Edmund Kemper: The Coed Butcher Part 1
Mothers tend to be the most influential person in a child’s life. From the cradle to adulthood we’re sought for everything from clean socks to advice. We teach, mold, and nurture as we nurse them through colds and injuries; tote them to school, practice, and friends houses; root for them at their games and performances; and help them through homework that sometimes makes us scratch our own heads. The path of motherhood is a sacrificial one as we lay our prior lives to the side along with many of our own needs to ensure that theirs are met. It is also the most rewarding path one can walk as your positive influence is seen more and more each passing year. With love, care, and compassion we hope to raise well-adjusted adults capable of taking on the world and blazing a trail all their own. Meanwhile we torture ourselves, wondering if we’re doing the right things and making the all the right decisions.
But what happens when a mother chooses to raise her child with hate and dominance instead of love and support? What if she pushed them away rather than pulling them close and holding them tightly? Though the subject of nature versus nurture is highly debated it can certainly be seen in this case that a lack of nurture contributed to the tragic outcome. Sources for this story include Biography, Edmund Kemper Stories, Crime Library, and The Independent.
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in sunny Burbank, California on December 18, 1948. He was the middle child and only son of E.E. and Clarnell Kemper. By 1957 what had been a tumultuous relationship between the parents ended in bitter divorce. Clarnell packed up her three children and moved them to the much more rural setting of Montana. The relationship that existed between E.E. And Clarnell hadn’t been a loving or affectionate one. She was cold as a dead fish and hateful as an old goat. As a mother she was hardly the most caring or nurturing. Alcoholism was likely a contributing factor to her rigidity.
As callus as she may have been it seems that Clarnell saw something lurking behind the dark eyes of her son from a young age. She actually feared for the safety of her two daughters in his presence. Because of this fear she forced Edmund to move into the basement. He was only ten years old and petrified of his new sleeping arrangement. While the rest of the family slept warm and comfortably in the upstairs of the house, Ed was all alone in the dark, cold, musty basement.
Clarnell was outwardly critical of him and everything he did. From childhood verbal abuse was a daily part of his life. She pushed Ed as far away as she could get him out of a sense of fear. She was afraid that he would hurt one of his sisters if given half a chance. Though the isolation he faced in his own home led him to a morbid fantasy life, it wasn’t his sisters he dreamed of killing. His dark and vivid fantasy life was dedicated to the murder of his mother. Little did she realize that with every barbed comment and cruel remark she was shaping and molding the stuff of nightmares. A monster consciously aware of his own evil.
Playtime for young Edmund was a cry out for help that no one seemed to notice until it was far too late. By far the most normal activity he engaged in as a brother to sisters was chopping the heads off their dolls. Hardly a warning sign as many brothers do this to torment their sisters, but there was another game he had made up on his own that should’ve raised some red flags. In a game he referred to as “gas chamber,” Ed would have his sisters blindfold him and lead him to a chair. Writhing in feigned agony, he would pretend to die from the toxic fumes of the poisonous gas. As children just playing along with their brother’s strange request, his sisters didn’t yet understand why this was so odd. As they grew older they put the game out of their minds without another thought until Ed’s conviction.
The same year that he was relegated to the basement Ed killed the family cat by burying it alive. Somehow feeling that it wasn’t enough, he dug the cat back up to decapitate it and plant its head on a stick. When confronted by Clarnell with the cat’s remains he stealthily lied his way out of suspicion. The rush of almost getting caught and negotiating his way through it without punishment was an all-new high for him. He felt powerful. He felt invincible.
When he was 13 yet another family cat would meet a grisly end at Ed’s hands. Slaughtered with a machete, the cat’s remains were hidden inside Ed’s closet. Clarnell was horrified at the discovery. Though we can only speculate as to what she did or said to her son when faced with the early warning signs of a serial-killer-to-be, I think we can all pretty well assume that it wasn’t conducive to curing the illness stirring within this young man.
Later in his life Ed would give taped interviews with the FBI as a way inside the mind of a serial killer. In one such interview he admitted to being considered a “chronic daydreamer” throughout school. He found an escape from Clarnell’s verbal and mental abuse within himself. The longer he was left isolated at school and at home, the further he withdrew into his murderous daydreams. Between junior high and high school he was sent to a counselor twice. However few questions were asked about him, his home life, or his mental health. The ball was dropped so hard it shattered in this case.
