Edmund Kemper

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 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." 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. 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. 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" Kemper claims that his mother refused to show him affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay". though Kemper also complained that his mother was always trying to get him to go out with girls. 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." or his mother ==First murders==

of Kemper taken at Atascadero State Hospital in 1964 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'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." 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. Kemper later demonstrated further to his psychiatrists that he was rehabilitated, and on November 29, 1972, his juvenile records were permanently expunged. at a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local cops. Kemper worked a series of menial jobs before gaining employment with the State of California Division of Highways in 1971. He often had financial difficulties, which resulted in him frequently returning to his mother's apartment in Aptos. 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 () 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 first picked up young women hitchhiking, then peacefully let them go; according to Kemper, he picked up around 150 hitchhikers who were in line with this pattern. This was before he felt homicidal sexual urges, which he called his "little zapples", and which he later began acting on. ==Co-ed murders==

Between May 1972 and February 1973, Kemper killed five female college students and one female high school student. He picked up hitchhiking college students and took them to isolated areas where he shot, stabbed, smothered, or strangled them. He then took their bodies back to his home, where he decapitated them, engaged in necrophilic acts with their corpses, and then dismembered them. Kemper has stated in interviews that he often searched for victims after having arguments with his mother. Psychiatrists, and Kemper himself, have espoused the belief that the young women were surrogates for his ultimate target: his mother. Mary Ann Pesce and 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, who were trying to visit friends at Stanford University. 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. Kemper put both of the women's bodies in the trunk of his car 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. He again drove to a remote area, where he pulled a gun on Koo before accidentally locking himself out of his car. However, Koo let him back inside, despite the fact that the gun was still in the car. Back inside the car, he proceeded to choke her unconscious, rape her, and kill her. Kemper subsequently packed Koo's body into the trunk of his car and went to a nearby bar to have a few drinks, then returned to his apartment. He later confessed that after exiting the bar, he opened the trunk of his car, "admiring [his] catch like a fisherman." Back at his apartment, he had sexual intercourse with the corpse, then dismembered and disposed of the remains in a similar manner as his previous two victims. Koo's mother called the police to report the disappearance of her daughter and put up hundreds of flyers asking for information, but she did not receive any responses regarding her daughter's location or status. Kemper kept Schall's severed head for several days, regularly engaging in irrumatio with it, then buried it in his mother's garden facing upward toward her bedroom. After his arrest, he stated that he did this because his mother "always wanted people to look up to her." He discarded the rest of Schall's remains by throwing them off a cliff. Kemper stopped his vehicle, and Liu entered the back seat of his car. When questioned in an interview as to why he decapitated his victims, he explained: "The head trip fantasies were a bit like a trophy. You know, the head is where everything is at, the brain, eyes, mouth. That's the person. I remember being told as a kid, you cut off the head and the body dies. The body is nothing after the head is cut off... well, that's not quite true, there's a lot left in the girl's body without the head." ==Final murders and arrest==

On April 20, 1973, Kemper was awakened by his mother, Clarnell Strandberg, coming home from a party. While sitting in her bed reading a book, she noticed Kemper enter her room and said to him, "I suppose you're going to want to sit up all night and talk now." Kemper replied, "No, good night." He waited for her to fall asleep, then he snuck back into her room to bludgeon her with a claw hammer and slit her throat with a penknife. Kemper then beheaded her and "humiliated her corpse," as stated in a 1984 interview. Kemper stated that he put her head on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour, threw darts at it, and, ultimately, "smashed her face in." He also cut out her tongue and larynx and put them in the garbage disposal. However, the garbage disposal could not break down the tough vocal cords and ejected the tissue back into the sink. "That seemed appropriate, as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years," Kemper later said. Kemper hid his mother's corpse in a closet and went to drink at a nearby bar. Upon his return, he invited his mother's best friend, 59-year-old Sara Taylor "Sally" Hallett, over to the house to have dinner and watch a movie. When Hallett arrived, Kemper strangled her. ==Trial==

Kemper was indicted on eight counts of first-degree murder on May 7, 1973. 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 attempted suicide twice while in custody. His trial went ahead on October 23, 1973. Kemper appeared to have known that the nature of his acts was wrong, and he had shown signs of malice aforethought. 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 stated that two beings inhabited his body and that when the killer personality took over, it was "kind of like blacking out." 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. ==Psychology==

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. ==Imprisonment==

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." He was also a prolific narrator of audiobooks for a charity program that prepared material for the visually impaired; 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. 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. While imprisoned, Kemper has participated in a number of interviews, including a segment in the 1981 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 E. Douglas described Kemper as "among the brightest" prison inmates he interviewed 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." However, Kemper's discussions with Robert Ressler changed how the FBI conducted interviews with serial killers. According to Ann Burgess, Kemper told Ressler at the end of one of their interviews, "The guard isn't coming back. They're on change of shift. He's not going to be here for 30 minutes. In that time, I could snap your head and leave it on the table. I'd own the prison then. I killed an FBI agent." After the guard came back, Kemper said he was joking. Regardless, FBI agents were required to conduct interviews in pairs and could no longer do this alone. 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." He also conducted an interview with French writer Stéphane Bourgoin in 1991. 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. 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." He was denied parole again in 1991 and in 1994. He then waived his right to a hearing in 1997 and in 2002. 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." Kemper waived his right to a hearing again in 2012. He was denied parole in 2017, and after declining to attend a parole hearing in 2024, Kemper was denied parole again. He is next eligible in 2031. Following his 2024 parole hearing, it was reported that Kemper used a wheelchair and suffered from diabetes and coronary heart disease. A psychiatric evaluation conducted in April 2024 classified him as a "high risk" to reoffend. ==In popular culture==

Kemper and fellow serial killers Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, Jerry Brudos, 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, Buffalo Bill fatally shoots his grandparents as a teenager. Dean Koontz cited Kemper as an inspiration for Edgler Vess, the villain of his 1995 novel Intensity. 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'." A direct-to-video horror film loosely based on Kemper's murders, titled Kemper: The CoEd Killer, was released in 2008. In 2012, French author Marc Dugain published a novel, Avenue des géants (Avenue of the Giants), about Kemper. Kemper was portrayed by actor Cameron Britton in three episodes (nos. 2, 3 and 10) of the first season of the 2017 Netflix television drama series Mindhunter, as well as the fifth episode of the show's second season. In 2025, Chad Ferrin directed and wrote (with Stephen Johnston) Ed Kemper, described as "based on actual events". Lew Temple portrays the title character. Multiple books have been written about Kemper. Extracts from Kemper's interviews have been used in numerous songs, including "Love // Hate" by Dystopia, "Abomination Unseen" by Devourment, "Necrose Evangelicum" by Brighter Death Now, "Forever" by The Berzerker, "Severed Head" by Suicide Commando, "New Flesh" by Pitchshifter, 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, "Killifornia (Ed Kemper)" by Church of Misery, "Edmund Temper" by Amigo the Devil and "Edmund Kemper" by SKYND. == See also ==