NAME: EDMUND KEMPER

BORN: december 14, 1948 (68)

status: california medical facility

number of victims: 10

span of killing: 1964-1973

sentence: life imprisonment

modus operandi: pick up young college women hitchhiking. shoot/strangle/smother victims. dismemberment and dissection. necrophilia.

" When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants to be real nice and sweet, and the other wonders what her head would look like on a stick."

- Edmund Kemper

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Early life

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California on December 18, 1948.[2] He was the middle child and only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper (née Stage, 1921–1973) and Edmund Emil Kemper II (1919–1985). Edmund II was a World War II veteran who, after the war, tested nuclear weapons in the Pacific Proving Grounds before returning to California, where he worked as an electrician.

Clarnell often complained about his "menial" electrician job, and he later said "suicide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with her" and that she affected him "as a grown man more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did."

Weighing 13 pounds (6 kg) as a newborn, Kemper was already a head taller than his peers by the age of 4. He was also intelligent but exhibited behavior such as 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.

Kemper later stated that he derived pleasure from successfully lying to his family about killing the cat.[11] At the age of 13, he killed another family cat when he perceived it to be favoring his younger sister, Allyn Lee Kemper (born 1951), more than him, and kept pieces of it in his closet until his mother found them.

Kemper had a dark fantasy life: he performed rituals with his younger sister's dolls that culminated in him removing their heads and hands,and, 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."

He also recalled that as a little 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.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, flip an imaginary switch and then he would tumble over and writhe on the floor, pretending to be dying of gas inhalation or electric shock. He also had near-death experiences as a child, once when his elder sister tried to push him in front of a train, and another when she successfully pushed him into the deep end of a swimming pool, where he almost drowned.

Kemper had a close relationship with his father and was devastated when his parents separated 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 would frequently belittle, humiliate and abuse him. Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would harm his sisters,regularly mocked him for his large size—he stood at 6 feet 4 inches by the age of 15 and derided him as "a real weirdo".

She also refused to coddle him for fear that she would "turn him gay," and told the young Kemper that he reminded her of his father and that no woman would ever love him. Kemper later described her as a "sick angry woman," and it has been postulated that she suffered from borderline personality disorder.

At the age of 14, Kemper ran away from home in an attempt to reconcile with his father in Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California. 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, Maude and Edmund Kemper, who lived on a ranch in the mountains of North Fork.Kemper hated living in North Fork; he referred to his grandfather as "senile" and projected his hatred of his mother onto his grandmother, stating that she "was constantly emasculating me and my grandfather."

First murders and imprisonment

On August 27, 1964, Kemper's grandmother, Maude Matilda Hughey Kemper (1897–1964), was sitting at the kitchen table when she and Kemper had an argument. Enraged by the argument, Kemper stormed off and grabbed the .22 caliber rifle which his grandfather had given him for hunting. He then returned to the kitchen and, when Maude told him not to shoot any birds, fatally shot her in the head before firing twice more into her back.

Some accounts allege that Maude Kemper additionally suffered multiple post-mortem stab wounds with a kitchen knife.He then dragged her body out of the kitchen and into her bedroom. When Kemper's grandfather, Edmund Emil Kemper (1892–1964), came home from grocery shopping, Kemper went outside and fatally shot him in the driveway. He was unsure of what to do next and so phoned his mother, who urged him to contact the local police. Kemper then called the police and waited for them to take him into custody.

When questioned by authorities, Kemper said that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma," and that he killed his grandfather so that he would not have to find out that his wife was dead.Psychiatrist Donald Lunde, who interviewed Kemper at length during adulthood, wrote that with these murders, "In his way, [Kemper] had avenged the rejection of both his father and his mother."

Kemper's crimes were deemed incomprehensible for a 15-year-old to commit, and court psychiatrists diagnosed him as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia before sending him to the criminally insane unit of the Atascadero State Hospital.

