“I Just Wanted To See What It Felt Like”, was the reasoning behind young Edmund Kemper’s killing of his grandparents at the age of fifteen. This was the beginning of Kemper’s killing but would not be his brutalist…not by a long shot.
To all the world it seemed that young Ed Kemper was bright and very intelligent albeit a a very shy young man. Kemper was born in Burbank, California, on Decmber 18th, 1948, to Clarnell Stage and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. He was very intelligent with an IQ of 136, however, he displayed sociopathic behavior from a young age. Kemper had a dark fantasy life, sometimes dreaming about killing his mother. He cut off the heads of his sisters’ dolls and even coerced the girls into playing a game he called “gas chamber,” in which he had them blindfold him and lead him to a chair, where he pretended to writhe in agony until he “died.” His first victims were the family cats. At ten he, buried one of them alive and the second, 13 year-old Kemper slaughtered with a knife.
Worsening the situation was Kemper’s mother, who constantly berated and humiliated her son and often made him sleep in a locked basement due to a fear that he would molest his sisters. Kemper’s mother Clarnell apparently suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder which resulted in her rages and abuse against her son.
On August 27, 1964, Kemper shot his grandmother while she sat at the kitchen table putting the finishing touches on her latest children’s book. When his grandfather came home from grocery shopping, Kemper shot him as well. Then he called his mother, who urged him to call the police. When questioned, he said that he “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma”, and that he killed his grandfather because he knew he would be angry at him for what he had done to his grandmother.
Kemper was committed to Atascadero State Hospital where he befriended his psychologist and even became his assistant. He was intelligent enough to gain the trust of the doctor to the extent of being allowed access to prisoners’ tests. With the knowledge he gained from his “apprenticeship” he eventually was able to impress his doctor at the hospital enough to let him go.
In 1969, Kemper was released at the age of 21. Despite his prison doctors’ recommendation that he does not live with his mother, because of her past abuse and his psychological issues involving her, he rejoined her in Santa Cruz, California, where she had moved after ending her third marriage to take a job with the University of California. While there, Kemper attended community college for a time and worked a variety of jobs, eventually finding employment with the Department of Transportation in 1971.
Kemper had applied to become a state trooper, but he was rejected because of his size — he weighed around 300 pounds and was 6 feet 9 inches tall, which led to his nickname “Big Ed.” However, he did hang around some of the Santa Cruz police officers. One gave him a training-school badge and handcuffs, while another let him borrow a gun, according to Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman. Kemper even had a car that resembled a police cruiser.
The same year he began working for the highway department, Kemper was hit by a car while out on his motorcycle. His arm was badly injured, and he received a $15,000 settlement in the civil suit he filed against the car’s driver. Unable to work, Kemper turned his mind toward other pursuits. He noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking in the area. In the new car he bought with some of his settlement money, Kemper began storing the tools he thought he might need to fulfill his murderous desires, including a gun, a knife and handcuffs.
‘The Co-ed Killer’
At first, Kemper picked up female hitchhikers and let them go. However, when he offered a ride to two Fresno State students — Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa — they would never make it to their destination. Their families reported them missing soon thereafter, but nothing would be known of their fates until August 15, when a female head was discovered in the woods near Santa Cruz and was later identified as Pesce’s. Luchessa’s remains, however, were never found. Kemper would later explain that he stabbed and strangled Pesce before stabbing Luchessa as well. After the murders, he brought the bodies back to his apartment and removed their heads and hands. Kemper also reportedly engaged in sexual activity with their corpses.
Later that year, on September 14, 1972, Kemper picked up 15-year-old Aiko Koo, who had decided to hitchhike rather than wait for the bus to take her to a dance class. She would meet the same fate as Pesce and Luchessa.
In January 1973, Kemper continued to act on his murderous impulses, picking up hitchhiker Cindy Schall, whom he shot and killed. While his mother was out, Kemper went to her home and hid Schall’s body in his room. He dismembered her corpse there the following day and threw the parts into the ocean. Several parts were later discovered when they washed up onshore. He buried her head in his mother’s backyard.
On February 5, 1973, Kemper used a campus parking sticker his mother had given him to facilitate a double-murder. He drove to the university, where he offered a ride to two students, Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. Shortly after picking them up, he shot the two young women then drove past the campus security at the gates with the two mortally wounded women in his car. After the murders, Kemper decapitated his two victims and further dismembered the bodies, removed the bullets from their heads and disposed of their parts in different locations. In March, some of Thorpe’s and Liu’s remains were discovered by hikers near Highway 1 in San Mateo County.
At the time of Kemper’s murders, two other serial killers, John Linley Frazier and Herbert Mullins were also perpetrating their own crimes in the area, resulting in Santa Cruz receiving the ignominious nickname the “Murder Capital of the World” in the press. For Kemper’s part, he was dubbed the “Co-ed Killer” and the “Co-ed Butcher.”
Mother’s Murder
In April 1973, Kemper committed what would be his last two murders. On Good Friday, he went to his mother’s home, where the two had an unpleasant exchange. Kemper attacked his mother after she went to sleep, first striking her in the head with a hammer, and then cutting her throat with a knife. As he had with his other victims, he then decapitated her and cut off her hands, but then also removed her larynx and put it down the garbage disposal.
After hiding his mother’s body parts, Kemper called his mother’s, friend Sally Hallett and invited her over to the house. Kemper strangled Hallett shortly after she arrived and hid her body in a closet.
WATCH ED KEMPER TALK ABOUT HIS CRIMES BELOW
Kemper fled the area the next day, driving east until he reached Pueblo, Colorado, where on April 23 he made a call to the Santa Cruz police to confess his crimes. At first, they did not believe that the guy they knew as “Big Ed” was a killer. But during subsequent interrogations, he would lead them to all the evidence they needed to prove that he was in fact the infamous “Co-ed Killer.”
Trial and Imprisonment
Charged with eight counts of first-degree murder, Kemper went on trial for his crimes in October 1973. He was found guilty of all of the charges in early November. When asked by the judge what he thought his punishment should be, Kemper said that he should be tortured to death. He instead received eight concurrent life sentences.
Most recently, Ed Kemper was one of the serial killers who was the focus of the ongoing Netflix series MINDHUNTER where he was portrayed with an almost uncanny resemblance by actor Cameron Britton. The performance was one that captivated audiences and even left people who knew Kemper in awe of how well Britton did at bringing this mountain of a man to life for the Netflix series. Sadly, the show only received 2 seasons, and a third looks very unlikely from showrunner David Fincher.
Then there is the 2025 film Ed Kemper, directed by Chad Ferrin, and it takes some pretty fantastical liberties with the story of the notorious Co-Ed Killer, exaggerating aspects of his crimes and incorporating surreal imagery that pushes the film into exploitation horror territory rather than a straightforward true crime account. While it isn’t the most accurate or grounded portrayal of the case, it’s still a decent watch for viewers looking to familiarize themselves with Kemper’s history, provided they remember that some of the film’s more outlandish moments are dramatized rather than factual.
At present, Kemper is serving his time at California Medical Facility in Vacaville. He is 77 years old.
(Article originally published on MacabreDaily.com, used with permission.)