October 7, 2025 • 28 mins
He was known as the “Co-Ed Killer.”
In the early 1970s, students in Northern California began vanishing while hitchhiking near campus. Behind the disappearances was Edmund Kemper, a towering figure with a history of violence dating back to the murder of his own grandparents at age 15.
Over eleven months, Kemper lured six young women into his car, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. He terrorized the University of California, Santa Cruz community while socializing with local police officers who nicknamed him “Big Ed.” His crimes escalated until he turned his rage against the person he hated most — his abusive mother.
In this episode of Murder U, we trace Kemper’s path from a troubled childhood to one of the most infamous killing sprees in American history. From the manipulation of psychiatrists who released him at 21, to his chilling confessions and his decision to turn himself in, this is the story of Ed Kemper — a serial killer whose calculated violence still haunts true crime history.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/murder-u--6152042/support.
In the early 1970s, students in Northern California began vanishing while hitchhiking near campus. Behind the disappearances was Edmund Kemper, a towering figure with a history of violence dating back to the murder of his own grandparents at age 15.
Over eleven months, Kemper lured six young women into his car, killed them, and mutilated their bodies. He terrorized the University of California, Santa Cruz community while socializing with local police officers who nicknamed him “Big Ed.” His crimes escalated until he turned his rage against the person he hated most — his abusive mother.
In this episode of Murder U, we trace Kemper’s path from a troubled childhood to one of the most infamous killing sprees in American history. From the manipulation of psychiatrists who released him at 21, to his chilling confessions and his decision to turn himself in, this is the story of Ed Kemper — a serial killer whose calculated violence still haunts true crime history.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/murder-u--6152042/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Oh my gosh. I can't thank you all enough for listening.
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(00:25):
From high school hallways to expansive college campuses and the
sanctity of their homes, these once secure spaces have transformed
into hunting grounds for sinister individuals seeking to inflict harm
on the unsuspecting. I'm your host, Mattie. Join me here
each week as we investigate the bone chilling stories of
senseless murders occurring in and around our centers of education.
(00:48):
Welcome to Murder You an Abnormia original. Today we're going
(01:13):
to discuss the case of serial killer Ed Kemper.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
In May nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
A series of murders baffled detectives in northern California as
college and high school girls began disappearing. Two of the
victims were picked up while hitchhiking from the University of
California Santa Cruz campus leading the press to dub this
dangerous predator the co Ed Killer. In April of the
following year, a Santa Cruz detective received a phone call
(01:41):
from Big Ed, a local drinking buddy who frequented the
police hangouts. Big Ed claimed he had just killed his
mother and her friend, but the detective didn't believe him.
The chatty gentle giant liked to talk and boast and
it had to be some sort of joke. However, when
Big Ed called again, the police followed up on his
(02:02):
story and were horrified to find the headless corpse of
his mother and the strangled body of her friend in
a closet at the Kemper house. The authorities rushed to
pick up the man they knew as Big Ed.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
When they brought him.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
To the station, he casually confessed to murdering six students
over eleven months. They also learned that Ed Kemper had
brutally slain his grandparents when he was just fifteen years old.
Kemper is one of the more fascinating serial killers for
several reasons. He's a textbook psychopath who had a terrible
(02:39):
childhood that included regular verbal abuse from his mother and
a father who had abandoned him. Kemper's mother was an
alcoholic who many experts on this case believe had borderline
personality disorder speculation aside, there's little doubt that she made
her son suffer from the imposing wrath of her constant belittlement.
(03:00):
Kembery exhibited disturbing behavior and violent fantasies at a remarkably
young age. He was highly intelligent, reportedly with an IQ
of one hundred and forty five. He evaded the police
for years and was one of the rare serial killers
who turned themselves in. Most serial killers have zero empathy
(03:23):
for their victims, and Ed was no exception in that regard.
What makes him different from other organized serial killers, which
is an FBI classification, is that the stress of evading
law enforcement and getting away with murder seemed to weigh
heavily on him. In addition, after he killed his mother,
(03:44):
who was the impetus of all his anger, he no
longer had a desire to keep killing. I mean, he
did also kill her close friends soon afterward, but killing
his mother was the culmination of a lifetime of mental
abuse and pent up rage. As I mentioned before, four
Kemper began killing when he was fifteen and was twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Four when he turned himself in.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
During those nine years, he managed to kill ten people,
including six students, in less than a year. The crimes
Kemper committed are some of the most heinous acts in
the annals of serial killer history. He was a cunning
predator who engaged law enforcement to learn about their investigation.
He killed without mercy and often violated his victim's corpses
(04:30):
and mutilated their bodies. He terrorized the students at every
school in university in the San Francisco Bay area and
enjoyed the infamy that being a serial killer brought. Those
who spoke to him said he was likable, engaging, thoughtful,
and self aware. So how did a seemingly ordinary man
(04:51):
evolve into a depraved serial killer? Edmund Emil Kemper third
was born in Bourbon, California, on December eighteenth, nineteen forty eight,
to Clarnel Elizabeth Kemper and Edmund Kemper Junior. His father
was a World War Two vet who in the post
war years was involved in testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific.
(05:14):
He then returned home and became an electrician. Kemper's mother
often berated his father about his menial electrician job. The
word vet once said that suicide missions in war and
testing nuclear bombs were nothing compared to.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Living with his wife.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Ouch, that's a pretty harsh comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Kemper weighed thirteen pounds as a newborn. Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
To give you an idea of how big that is,
the average birthweight for a baby boy is seven point
four pounds. By age four, he was already a foot
taller than the other neighborhood kids. Kemper was the middle
child of the family, with an older and younger sister.
