Edmund Kemper

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California, on December 18, 1948.[6] He was the middle child and only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper (née Stage, 1921–1973) and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. (1919–1985).[7][8] 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.[9][10] Clarnell often complained about her husband's "menial" electrician job.[10] Edmund Jr. later stated that "suicide missions in wartime and 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."[11]

Weighing 13 pounds (5.9 kg) as a newborn, Kemper was a head taller than his peers by the age of four.[12] Early on, he exhibited antisocial behavior such as torture of insects and cruelty to animals: at the age of 10, he buried a pet cat alive; once it died, he dug it up, decapitated it, and mounted its head on a spike.[13][14] Kemper later stated that he derived pleasure from successfully lying to his family about killing the cat.[15] 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.[16][17]

Kemper had a dark fantasy life. He performed rites with his younger sister's dolls that culminated in his removing their heads and hands;[18] 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."[15] He also recalled that as a young boy, he would sneak out of his house and, armed with his father's bayonet, go to his second-grade teacher's house to watch her through the windows.[18] He 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.[18] He also had close-to-death experiences as a child: once, when his elder sister tried to push him in front of a train and another time when she successfully pushed him into the deep end of a swimming pool, where he almost drowned.[19]

Kemper had a close relationship with his father and was notably devastated when his parents divorced in 1957, causing him to be raised by Clarnell in Helena, Montana. He had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him.[20] Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would harm his sisters,[21] regularly mocked him for his large size—he stood 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) by the age of 15[7]—and derided him as "a real weirdo"[18] in a phone conversation to Kemper's father, unaware that her son had been eavesdropping. She also refused to show him affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay"[10] and told the young Kemper that he reminded her of his father and that no woman would ever love him.[13][22] Kemper later described her as a "sick angry woman,"[23] and it has been postulated that she had borderline personality disorder.[24]

At the age of 14, Kemper ran away from home in an attempt to reconcile with his father in Van Nuys, California.[15] Once there, he learned that his father had remarried and had a stepson. Kemper stayed with his father for a short while until the elder Kemper sent him 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.[7][25] Kemper hated living in North Fork; he described his grandfather as "senile" and said that his grandmother "was constantly emasculating me and my grandfather."[26]

On August 27, 1964, at the age of 15, Kemper was sitting at the kitchen table with his grandmother Maude Matilda Hughey Kemper (b. 1897) when they had an argument. Enraged, Kemper stormed off and retrieved a rifle that his grandfather had given him for hunting; the rifle had been confiscated because he used it to needlessly shoot animals. He then re-entered the kitchen and fatally shot his grandmother in the head before firing twice more into her back. His grandmother's last words were, "Oh, you'd better not be shooting the birds again."[27] Some accounts mention that she also suffered multiple post-mortem stab wounds with a kitchen knife.[28][29] When Kemper's grandfather, Edmund Emil Kemper Sr. (b. 1892), returned from grocery shopping, Kemper went outside and fatally shot him in the driveway next to his car.[25] He was unsure of what to do next, so he phoned his mother, who told him to contact the local police. Kemper did so and waited to be taken into custody.[30]

After his arrest, Kemper said that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma" and testified that he killed his grandfather so he would not have to find out that his wife was dead, and that he would be angry with Kemper for what he'd done.[13][30] Psychiatrist Donald Lunde, who interviewed Kemper during adulthood, wrote, "In his way, he had avenged the rejection of both his father and his mother."[7] 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.[31]

On December 18, 1969, his 21st birthday, Kemper was released on parole from Atascadero.[28] Against the recommendations of psychiatrists at the hospital,[7] he was released into the care of his mother Clarnell —who had remarried, taken the surname Strandberg, and then divorced again— in Aptos, California, a short drive from where she worked as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC).[34] Kemper later demonstrated further to his psychiatrists that he was rehabilitated, and on November 29, 1972, his juvenile records were permanently expunged.[35] 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.[36]

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".[34] Kemper maintained relationships with Santa Cruz police officers despite his rejection from joining the force and became a self-described "friendly nuisance"[37] at a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local cops.[23]

Kemper worked a series of menial jobs before gaining employment with the State of California Division of Highways.[34] During this time, his relationship with Clarnell remained toxic and hostile, the two having frequent arguments that their neighbors often overheard.[34] Kemper later described the arguments he had with his mother around this time, stating the following:

My mother and I started right in on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. I've never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone. It would go to fists with a man but this was my mother and I couldn't stand the thought of my mother and I doing these things. She insisted on it and just over stupid things. I remember one roof-raiser was over whether I should have my teeth cleaned.[38]

When he had saved enough money, Kemper moved out to live with a friend in Alameda. There, he still complained of being unable to get away from his mother because she regularly phoned him and paid him surprise visits.[39] He often had financial difficulties, which resulted in his frequently returning to his mother's apartment in Aptos.[34] At a Santa Cruz beach, Kemper met a student from Turlock High School to whom he became engaged in March 1973. The engagement was broken off after Kemper's second arrest, and his fiancée's parents requested her name not be revealed to the public.[40]

