Latest / The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories / True Crime Documentary - The Terrifying Case of Edmund Kemper： The Co-Ed Killer

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True Crime Documentary - The Terrifying Case of Edmund Kemper： The Co-Ed Killer · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:07
Speaker 1: In the early nineteen seventies, the idyllic Californian seaside town
0:12
Speaker 1: of Santa Cruz would be plunged into panic.
0:15
Speaker 2: One day there would be a body part found somewhere
0:18
Speaker 2: or washing in from the ocean.
0:22
Speaker 1: Innocent young women were being raped, murdered, and dismembered.
0:28
Speaker 3: He picked up a sack with the remains and then.
0:33
Speaker 4: Heaped it over.
0:36
Speaker 1: And all the while, the elusive killer was right under
0:39
Speaker 1: the noses of the cops that pursued him.
0:43
Speaker 5: He had a great personality. He was a likable guy.
0:47
Speaker 1: What kind of man could commit such heenous crimes?
0:51
Speaker 6: He would have oral sex with a decapitated head.
0:56
Speaker 1: Was he a terrible product of his environment?
0:58
Speaker 7: His mother would lock in the basement room at night
1:02
Speaker 7: because she had this idea that he could possibly sexually
1:05
Speaker 7: assault his sisters.
1:08
Speaker 1: Butcher born to kill.
1:11
Speaker 8: He just erupted ah.
1:49
Speaker 2: Santa Cruz up through the sixties was a small beach town.
1:55
Speaker 2: It was a surf town, and it was a retirement town.
2:00
Speaker 2: Then the university popped onto the scene in nineteen sixty five.
2:06
Speaker 2: It was the dawn of the Hippies, of the Age
2:11
Speaker 2: of Aquarius, so there was a very free and easy
2:14
Speaker 2: feel to life here.
2:17
Speaker 3: A lot of the counterculture that essentially led over from
2:21
Speaker 3: San Francisco area and came down here. A lot of
2:26
Speaker 3: the so called the hippie types ended up forming communes
2:30
Speaker 3: here in Santa Cruz County, and that was attractive to
2:34
Speaker 3: a lot of young people and including young girls, and
2:39
Speaker 3: people were coming from all over the country just to
2:43
Speaker 3: live that free and liberating lifestyle.
2:52
Speaker 1: But in nineteen seventy two, the piece in Santa Cruz
2:56
Speaker 1: would be shattered.
2:58
Speaker 2: All of a sudden. There were bodies being washed in
3:02
Speaker 2: on the ocean. There were grizzly discoveries, and the thought
3:08
Speaker 2: was from a lot of people in town, what the
3:10
Speaker 2: hell is happening to our little paradise.
3:14
Speaker 4: We were dealing with a lot of missing person reports.
3:17
Speaker 3: It became clear that somebody was killing young co ed hitchhikers.
3:23
Speaker 1: Eighteen year old Fresno College students Anita lukesse vanishes.
3:29
Speaker 2: Severed head found in the mountain. It was just a skull.
3:32
Speaker 2: We had no body.
3:34
Speaker 1: Mary Anne pesh An, eighteen year old co ed and
3:37
Speaker 1: talented skier, disappears.
3:42
Speaker 3: It became a very confusing time for homicide investigators.
3:48
Speaker 1: Fifteen year old many dumps and mikah Ku abducted.
3:52
Speaker 4: It just seemed like a world gone crazy.
3:56
Speaker 1: Cindy Show. Eighteen years old and baby sitting to earn
4:00
Speaker 1: her way through college goes missing.
4:05
Speaker 9: I remember at the time very much wanting to get him,
4:08
Speaker 9: I mean, get them off the streets, catch him, put
4:11
Speaker 9: them away.
4:14
Speaker 1: The media christened the mystery killer the co ed butcher.
4:20
Speaker 3: Whenever we see somebody under the age of eighteen who
4:25
Speaker 3: was hitchhiking.
4:26
Speaker 4: We would pick them up and take them to juvenile Hall.