His older sister held onto some disturbing recollections herself. Like the occasion that she attempted to goad him into kissing a teacher at their school. His intensely serious, deadpan response haunted her later. He coldly replied that if he kissed the woman he’d have to kill her.
During those confusing and tumultuous teenage years Ed ran away to California to live with his father. He was quite surprised to find that E.E. had moved on with his life, remarrying and starting a new family. Ed had a step-mother and a younger half-brother that he was learning about for the first time, and not surprisingly, he wasn’t thrilled about it. What he had undoubtedly hoped to be a blissful reunion between father and son was hampered by this young child and yet another woman that didn’t want him around. Regardless, he stayed for a while before being sent back to his mother in Montana.
His step-mother began to complain of migraine headaches after his arrival. She convinced E.E. that his odd older son was the cause of her pain. After all she had been fine before he got there, hadn’t she? He caved and sent Ed back to Montana. Back to the hateful woman that had driven him away to start with. By the time he returned home Clarnell was planning to marry her third husband. Wanting to start a new life herself, she decided that Ed wouldn’t be a part of it. She sent him to his paternal grandparents in Norfolk, California. By this point in his life Edmund Kemper was 15 years old, 6’4” tall, and built like a linebacker. His size was hardly surprising when looking at the imposing size of his parents, his father standing at 6’8”, and Clarnell at an impressive 6’ even.
The eldest Edmund and his domineering wife, Maude, lived on a 17-acre ranch. Having raised their children, they lived alone and managed the ranch on their own. Initially Ed was sent out for the Christmas season of 1963, but he ended up being left there for the rest of the school year. He returned to his mother at the end of the school year, but not for long. Clarnell sent him right back to the ranch that Ed had come to loathe.
There was nothing to do there. It was a new kind of isolation with no one else around on this large parcel of land. Just his grandparents. While the senior Edmund was milder, Maude was like a carbon copy of Clarnell. She was every bit as critical and demanding. Just as cruel and full of hate. Ed saw the two of them as one and the same as he added her to his rich fantasies of violence. He would later describe himself as being a “walking time bomb” while living at the ranch under the command of his tyrannical grandmother.
During his stay he received a present on Christmas. His grandfather had bought him a .22 rifle. He likely regretted the purchase after catching his grandson killing birds and other small animals with it. It would be this very issue that finally set the time bomb off. It was a sticky, balmy afternoon in August when a heated argument erupted between Maude and Ed. When she warned him against shooting the birds outside, he grabbed his rifle and shot her in the head. Then he shot the old woman two more times in the back. Three loud gunshots had hardly quieted the rage within. So he grabbed a kitchen knife and repeatedly stabbed her lifeless body until it was quelled.
Maude was 66 years old when she was killed. Her lifeless corpse was dragged to her bedroom from where it lay in the kitchen. The half-hearted attempt by a teenage boy to conceal his crime. He didn’t want his grandfather to walk inside and see her body lying in a dark pool of coagulating blood. It was this same mercy that led him to his next horrendous act.
Upon dragging Maude into the bedroom Ed heard the sound of his grandfather’s truck rumbling up the drive. He didn’t want the old man to discover what he’d done. Apparently it was a twisted sense of mercy that led him to the window with his rifle. He saw the elder Edmund getting out of his truck as he leveled his gun and took aim. In that moment he decided that the best way to save his grandfather from insurmountable grief was to kill him too. Edmund Sr. was 72 when he was gunned down in his driveway. He would also be dragged from the spot where he gasped his final breath and hauled into the garage.
Ed would later recall this event. He said that in this act he managed to successfully “avenge the rejection” he felt from both of his parents. With his first murders committed Ed could feel the rage go silent as his adrenaline levels suddenly plummeted. He was now painfully aware that he was sitting on top of two dead bodies with no idea of what to do next. He had nowhere to turn and no one else to call. So he called Clarnell.
