Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18,1948, in Burbank, California), aka The Co-ed Killer, is a serial killer and necrophile who was active in the early 1970s. Kemper killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz, California, area. He then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities. He had previously been incarcerated as a teenager for shooting both his grandparents while staying on their farm in North Folk, California.

His crimes

Kemper was committed at Atascadero State Hospital. He was eventually released into his mother's care in Santa Cruz, California, against the wishes of several doctors at the hospital. It was not the first time that Kemper had convinced psychologists that he was well. He did so during his subsequent murderous rampage and managed to have his juvenile records sealed forever. Kemper worked a series of odd jobs before securing work with the Division of Highways. By that time his height had reached 6 feet 9 inches and he weighed over 300 pounds. Between May 1972 and February 1973, Edmund Kemper embarked on a spree of murders, picking up female students hitchhiking, taking them to isolated rural areas and killing them. He would stab, shoot or smother the victims and afterwards take the bodies back to his apartment, hack them to pieces and have sex with the remains. He would often dump the bodies in ravines or bury them in fields, although on one occasion he buried the severed head of a 15-year-old girl in his mother's garden as a kind of sick joke. He killed six college girls in this way and quite often he would go hunting for victims after arguing with his mother, a domineering woman who had emotionally abused him since childhood.

In April 1973, Edmund Kemper battered his mother to death with a hammer as she slept. His murderous urges not yet sated, he then invited one of his mother's friends over and killed her too, strangling her with such brutality that he broke her neck. The next day, Kemper hit the road and drove east, cruising aimlessly and listening to radio broadcast for news of a manhunt. By the time he reached Pueblo, Colorado, a few days later, Kemper was frustrated that his mother's body had not been found and there was no manhunt. He called the police and confessed over the phone, although it took a number of calls before the police finally realized Kemper was serious. A lone officer was sent to arrest him as he waited patiently by the side of a road. In custody, Kemper gave a full and frank confession to his killing spree, seemingly unashamed as he confessed to necrophilia and cannibalism. At his trial he pleaded insanity, but he was found guilty on eight counts of murder. He asked for the death penalty but, with capital punishment suspended at that time, he instead received life imprisonment. At the time of Kemper's murder spree in Santa Cruz, another serial killer named Herbert Mullin was also active, earning the small Californian town the dubious title of 'Murder Capital Of The World'. Kemper and Mullin were briefly held in adjoining cells, with the former angrily accusing the latter of stealing his body-dumping sites. He is currently incarcerated in Folsom Prison. He allegedly possesses a near-genius IQ.

He was once quoted as saying, "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." In Bret Easton Ellis' book American Psycho, main character Patrick Bateman, himself a serial killer, uses this quote when asked about women, although he mistakenly attributes it to Ed Gein.

Author Thomas Harris based the character of Buffalo Bill in his book The Silence of the Lambs in part upon Kemper. In the book, Buffalo Bill was a serial killer who, like Kemper, had begun his "career" by impulsively killing his grandparents as a teenager.

Victims of Ed Kemper

• Maude Kemper August 27,1964
• Ed Emil Kemper August 27,1964
• Mary Anne Pisce May 5,1972
• Anita Luchese May 5,1972
• Aiko Koo September 14,1972
• Cindy Schall January ?, 1973
• Rosalind Thorpe February 5,1973
• Alice Lui February 5,1973
• Clarnell Strandberg April 21,1973
• Sarah Hallett April 21,1973

Books

• Cheney, Margaret , Why: The Serial Killer in America. R& E Publishers:Saratoga, CA. 1992.
• Ressler, Robert K., Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Tracking Serial Killers for The FBI. (approx. 20 pages on Kemper).

External links

• Murder Capital of the World
• Crime Library feature on Ed Kemper