4:29
Speaker 3: And there became a big outcry of that that we
4:32
Speaker 3: were violating their right to hitchhike, but in reality is
4:37
Speaker 3: that we were just trying to save their lives.
4:40
Speaker 1: And it went on. Twenty three year old Rosalin Thupe
4:43
Speaker 1: vanishes from the Santa Cruz.
4:45
Speaker 3: Campus every time we have a missing person report, where
4:48
Speaker 3: it just fearful that this was going to be another
4:53
Speaker 3: homicide victim.
4:57
Speaker 1: And twenty one year old student Alison Lou disappears.
5:01
Speaker 4: For We had no clue as to who was doing this.
5:06
Speaker 4: They didn't know what the hell was going on.
5:08
Speaker 2: And indiscriminate murder cases are extremely hard to solve because
5:12
Speaker 2: there's no rhyme nor reason.
5:14
Speaker 3: Because the culture at the time was there were a
5:17
Speaker 3: lot of drugs going on here and a lot of
5:18
Speaker 3: the so called hippie movement. I suppose individually we may
5:23
Speaker 3: have thought it may have had something to do with that.
5:28
Speaker 1: In Apool nineteen seventy three, as part of the routine
5:32
Speaker 1: firearms inquiry, Detective Michael Leloufi would come face to face
5:37
Speaker 1: not with a drug crazed hippie, but with a shorthaired
5:41
Speaker 1: conservative young man popular with local police.
5:46
Speaker 3: The Sheriff's office that I worked for at the time
5:49
Speaker 3: received what we call a dealer's record of sale. One
5:53
Speaker 3: of our records clerks brought back to us a file
5:57
Speaker 3: card and said, you know, this guy just tried to
5:59
Speaker 3: buy a gun and his record was expunged.
6:03
Speaker 4: But I could.
6:03
Speaker 3: See through the blackout that he was involved in a
6:08
Speaker 3: murder in Madera County some years ago.
6:12
Speaker 1: Affectionately known as Big Ed, the twenty five year old
6:16
Speaker 1: six foot nine inch two hundred and eighty pound Edmund
6:19
Speaker 1: Kemper was a regular fixture at Cops bar the jury room.
6:25
Speaker 10: He would come down to a local watering hole that
6:29
Speaker 10: US police officers would go to after work and hang
6:34
Speaker 10: out and talk with us.
6:39
Speaker 5: He was at a great personality.
6:42
Speaker 10: He was very friendly, very outgoing, and he was a
6:46
Speaker 10: likable guy.
6:47
Speaker 3: The discussion became, well, who's going to go take the
6:49
Speaker 3: gun away from this guy? Because when you look at
6:51
Speaker 3: his dealer's record of sale, he's six feet eight and
6:54
Speaker 3: a half and two hundred and eighty five pounds, so
6:56
Speaker 3: he's a pretty big guy. So, being the junior detect,
7:00
Speaker 3: if I drew the straw, there.
7:04
Speaker 4: Was some apprehension involved.
7:07
Speaker 3: Just dude in the guy's size, big man, big gun,
7:13
Speaker 3: and little on me.
7:16
Speaker 1: Although unfamiliar to a loofy, the gun owner was definitely
7:20
Speaker 1: not considered a suspect in the co ed killings. Big
7:26
Speaker 1: Ed lived with his mother on a pleasant, peaceful suburban street,
7:33
Speaker 1: but the address was unclear.
7:38
Speaker 3: We parked right there and we looked around, couldn't find
7:42
Speaker 3: much of anything. There were several places that had basically
7:49
Speaker 3: the same address, so we weren't sure which one was his.
7:52
Speaker 3: We were I'm just guessing at this point, right around
7:55
Speaker 3: this point, right here, when a car came around the
7:58
Speaker 3: curve and pulled up right there where that car is,
8:01
Speaker 3: I told Don, I said, let me go ask this
8:03
Speaker 3: guy if he knows where Kemper is.
8:04
Speaker 4: So as I approached the car.