His mother directed him to call the police. Ever-subservient, he did as he was told. Calmly and quietly he waited for police to arrive on the front porch. He tried to cover up his crimes no further. There was no point. His demeanor when officers arrived was a direct contradiction to what he was turning himself in for. He was eerily stoic and calm as a summer breeze. He put up no fight when taken into custody. He never even protested when he was handed over to the California Youth Authority.
When interviewed by police he said that he had shot his grandmother simply to see what it felt like. When asked why he killed his grandfather he gave a contradictory response. He said he shot poor old Edmund to spare him. He didn’t want the old man to find out that his grandson had killed his wife. In the 60s it was inconceivable that a minor could commit such an atrocity. If such a thing happened it was assumed that the child was mentally unstable and could be rehabilitated. In response to his crimes he was sent for psychiatric testing, which revealed him to have paranoid schizophrenia, a kind of catch-all diagnosis in this era. He was also found to have a near-genius IQ.
Rather than being sent to a Youth Authority operated facility Ed landed at the Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. His abundance of intelligence allowed him access to the hospital assessment devices. These were a series of 28 questions that required a response to determine a patient as safe for release. Ed not only had access to them, he had been allowed to administer them to other patients. He took advantage of his heightened clearance by memorizing the assessment questions and the expected answers from a rehabilitated patient. When it was time for his assessment he was able to convince the board that he was fully treated and ready to re-enter society. Surprisingly Clarnell even aided in securing his release. Upon his 21st birthday he was cut loose from the hospital as his doctors patted themselves on the back for a job well done.
It was 1969 when Ed weaseled his way out of Atascadero’s care. With hardly any effort applied on his part he was able to trick the parole board into letting him go free. Today there would’ve been psychologists and psychiatrists present to weigh in on this decision, but in 1969 this wasn’t in practice. Though he was interviewed by two psychiatrists before being assessed for release, he had managed to con them into believing he was cured, too. No follow-up psychiatric care was ordered on his release as it should’ve been. The doctors that interviewed him before his assessment merely advised him to stay clear of Clarnell.
During his stay Ed participated in his therapy without argument or hesitation, likely to further ensure his eventual release. It was found that the root of his rage and violent tendencies was his mother’s persistent cruelty and humiliation of him. It was advised by the parole board that he not be sent back to her. They correctly assumed that further contact with her would trigger something lethal within him again. Unfortunately the authorities didn't keep track of such things 56 years ago. With no support offered up by the Youth Authority, no prospects or work history, no money in his pocket to house, feed, and clothe himself, he was forced right back to Clarnell’s doorstep.
Fresh from a mental health facility and immediately on hard times, Clarnell still couldn’t find an ounce of compassion in her heart for her only son. The moment he re-entered her home she went right back to berating and embarrassing him as though she never stopped. Having recently run off husband number three, she was now living in Aptos, California.
Clarnell was bouncing right back from her most recent divorce. She made a big move back to California, where she could enjoy the warm weather year-round . She also landed a job at Santa Cruz’s newest university as the administrative assistant. Clarnell had managed to make at least one friend and she was actually well-liked at work. She put on the facade of a sweet woman and wore it well. No one at the university would’ve guessed that she was actually a quite cold and cruel person in her personal life.
Ed moved into his mother’s house and tried to follow the requirements of his release. He attended community college as part of these requirements and did quite well in his classes. He had cultivated a dream of one day entering the police academy, but it wasn’t to be. He was told that because of his size he was unable to pursue a career as an officer. He was just too tall. By the time he was discharged from Atascadero he was a staggering 6’9” tall and nearly 300 pounds. He was a mountain of a man that could hardly go unnoticed anywhere he went.
As any young man in his early 20s, Ed wanted to be more socially engaged with women his own age. Recognizing that his mother’s job offered her the opportunity to help him meet someone, he asked for her help. It’s quite possible that his request that she introduce him to some women reignited an old fear. That long-held fear throughout his childhood that he would hurt one of his sisters. Regardless of how she came to her decision, Clarnell refused to help. But she couldn’t leave it at a simple ‘no.’ Instead she had to further berate him as she informed him that those girls were far too good for him, saying that Ed was no better than his father.
When Clarnell outright told him that he didn’t deserve to know those women she relit the flame that had once been extinguished by the murder of his grandparents. It was no different than blowing on the embers of a waning fire. Ed decided that he would meet them one day soon. On his own terms.
