Big Ed Kemper, the Co-ed Killer

Imagine this. A serial killer is on the loose killing girls from the college you attend. The school and police both request that you walk in groups, and never accept a ride from anyone you don’t know – unless they have a University sticker on their car. You and a friend start walking toward home when a car pulls up and the driver offers you a ride. The car has a University sticker on it, so you both go ahead and get in. Unfortunately, you just got into the car with Ed Kemper, the Co-ed Killer.

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948 in Burbank, CA. He was the middle child, and only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper and Edmund Emil Kemper II. His father was a WWII veteran who worked testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific Proving Grounds before returning to California where he worked as an electrician. Clarnell often complained about his menial electrician job, and Edmund later said, “suicide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with her” and that his wife affected him “more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did.”

Edmund was born a hefty baby, weighing 13 pounds, and by the age of four, he was already standing a head taller than other children his age. He was highly intelligent, but exhibited behavior that is common among serial killers – he was cruel to animals. When he was just ten years old, he buried the family cat alive and waited for it to die. Once he was sure it was dead, he dug it up and decapitated it, mounting its head on a spike. At age thirteen he killed another family cat, believing it favored his younger sister over him. This time he kept pieces of the cat in his closet – until his mother found them. 

His disturbing behavior didn’t end there; he liked to perform “rituals” with his younger sister’s dolls during which he would remove their heads and hands. He enjoyed playing games he made up called “Gas Chamber,” and “Electric Chair,” in which he would ask his younger sister to tie him up and flim an imaginary switch. Ed would then tumble over and write on the floor, as though he were dying of electric shock or gas inhalation. 

Once, his older sister asked him why he didn’t try to kiss his teacher. Ed replied, “If I kiss her, I’d have to kill her first.” But what he didn’t tell her, was that at night, he would sneak out of the house and go to his second-grade teacher’s house to watch her through the windows – armed with his father’s bayonet. 

Evidently, his older sister realized something just wasn’t right about him, and once she tried to push him in front of a train. When that was unsuccessful, she pushed him into the deep end of a swimming pool – where he nearly drowned.

Ed’s mother was not an easy woman to live with; she was neurotic, domineering, and an alcoholic. Some would even say she suffered an undiagnosed case of borderline personality disorder. It was no surprise when his parents separated in 1957, but unfortunately his father, whom he was very close with, left him behind to be raised by his mother. 

As he grew up, Clarnell would frequently humiliate and belittle Ed, as well as abuse him. She would make him sleep in a locked basement because she feared he would harm his sisters. He was big, standing 6 feet 4 inches by the age of 15, and she labeled him “a real weirdo.”

Any form of affection was off the table, as Clarnell thought she would “turn him gay.” Additionally, Ed was so much like his father, that Clarnell told him that no woman would ever love him.

Ed ran away from home, hoping to reconcile with his father in Van Nuys, California. As a 15 year old boy, he was saddened to learn that his father had remarried and had a stepson. While his father allowed Ed to stay, he ultimately chose to send him to live with his paternal grandparents as his presence made it difficult for him to enjoy his new life and new family.

Ed’s grandparents lived on a ranch in the mountains of North Fork, California. He hated living there, where he and his grandfather, whom he described as “senile,” were constantly emasculated by his grandmother.  

Ed got along well with his grandfather. He had even bought Ed a rifle and was learning to shoot. Often they shot birds. His grandmother didn’t like it though, and on August 27, 1964, she and Ed got into an argument at the kitchen table. She told him she didn’t want him shooting any more birds. He stormed away from the table and retrieved his rifle. Without skipping a beat, Ed returned to the kitchen and shot his grandmother in the head, and then fired twice more into her back. 

“I just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma.”

Edmund Kemper III

He waited for his grandfather, Edmund Emil Kemper, to return home from grocery shopping. He didn’t even make it to the door before Ed shot him in the driveway. He didn’t want to kill his grandfather, but didn’t want him to suffer the loss of his wife. 

