Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) a.k.a. "The Co-Ed Killer" or "The Co-Ed Butcher", is an American rapist and necrophiliac, ephebophilic, and cannibalistic serial/spree killer active in the early 1970s. His murders coincided with those of another California serial killer, Herbert Mullin.
He was convicted of murdering seven women 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. Kemper will next be eligible for parole in 2031 at the age of 82.
Background[]
Kemper was born on 18 December 1948, in Burbank, California. His parents were Edmund Jr. and Clarnell Kemper (née Strandberg). He also had one older and one younger sister and was very close to his father. Because of this, he was troubled when they divorced in 1957 and his mother took Kemper and his sisters and moved to Helena, Montana. Though very bright (he was later found to have an IQ of 145 during adulthood), he displayed sociopathic traits at an early age; he was a pyromaniac and often used his sisters' dolls to enact murders and bizarre sexual rituals. He particularly enjoyed pulling their heads off. He took great delight in torturing and killing cats; one of them he stabbed to death. Another he reportedly buried alive, dug up again, decapitated it and put its head on a pole. He fantasized about being executed by electric chair and would often enact it as a game with his sisters. He was molested as a child by his cousin. Kemper had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him. His emotionally and physically abusive mother would often lock him in the basement because she was afraid that he would attack his sisters, the basement often being filled with rats. She would continually call him “stupid,” a “sissy,” a “real weirdo,” and would smack him for the slightest act of insubordination. At the age of 14, he ran away and made it all the way to his father in California, only to discover that he had remarried and made his stepson the object of his affection. Kemper, heartbroken, was sent back to his mother.
At the age of 14, Kemper was sent to live with his paternal grandparents, Edmund Sr. and Maude Kemper, at their ranch in North Fork, California. Even though he already was an imposing 6 foot 4 inches (1,93 m) tall, he was easily bullied by classmates. He also didn't get along with his grandmother. On the afternoon of 27 August 1964, he shot and killed first her, then Edmund Sr., with a .22 rifle that had been given to him for Christmas the previous year. Sources vary on exactly how it happened; some claim it was a spur of the moment after Kemper and she had an argument. Others claim that she was working on her next children's book when she was shot and that Kemper did it just to find out how it felt. He then killed his grandfather when he came home from grocery shopping to spare him the sight of his dead wife and made two phone calls; first to his mother to tell her what he had done and then to the local police to do the same. He then sat down on the porch and waited for their arrival. After being arrested, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and placed in mental care at the Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He surprisingly got along well with his psychiatrist and was even made his assistant. On 18 December 1969, on his 21st birthday, Kemper was released against the wishes of several psychologists and placed in the care of his mother in Santa Cruz.
After being released, Kemper, still living with his mother, took a number of menial jobs before eventually getting a job at the State of California's Department of Public Works as a laborer. He was then 6 foot 9 (2,06 m) and weighed 300 pounds (136 kg). He befriended several local police officers and even planned to become one himself, a dream that ended when he learned that he was above regulation height. Though he wasn't good with money, he eventually saved up enough to move away from his mother and get an apartment with a roommate. After getting a $15,000 settlement through a motorbike accident, he bought a yellow Ford Galaxy and began cruising the Pacific coast area in search of female hitchhikers, all the while gathering kill supplies such as a knife, plastic bags and handcuffs. He eventually had to leave his apartment and move back in with his mother, who had been divorced a total of three times by that point. On May 7, 1972, he committed his first two murders as a serial killer. Over the following nine months, he killed four more women, coinciding with murders committed by fellow Californian serial killer Herbert Mullin. Many of his murders were committed after an argument with his mother.
Serial Killings[]
Kemper targeted women, most of whom were co-eds aged in their teens to mid-twenties, most of whom attended the same college his mother worked at. All victims during his serial killer period, with the exception of his mother and Sally Hallett, were hitchhikers who were given rides by him when he cruised around. After taking them somewhere secluded, chatting them up on the way, he would kill them in various ways, including shooting, stabbing, and strangling, and then take their remains to his room, where he would perform bizarre experiments on, eviscerate, and engage in sexual activities with their bodies. He would also decapitate his victims' heads and sexually penetrate them orally. One of the psychiatrists who interviewed him using a truth serum, Dr. Joel Fort, also believed that Kemper had cooked and eaten parts of his victims. He took Polaroid photos of their mutilated corpses as souvenirs. After he was done with the bodies, he would dispose of them, often by throwing them into a ravine or a gorge. The heads of some victims were buried in his mother's garden, with Kemper claiming he placed them there because his mother "always wanted people to look up to her".
Kemper murdered six coeds between May 1972 and February 1973.
Motive: Paraphilia, possession, and necrophilia
His Mother's Murder[]
On the night of 20 April 1973, he walked into his mother's bedroom while she was reading a book. When she saw him walk in, she reportedly sneered, "I suppose that you want to sit up all night and talk now."
After hearing this comment, he quickly said goodnight and left. However, a few hours later, he returned with a claw hammer and beat her to death while she was sleeping. He spent hours mutilating her body, severing her head, using it for oral sex, tossing darts at it and throwing her vocal cords into the garbage disposer. When the murder didn't satisfy his homicidal needs, he invited over Sally Hallett, a friend of his mother, and killed her as well when she arrived.
Kemper Quotes[]
- One side of me says, "I'd like to talk to her, date her." The other side of me says, "I wonder how her head would look on a stick?" (On being asked: "What do you think when you see a pretty girl walking down the street?"
- "Death by torture". (When asked what punishment he considered fitting for his crimes)
- "This seemed appropriate, as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years." (To authorities as to why he had put his mother's larynx down the garbage disposal)
- "I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma." (To authorities as to why he had killed his grandparents)
- "If I killed them, you know, they couldn't reject me as a man. It was more or less making a doll out of a human being... and carrying out my fantasies with a doll, a living human doll."
Trivia[]
- His IQ is 145.
- Height: 6'9"
- During a medical review, it was stated that Kemper is diabetic, has had his left second toe amputated, has had a stroke, and has a pacemaker due to coronary artery disease. He has also been diagnosed with an antisocial disorder, narcissistic disorder and schizotypal disorder.
Portrayal in Media[]
- Actor Cameron Britton played Ed Kemper in the Netflix series Mindhunter. His portrayal was widely praised, earning him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series.
- Kemper was mentioned in Dexter: Resurrection as a part of Leon Prater's collection.
Related Pages[]
Gallery[]
