When he was just a teenager, Edmund Kemper committed a double homicide that shocked both his family and police, leading medical professionals to diagnose the 15-year-old with a serious mental illness. After spending several years in a psychiatric hospital, however, Ed Kemper was released at the age of 21, only to commit the series of killings that earned him the nicknames the "Co-ed Killer" and the "Co-ed Butcher" within months of leaving the secure facility.
However, his penultimate killing, in which Kemper murdered the woman he blamed for many of his problems, was truly shocking, not only because of his relationship to the victim, but also because of the depraved acts he subjected her body to after beating her to death with a hammer. Now in prison for his crimes, the necrophiliac serial killer, one of the most intelligent serial killers the FBI has ever interviewed, appears to have no interest in returning to the outside world, and he has repeatedly taken steps to guarantee he will the spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Revolting Facts About The Crimes Of The Co-Ed Butcher Edmund Kemper, crime, murder, serial killers, other, True crime,
He Was Freed For Killing His Grandparents When He Was 21
After killing both of his grandparents with a rifle, the authorities determined 15-year-old Edmund Kemper was criminally insane, so he was committed to California's Atascadero State Hospital for evaluation and treatment. While at Atascadero, Kemper helped out in the hospital's psychology lab and even gave psychological exams to other patients, furnishing him with a unique insight into the instruments used to determine sanity.
As a result, Kemper was able to convince hospital officials he was no longer criminally insane, nor was he threat to others. Consequently, Kemper was released when he turned 21, just six years after he murdered his grandmother and grandfather, and he moved into his mother's apartment near Santa Cruz and got a job with the California Highway Department.
He Played Morbid Games With His Sister As A Child
From the time he was a boy, Edmund Kemper was fascinated by death to a disturbing degree, and he routinely played a macabre game with his sister he called "gas chamber." In the game, Kemper played the role of the condemned criminal and his sister pretended to be the executioner, culminating in Kemper miming painful death throes.
In addition to this bizarre form of recreation, Kemper tortured and killed animals, including the family cat. In an act of dismemberment that seemed to foretell his future crimes, after burying the poor animal alive, he disinterred his family pet, decapitated it, and placed its severed head on the end of a stick.
He Towered Over His Victims, Standing At 6'9"
From the time he was a child, Edmund Kemper was considerably larger than his peers, and even his own mother was fearful of the harm a boy his size could cause. By the time he was fully grown, Kemper was 6'9", making him a head taller than the average man, and he weighed approximately 250 pounds when he was arrested in the early 1970s.
Given his remarkable height and weight, Kemper should have had difficulty convincing women to accept rides from him, but he used a number of psychological tactics to make the hitchhikers think he was safe, even after they had learned that a serial killer was operating in the area.
Plus, Kemper's mother worked at the University of California, Santa Cruz, so he had a sticker on his vehicle that not only gave him access to the college campus, it also made young coeds view him as a fellow student or school employee they could trust.
His High IQ Helped Him Commit His Crimes
During his time at the Atascadero State Hospital, doctors administered a number of psychological tests to Kemper, including an exam to determine his IQ. At age 15, hospital staff found he had an IQ of 136, which is considered to be well above average.
After he was apprehended for the crimes he committed as an adult in the early 1970s, Kemper was given yet another IQ test, and the doctors found he had an IQ of 145, making him near genius. While his intelligence undoubtedly helped him commit murders and avoid detection, it also gave Kemper insight into his crimes, which he shared with FBI profilers who were eager to learn more about the minds of serial killers like the Co-ed Killer.
He Dismembered His Victims
After killing his victims, Edmund Kemper brought their dead bodies back to his home to dismember their corpses, sometimes performing this grisly task in his bathtub. In the case of 15-year-old Aiko Koo, he decapitated the teenager and put her head in the trunk of his car, intending to dispose of it in the mountains. On his way to discard Koo's remains, Kemper kept a scheduled appointment with a psychiatrist: the doctor deemed the serial killer no longer a threat to others, recommending his juvenile record should be sealed, all while Kemper had a severed head in the trunk of his vehicle.
In an interview with the authorities after he was apprehended, Kemper admitted that when he saw an attractive woman, part of him thought about what it what it would be like to take her on a date, while another part of him wondered "how her head would look on a stick."