He didn’t know what to do next, so he hid his grandfather’s body, and called his mother, Clarnell. She advised him to call the police and confess. Ed was arrested, and when questioned by authorities, he said he “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma.” He was interviewed by psychiatrists, and was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. His crimes were deemed incomprehensible for a 15 year old boy, and he was sent to the criminally insane unit of Atascadero State Hospital.

Ed saw numerous psychiatrists, doctors, and social workers while incarcerated. They started with the belief that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, but came to disagree with the court psychiatrists’ diagnosis. Their reports stated that he showed “no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre thinking.” Additionally, he was tested and found to have an IQ of 136 (scores between 120-140 are considered very superior intelligence, with genius starting at 140). They changed his diagnosis, stating he had a “personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type.” Later on during his time at Atascadero, he was given another IQ test, this time scoring 145.

Ed proved to be a model prisoner, and was even trained to administer psychiatric tests to other inmates. One of his psychiatrists later stated, “He was a very good worker and this is not typical of a sociopath. He really took pride in his work.”

He became a member of the Jaycees (a leadership training and civic organization for people between the ages of 18 and 40. A branch of Junior Chamber International, its areas of emphasis include business development, management skills, individual training, community service, and international connections. Members include Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Elvis Presley, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne Gacy, and more). He also developed “some new tests and some new scales on the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory,” specifically, an “Overt Hostility Scale.” Ed later admitted that being able to understand how these tests functioned allowed him to not only manipulate his psychiatrists, but also to learn from the sex offenders to whom he administered tests. One thing they told him was that it was best to kill a woman after raping her to avoid leaving witnesses.

Since he was a minor during the time of his first murders, Ed was eligible for parole when he turned 21. On December 18, 1969, on his 21st birthday, Ed was released. Against the recommendations of his psychiatrists at the hospital, he was released into the care of his mother, who lived at 609 A Ord Street, Aptos, which was just a short drive from where she worked as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Ed stayed out of trouble and was able to prove that he was rehabilitated and his juvenile records were permanently expunged on November 29, 1972. The last report from his probation psychiatrists read: 

“If I were to see this patient without having any history available or getting any history from him, I would think that we’re dealing with a very well adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence and who was free of any psychiatric illnesses … It is my opinion that he has made a very excellent response to the years of treatment and rehabilitation and I would see no psychiatric reason to consider him to be of any danger to himself or to any member of society … [and] since it may allow him more freedom as an adult to develop his potential, I would consider it reasonable to have a permanent expunction of his juvenile records.”

Ed attended community college in accordance with his parole requirements, and had hopes of becoming a police officer. Unfortunately, he was rejected because of his size, which at the time of his release from Atascadero, he stood 6 feet 9 inches tall – earning him the nickname, “Big Ed.” Despite the rejection, he maintained relationships with the Santa Cruz police officers, and even frequented a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local law enforcement officers.

He kept busy, working menial jobs until he was able to secure employment with the State of California Highway Department (now known as the California Department of Transportation). 

The toxic nature of his relationship with his mother continued, even getting hostile at times. They had frequent arguments, so loud the neighbors often overheard. Ed later described these arguments:

“My mother and I started right in on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. I’ve never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone. It would go to fists with a man, but this was my mother and I couldn’t stand the thought of my mother and I doing these things. She insisted on it, and just over stupid things. I remember one roof-raiser was over whether I should have my teeth cleaned.”

Ed saved his money, working to move out of his mother’s apartment. But even when he had saved enough, and moved in with a friend in Alameda, his mother was still there. She called him regularly and even paid him “surprise” visits. Money remained an issue for Ed though, and it left him returning to his mother’s apartment more than once.