He played twisted imaginary games with his younger sister called
(06:00):
gash Chamber, an electric chair, whereby he would make his
sister tie him up and execute him. He would also
cut the heads off his sister's dolls, acting out the
warped fantasies that would escalate to murder. As an adult,
by age ten, ed Kemper exhibited increasingly disturbing antisocial behaviors.
(06:22):
After his father left the family in nineteen fifty seven,
he began acting out in violent ways. He reportedly buried
the family cat alive, then later dug it up, cut
its head off, and stuck it on a spike. Three
years later, he killed another family cat because it liked
his sister more. I mean that cat was no fool.
(06:46):
He kept the cat's remains in his closet until his
mother found them. Kemper said, I remember there was actually
a sexual thrill. You hear that little pop and pull
off their head and hold them up by the hair,
whipping their heads off their bodies.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Sitting there, that'd get me off. Yikes.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Now there's a kid who shouldn't be around Barbie dolls.
Kemper even stalked his second grade teacher armed with his
father's bayonet.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
One day, his sister.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Susan teased ed about kissing the teacher he had a
crush on. Kemper stared at her blankly and said, if
I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first, so chilling.
Kemper was missing his father since he left the family,
and was quite devastated when his parents divorced in nineteen
sixty one. He had split the time between his mother
(07:38):
and father, but now went to live with his abusive
mother in Montana. According to Kemper, his mother often belittled
and humiliated him. She made him sleep in a locked
basement because she feared he would hurt his sisters. I mean,
that's not exactly an unreasonable fear when you're dealing with
a kid who buries the family.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Cattiwag.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Kemper would grow to be six foot nine, and being
such a large and awkward teenager wasn't made any easier
by his mother. I mean, it's bad enough being mocked
by your peers at school, but coming home from school
and being humiliated by your own mother had to be
traumatizing for young Ed. It sounds like Clairenel Kemper took
(08:22):
her anger for her ex husband on her son, and
that's not a very nurturing environment to grow up in.
She would say things like no woman will ever fall
in love with you and called him a real weirdo.
By age fourteen, Ed Kemper had had enough. He ran
away from home and tried to reconnect with his father
in Van Nuys, California. His father had remarried, so Kemper
(08:46):
now had a stepbrother, but it was not a happy,
blended family from the start. Kemper's father later spoke about
what it was like having the whole king teenager living
with his new family. His personality had changed so much
that I was worried about him being here with my
present wife, who tried very hard to be a real
friend to him. Kemper's father recalled, I saw him one
(09:10):
day in a brooding mood and his eyes looked like
a sleepwalker, and several talks I had with him toward
the last he seemed fascinated by death in war. He
tried to watch weird tales on TV, which I suppressed.
Years later, Kemper agreed that his stepmother didn't want him around.
My presence gave her migraine headaches when.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I came out.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
She was going to have a heart attack if I
came around, he told her reporter. Uh, yeah, I think
that would give me a migraine too, if not a
heart attack. Because Kemper was creeping everyone out, his father
sent him to live with his paternal grandparents, Ed Kemper
Senior and Maud Kemper. The elderly couple lived on an
(09:54):
isolated ranch near North Fork, California. Kemper hated country life,
and again his grandmother belittled and emasculated him, just as
his mother did. He liked and admired his grandfather, but
the elderly man had dementia so he rarely defended the teenager.
He did teach Kemper to fire a twenty two rifle, however,
(10:17):
which in retrospect wasn't the best idea. Kemper spent many
hours in the woods shooting birds and small animals, much
to the annoyance of his grandmother. Eventually, Maud had her
husband take the rifle away from ed. The punishment enraged Kemper,
and he began plotting his revenge. Kemper's hatred towards his
(10:39):
mother transferred to his grandmother. His anger continued to build,
and he often argued with her. I couldn't please her,
Kemper said of his grandmother, it was like being in jail.
I began a walking time bomb, and I finally blew,
he added. It all culminated on August twenty seventh, nineteen
(11:00):
sixty four. Kemper's grandfather ran errands that day, leaving edit
his grandmother back at the ranch.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Maud worked on a short story for.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Boys Life magazine entitled Fire in the Cannon. It was
an ominous title considering what was about to happen. Next,
Kemper and his grandmother were in the kitchen, where they
began to argue his anger boiling over, he stomped off
and retrieved the rifle his grandfather got him for hunting,
(11:29):
the same weapon Maud had confiscated. According to Kemper, he
grabbed the gun and said he planned on going hunting.
He left the house, but when his grandmother saw the weapon,
she said, oh, you'd better not be shooting the birds again.
Kemper stopped in his tracks and peered through the kitchen's
screen window. He had been fantasizing about this moment for
(11:52):
a long time, and with his grandma facing away from him,
the target was simply too tempting. Kemper raised the rifle
and fired a bullet into the back of her skull.
Maud's lifeless body collapsed at the kitchen table, where she
had been typing the story. Kemper shot her again in
the head and once in the back to ensure she
(12:14):
was dead. He dragged her body into the bedroom and
stabbed her several times, likely for his own gratification. Then,
when his grandfather came home, Kemper shot him as he
was walking up the driveway. Kemper later said, of the murders,
I just wanted to see what it felt like to
kill grandma. He further explained that he killed his grandfather
(12:38):
to spare him the pain of seeing his wife murdered,
an act of serial killer kindness, if you will. After
he killed his grandparents, the fifteen year old Kemper called
his mother and confessed what had happened. She told him
to call the police, which he did. Kemper was sent
to the Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally Insane. There,
(13:00):
doctors diagnosed Kemper with paranoid schizophrenia. The affable Ed befriended
his psychologists at the hospital and became his assistant. The
doctors discovered Kemper had a very high ikeal, but apparently
it never crossed their minds that he might be smart
enough to fake being both insane and later rehabilitated. Kemper
(13:24):
gained access to the other prisoner's psychiatric tests and gained
enough knowledge in his assistant role to convince his doctor
that he was all better. On his twenty first birthday,
Ed Kemper got the best gift he could receive, his freedom.
