Edmund Kemper

"When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things: one part of me wants to take her home, be real nice and treat her right; the other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick."

Edmund Emil "Ed" Kemper III, aka "The Co-Ed Killer", is an American serial/spree killer.

Background
Ed Kemper was born on December 18, 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 Ed and his sisters and moved to Helena, Montana. Though very bright (he was later found to have an IQ of 136), 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 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. His emotionally abusive mother would often lock him in the basement because she was afraid that he would rape the youngest. At the age of 13, 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. Ed, heartbroken, was sent back to his mother.

Aged 14, Ed 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 August 27, 1964, he shot and killed first her, then Ed Sr. with a rifle that had been given to him Christmas the previous year. Sources vary on exactly how it happened; some claim it was spur of the moment after Ed and she had an argument. Others claim that she was working on her next children’s book when she was shot and that Ed 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 got along well with his psychiatrist and was even made his assistant. On December 18, 1969, on his 21:st birthday, Ed was released against the wishes of several psychologists and placed in the care of his mother in Santa Cruz.

Serial Killings and Capture
After being released, Ed, 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 (2,05 m) and weighed ca. 300 pounds (ca. 140 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 Galaxie 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 now three-times-divorced mother. 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. On April 19, 1973, he bludgeoned his mother to death in her sleep and spent hours mutilating her body, severing her head, using it for oral sex, tossing darts at it and throwing her vocal chords 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.

Ed then took his car and drove away, all the while listening to the radio for reports about his murders. After four days on the road without hearing any such broadcasts, he stopped at a phone booth in Pueblo, Colorado, called his friends at the Santa Cruz PD and confessed to his eight murders. At first, they thought it was a poor joke, but, after a few phone calls, learned that he was telling the truth. He then sat down in the car and waited for them to come and arrest him. After unsuccessfully pleading insanity, he requested to be sentenced to death and executed by electrical chair, like he had fantasized about, but due to the state having temporarily suspended capital punishment, he was denied his childhood dream and sentenced to life in prison. While in prison, he was one of the first 36 convicted killers to be interviewed by the then recently founded Behavioral Science Unit. He was interviewed three times by Robert Ressler. During the third time, the guards didn’t respond when he called for them and he found himself locked in the small room alone with Ed, who started making death threats and taunting him. When the guard finally came, he claimed to have been kidding. John Douglas, who also interviewed him, later admitted to liking Ed, who was friendly, open and sensitive when they spoke. Ed Kemper is still (February 2011) serving his sentence at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville and has his next parole hearing scheduled in 2012.

Modus Operandi
Kemper targeted women, most of which were co-eds. 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 took Polaroid photos of their mutilated corpses as souvenirs. After he was done with the remains, 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.

Known Victims

 * August 27, 1964: Edmund Kemper Sr. and Maude Kemper
 * May 7, 1972: Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa
 * September 14, 1972: Aiko Koo
 * January 7, 1973: Cindy Schall
 * February 5, 1973: Rosalind Thorpe and Allison Liu
 * April 19, 1973: Clarnell Strandberg and Sally Hallett

Criminal Minds Comparison
Kemper's first mention on Criminal Minds was in Charm and Harm as an example of killers who save their most meaningful murders for last, referring to how he killed his mother. A scene from Damaged in which Hotch and Reid interview serial killer Chester Hardwick appears to have been based on Robert Ressler's third interview with Kemper; in both cases, the interviewers were threatened by the killer when guards didn't show up and stalled for time by talking to them.