Then Ed began dating a 16 year old girl who attended Turlock High School. That same year, he was hit by a car while riding a motorcycle that he had recently purchased. His arm was badly injured and he filed a civil suit, which he won, receiving a $15,000 settlement. He took that money and purchased a 1969 Ford Galaxie. Driving around, something he enjoyed doing, he noticed just how many young women were hitchhiking. Despite getting engaged to his young girlfriend, Ed couldn’t resist storing plastic bags, knives, blankets, and handcuffs in his car. 

He began picking up girls and peacefully letting them go. According to Ed, he picked up around 150 hitchhikers and let them go before he felt his homicidal sexual urges, which he called his “little zapples,” creep up, and began to act on them.

“When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants to be real nice and sweet, and the other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick.”

Edmund Kemper III

Ed’s murder spree ran from May 1972 until April 1973. 

Clarnell refused to introduce her son to women attending the university where she worked. She would say, “You’re just like your father. You don’t deserve to get to know them.” But Ed didn’t need his mother’s permission to pick up the occasional hitchhiking co-ed.

On May 7, 1972, Ed was driving in Berkeley when he picked up two 18 year old Fresno State University students, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Mary Luchessa. He agreed to drive them to Stanford University, and after driving for an hour, he reached a secluded wooded area near Alameda, which he was familiar with thanks to his work with the Highway Department. The girls hadn’t even realized that he had changed directions from where they wanted to go.

Intent to rape the girls, and taking into account the lessons learned from the serial rapists in Atascadero, he decided to handcuff Mary Ann, and locked Anita Mary in the trunk of his car. He stabbed and strangled Mary Ann before killing Anita Mary in a similar manner. During an interview, Ed confessed that while handcuffing Mary Ann, he “brushed the back of [his] hand against one of her breasts and it embarrassed [him]” before adding that “[he] even said ‘whoops, I’m sorry’ or something like that” after grazing her breast, despite murdering her minutes later.

He placed both bodies in the trunk of his car, and during his drive home, he was stopped by a police officer for having a broken taillight. The officer had no idea what Ed had just done, and suspected nothing, so he was let go. When he arrived home, his roommate was gone, so he was able to take the bodies into his bedroom where he took photos, and had sexual intercourse with them. When he was finished, he dismembered their bodies, placing their parts into plastic bags which he later disposed of near Loma Prieta Mountain. 

“If I killed them, you know, they couldn’t reject me as a man. It was more or less making a doll out of a human being… and carrying out my fantasies with a doll, a living human doll.”

Edmund Kemper III

He hadn’t disposed of their heads yet, and he had time to engage in irrumatio (The active thrusting of a man’s penis into or between one or more parters’ body parts, including legs,breasts, feet, upper thighs (intercrural sex), abdomens, throat and mouth) with both of them before dumping their heads in a ravine. 

Mary Anne Pesce’s skull was found on Loma Prieta Mountain that August. The rest of her remains, were never found, nor were any remains of Anita Mary Luchessa.

On September 14, 1972, 15 year old Aiko Koo missed her bus and decided to hitchhike to a dance class. Ed picked her up and drove to a remote area where he pulled a gun on Aiko before accidentally locking himself out of the car. Despite having had a gun pointed at her, Aiko had developed a trust in Ed and let him back inside. It was then that Ed choked her until she was unconscious, then raped and killed her. 

Again, he put her body in the trunk, and this time on the way home, he stopped for drinks at a nearby bar. Before heading home, he opened his truck to admire his work. Once home, he took Aiko to his bedroom where he had sexual intercourse with her corpse then dismembered her and disposed of her remains in the same manner he had his previous victims. 

Despite calling the police and posting hundreds of flyers, Aiko Koo’s mother never received any information regarding the fate of her daughter.

By January 1973, Ed had moved back in with his mother. On January 7, while driving around the Cabrillo College campus, he again found a girl in need of a ride. 18 year old Cynthia Ann “Cindy” Schall was picked up and driven to wooded area and shot with a .22 caliber pistol. He took her body home, and hid her in the closet of his room overnight. Once his mother had left for work the next morning, he pulled her out and had sexual intercourse with her corpse. He then removed the bullet from her body and decapitated her in his mother’s bathtub.