He only served six years for killing two family members.
(13:46):
Despite his doctor's recommendation that he avoid living with his mother,
Kemper rejoined her in Santa Cruz, California, in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I mean, who did the.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Psychologists think he would live with. I don't know a
lot of people who would want to house someone who
slaughtered wolf their grandparents. Clairenell Strandberg, as she was now known,
had taken a position as an administrative assistant at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. Kemper attended a community college
and seemed to have attempted to live a quiet life
(14:19):
despite his deviant urges. His animosity towards his mother, however,
never waned. Living with Claiarnell again dredged up traumatizing memories
of his childhood. My mother and I started right in
on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. Kember
(14:41):
later explained, it takes a brave woman to argue with
a guy who killed his grandparents. It seems Kemper's mother
had some psychological issues of her own.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Outside the unhappy.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Home, Kemper worked a variety of jobs. However, Kemper's application
to become a state trooper was turned down because of
his size. Yeah, I highly doubt it was because of
his height. Perhaps it had something to do with, I
don't know, killing your grandparents. Eventually, Kemper got a job
(15:13):
working for the Department of Transportation. He noticed how many
young college girls liked to.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Hitchhike during this time.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
At first, I picked up girls just to talk to them,
Kemper later explained, just to try to get acquainted with
people my own age and try to strike up a friendship.
He began storing a murder kit in his car, which
included a gun, a knife, and handcuffs. You know, because
that's what totally normal future BFFs do. One side of
(15:45):
me says, Wow, what an attractive chick. I'd like to
talk to her, date her, Kember said. The other side
of me says, I wonder how her head would look
on a stick. For a while, Kember picked up female
hitchhikers without harming them. Who knows how many women narrowly
avoided being the victims of the man who would be
dubbed the co ed killer. Kemper claims it was over
(16:09):
one hundred women. However, Mary Anne Poichet and Anita Lucesa
wouldn't be so lucky. On May seventh, nineteen seventy two,
Kemper picked up the young students hitchhiking near the u C.
Berkeley campus. During the drive, he pulled out a gun
and drove them at gunpoint to a secluded area in
the woods. He took mary Anne into the woods and
(16:31):
left Anita handcuffed in the car. He stopped and strangled
mary Anne, then returned and killed Anita in the same manner.
Kemper then put both of the bodies in the trunk
of his car and drove home. When he arrived home,
he removed the head and hands from the bodies and
violated what remained of their corpses. This guy is the
(16:52):
very definition of depraved evil. The girls' families reported them missing,
and on August fifteenth, a female head was found in
the woods and was identified as mary Anne's. Unfortunately, Anita's
remains were never found. A month later, on September fourteenth,
Kemper picked up fifteen year old Ikokou, who was hitchhiking.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Instead of taking the bus.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
To her dance class. She would never arrive at her
dance class. Kemper drove to a secluded area and strangled
the young high school student. He raped her while she
was unconscious, and then killed her. It's tricky to talk
about serial killers without inadvertently sensationalizing these cases. But I'd
never want to glorify a killer like Ed Kemper. I'll
(17:39):
just remind you once again that Ed Kemper is a
child killer.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So we're talking about the worst of the worst here.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
All of the victims lives mattered, but it's especially deplorable
to kill an innocent child, as Kemper.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Did at least once.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
The other girls were also very young and h their
whole lives ahead of them. As the calendar flipped to
nineteen seventy three, Kemper continued killing young college students from
various Northern California universities. He later told reporters that his
intense hatred for his mother became an uncontrollable rage. My victims,
(18:20):
Kemper explained, represented not what my mother was, but what
she liked, what she coveted, what was important to her,
and I was destroying it. In January, Kemper picked up
eighteen year old Cindy Shall, who was hitchhiking to.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Class at Cabrillo College.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
He shot and killed her, then hid her body in
his bedroom. He seemed to derive a lot of sick
pleasure from committing some of these heinous acts under his
mother's roof. The next day, Kemper dismembered Cindy's body. He
buried the girl's severed head in his mother's garden, basing
her bedroom window.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
He lay joked that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
He did this because his mother always wanted people to
look up to her talk about creepy. Around this time,
he began hanging out at a bar that was ironically
called the Jury Room, which local police officers frequented. He
made friends with several officers called him big Ed.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Not only was big Ed getting a.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Thrill from outsmarting law enforcement, but he was also gaining
valuable insight into the murder investigation. Ed learned investigator said
piece together that college students were disappearing while hitchhiking. The
police warned the public against hitchhiking, and several universities increased
their bus schedules for students on campus.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
However, hitch hiking was popular.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
In the seventies, and many young people ignored the advice.
One morning, even advised students to only ride in cars
with university stickers. The only problem was that Kemper had
a U. You see Santa Cruz parking sticker since his
mother worked for the college. On February fifth, Kemper's parking
(20:10):
sticker paid off. He drove to the Santa Cruz campus
and picked up two students, Rosalind.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thorpe and Alice Low.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
They hadn't been in his car long when he shot
both women, and even drove past the campus security gate
as the women lay dying in the back of his car.