8:07
Speaker 3: There was a gentleman in the car, lying across the
8:10
Speaker 3: front seat with the door open, and he was fiddling
8:14
Speaker 3: underneath the dashboard. And I was just about to this
8:17
Speaker 3: point when I said, excuse me, I'd.
8:19
Speaker 4: Like to speak with you for a second.
8:21
Speaker 3: When he got out of the car, he got out
8:23
Speaker 3: of the car, and he got out of the car,
8:25
Speaker 3: and he got out of the car, and immediately I
8:27
Speaker 3: knew that this was mister Kemper, the man I was
8:29
Speaker 3: looking for, because he towered over me and I'm six
8:32
Speaker 3: week tall. So from here we explained that what we
8:38
Speaker 3: needed to do we needed to take his weapon to make.
8:42
Speaker 4: Sure that he was authorized to have that legally.
8:46
Speaker 3: We came to the trunk and he had his keys
8:49
Speaker 3: in his pocket and he went to put the key
8:51
Speaker 3: in there, and so my partner and I instinctively, whether
8:55
Speaker 3: it be instinct or training, separated, and I came around
8:59
Speaker 3: to this side of the car on the trunk, and
9:01
Speaker 3: my partner was on the other side, and.
9:03
Speaker 4: We had our hands on the guns.
9:05
Speaker 3: The only thing that was in the trunk was a
9:06
Speaker 3: bungle like in a blanket of some sort of towel.
9:09
Speaker 4: He started to reach in for it and I said, no,
9:11
Speaker 4: wait a minute, let me get it.
9:14
Speaker 3: I reached in the trunk, got the bungle, and inside
9:17
Speaker 3: of that was the weapon.
9:19
Speaker 4: We're looking for it.
9:20
Speaker 3: And I noticed there was nothing in the trunk, no
9:22
Speaker 3: liner in the trunk or anything. I thought that was
9:24
Speaker 3: a little strange, but we took the handgun and we.
9:27
Speaker 1: Left and Loofy handed the gun in at the station
9:31
Speaker 1: and thought no more about it. Two weeks later, five
9:40
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning, Officer Jim Connor is on the
9:44
Speaker 1: night shift when he overhears a colleague taking a call
9:48
Speaker 1: from the gun owner.
9:50
Speaker 10: Knowing ed, I got on the phone and we we
9:54
Speaker 10: started talking.
9:55
Speaker 5: I could tell that something wasn't right. Pueblo, Colorado.
10:01
Speaker 10: He was in a phone booth and he hadn't had
10:05
Speaker 10: any sleep for several days, and he said he had
10:09
Speaker 10: done something really bad. He said that he had killed
10:17
Speaker 10: his mother and a friend of hers.
10:23
Speaker 5: He said that they were at his house.
10:26
Speaker 10: And he asked me if I knew Mickey A Loofy,
10:29
Speaker 10: and I said yes, and he says, well, my house
10:33
Speaker 10: is hard to find. Mickey knows how to find it
10:35
Speaker 10: very easily because he had been out there and had
10:40
Speaker 10: confiscated a.
10:41
Speaker 1: Gun officers contacted Detective Aloofy at his home.
10:46
Speaker 3: I'm standing there getting all this information and giving all
10:49
Speaker 3: this information, and I have this tremendous feeling of all
10:52
Speaker 3: of the blood just rushing out of my body.
10:55
Speaker 4: It was just, oh my god, this is unreal.
11:00
Speaker 3: One of the deputies broke the back window, which is
11:02
Speaker 3: on the other side of the sliding glass door, and
11:05
Speaker 3: then we started looking to see if we could locate
11:08
Speaker 3: the bodies in the classic we pulled back a sheet
11:13
Speaker 3: and we saw some hair and some blood.
11:19
Speaker 1: Then Big ed Kemper made a startlingk confession.
11:24
Speaker 3: He made comments to Jim Conner on the telephone that
11:27
Speaker 3: he had killed all of the.
11:28
Speaker 4: Co eds too.