At Atascadero, California Youth Authority psychiatrists and social workers strongly disagreed with the court psychiatrists' diagnosis. 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," and recorded that he had an IQ of 136.He was re-diagnosed and stated as having a "personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type."Later on in his time at Atascadero, Kemper tested higher at an IQ of 145.

Kemper endeared himself to his psychiatrists by being a model prisoner, and was trained to administer psychiatric tests to other inmates.One of his psychiatrists later stated: "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 stated that he 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 stated that being able to understand how these tests functioned allowed him to manipulate his psychiatrists, and admitted that he learned a lot from the sex offenders to whom he administered tests; for example, they told him it was best to kill a woman after raping her to avoid leaving witnesses.

Release and following murders

On December 18, 1969, his 21st birthday, Kemper was released on parole from Atascadero. Against the recommendations of psychiatrists at the hospital, he was released into the care of Clarnell—who had remarried and taken the surname Strandberg, then divorced again—at 609 A, Ord Street, Aptos, California, a short drive from where she worked as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kemper later demonstrated further to his psychiatrists that he was rehabilitated, and on November 29, 1972, his juvenile records were permanently expunged.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 expungtion of his juvenile records.

While staying with his mother, Kemper attended community college in accordance with his parole requirements and had hoped he would become a state trooper, but 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".[30] Kemper maintained relationships with Santa Cruz police officers despite his rejection to join the force and became a self-described "friendly nuisance" at a bar called the Jury Room, which was a popular hangout for local law enforcement officers.

He worked a series of menial jobs before securing employment with the State of California Highway Department (now known as the California Department of Transportation).

During this time, his relationship with Clarnell remained toxic and hostile, with mother and son having frequent arguments which their neighbors often overheard. Kemper later described the arguments he had with his mother around this time, stating:

"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."

When he had saved enough money, he moved out to live with a friend in Alameda. Here he still complained of being unable to get away from his mother, with her regularly phoning him and paying him surprise visits, and he often had limited funds which frequently resulted in him having to return to her apartment in Aptos.

The same year he began working for the Highway Department, Kemper began dating a 16-year-old Turlock High School student to whom he would later become engaged. During this year, he was also hit by a car while out on his motorcycle which he had recently purchased. His arm was badly injured, and he received a $15,000 settlement in the civil suit he filed against the car's driver.

While driving around in the yellow 1969 Ford Galaxie he bought with his settlement money, he noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking, and began storing tools—including plastic bags, knives, blankets, and handcuffs—he thought he might need to fulfill his re-burgeoning murderous desires.

He then began picking up girls and peacefully letting them go—according to Kemper, he picked up around 150 hitchhikers, any of whom would have been suitable—before he felt homicidal sexual urges, which he called his "little zapples",and began acting on

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—who had defended John Linley Frazier and also been assigned to the Herbert Mullin case—but 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, surviving both times. His trial went ahead on October 23, 1973.

Edmund Kemper in custody, towering above detective Terry Medina and a correctional officer.

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. He also interviewed Kemper, including under truth serum, and relayed to the court that Kemper had engaged in cannibalism, alleging that Kemper sliced flesh from the legs of his victims, then cooked and consumed these strips of flesh in a casserole.

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. Kemper later recanted the confession of cannibalism.

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."

Kemper appeared to have known that the nature of his acts were wrong, and had also shown signs of malice aforethought. On November 1, Kemper took the stand. He testified that he killed the co-eds because he wanted them "for myself, like possessions," and attempted to convince the jury that he was insane based on the reasoning that his actions could only have been committed by someone with an aberrant mind. He said two beings inhabited his body and that when the killer personality took over it was "kind of like blacking out".

On November 8, 1973, the six-man, six-woman jury convened for five hours before declaring Kemper sane and guilty on all counts.He asked for the death penalty, requesting "death by torture".However, with a moratorium placed on capital punishment by the Supreme Court at that time, Kemper instead received seven years to life for each count, with these terms to be served concurrently, and was sentenced to the California Medical Facility for incarceration and medical observation.