With his dreams of becoming a police officer dashed to the wind, Ed started hanging out at a local cop bar called the Jury Room. There, inside the raucous, smoke-filled bar officers would trade stories of their cases and arrests over ice, cold beer and liquor likely served on the rocks. Ed loved to listen to their stories and live vicariously through them. His soft-spoken, mild mannered personality coupled with his incredible intelligence disarmed even the most experienced of officers. They called him ‘Big Ed’ and they seemed to enjoy his company as much he enjoyed theirs. Had someone told them then that one day their most depraved stories would come from Ed’s crimes they never would’ve believed it.
Struggling to find his way, Ed went through a number of jobs before finally landing a position with the California Highway Department in 1971. As soon as he had enough money saved to move out of Clarnell’s house, he left. Although, he would end up have to return every so often because he was frequently broke. His first apartment, in Alameda, was shared with a friend. The arrangement ended up not working out, likely due to his near-constant lack of funds.
Despite his light wallet, Ed somehow managed to buy a motorcycle, which he wrecked twice. One of these accidents resulted in a $15,000 settlement. Today that would be worth $122,012.24. He put that money toward a yellow Ford Galaxy and hung his motorcycle helmet up.
His most recent accident left him with a lot of downtime. With not much else to do Ed would get in his new car and drive the streets and highways. He quickly took notice of the beautiful young women hitchhiking their way from one place to another and allowed his imagination to run wild. Hitchhiking was a trend that swept the country throughout the 60s and 70s. Particularly on the West Coast. It actually became a popular mode of transportation as it was cheap, oftentimes even free. There was no stranger danger in those days. People counted on one another to be decent and trustworthy.
As he drove up and down those roads the fantasy became all the more appealing. The daydreams quickly to turned to impulse as he began to plot and prepare. He packed his trunk with plastic bags, knives, a blanket, a gun, and handcuffs. The handcuffs he had obtained from an officer he befriended at the Jury Room, along with a training school badge. Another officer from the bar had even allowed him to borrow a gun. For a time Ed owned a vehicle that looked very similar to a police car. Between his car, badge, and unassuming personality he had all the ingredients to completely disarm an unsuspecting victim.
For a while Ed would pick up women and drop them off at their destinations. He later estimated that he picked up around 150 women, any one of which could’ve been his next victim. This likely gave him an additional thrill. As though he were playing God with the lives of innocent college girls. The violent urge that came from within grew and became more persistent. He referred to it as his “little zappies.”
The early 70s saw a continuation on California’s epidemic of violence. The 60’s were ended with such atrocities as the Manson Family murders and the Zodiac, to name a couple. California residents were starting to adjust to a new reality. Strangers cannot be trusted and doors should stay locked. While that sounds like common sense today, the world was a vastly different place back then. People felt safe because monsters only existed in the movies. Or so they thought.
Santa Cruz was not immune to the marked increase in stranger-on-stranger crimes. Further more, Ed Kemper was hardly the only danger lurking in the shadows of this warm, breezy beach town. Just south of San Francisco, Santa Cruz was not only a popular tourist destination, it was also home to the area’s wealthy and well-to-do. Upscale homes and apartments dazzled visitors and drew in the rich and successful. Those that called it home were proud of their lazy beachside town and weren’t particularly open to change.
When the University of California opened their newest campus in Santa Cruz residents were far from thrilled. The way they saw it they had spent a lot of money to plant roots in such a picturesque location. Now it was being overrun by ‘hippies.’ College kids were arriving in droves to continue their education and follow their dreams. In a time when violence was starting to become more commonplace the sudden influx of strangers didn’t sit well with the occupants.
Santa Cruz hadn’t seen any drug-abusing cults or deranged serial killers up to this point in the early 70s. The vast majority of their murders were either domestic in nature, or the result of an altercation between people known to each other. Stranger-on-stranger crime was unheard of. Even today it’s much less common. Most victims know their killers well. However a string of murders that cropped up during this time didn’t fit the typical profile. With no reference to such crimes detectives and officers found themselves baffled.
