Edmund Kemper, The Murderer Known As “The Coed Killer”
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 both mental and physical powers that made him one of the most terrifying American serial killers.
Kemper’s childhood foreshadowed the violent 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 who may have had borderline personality disorder.
From a young age, Kemper experienced gruesome 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.
To escape his mother, 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 violent 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 21st 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 to die this way were Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, two Fresno State students. Upon picking them up, Kemper intended to rape them, but he panicked and murdered the pair, dismembered their bodies, and dumped them near Loma Prieta Mountain.
Next was 15-year-old Aiko Koo, a Korean dance student who tragically met a similar fate. Kemper eventually went back to his mother’s home on the UC Santa Cruz campus and then 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.
But after he heard nothing about the murders, Kemper decided to turn himself in because “the original purpose was gone.”
He was arrested and convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder. Kemper attempted suicide twice and requested the death penalty, but was unsuccessful. He was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences.
Kemper, still considered one of the grisliest American serial killers, is currently serving out his life sentences inside the California Medical Facility. Shockingly, he is often said to be a model prisoner today.