Once they were dead, Kemper decapitated his victims and dismembered
their bodies. He discarded their remains in different locations. Some
hikers eventually discovered some of the girls' remains.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
With the latest victims.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
The media adopted the unknown predator the co ed killer,
but killing co eds didn't satisfy ed Kemper. He stressed
out about being caught, and the murders took.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
An emotional toll on the man.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Kemper is an absolute monster, but he's unique and and
that he does seem to be more self aware than
the average psychopath. That's not to say he was empathetic
towards his victims, but instead he knew his crimes would
eventually catch up to him. He was also hyper aware
of the real object of his burning rage his overbearing,
(21:17):
psychologically abusive mother. His anger reached its peak on April twentieth,
nineteen seventy three. It was a good Friday, but nothing
about this day would go well for his mother, Claernel.
Kember came home early in the morning, and as usual,
his mother belittled him. I guess you're going to want
to stay up and talk, his mother said, with a sigh.
(21:39):
Kember said nope and went to his bedroom. Once his
mother had fallen asleep, Kemper attacked her with a claw hammer.
As she slept, he finished her off by slitting her throat.
Like he had with his other victims, Kemper decapitated his
mother and cut off her hands, but he had special
plants for Claernel. Kemper also removed her tongue and vocal
(22:03):
cords and stuffed them down the garbage disposal. He also
performed sex acts with his mother's head. That's about as
gruesome and disgusting as it gets. Later that evening, Kemper
called his mother's close friend, Sally Hallett, and invited her
over for a movie night. When Sally arrived, he strangled
(22:26):
her to death and hid her body in a closet.
Part of his plan was to say that his mother
and Sally had taken off on a vacation together, but
perhaps he realized no one would buy it. Kemper skipped
town in Sally's stolen car the next day and made
it as far as Pueblo, Colorado. However, he was tired
of living the stressful double life of a wanted serial killer,
(22:50):
so amazingly, he picked up the phone and called a
detective he knew in Santa Cruz ed confessed to killing
his mother and her friend. At first, the police thought
big Ed wishdis yanking their chain. After all, he was
a gentle giant who often stretched the truth. But after
Kemper called back and explained to he was serious, the
(23:12):
Santa Cruz detectives contacted Pueblo law enforcement. The local police
then rushed to pick up the wanted suspect. Once in custody,
Kemper horrified investigators by recounting how he cunningly prayed on
young women, ultimately killing six of them. He explained how
he picked up and murdered the high school and college
students before violating and dismembering their corpses. Kemper was charged
(23:37):
with eight counts of first degree murder. He went on
trial in October nineteen seventy three. Not surprisingly, he was
found guilty of all the charges the following month. When
asked by the judge what he thought his punishment should be,
Kemper replied that he should be tortured to death.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's not the worst idea ever.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Instead, the man known as the co Ed Killer received
eight life sentences, despite asking the court for the death penalty.
Following the verdict, Kemper attempted suicide two times, but survived
both attempts. So why didn't Kemper just kill his mother
in the first place and spare the other seven women
(24:18):
who didn't deserve to die? Kemper explained in an interview, saying,
my mother was a sick, angry, hungry, and very sad woman.
I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother.
Kember's mother had been the real target the entire time
he was killing. It's just a shame that six other
(24:40):
innocent girls had to die before he killed his mother
and her close friend. Not that the mother or her
friend's murders was any less tragic than the students who perished.
But I also can't say that Claire Noel Kemper was
completely innocent. It's a near certainty that Clarnell's abusive behavior
caused psychological trauma that played a significant role in Kemper's
(25:02):
violent actions. She was such a powerful figure in his
life that once he murdered her, he no longer felt
the need to continue killing. That alone is very rare
for a serial killer. When asked why he ended his
killing spree and turned himself in, Kemper replied, it wasn't
serving any physical or real or emotional purpose. It was
(25:24):
just a pure waste of time. Emotionally, I couldn't handle
it much longer. Toward the end there I started to
feel the folly of the whole damn thing, and at
the point of near exhaustion, near collapse, I just said
to hell with it and called it all off. Students
and parents at high school and college campuses from Santa
(25:45):
Cruz to the San Francisco Bay area breathed a sigh
of relief once the co ed killer was captured, regardless
of how it happened. Unfortunately, there were two other active
serial killers, John Linley Fraser and Herrobert Mullins, operating in
the same area, leading Santa Cruz to be dubbed the
murder capital of the World. Not the best nickname for
(26:08):
your tourism bureau to work with. Ed Kemper was imprisoned
at the California Medical Facility, the same place Charles Manson
was imprisoned until his death. Kemper is now seventy five
years old and reportedly one of the more popular inmates.
Guards describe him as very cordial. Sure if you're not
(26:29):
a young female student. Luckily he'll never be able to
harm another student again. Since being imprisoned a second time,
Kemper has done many interviews with the media and law enforcement.
He even met with the FBI to talk about his
brutal crimes and his motivation for committing them. He even
gave them advice on a few cases. In twenty seventeen,
(26:52):
the popular Netflix series mind Hunter renewed interest in Kemper
thanks to a memorable and chilling performance by actor Kings Britain.
If you haven't seen that series, I highly recommend it.
Ed Kemper terrorized campuses in northern California for eleven murderous
months in nineteen seventy two and seventy three. He killed
(27:14):
ten people, including three of his family members, but will
forever be known as the co ed killer because of
the six young students he butchered by the side of
the road, all to get even with the abusive mother
he hated. It's easy to blame Kemper's mother for all
the terrible things her son did, but Kemper made the
decision to kill and got sexual gratification from terrorizing young girls.