With women turning up missing and people turning up dead in the early 70s Santa Cruz was on edge. The influx of students pouring into town made them equally uncomfortable. By 1973 gun sales had risen as residents began buying up weapons to defend themselves and their homes.
As 1970 was drawing to a close most people were settling on their resolutions for the new year. John Linley Frazier, however, was plotting to stop the spread of progress that he deemed harmful to the environment. Involved in the hippie lifestyle, John was referred to as an extremist in his beliefs. Believing that this act would serve his cause, he murdered five people in cold blood. Dr. Ohta, his secretary, and his entire family were killed inside the Ohta home for John’s agenda. The crime was a traumatic assault on the town’s sense of safety. If an entire family could be murdered in their own home then was anybody really safe?
Hippies had gained an unsavory reputation since the crimes of Charles Manson and his so-called family. John Frazier’s brutal mass murder of an entire family and their acquaintance branded the entire group of people as one to feared. Though diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, John was found fit to stand trial and was convicted of all five murders.
Then in late 1972 and into early 1973 Santa Cruz saw bodies piling up at an alarming rate within just four months. There was no rhyme or reason to the victim profile. A priest, four campers, a man digging in his garden, a young girl, and a mother and her two children were all murdered by the same man. The perpetrator was 25-year-old Herbert Mullin, who had already been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and deemed a danger to others. Somehow he ended up as an outpatient and was allowed back out in society.
Like John Linley Frazier, Herbert Mullin was also deemed fit to stand trial for 10 murders. As long as he was medicated he was very lucid. As an outpatient he stopped taking his mediation, leading him to start hearing a voice in his head that told him to save the people of California from a mega-earthquake. The voice told him that the entire state would be sent into the Pacific. Believing that he was saving these people from a much more horrendous death, he made it his mission to kill them. He believed he could telepathically sing what he referred to as the “die song” to his victims. He thought that this song would compel those who heard it to commit suicide, or make them into willing human sacrifices. Using a gun, knife, or baseball bat interchangeably, he killed 13 people.
This was the backdrop to Edmund Kemper’s reign of terror. By the time Herbert Mullin started his deranged killing spree hitchhikers were already disappearing from the roads of Santa Cruz. Climbing into Ed’s car never to be seen alive again. At the time of Herbert’s arrest the hitchhikers were attributed to him, mainly to quell the public panic. Maybe they had truly hoped that in catching Herbert they had brought an end to Santa Cruz’s nightmares. The police had no idea the kind of monster that would deliver itself unto them.
Disappearing college girls, an extremist with a dangerous agenda to save the planet, and a delusional man that thought he was saving innocents from the big one. With so much unknown peril in the streets of Santa Cruz no one felt safe. Those who had planted roots there were afraid no matter where they went. Even home didn’t feel safe anymore. College students were also becoming wary in an era where a stranger was simply a friend you hadn’t met yet.
As Ed was preparing to take a life for the first time his mother’s needling voice served as the driving force behind his violent urges. She would continue to fuel his rage and impulses until the inevitable climax of his crimes. On May 7, 1972, he seemed no longer satisfied with the mere fantasy of killing. Fully prepared and ready, he picked up Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, who were hitchhiking from Fresno State College to Stanford University to meet up with friends. They were only 18 years old. Just starting out in a life that still seemed so full of possibilities.
His original plan had been to rape the girls, but he didn’t want them to identify him. As they rode along, cheerfully oblivious of the danger they were in, he was shifting his plot from bad to worse. He decided that the best way to ensure these young women never identified him was to kill them.
He described them as being “very naive.” In his opinion they believed themselves more street savvy than they were. He based that opinion solely on the fact that they accepted a ride from him, trusting him enough to deliver them to Stanford unharmed.
When the car veered off the highway and onto a dirt road Mary Ann and Anita began to realize that their situation was serious. Bouncing down the dusty road, he informed them that he was going to rape them, though he had already changed his mind about that. His goal was to insight fear, and it worked. He used the very same handcuffs gifted to him by the officer from the Jury Room to secure Mary Ann to the back seat. Then he forced Anita into the trunk and locked her inside, where she could hear her friend struggling for her life as she feared for her own.