“With a girl, there’s a lot left in the girls body without a head. Of course, the personality is gone.”

Edmund Kemper III

Ed kept Cindy’s head for several days, regularly engaging in irrumatio with it. But then it was time to say goodbye, and he buried her head in his mother’s garden, her face pointing up toward her bedroom. He later remarked that his mother “always wanted people to look up to her.”

The remainder of Cindy’s remains were tossed off a cliff. Over the course of the following weeks, all of her pieces were discovered, aside from her head and right hand. Police and a pathologist determined that she had been hacked to death, then cut into tiny pieces with a power saw. 

With the suspicion of a serial killer in the area, all students were advised to only get into cars with University stickers on them. Ed had one of those stickers, since his mother worked at the university. He continued to pick up hitchhikers and deliver them safely to their destinations, as he truly enjoyed driving around. But on February 5, 1973, after a heated argument with his mother, he left in search of a new victim. 

He pulled over for a couple of ladies, 23 year old Rosalind Heather Thorpe and 20 year old Alice Helen “Allison” Liu on the UCSC campus. Rosalind entered the car first, which reassured Allison. He promptly shot the girls and wrapped their bodies in blankets. He drove them back to his mother’s house and beheaded them in his car. He carried their headless corpses into the house to have sexual intercourse with them, and again removed the bullets to prevent identification and dismembered their bodies. The next morning he discarded them, and a week later, some remains were found at Eden Canyon, and in March more were found near Highway 1. 

“I remember there was actually a sexual thrill… You hear that little pop and pull their heads off and hold their heads up by the hair whipping their heads off, their body sitting there. That’d get me off.”

Edmund Kemper III

On April 20, 1973, Clarnell, now 52, returned home late from a party. She was so noisy she awoke Ed. He got up and went to her room where she sat in bed reading a book. As soon as she noticed him, she said, “I suppose you’re going to want to sit up all night and talk now.” He replied “No, good night!” and returned to his room. He waited for her to fall asleep before returning to her room. He took a claw hammer and bludgeoned her before slitting her throat with a knife. 

Ed had finally conquered his mother, and cut off and committed irrumatio with her severed head. He put her head on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour, threw darts at it, then smashed her face in.He cut out her tongue and larynx and put them in the garbage disposal. Unfortunately, the garbage disposal could not break down her tough vocal cords, and it ejected the tissue back into the sink. Ed later said, “That seemed appropriate, as much as she’d bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years.”

He hid his mother’s corpse in a closet and went out for a drink. When he returned home, he invited his mother’s best friend, 59 year old Sara Taylor “Sally” Hallett, over for dinner and a movie. As soon as she arrived, Ed strangled her to death, decapitated her and spent the rest of the night with her body. 

He stuffed her corpse in a closet and tidied up the house, hiding any signs of a disturbance. He then wrote a note for the police:

“Appx. 5:15 A.M. Saturday. No need for her to suffer any more at the hands of this horrible “murderous Butcher”. It was quick—asleep—the way I wanted it. Not sloppy and incomplete, gents. Just a “lack of time”. I got things to do!!!”

Ed Kemper got into his car and drove nonstop to Pueblo, Colorado. He listened to the radio for anything about the murders of his mother and Sally, but there was nothing. He found a phone booth and called the police, confessing to the murders of his mother and Sally, yet oddly the police did not take him seriously and told him to call back at a later time.

He tried calling again hours later, asking to speak to an officer he personally knew. He confessed again, and waited for the police to arrive and take him into custody, where he confessed to the murders of six students. 

Why did he turn himself in though? Ed said, “The original purpose was gone… It wasn’t serving any physical or real or emotional purpose. It was just a pure waste of time… Emotionally, I couldn’t handle it much longer. Toward the end there, I started feeling 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.”