(27:39):
There seemed to be something wrong with Kemper from an
early age that, when combined with his mother's abuse and
his father's neglect, became a perfect storm of sexual depravity
and psychotic violence. What I find so chilling is the
thought that Kemper might never have been caught if he
hadn't turned himself in after murdering his mother. Luckily he did,
(28:01):
because who knows how many students would have gone missing
if he had kept on killing. That's it for this
episode of Murder You and please remember if you or
anyone you know has been the victim of sexual violence.
In the United States, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is
available twenty four hours call one eight hundred sixty five
(28:22):
six four six seven three one eight hundred six five
six four six seven three. Be sure to like, and
subscribe to Murder You on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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(00:25):
From high school hallways to expansive college campuses and the
sanctity of their homes, these once secure spaces have transformed
into hunting grounds for sinister individuals seeking to inflict harm
on the unsuspecting. I'm your host, Mattie. Join me here
each week as we investigate the bone chilling stories of
senseless murders occurring in and around our centers of education.
(00:48):
Welcome to Murder You an Abnormia original. Today we're going
(01:13):
to discuss the case of serial killer Ed Kemper.
Speaker 2 (01:16):
In May nineteen seventy two.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
A series of murders baffled detectives in northern California as
college and high school girls began disappearing. Two of the
victims were picked up while hitchhiking from the University of
California Santa Cruz campus leading the press to dub this
dangerous predator the co Ed Killer. In April of the
following year, a Santa Cruz detective received a phone call
(01:41):
from Big Ed, a local drinking buddy who frequented the
police hangouts. Big Ed claimed he had just killed his
mother and her friend, but the detective didn't believe him.
The chatty gentle giant liked to talk and boast and
it had to be some sort of joke. However, when
Big Ed called again, the police followed up on his
(02:02):
story and were horrified to find the headless corpse of
his mother and the strangled body of her friend in
a closet at the Kemper house. The authorities rushed to
pick up the man they knew as Big Ed.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
When they brought him.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
To the station, he casually confessed to murdering six students
over eleven months. They also learned that Ed Kemper had
brutally slain his grandparents when he was just fifteen years old.
Kemper is one of the more fascinating serial killers for
several reasons. He's a textbook psychopath who had a terrible
(02:39):
childhood that included regular verbal abuse from his mother and
a father who had abandoned him. Kemper's mother was an
alcoholic who many experts on this case believe had borderline
personality disorder speculation aside, there's little doubt that she made
her son suffer from the imposing wrath of her constant belittlement.
(03:00):
Kembery exhibited disturbing behavior and violent fantasies at a remarkably
young age. He was highly intelligent, reportedly with an IQ
of one hundred and forty five. He evaded the police
for years and was one of the rare serial killers
who turned themselves in. Most serial killers have zero empathy
(03:23):
for their victims, and Ed was no exception in that regard.
What makes him different from other organized serial killers, which
is an FBI classification, is that the stress of evading
law enforcement and getting away with murder seemed to weigh
heavily on him. In addition, after he killed his mother,
(03:44):
who was the impetus of all his anger, he no
longer had a desire to keep killing. I mean, he
did also kill her close friends soon afterward, but killing
his mother was the culmination of a lifetime of mental
abuse and pent up rage. As I mentioned before, four
Kemper began killing when he was fifteen and was twenty.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Four when he turned himself in.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
During those nine years, he managed to kill ten people,
including six students, in less than a year. The crimes
Kemper committed are some of the most heinous acts in
the annals of serial killer history. He was a cunning
predator who engaged law enforcement to learn about their investigation.
He killed without mercy and often violated his victim's corpses
(04:30):
and mutilated their bodies. He terrorized the students at every
school in university in the San Francisco Bay area and
enjoyed the infamy that being a serial killer brought. Those
who spoke to him said he was likable, engaging, thoughtful,
and self aware. So how did a seemingly ordinary man
(04:51):
evolve into a depraved serial killer? Edmund Emil Kemper third
was born in Bourbon, California, on December eighteenth, nineteen forty eight,
to Clarnel Elizabeth Kemper and Edmund Kemper Junior. His father
was a World War Two vet who in the post
war years was involved in testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific.
(05:14):
He then returned home and became an electrician. Kemper's mother
often berated his father about his menial electrician job. The
word vet once said that suicide missions in war and
testing nuclear bombs were nothing compared to.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Living with his wife.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
Ouch, that's a pretty harsh comparison.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Kemper weighed thirteen pounds as a newborn. Wow.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
To give you an idea of how big that is,
the average birthweight for a baby boy is seven point
four pounds. By age four, he was already a foot
taller than the other neighborhood kids. Kemper was the middle
child of the family, with an older and younger sister.
He played twisted imaginary games with his younger sister called
(06:00):
gash Chamber, an electric chair, whereby he would make his
sister tie him up and execute him. He would also
cut the heads off his sister's dolls, acting out the
warped fantasies that would escalate to murder. As an adult,
by age ten, ed Kemper exhibited increasingly disturbing antisocial behaviors.
(06:22):
After his father left the family in nineteen fifty seven,
he began acting out in violent ways. He reportedly buried
the family cat alive, then later dug it up, cut
its head off, and stuck it on a spike. Three
years later, he killed another family cat because it liked
his sister more. I mean that cat was no fool.
(06:46):
He kept the cat's remains in his closet until his
mother found them. Kemper said, I remember there was actually
a sexual thrill. You hear that little pop and pull
off their head and hold them up by the hair,
whipping their heads off their bodies.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Sitting there, that'd get me off. Yikes.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Now there's a kid who shouldn't be around Barbie dolls.