He Committed Necrophilia
When he was a child, Kemper's sister teases him about having a crush on one of his teachers, to which he reportedly replied, "If I kissed her, I'd have to kill her first." This disturbing statement proved prescient, as Kemper later demonstrated a bizarre desire to mix death with sexuality.
After killing his victims, Edmund Kemper dismembered their bodies and then engaged in necrophilia with their corpses. In the cases of Anita Luchessa, Mary Ann Pesce, and Cindy Schall, he decapitated the young women and used their severed heads to perform oral sex on himself. He also vaginally raped the corpses of some of his victims after killing them, and he took nude photographs of many of their lifeless bodies.
Two Other Serial Killers Were Operating In The Same Area When He Was Committing Murders
At the same time Edmund Kemper was murdering young female hitchhikers in Santa Cruz, California, two other serial killers, Herbert Mullin and John Linley Frazier, were also operating in the area. Because so many people were being abducted and murdered in the early 1970s in Santa Cruz, the city had the unfortunate honor of being dubbed the "Murder Capital of the World" by the press.
On October 19, 1970, Frazier killed a family of four and the patriarch's secretary, and he was convicted of the murders and sentenced to life in prison. From October 1972 to February 1973, Mullin killed 13 people, many of them hitchhikers, because he was convinced he needed to commit murders to prevent earthquakes from happening in California. Mullin was arrested and convicted of the killings, and he received a life sentence for his crimes.
He Murdered His Mother And Her Friend
Having murdered his grandparents and six young women, Edmund Kemper killed his final two victims on April 30, 1973. While visiting his mother at her home, Kemper said 52-year-old Clarnell became angry with him when he interrupted her while she was reading a book. Frustrated by a lifetime of verbal abuse and a childhood of physical assaults, Kemper responded by bludgeoning his mother to death with a hammer and cutting off her head. As with his other victims, Kemper had sex with Clarnell's severed head, and he also cut out his mother's vocal cords and destroyed them by forcing them down the garbage disposal.
After killing his mother, Kemper invited Clarnell's closest friend, 59-year-old Sally Hallett, over for dinner, only to strangle her to death shortly after she entered the home. After murdering both women, Kemper fled his mother's house and drove until he hit Colorado.
He Killed Female Hitchhikers
On May 7, 1972, less than six months after he was released from Atascadero State Hospital for killing his grandparents, Kemper murdered Anita Mary Luchessa and Mary Ann Pesce, two 18-year-old college students he picked up as hitchhikers. He drove the teenagers to an isolated area, stabbed and strangled the girls to death, and took their corpses back to his home, where he engaged in a disturbing post-mortem ritual.
Months later, on September 14, 1972, Kemper offered to drive 15-year-old Aiko Koo to a dance class. However, instead of taking the teenager to her destination, he threatened Koo with a gun and drove her to a remote location. Incredibly, he accidentally locked himself out of the car, leaving the 15-year-old inside the vehicle with his keys, but Kemper was somehow able to convince the girl to open the door for him. Sadly, he choked Koo to death and took her lifeless body back to his house.
On January 7, 1973, Kemper killed a fourth female hitchhiker, 18-year-old Cynthia Ann Schall, after driving the college student to a secluded spot and shooting her to death. The following month, Kemper murdered Rosalind Heather Thorpe, 23, and Alice Helen Lie, 20, by shooting both of them with a .22 caliber pistol. After killing the young women, Kemper wrapped their dead bodies in blankets and drove through a security gate, telling the guard his passengers had passed out from drinking too much.
He Murdered His Grandparents When He Was A Teenager
On August 27, 1964, 15-year-old Edmund Emil Kemper III killed his first victims when he murdered both of his paternal grandparents while staying with them at the elderly couple's ranch in North Fork, California. Kemper killed his grandmother Maude by shooting her in her back and head with a rifle and stabbing her repeatedly, and then he murdered his grandfather by shooting his namesake when he arrived home.
After ending the lives of both of his grandparents, Kemper phoned his mother to tell her what he'd done. When police arrived at the remote California farm, Kemper explained the murders by telling officers, "I just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma."