DECEMBER 9, 2015
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Welcome back dear reader and lover of the dark!
It's been a few days since your Uncle Charlie has posted something and I hope that
you'll enjoy this little tidbit of the dark and bizarre
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Please, sit back and relax a bit
Light one up if you're holding and get yourself ready
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Edmund Kemper
"The Co-ed Butcher"
His name was Edmund Kemper III. aka "Big Ed", aka "The Co-ed Butcher"
He was born in Burbank California on December 18, 1948, to Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. (1919 to 1985) and Clarnell Stage (1921 to 1973). He was an extremely bright child but at a very early age he exhibited antisocial and psychopathic behavior, stabbing a pet cat at the age of 13, burying it and other animals alive and then digging them up for further torture. The middle child of three and the only boy, he would often take pleasure in bizarre sexual rituals with his sister’s dolls and often exhibited a dark fantasy life. At times, he would cut off the heads of those same dolls and even coerce his sisters into playing a game called “Gas-Chamber” in which he would have them blindfold him and lead him to a chair, where he pretended to writhe in agony until he “died.” His eldest sister had pushed him into the deep end of a swimming pool and had also pushed him to within yards of a moving train in hopes of killing him but without success.
Kemper had a close relationship with his father and was devistated when his parents had divorced in 1957, and he found himself forced to move with his mother to Helena Montana. His relationship with his mother was severely dysfunctional, who was a violent alcoholic who would constantly belittle, humiliate and verbally abuse him. Clarnell often made Kemper sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would rape his youngest sister. He later told an interviewer that his mother often blamed him for all of her problems and he would fantasize about killing her.
In the summer of 1963, at the age of 15, Kemper ran away from home in search of his father in Van Nuys California. Once, there he learned that his father had remarried and had another son from this new marriage. He stayed only a short time before his father sent him back to Montana. But Clarnell was not at all happy to see him and quite unwilling to let him back into the house. Instead, she sent him to live with his parenal grandparents, Edmund and Maude Kemper who lived on a 17 acre ranch in the mountains of North Fork, California. He hated living there with them and often referred to them as senile and emasculating. He arrived at the ranch in time for the Christmas Holiday of 1963.
During is time at the ranch, Kemper attended his first year of high school at Sierra Joint Union High School. His teachers there at the school found him a quiet sort of boy, rather meek in fact. He caused no trouble that they can recall and got average grades. He didn’t draw much attention to himself, but apart from his size ( He was a tall and big sized for his age). At home on the ranch the situation was tense but bearable and his grandparents found him as disconcerting as had his mother and father, but he kept himself busy and out from under their feet, with his dog and a .22 rifle given to him by his grandfather. He shot rabbits and gophers and birds, containing his aggression to this outlet. At the end of the school year, he returned to his mother supposedly where he was to spend the summer. But within two weeks, he was back at the farm.
On August 27, 1964, Kemper’s Grandmother Maude, was sitting at the kitchen table working on her latest book when she and Kemper began to argue. He got up from the table retrieved a gun and shot his grandmother dead (some will claim he also stabbed her after the shooting). When his Grandfather returned to the ranch, Kemper went outside and shot him by the car, then hiding the bodies. Afterwards, he called his mother who told him he needed to call the local police and let them know what he’d done. When questioned by Police, Kemper said that he “just wanted to see what it felt like to kill grandma”, and he killed his grandfather because he knew that his grandfather would be angry at him for killing his grandmother.
Kemper was committed to the Atascadero State Hospital. While there, he was tested with an IQ of 136. Later on in adulthood, his IQ would be tested at 145. In 1969, after serving fewer than 5 years, he was released into his mother’s care against the wishes of several doctors on staff even though he;d demonstrated that he was well. His juvenile jobs. For a time, Kemper worked a series of menial jobs before securing work with the California Department of Public Works/Divison of Highways. By that time, he weighed nearly 300 pounds and stood 6‘9“ tall, which led to his nickname “Big Ed.” In 1971, the same year he’d started work with the Highway Department, Kemper had been hit buy an automobile and his arm was badly injured. He received a $15,000.00 settlement in a civil suit against the car’s driver. Unable to work, he turned his mind to other pursuits.