Kemper even stalked his second grade teacher armed with his
father's bayonet.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
One day, his sister.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Susan teased ed about kissing the teacher he had a
crush on. Kemper stared at her blankly and said, if
I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first, so chilling.
Kemper was missing his father since he left the family,
and was quite devastated when his parents divorced in nineteen
sixty one. He had split the time between his mother
(07:38):
and father, but now went to live with his abusive
mother in Montana. According to Kemper, his mother often belittled
and humiliated him. She made him sleep in a locked
basement because she feared he would hurt his sisters. I mean,
that's not exactly an unreasonable fear when you're dealing with
a kid who buries the family.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
Cattiwag.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Kemper would grow to be six foot nine, and being
such a large and awkward teenager wasn't made any easier
by his mother. I mean, it's bad enough being mocked
by your peers at school, but coming home from school
and being humiliated by your own mother had to be
traumatizing for young Ed. It sounds like Clairenel Kemper took
(08:22):
her anger for her ex husband on her son, and
that's not a very nurturing environment to grow up in.
She would say things like no woman will ever fall
in love with you and called him a real weirdo.
By age fourteen, Ed Kemper had had enough. He ran
away from home and tried to reconnect with his father
in Van Nuys, California. His father had remarried, so Kemper
(08:46):
now had a stepbrother, but it was not a happy,
blended family from the start. Kemper's father later spoke about
what it was like having the whole king teenager living
with his new family. His personality had changed so much
that I was worried about him being here with my
present wife, who tried very hard to be a real
friend to him. Kemper's father recalled, I saw him one
(09:10):
day in a brooding mood and his eyes looked like
a sleepwalker, and several talks I had with him toward
the last he seemed fascinated by death in war. He
tried to watch weird tales on TV, which I suppressed.
Years later, Kemper agreed that his stepmother didn't want him around.
My presence gave her migraine headaches when.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I came out.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
She was going to have a heart attack if I
came around, he told her reporter. Uh, yeah, I think
that would give me a migraine too, if not a
heart attack. Because Kemper was creeping everyone out, his father
sent him to live with his paternal grandparents, Ed Kemper
Senior and Maud Kemper. The elderly couple lived on an
(09:54):
isolated ranch near North Fork, California. Kemper hated country life,
and again his grandmother belittled and emasculated him, just as
his mother did. He liked and admired his grandfather, but
the elderly man had dementia so he rarely defended the teenager.
He did teach Kemper to fire a twenty two rifle, however,
(10:17):
which in retrospect wasn't the best idea. Kemper spent many
hours in the woods shooting birds and small animals, much
to the annoyance of his grandmother. Eventually, Maud had her
husband take the rifle away from ed. The punishment enraged Kemper,
and he began plotting his revenge. Kemper's hatred towards his
(10:39):
mother transferred to his grandmother. His anger continued to build,
and he often argued with her. I couldn't please her,
Kemper said of his grandmother, it was like being in jail.
I began a walking time bomb, and I finally blew,
he added. It all culminated on August twenty seventh, nineteen
(11:00):
sixty four. Kemper's grandfather ran errands that day, leaving edit
his grandmother back at the ranch.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Maud worked on a short story for.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Boys Life magazine entitled Fire in the Cannon. It was
an ominous title considering what was about to happen. Next,
Kemper and his grandmother were in the kitchen, where they
began to argue his anger boiling over, he stomped off
and retrieved the rifle his grandfather got him for hunting,
(11:29):
the same weapon Maud had confiscated. According to Kemper, he
grabbed the gun and said he planned on going hunting.
He left the house, but when his grandmother saw the weapon,
she said, oh, you'd better not be shooting the birds again.
Kemper stopped in his tracks and peered through the kitchen's
screen window. He had been fantasizing about this moment for
(11:52):
a long time, and with his grandma facing away from him,
the target was simply too tempting. Kemper raised the rifle
and fired a bullet into the back of her skull.
Maud's lifeless body collapsed at the kitchen table, where she
had been typing the story. Kemper shot her again in
the head and once in the back to ensure she
(12:14):
was dead. He dragged her body into the bedroom and
stabbed her several times, likely for his own gratification. Then,
when his grandfather came home, Kemper shot him as he
was walking up the driveway. Kemper later said, of the murders,
I just wanted to see what it felt like to
kill grandma. He further explained that he killed his grandfather
(12:38):
to spare him the pain of seeing his wife murdered,
an act of serial killer kindness, if you will. After
he killed his grandparents, the fifteen year old Kemper called
his mother and confessed what had happened. She told him
to call the police, which he did. Kemper was sent
to the Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally Insane. There,
(13:00):
doctors diagnosed Kemper with paranoid schizophrenia. The affable Ed befriended
his psychologists at the hospital and became his assistant. The
doctors discovered Kemper had a very high ikeal, but apparently
it never crossed their minds that he might be smart
enough to fake being both insane and later rehabilitated. Kemper
(13:24):
gained access to the other prisoner's psychiatric tests and gained
enough knowledge in his assistant role to convince his doctor
that he was all better. On his twenty first birthday,
Ed Kemper got the best gift he could receive, his freedom.
He only served six years for killing two family members.