Edmund Kemper was indicted on eight counts of first degree murder on May 7, 1973. He was assigned a public defender, and thanks to his detailed confession, his only option was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. Ed tried killing himself twice, but he survived and his trial commenced on October 23, 1973.

He was examined by three court appointed psychiatrists, who ultimately found him to be legally sane. One of the psychiatrists looked at his juvenile records and diagnosis that he was once psychotic. He also gave Ed truth serum, where Ed had allegedly revealed that he had engaged in cannibalism, claiming he sliced flesh from the legs of his victims, then cooked and consumed these strips of flesh in a casserole. Regardless, even this psychiatrist had determined that he had been fully cognizant in each case, and enjoyed the prospect of the infamy associated with being labeled a murderer.

Ed later recanted the confession of cannibalism.

On November 1, Ed took the stand, testifying that he had killed the victims because he wanted them “for myself, like possessions.” He continued to try and convince the jury that he was insane, based on the reasoning that his actions could only have been committed by someone with an aberrant mind. He said two beings inhabited his body, and that when the killer personality took over, it was “kind of like blacking out.”

Nevertheless, on November 8, the jury, made up of six men and six women, declared him sane and guilty on all counts. Ed asked for the death penalty, even requesting death by torture, however a moritorium had been placed on capital punishment by the Supreme Court at that time, so instead he received only seven years to life for each count, to be served concurrently at the California Medical Facility.

He sat in the same prison block as Charles Manson and Herbert Mullin. He showed particular disdain for Herbert, saying he was “just a cold-blooded killer… killing everybody he saw for no good reason.” Herbert stood 5 feet 7 inches, to Ed’s 6 feet 9 inches, making it easy for him to be intimidated. Ed once stated that “[Herbert] had a habit of singing and bothering people when somebody tried to watch TV, so I threw water on him to shut him up. Then, when he was a good boy, I’d give him peanuts. Herbie liked peanuts. That was effective, because pretty soon he asked permission to sing. That’s called behavior modification treatment.”

As a model prisoner, he was placed in charge of schedule other inmates’ appointments with psychiatrists. He made pottery, and became a prolific reader of books on tape for the blind. He was retired from these positions in 2015 after suffering a stroke and declared medically disabled. 

He has participated in numerous interviews over the years, even helping the FBI understand the mind of serial killers. FBI profiler, John Douglas, described him as “among the brightest” prison inmates he ever interviewed and capable of “rare insight” for a violent criminal.

Ed has stated that he has participated in the interviews to save others from himself from killing. “There’s somebody out there that is watching this and hasn’t done that – hasn’t killed people, and wants to, and rages inside and struggles with that feeling, or is so sure they have it under control. They need to talk to somebody about it. Trust somebody enough to sit down and talk about something that isn’t a crime; thinking that way isn’t a crime. Doing it isn’t just a crime, it’s a horrible thing. It doesn’t know when to quit and it can’t be stopped easily once it starts.”

As for parole, Ed became eligible in 1979, but was denied then, and again in 1980, 1981, and 1982. He waived his right to a hearing in 1985, and at his hearing in 1988, when he was once again denied, he said, “society is not ready in any shape or form for me. I can’t fault them for that.” Denials again in 1991 and 1994, and he again waived his right to a hearing in 1997 and 2002. In 2007 he was again denied parole. Prosecutor Ariadne Symons said, “We don’t care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes.”

In 2012, Ed waived his right to a hearing, and in 2016, attorney Scott Currey, who had represented him at his 2007 hearing, relayed a message to the media stating that Edmund Kemper believes no one is ever going to grant him parole, and that he is “happy going about his life in prison.” He was again denied parole in 2017

Edmund Kemper will be eligible for parole again in 2024. He will be 76.

Do you think serial killers can be made, based on the treatment they receive from their mothers? Here we have Ed Kemper. Then there’s Ed Gein, and Bobby Joe Long.