He tried to smother and stab Mary Ann in the back seat of the car, but failed. Then he moved on to asphyxiation, yanking a bag over her head that she bit straight through in her heroic battle to save herself. He tried to stab her again, striking her backbone with the blade rather than penetrating her back. Though the blade didn’t pierce her flesh, it still would’ve caused an incredible amount of pain. When nothing else seemed to work Ed slit her throat and left her to bleed out in the back seat as he returned to Anita in the trunk. Though we don’t know the details of her death, we know Anita Luchessa didn’t make it out of that trunk alive.
His first kill since his grandparents didn’t go at all the way he imagined. Both his rage and urge were quiet, but now he was left with two bodies that he knew he would need to get rid of if he didn’t want to get caught. This time Ed would not turn himself over so quickly and easily. He piled Mary Ann on top of her friend in the trunk and drove the two back toward Alameda. On the way there he was pulled over for a broken taillight. His easygoing demeanor while interacting with the officer was haunting. With two dead women in his trunk he maintained a calm, polite, soft-spoken manner about him. The officer never suspected a thing as Ed charmed his way out of a ticket, getting off with a warning to get the taillight fixed.
The officer had no idea how lucky he was to have driven away from that exchange. Ed had every intention of killing him if he decided to look in the trunk. The poor man would’ve hardly had time to register the two bodies wrapped in blankets and covered in blood before being killed himself. What Ed’s plan would’ve been after killing a cop is anyone’s guess.
At the time of Mary Ann and Anita’s murders Ed was still living with his roommate in Alameda. He brought the remains back to the apartment, knowing that his roommate would be out. His intention in bringing them home was to dismember them without interruption. Laying them out on his bedroom floor, he took photographs before he beginning the ugly process. He continued to take pictures throughout the process of dismemberment. His trophies to relive the crime through like a conduit of evil.
Ed would later give a full confession to this as well as his other crimes. He would even admit to engaging in sexual activity with each body part as he removed it, savoring and enjoying the atrocity he committed. Even the heads of the victims were violated before being disposed of. His blunt honesty and the stoic manner with which he delivered it was astounding as well as horrifying. Even Ted Bundy denied practicing necrophilia with his victims until his dying day. However Ed was a different kind of beast. He was one without shame.
Mary Ann’s remains were placed in a bag and buried in a shallow grave in the mountains. Ed made note of where they were located so he could come back to visit. Both of their heads were unceremoniously tossed into a ravine as though they didn’t matter. Like a predatory animal finishing his meal, he tossed the bones to the side and went to curl up back in his den.
On August 15th a female head was recovered from the mountains. No other remains were found and to this day have never been located. The head turned out to be that of Mary Ann Pesce. Though no trace of Anita was ever found it was assumed that the two were killed together. Police wouldn’t learn the full scope of the terror they faced until Ed’s confession.
Having experienced the release of a double homicide, Ed’s inner monster was quiet for four months. He continued to pick up hitchhikers, delivering them to their destinations as he reveled in his new God complex. He said that these women were “giving me their life” when they got into his car. It was entirely up to him whether they lived or died, and they had no idea. The power was overwhelmingly intoxicating.
Four months passed after the disappearance of Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. Ed grew restless once again as he drove the streets just to escape the persistent screech emitting from his mother’s mouth. Allowing his imagination to carry him off to darker realms, he could feel the itch growing again. It was September 14, 1972 when he picked up Aiko Koo, a 15-year-old dance student on her way to class. Tired of waiting for a bus that seemed like it would never get there, Aiko decided to hitchhike. Unfortunately she accepted a ride from Ed Kemper.
Ed was surprised to learn of her age, believing her to be older when he picked her up. Even this girl’s young age couldn’t deter him from his sinister plot. He had set out that day to kill someone. Aiko had the misfortune of crossing paths with him at the wrong time. When his God complex wasn’t feeling so merciful. Rather than dropping her off at her dance class safe, sound, and unsuspecting, he decided to make this the scariest and most nerve-wracking ride of her life.
This is where we will leave Ed for now. Bloodthirsty and ravenous for his next kill. In Part 2 we will examine the rest of his crimes as well as the dramatic end to his reign of terror. With so much more to get into I hope you will come back for the second part in this twisted story of a serial killer.