(13:46):
Despite his doctor's recommendation that he avoid living with his mother,
Kemper rejoined her in Santa Cruz, California, in nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
I mean, who did the.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
Psychologists think he would live with. I don't know a
lot of people who would want to house someone who
slaughtered wolf their grandparents. Clairenell Strandberg, as she was now known,
had taken a position as an administrative assistant at the
University of California, Santa Cruz. Kemper attended a community college
and seemed to have attempted to live a quiet life
(14:19):
despite his deviant urges. His animosity towards his mother, however,
never waned. Living with Claiarnell again dredged up traumatizing memories
of his childhood. My mother and I started right in
on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. Kember
(14:41):
later explained, it takes a brave woman to argue with
a guy who killed his grandparents. It seems Kemper's mother
had some psychological issues of her own.
Speaker 2 (14:51):
Outside the unhappy.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Home, Kemper worked a variety of jobs. However, Kemper's application
to become a state trooper was turned down because of
his size. Yeah, I highly doubt it was because of
his height. Perhaps it had something to do with, I
don't know, killing your grandparents. Eventually, Kemper got a job
(15:13):
working for the Department of Transportation. He noticed how many
young college girls liked to.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
Hitchhike during this time.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
At first, I picked up girls just to talk to them,
Kemper later explained, just to try to get acquainted with
people my own age and try to strike up a friendship.
He began storing a murder kit in his car, which
included a gun, a knife, and handcuffs. You know, because
that's what totally normal future BFFs do. One side of
(15:45):
me says, Wow, what an attractive chick. I'd like to
talk to her, date her, Kember said. The other side
of me says, I wonder how her head would look
on a stick. For a while, Kember picked up female
hitchhikers without harming them. Who knows how many women narrowly
avoided being the victims of the man who would be
dubbed the co ed killer. Kemper claims it was over
(16:09):
one hundred women. However, Mary Anne Poichet and Anita Lucesa
wouldn't be so lucky. On May seventh, nineteen seventy two,
Kemper picked up the young students hitchhiking near the u C.
Berkeley campus. During the drive, he pulled out a gun
and drove them at gunpoint to a secluded area in
the woods. He took mary Anne into the woods and
(16:31):
left Anita handcuffed in the car. He stopped and strangled
mary Anne, then returned and killed Anita in the same manner.
Kemper then put both of the bodies in the trunk
of his car and drove home. When he arrived home,
he removed the head and hands from the bodies and
violated what remained of their corpses. This guy is the
(16:52):
very definition of depraved evil. The girls' families reported them missing,
and on August fifteenth, a female head was found in
the woods and was identified as mary Anne's. Unfortunately, Anita's
remains were never found. A month later, on September fourteenth,
Kemper picked up fifteen year old Ikokou, who was hitchhiking.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
Instead of taking the bus.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
To her dance class. She would never arrive at her
dance class. Kemper drove to a secluded area and strangled
the young high school student. He raped her while she
was unconscious, and then killed her. It's tricky to talk
about serial killers without inadvertently sensationalizing these cases. But I'd
never want to glorify a killer like Ed Kemper. I'll
(17:39):
just remind you once again that Ed Kemper is a
child killer.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
So we're talking about the worst of the worst here.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
All of the victims lives mattered, but it's especially deplorable
to kill an innocent child, as Kemper.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Did at least once.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
The other girls were also very young and h their
whole lives ahead of them. As the calendar flipped to
nineteen seventy three, Kemper continued killing young college students from
various Northern California universities. He later told reporters that his
intense hatred for his mother became an uncontrollable rage. My victims,
(18:20):
Kemper explained, represented not what my mother was, but what
she liked, what she coveted, what was important to her,
and I was destroying it. In January, Kemper picked up
eighteen year old Cindy Shall, who was hitchhiking to.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
Class at Cabrillo College.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
He shot and killed her, then hid her body in
his bedroom. He seemed to derive a lot of sick
pleasure from committing some of these heinous acts under his
mother's roof. The next day, Kemper dismembered Cindy's body. He
buried the girl's severed head in his mother's garden, basing
her bedroom window.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
He lay joked that.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
He did this because his mother always wanted people to
look up to her talk about creepy. Around this time,
he began hanging out at a bar that was ironically
called the Jury Room, which local police officers frequented. He
made friends with several officers called him big Ed.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Not only was big Ed getting a.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Thrill from outsmarting law enforcement, but he was also gaining
valuable insight into the murder investigation. Ed learned investigator said
piece together that college students were disappearing while hitchhiking. The
police warned the public against hitchhiking, and several universities increased
their bus schedules for students on campus.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
However, hitch hiking was popular.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
In the seventies, and many young people ignored the advice.
One morning, even advised students to only ride in cars
with university stickers. The only problem was that Kemper had
a U. You see Santa Cruz parking sticker since his
mother worked for the college. On February fifth, Kemper's parking
(20:10):
sticker paid off. He drove to the Santa Cruz campus
and picked up two students, Rosalind.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Thorpe and Alice Low.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
They hadn't been in his car long when he shot
both women, and even drove past the campus security gate
as the women lay dying in the back of his car.
Once they were dead, Kemper decapitated his victims and dismembered
their bodies. He discarded their remains in different locations. Some
hikers eventually discovered some of the girls' remains.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
With the latest victims.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
The media adopted the unknown predator the co ed killer,
but killing co eds didn't satisfy ed Kemper. He stressed
out about being caught, and the murders took.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
An emotional toll on the man.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
Kemper is an absolute monster, but he's unique and and
that he does seem to be more self aware than
the average psychopath. That's not to say he was empathetic
towards his victims, but instead he knew his crimes would
eventually catch up to him. He was also hyper aware
of the real object of his burning rage his overbearing,
(21:17):
psychologically abusive mother. His anger reached its peak on April twentieth,
nineteen seventy three. It was a good Friday, but nothing
about this day would go well for his mother, Claernel.
