Edmund Kemper III

Ancestors

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Biography

Edmund Emil "Ed" Kemper III, was born 18 Dec 1948, in Burbank, Los Angeles County, California, to parents Edmund Kemper Jr. and Clarnell Kemper Strandberg. He is currently serving life, in the California State prison system. ^[1]

Sources

1. ↑ Santa Cruz Sentinel Newspaper, Santa Cruz, California.

• Link to "Ancestry of Edmund Emil Kemper III, Compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner.

• Some of the following narrative, can be located at: Link to Edmund Kemper III, on Wikipedia.

• Edmund Emil "Ed" Kemper III, Known as “The Co-ed Killer”
• Height: 6' 9" (2.06 m)

• Parents: Edmund Emil Kemper, Jr., and Clarnell Strandberg. Divorced in 1957 (Father remarried and had a stepson) (Mother married and divorced 3 different times).

• One Older Sister and One Younger Sister.

• Grandparents: Edmund Kemper, Sr. and Maude (  ? ) Kemper.

* He was close to his father. Because of this, he was troubled when his parents divorced in 1957 and his mother took Kemper and his sisters and moved to Helena, Montana. Though very bright (he was later found to have an IQ of 145 during adulthood), he displayed sociopathic traits at an early age; he was a pyromaniacand often used his sisters' dolls to enact murders and bizarre sexual rituals. He particularly enjoyed pulling their heads off. He took great delight in torturing and killing cats; one of them he stabbed to death. Another he reportedly buried alive, dug up again, decapitated it and put its head on a pole. He fantasized about being executed byelectric chair and would often enact it as a game with his sisters. His emotionally abusive mother would often lock him in the basement because she was afraid that he would rape the youngest. At the age of 13, he ran away and made it all the way to his father in California, only to discover that he had remarried and made his stepson the object of his affection. Kemper, heartbroken, was sent back to his mother.

At the age of 14, Kemper was sent to live with his paternal grandparents, Edmund Sr. and Maude Kemper, at their ranch in North Fork, California. Even though he already was an imposing 6 foot 4 inches (1,93 m) tall, he was easily bullied by classmates. He also didn't get along with his grandmother. On the afternoon of August 27, 1964, he shot and killed first her, then Edmund Sr., with a rifle that had been given to him Christmas the previous year. Sources vary on exactly how it happened; some claim it was a spur of the moment after Kemper and she had an argument. Others claim that she was working on her next children's book when she was shot and that Kemper did it just to find out how it felt. He then killed his grandfather when he came home from grocery shopping to spare him the sight of his dead wife and made two phone calls; first to his mother to tell her what he had done and then to the local police to do the same. He then sat down on the porch and waited for their arrival. After being arrested, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and placed in mental care at the Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He surprisingly got along well with his psychiatrist and was even made his assistant. On December 18, 1969, on his 21st birthday, Kemper was released against the wishes of several psychologists and placed in the care of his mother in Santa Cruz

After being released, Kemper, still living with his mother, took a number of menial jobs before eventually getting a job at the State of California's Department of Public Works as a laborer. He was then 6 foot 9 (2,05 m) and weighed ca. 300 pounds (ca. 140 kg). He befriended several local police officers and even planned to become one himself, a dream that ended when he learned that he was above regulation height. Though he wasn't good with money, he eventually saved up enough to move away from his mother and get an apartment with a roommate. After getting a $15,000 settlement through a motorbike accident, he bought a yellow Ford Galaxy and began cruising the Pacific coast area in search of female hitchhikers, all the while gathering kill supplies such as a knife, plastic bags and handcuffs. He eventually had to leave his apartment and move back in with his mother, who had been divorced a total of three times by that point.

May 7, 1972, he committed his first two murders as a serial killer. Over the following nine months, he killed four more women, coinciding with murders committed by fellow Californian serial killer Herbert Mullin. Many of his murders were committed after an argument with his mother. On April 19, 1973, he bludgeoned his mother to death in her sleep and spent hours mutilating her body, severing her head, using it for oral sex, tossing darts at it and throwing her vocal chords into the garbage disposer. When the murder didn't satisfy his homicidal needs, he invited over Sally Hallett, a friend of his mother, and killed her as well when she arrived.

Kemper then took his car and drove away, all the while listening to the radio for reports about his murders. After four days on the road without hearing any such broadcasts, he stopped at a phone booth in Pueblo, Colorado, called his friends at the Santa Cruz PD and confessed to his eight murders. At first, they thought it was a poor joke, but, after a few phone calls, learned that he was telling the truth. He then sat down in the car and waited for them to come and arrest him. After unsuccessfullypleading insanity, he requested to be sentenced to death and executed by electrical chair, like he had fantasized about, but due to the state having temporarily suspended capital punishment, he was denied his childhood dream and sentenced to life in prison. While in prison, he was one of the first 36 convicted killers to be interviewed by the then recently founded Behavioral Science Unit. He was interviewed three times by Robert Ressler. During the third time, the guards didn't respond when he called for them and he found himself locked in the small room alone with Kemper, who started making death threats and taunting him. When the guard finally came, he claimed to have been kidding. John Douglas, who also interviewed him, later admitted to liking Kemper, who was friendly, open, and sensitive when they spoke. Kemper is still (January 2014) serving his sentence at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

"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."

Known Victims:

• August 27, 1964

Edmund Sr. and Maude Kemper (his grandparents; both shot with a .22 rifle)

• May 7, 1972:

Mary Ann Pesce

Anita Luchessa (both were manually strangled and fatally stabbed):

Mary Ann Pesce, 18

Anita Luchessa, 18

• September 14, 1972

Aiko Koo, 15 (fatally strangled)

• January 7. 1972

Cindy Schall, 19 (shot)

• February 5. 1972

Rosalind Thorpe 24

Allison Liu 23 (both shot)

• April 19, 1972

Clarnell Strandberg (his mother; bludgeoned with a claw hammer; mutilated and decapitated post-mortem)

Sally Hallett, 59 (fatally strangled) Mother's friend

Imprisoned: California Medical Facility, Vacaville, California.

Acknowledgements

• Kemper-509 was created by Sally Stovall, on 25 Feb 2015, for the Outlaws Project. Thank you Sally.