Prolific American Serial Killers: Edmund Kemper
Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office/Wikimedia CommonsEdmund Kemper’s mug shot from April 28, 1973.
Deemed “The Coed Killer” due to his grisly murders of Northern California students, Edmund Kemper III was formidable. Standing at six feet, nine inches, and with an IQ of 145, Kemper had an undeniable mental and physical power that made him one of the most terrifying American serial killers of all time.
Kemper’s childhood foreshadowed the murderous life he was going to lead. He was born into a loveless family; his father was a World War II veteran who left the family when Kemper was just a teenager, and his mother was an alcoholic with what some have speculated was borderline personality disorder.
From a young age, Kemper experienced sick, dark fantasies. He decapitated his sister’s dolls and stalked his second-grade teacher while carrying his father’s bayonet. When he was just 10 years old, he killed his family’s cat. He killed another cat when he was 13. That time, he kept bits and pieces of the dead animal in his closet until his mother found them.
Trying to escape his mother’s scolding and fear, Kemper ran away to live with his father. His father, however, had remarried and sent him to live with his grandparents.
Soon after moving in with his grandparents, Kemper’s murderous tendencies came to the surface again. He got into an argument with his grandmother, which ended with him shooting her in the head. Then, so his grandfather wouldn’t have to find out that his wife was dead, Kemper killed him too.
Kemper turned himself in and was sent to the criminally insane unit of Atascadero Hospital, where he remained until his twenty-first birthday in 1969. He was released into the care of his mother, but after just a year he moved out and began living in a variety of places across Northern California.
That was when he began to build his reputation as one of the most terrifying American serial killers. Kemper started to pick up young hitchhiking women, murder them, have sex with their corpses, and then dismember their bodies.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesKemper at his preliminary hearing before Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Harry F. Brauer.
His first two victims were Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, two Fresno State students. Upon picking them up, Kemper intended to rape them, but he panicked and ended up murdering the pair, dismembering their bodies, and dumping them into a ravine near Loma Prieta Mountain.
Next was 15-year-old Aiko Koo, a Korean dance student who was met with a similar fate. Kemper eventually went back to his mother’s home on the UC Santa Cruz campus and murdered three more college students.
Kemper’s final two murders took place on April 20, 1973. First, he bludgeoned his mother to death while she slept and then decapitated her, raped her severed head, and used it as a dart board. He also cut out her tongue and larynx and placed them in the garbage disposal. After that, Kemper invited his mother’s best friend over, murdered her, and then stole her car.
After hearing nothing about the murders, Kemper turned himself in because “the original purpose was gone.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUOnijF2KDw
Kemper was arrested and convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder. He attempted suicide twice and requested the death penalty but was unsuccessful on all counts. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences.
Kemper, one of the grisliest American serial killers, is currently serving out his sentences inside the California Medical Facility, where he is said to be a model prisoner.