The same year that he began working for the Highway Division, Kemper was hit by a car while riding a motorcycle that he had recently purchased. His arm was badly injured in the crash, and he received a $15,000 (equivalent to $91,563 in 2021) settlement in the civil suit he filed against the car's driver. As he was driving around in the 1969 Ford Galaxie he bought with part of his settlement money, he noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking and began storing plastic bags, knives, blankets and handcuffs in his car. He then began picking up young women and peacefully letting them go. According to Kemper, he picked up around 150 such hitchhikers[34] before he felt homicidal sexual urges, which he called his "little zapples,"[41] and began acting on them.[34]

Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper killed eight people — all women. 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.[42]

During this 11-month murder spree, Kemper killed five college students, one high school student, 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'."[43] Psychiatrists, and Kemper himself, have espoused the belief that the young women were surrogates for his ultimate target: his mother.[2][44]

Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa

Anita Luchessa

On May 7, 1972, Kemper was driving in Berkeley, when he picked up two 18-year-old hitchhiking students from Fresno State University, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Mary Luchessa, with the pretense of taking them to Stanford University.[45] After driving for an hour, he managed to reach a secluded wooded area near Alameda, with which he was familiar from his work at the Highway Department, without alerting his passengers that he had changed directions from where they wanted to go.[39] It was there that he handcuffed Pesce and locked Luchessa in the trunk, then stabbed and strangled Pesce to death, subsequently killing Luchessa in a similar manner.[7][43] Kemper later confessed that while handcuffing Pesce, he "brushed the back of [his] hand against one of her breasts and it embarrassed [him]", adding that he said, "'Whoops, I'm sorry' or something like that" after grazing her breast, despite murdering her minutes later.[39]

Kemper put both of the women's bodies in the trunk of his Ford Galaxie and returned to his apartment. He was stopped on the way by a police officer for having a broken taillight, but the officer did not detect the corpses in the car.[43] Kemper's roommate was not at home, so he took the bodies into his apartment, where he photographed and had sexual intercourse with the naked corpses before dismembering them. He then put the body parts into plastic bags, which he later abandoned near Loma Prieta Mountain.[43][45] Before disposing of Pesce's and Luchessa's severed heads in a ravine, Kemper engaged in irrumatio with both of them.[7] In August of that year, Pesce's skull was found on Loma Prieta Mountain. An extensive search failed to turn up the rest of Pesce's remains or a trace of Luchessa.[45]

Mug shot of Kemper on November 9, 1973

Kemper was indicted on eight counts of first-degree murder on May 7, 1973.[3] He was assigned the Chief Public Defender of Santa Cruz County, attorney Jim Jackson. Due to Kemper's explicit and detailed confession, his counsel's only option was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges. Kemper twice tried to commit suicide in custody. His trial went ahead on October 23, 1973.[3]

Three court-appointed psychiatrists found Kemper to be legally sane. One of the psychiatrists, Dr. Joel Fort, investigated his juvenile records and the diagnosis that he was once psychotic. Fort also interviewed Kemper, including under truth serum, and relayed to the court that Kemper had engaged in cannibalism, alleging that he sliced flesh from the legs of his victims, then cooked and consumed these strips of flesh in a casserole.[2][3] Nevertheless, Fort determined that Kemper was fully cognizant in each case and stated that Kemper enjoyed the prospect of the infamy associated with being labeled a murderer.[3] Kemper later recanted the confession of cannibalism.[60]

California used the M'Naghten standard, which held that for a defendant to "establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of mind, and not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong."[61] Kemper appeared to have known that the nature of his acts was wrong, and he had shown signs of malice aforethought.[3] On November 1, Kemper took the stand. He testified that he killed the victims because he wanted them "for myself, like possessions",[1] and attempted to convince the jury that he was insane based on the reasoning that his actions could have been committed only by someone with an aberrant mind. He said that two beings inhabited his body and that when the killer personality took over, it was "kind of like blacking out."[60]

On November 8, 1973, the six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for five hours before declaring Kemper sane and guilty on all counts.[25][60] He asked for the death penalty, requesting "death by torture."[62] However, with a moratorium placed on capital punishment by the Supreme Court of California, he instead received seven years to life for each count, with these terms to be served concurrently, and was sentenced to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.[60]

In the California Medical Facility, Kemper was incarcerated in the same prison block as other notorious criminals such as Herbert Mullin and Charles Manson. Kemper showed particular disdain for Mullin, who committed his murders at the same time and in the same area as Kemper. He described Mullin as "just a cold-blooded killer... killing everybody he saw for no good reason."[59] Kemper manipulated and physically intimidated Mullin, who, at 5 feet 9 inches (1.75 m), was a foot shorter than him. Kemper stated that "[Mullin] had a habit of singing and bothering people when somebody tried to watch TV, so I threw water on him to shut him up. Then, when he was a good boy, I'd give him peanuts. Herbie liked peanuts. That was effective because pretty soon he asked permission to sing. That's called behavior modification treatment."[59]