Kember came home early in the morning, and as usual,
his mother belittled him. I guess you're going to want
to stay up and talk, his mother said, with a sigh.
(21:39):
Kember said nope and went to his bedroom. Once his
mother had fallen asleep, Kemper attacked her with a claw hammer.
As she slept, he finished her off by slitting her throat.
Like he had with his other victims, Kemper decapitated his
mother and cut off her hands, but he had special
plants for Claernel. Kemper also removed her tongue and vocal
(22:03):
cords and stuffed them down the garbage disposal. He also
performed sex acts with his mother's head. That's about as
gruesome and disgusting as it gets. Later that evening, Kemper
called his mother's close friend, Sally Hallett, and invited her
over for a movie night. When Sally arrived, he strangled
(22:26):
her to death and hid her body in a closet.
Part of his plan was to say that his mother
and Sally had taken off on a vacation together, but
perhaps he realized no one would buy it. Kemper skipped
town in Sally's stolen car the next day and made
it as far as Pueblo, Colorado. However, he was tired
of living the stressful double life of a wanted serial killer,
(22:50):
so amazingly, he picked up the phone and called a
detective he knew in Santa Cruz ed confessed to killing
his mother and her friend. At first, the police thought
big Ed wishdis yanking their chain. After all, he was
a gentle giant who often stretched the truth. But after
Kemper called back and explained to he was serious, the
(23:12):
Santa Cruz detectives contacted Pueblo law enforcement. The local police
then rushed to pick up the wanted suspect. Once in custody,
Kemper horrified investigators by recounting how he cunningly prayed on
young women, ultimately killing six of them. He explained how
he picked up and murdered the high school and college
students before violating and dismembering their corpses. Kemper was charged
(23:37):
with eight counts of first degree murder. He went on
trial in October nineteen seventy three. Not surprisingly, he was
found guilty of all the charges the following month. When
asked by the judge what he thought his punishment should be,
Kemper replied that he should be tortured to death.
Speaker 2 (23:55):
It's not the worst idea ever.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Instead, the man known as the co Ed Killer received
eight life sentences, despite asking the court for the death penalty.
Following the verdict, Kemper attempted suicide two times, but survived
both attempts. So why didn't Kemper just kill his mother
in the first place and spare the other seven women
(24:18):
who didn't deserve to die? Kemper explained in an interview, saying,
my mother was a sick, angry, hungry, and very sad woman.
I hated her, but I wanted to love my mother.
Kember's mother had been the real target the entire time
he was killing. It's just a shame that six other
(24:40):
innocent girls had to die before he killed his mother
and her close friend. Not that the mother or her
friend's murders was any less tragic than the students who perished.
But I also can't say that Claire Noel Kemper was
completely innocent. It's a near certainty that Clarnell's abusive behavior
caused psychological trauma that played a significant role in Kemper's
(25:02):
violent actions. She was such a powerful figure in his
life that once he murdered her, he no longer felt
the need to continue killing. That alone is very rare
for a serial killer. When asked why he ended his
killing spree and turned himself in, Kemper replied, it wasn't
serving any physical or real or emotional purpose. It was
(25:24):
just a pure waste of time. Emotionally, I couldn't handle
it much longer. Toward the end there I started to
feel the folly of the whole damn thing, and at
the point of near exhaustion, near collapse, I just said
to hell with it and called it all off. Students
and parents at high school and college campuses from Santa
(25:45):
Cruz to the San Francisco Bay area breathed a sigh
of relief once the co ed killer was captured, regardless
of how it happened. Unfortunately, there were two other active
serial killers, John Linley Fraser and Herrobert Mullins, operating in
the same area, leading Santa Cruz to be dubbed the
murder capital of the World. Not the best nickname for
(26:08):
your tourism bureau to work with. Ed Kemper was imprisoned
at the California Medical Facility, the same place Charles Manson
was imprisoned until his death. Kemper is now seventy five
years old and reportedly one of the more popular inmates.
Guards describe him as very cordial. Sure if you're not
(26:29):
a young female student. Luckily he'll never be able to
harm another student again. Since being imprisoned a second time,
Kemper has done many interviews with the media and law enforcement.
He even met with the FBI to talk about his
brutal crimes and his motivation for committing them. He even
gave them advice on a few cases. In twenty seventeen,
(26:52):
the popular Netflix series mind Hunter renewed interest in Kemper
thanks to a memorable and chilling performance by actor Kings Britain.
If you haven't seen that series, I highly recommend it.
Ed Kemper terrorized campuses in northern California for eleven murderous
months in nineteen seventy two and seventy three. He killed
(27:14):
ten people, including three of his family members, but will
forever be known as the co ed killer because of
the six young students he butchered by the side of
the road, all to get even with the abusive mother
he hated. It's easy to blame Kemper's mother for all
the terrible things her son did, but Kemper made the
decision to kill and got sexual gratification from terrorizing young girls.
(27:39):
There seemed to be something wrong with Kemper from an
early age that, when combined with his mother's abuse and
his father's neglect, became a perfect storm of sexual depravity
and psychotic violence. What I find so chilling is the
thought that Kemper might never have been caught if he
hadn't turned himself in after murdering his mother. Luckily he did,
(28:01):
because who knows how many students would have gone missing
if he had kept on killing. That's it for this
episode of Murder You and please remember if you or
anyone you know has been the victim of sexual violence.
In the United States, the National Sexual Assault Hotline is
available twenty four hours call one eight hundred sixty five
(28:22):
six four six seven three one eight hundred six five
six four six seven three. Be sure to like, and
subscribe to Murder You on Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music,
or wherever you get your podcasts.
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