also observed him to be intelligent and introspective. Initial testing measured his IQ at 136, more than two standard deviations above average. Kemper was re-diagnosed with a less severe condition, a "personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type." Later during his stay at Atascadero, he was given another IQ test, which produced a higher result of 145.

Kemper endeared himself to his psychiatrists by being a model prisoner, and he was trained to administer psychiatric tests to other inmates. A psychiatrist later said, "He was a very good worker[,] and this is not typical of a sociopath. He really took pride in his work." Kemper also became a member of the Jaycees while in Atascadero and claimed to have developed "some new tests and some new scales on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory," specifically an "Overt Hostility Scale", during his work with Atascadero psychiatrists. After his second arrest, Kemper said that being able to understand how these tests functioned allowed him to manipulate his psychiatrists, admitting that he learned a lot from the sex offenders to whom he administered tests.

Release and time between murders

On December 18, 1969, his 21st birthday, Kemper was released on parole from Atascadero. Against the recommendations of psychiatrists at the hospital, 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). Kemper later demonstrated further to his psychiatrists that he was rehabilitated, and on November 29, 1972, his juvenile records were permanently expunged. The last report from his probation psychiatrists read:

If I were to see this patient without having any history available or getting any history from him, I would think that we're dealing with a very well-adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence and who was free of any psychiatric illnesses... It is my opinion that he has made a very excellent response to the years of treatment and rehabilitation and I would see no psychiatric reason to consider him to be of any danger to himself or to any member of society... [and] since it may allow him more freedom as an adult to develop his potential, I would consider it reasonable to have a permanent expunction of his juvenile records.

While staying with his mother, Kemper attended community college in accordance with his parole requirements and had hoped to become a police officer, though he was rejected because of his size—at the time of his release from Atascadero, Kemper stood 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m) tall—which led to his nickname "Big Ed". Kemper maintained relationships with Santa Cruz police officers despite his rejection from joining the force and became a self-described "friendly nuisance" at a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local cops.