Kemper remains among the general population in prison and is considered a model prisoner. He was in charge of scheduling other inmates' appointments with psychiatrists and was an accomplished craftsman of ceramic cups.[60] He was also a prolific narrator of audiobooks; a 1987 Los Angeles Times article stated that he was the coordinator of the prison's program and had personally spent over 5,000 hours narrating books with several hundred completed recordings to his name.[63] Kemper was retired from these positions in 2015 after he experienced a stroke and was declared medically disabled. He received his first rules violation report in 2016 for failing to provide a urine sample.[64]

Kemper on November 17, 2011

While imprisoned, Kemper has participated in a number of interviews, including a segment in the 1982 documentary The Killing of America, as well as an appearance in the 1984 documentary Murder: No Apparent Motive. His interviews have contributed to the understanding of the mind of serial killers. FBI profiler John Douglas described Kemper as "among the brightest" prison inmates he interviewed[65][66] and capable of "rare insight for a violent criminal." He further added that he personally liked Kemper, referring to him as "friendly, open, sensitive, [and having] a good sense of humor."[67]

Kemper is forthcoming about the nature of his crimes and has stated that he participated in the interviews to save others like himself from killing. At the end of his Murder: No Apparent Motive interview, he said, "There's somebody out there that is watching this and hasn't done that—hasn't killed people, and wants to, and rages inside and struggles with that feeling, or is so sure they have it under control. They need to talk to somebody about it. Trust somebody enough to sit down and talk about something that isn't a crime; thinking that way isn't a crime. Doing it isn't just a crime; it's a horrible thing. It doesn't know when to quit, and it can't be stopped easily once it starts."[68] He also conducted an interview with French writer Stéphane Bourgoin in 1991.[69]

Kemper was first eligible for parole in 1979. He was denied parole that year, as well as at parole hearings in 1980, 1981, and 1982. He subsequently waived his right to a hearing in 1985.[70][71] He was denied parole at his 1988 hearing, where he said, "Society is not ready in any shape or form for me. I can't fault them for that."[72] He was denied parole again in 1991[73] and in 1994. He then waived his right to a hearing in 1997[74] and in 2002.[75][76] He attended the next hearing, in 2007, where he was again denied parole. Prosecutor Ariadne Symons said, "We don't care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes."[77] Kemper waived his right to a hearing again in 2012. He was denied parole in 2017 and is next eligible in 2024.[78]

While on trial for murdering his grandparents, Kemper was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by court-appointed psychiatrists; California Youth Authority psychiatrists and social workers at Atascadero State Hospital, however, disagreed on the basis that Kemper showed "no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre thinking",[31] further observing him to be highly intelligent and introspective.[n 1] Kemper was therefore re-diagnosed with "personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type."[31]

Shortly after arriving at California Medical Facility in 1973, Kemper was admitted to psychiatrists for re-evaluation. He was re-diagnosed with antisocial, narcissistic, and schizotypal personality disorders.[79]

Kemper has influenced many works of film and literature. He and Ed Gein were used as an inspiration for the character of Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs. Like Kemper, Bill fatally shoots his grandparents as a teenager.[80] Dean Koontz cited Kemper as an inspiration for character Edgler Vess in his 1996 novel Intensity.[81] The character Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film American Psycho mistakenly attributes a quote by Kemper to Gein, saying: "You know what Ed Gein said about women? ... He said 'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right ... [the other part wonders] what her head would look like on a stick'."[82]

A direct-to-video horror film loosely based on Kemper's murders, titled Kemper: The CoEd Killer, was released in 2008.[83] In 2012, French author Marc Dugain published a novel, Avenue des géants (Avenue of the Giants), about Kemper.[84] Kemper was portrayed by 6'5" actor Cameron Britton in three episodes (nos. 2, 3 and 10) of the first season of the 2017 Netflix television drama series Mindhunter, surrounding FBI research of the criminally insane. Britton received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series because of this role, and appeared in the fifth episode of the second season.

Kemper has been the subject of multiple books, including Edmund Kemper: The True Story of the Co-Ed Killer, Edmund Kemper: The True Story of the Brutal Co-ed Butcher, and The Co‑Ed Killer: A Study of the Murders, Mutilations, and Matricide of Edmund Kemper III, among others.

Extracts from Kemper's interviews have been used in numerous songs, including "Love // Hate" by Dystopia, "Abomination Unseen" by Devourment, "Forever" by The Berzerker, "Severed Head" by Suicide Commando, and "Crave" by Optimum Wound Profile. He is discussed in many songs, such as "Edmund Kemper Had a Horrible Temper" by Macabre, "Fortress" by System of a Down, "Temper Temper Mr. Kemper" by The Celibate Rifles, "Murder" by Seabound, "Killfornia (Ed Kemper)" by Church of Misery, and "Edmund Temper" by Amigo the Devil.

• List of serial killers in the United States
• List of serial killers by number of victims