He began to notice a large number of young women hitchhiking in the area and with the new car he’d purchased with some of his settlement money, Kemper began to store the tools he thought he might need to fulfill his murderous desires; A gun,. knife, handcuffs and so forth. At first, he would pick up hitchhiking women and let them go but that came to an end on May 7th, 1972, when he picked up two Fresno State college students - Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. They were headed to Stanford University after a couple of days in Berkley. After driving them around for a bit, Kemper took his gun out from under his seat and pulled off into a deserted area. Forcing Anita into the trunk, he turned his attention towards Mary Ann Pesce, handcuffing her and laying her across the back seat face down. He placed a plastic bag over her head and attempted to strangle her with a length of terry cloth. Mary Ann however bit through the plastic bag and the cloth snapped. Frustrated by the amount of fighting she was putting up, he took out his knife and stabbed her repeatedly, eventually slashing her throat. Removing Anita from the trunk he used a larger knife to stab her and even though she was screaming and fighting him back, Kemper eventually wore her down.
According to Kemper, he drove around with the bodies in the car for a while trying todecide what to do. Eventually, bringing Mary Ann’s body to his apartment where he undressed her and dissected her. He buried her in the plastic bag he tried to suffocate her in. As for Anita, he beheaded her as well as dissecting her remains. He kept both their heads for a while, eventually disposing them in a ravine but not before having sex with their corpses.
His next murder took place on the evening of September 14th, 1972 when Kemper picked up 15 year old Aiko Koo, who had decided to hitchhike to her dance class after missing the bus. While holding her at gunpoint, he pulled over to the side of the road and strangled her to death followed by having sex with her still warm corpse. In January of 1973, Kemper’s next victim was Cindy Schall, a 19 year old student at Cabrillo College. He shot her with a .22 caliber pistol in a seculded wooded area, then drove back to his mother’s house with the body in the trunk of his car. He kept her in his room overnight so he could remove the bullet from her head and decapitate her. He buried the head in his mother’s garden facing toward his mother’s bedroom as a joke, later saying that his mother always wanted people to look up to her.
On February 5, 1973, following an argument he’d had with his mother, Kemper left the house and encountered 24 year old Rosalind Thorpe and 23 year old Alice Liu on the campus of UC Santa Cruz. According to Kemper, Thorpe entered the car first followed by Liu. Right after driving off of campus property, Kemper fatally shot the two women with a .22 caliber pistol. He then wrapped their bodies in blankets and placed them both in the backseat of his car. He sexually abused their bodies and the next morning, dismembered them and discarded their remains at Eden Canyon near San Francisco where they were discovered a week later.
Kemper’s murder spree came to an end with that of his mother, Clarnell Kemper and a friend of his mother’s, Sara Hallett on Good Friday of 1973. While waiting for his mother to come home from a party, Kemper fell asleep on her sofa and was awakened by her arrival home. Some reports say that another argument ensued between the two, while another says that his mother had retired to her room where she lay in bed reading. She noticed her son enter the room and she said to him;”I suppose you’re going to want to sit up all night and talk now.” Kemper replied: “No. Goodnight.” at which point he began beating her to death with a claw hammer. He then decapitated her and and engaged in fellatio with her severed head before using it as a dart board. He then cut out her vocal cords and ground them up in the disposal. He then invited Sarah Hallett, his mother’s best friend over to the house, using the story that he was needing help in planning a surpirse party for his mother. When she arrived, he strangled the 59 year old woman to death and then got into his car and drove away.
Kemper drove east, leaving California and driving through Nevada and Utah, finally arriveing in Pueblo Colorado a few days later. Not having heard any news on the radio about the murders of his mother and Sally Hallett, Kemper called police from a phone booth, confessing to the murders. They didn’t believe him. He called again several hours later, talking to a police officer he knew in Santa Cruz and told him he’d killed his mother and friend. He didn’t say anything about the other murders until later on while being interviewed by detectives. After hanging up the phone, Kemper sat in his car and waited for the police to arrive and take him into custody.
His trial began on October 23, 1973. Twice while awaiting trial, he’d attempted to commit suicide by slashing his wrists. He’d been indicted on 8 counts of first-degree murder. He stated for the record that he was not guilty by reason of insanity.
Psychiatrists on the prosecution side examined him at length and found Kemper to be sane while the Psychiatrist hired by his defense lawyer, had looked at his juvenile records and the diagnosis was he was psychotic. He interviewed Kemper at length while under the influence of truth serum and told the court that he’d engaged in acts of cannibalism, cooking and eating parts of the girl’s flesh after dismembering them. However, it was decided that he was thrilled at the notoriety of being a mass murderer, aware fully that what he’d done was wrong, and therefore he was considered sane. In November of 1973, he was found guilty on all 8 counts of murder in the first and he asked for the death sentence. But in California at that time, capital punishment had been suspended and instead he received life without parole.
Edmund Kemper III remains locked up among the general prison population at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville California.