11:31
Speaker 1: Taken into custody, twenty four year old Edmund Kemper would
11:35
Speaker 1: then reveal an extraordinary and sickening tale. In the early
11:51
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, the Californian beach resort of Santa Cruz had
11:56
Speaker 1: been stunned by the mysterious disappearance of a series of
11:59
Speaker 1: young college els and a catalog of gruesome discoveries. Then,
12:08
Speaker 1: in April nineteen seventy three, twenty four year old six
12:12
Speaker 1: foot nine inch Edmund Kemper unexpectedly confessed that he was
12:17
Speaker 1: the infamous co Ed Butcher and that he now had
12:21
Speaker 1: a tally of ten murder victims to his name. Taken
12:31
Speaker 1: into custody, he would now reveal his extraordinary story.
12:38
Speaker 7: The co ed killer had such a fascinating life.
12:44
Speaker 1: Born in nineteen forty eight, Edmund Kemper was the middle
12:48
Speaker 1: child of three.
12:50
Speaker 3: His mother and his father were very strict disciplinarians. There
12:56
Speaker 3: was no leeway one way or the other.
13:01
Speaker 1: Growing up in Burbank, California, Kempe looked up to his father,
13:06
Speaker 1: but had difficulties with his mother, Clanel.
13:10
Speaker 6: She was a punitive person that he resented greatly. She
13:15
Speaker 6: was harsh, aggressive, putting him down. I think when he
13:20
Speaker 6: was younger.
13:20
Speaker 11: Call it verbally abusive, I don't know, but very very
13:23
Speaker 11: aggressive verbally.
13:26
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty seven, after years of unhappy marriage, the
13:30
Speaker 1: nine year old Edmund's parents divorced Clanel, Edmund and his
13:40
Speaker 1: two sisters moved away. Kempe was already behaving oddly.
13:45
Speaker 6: He showed a lot of pathology.
13:47
Speaker 5: As a child.
13:49
Speaker 6: He would cut off the heads of his sister's dolls
13:52
Speaker 6: in other ways deform the dolls.
13:58
Speaker 7: At ten, he had made a comment that if he
14:03
Speaker 7: ever had to kiss his teacher, he would have to
14:05
Speaker 7: kill her. And when you think about a nine and
14:08
Speaker 7: ten year old at that point having that kind of
14:12
Speaker 7: a thought process, you begin to wonder, you know, what
14:16
Speaker 7: is it about him?
14:21
Speaker 1: The young Kemper was developing a violent fantasy life. He
14:25
Speaker 1: moved from dismembering dolls to harming animals. He admitted once
14:31
Speaker 1: bearing a cat alive, later digging its body up to
14:34
Speaker 1: play with.
14:40
Speaker 12: There's many many serial sexual murderers that have a background
14:44
Speaker 12: of killing cats, torturing cats, tormenting cats. Why cats, because
14:49
Speaker 12: cats are a female symbol.
14:54
Speaker 1: Kemper was showing warning signs that the FBI have since
14:57
Speaker 1: identified as common amongst a number of serial killers.
15:03
Speaker 13: Basically, as you're dealing with a young male that is
15:08
Speaker 13: engaged in fantasies that are average and destructive and violent
15:12
Speaker 13: before adolescent, you're looking at the individual and has a
15:16
Speaker 13: broken home, a cold and distant mother, an absent father,
15:21
Speaker 13: through divorce or just abandonment, they get into animal torturing.
15:26
Speaker 5: There are patterns that are identifiable.
15:32
Speaker 1: Kemper grew taller, stronger, and stranger.
15:36
Speaker 7: His mother put him in the basement room and would
15:40
Speaker 7: lock him in at night because she had this idea
15:43
Speaker 7: that he could possibly sexually assault his sisters.
15:49
Speaker 11: He described as having a cot and a sleeping bag
15:53
Speaker 11: and a light hanging down from the ceiling with just
15:57
Speaker 11: a bare bulb and a string. Talked about it as
16:00
Speaker 11: being a very difficult time in his life, very scary.
16:03
Speaker 11: He could hear rats running around at night and that
16:06
Speaker 11: kind of thing.
16:09
Speaker 1: As a teenager, Kemper left his mother, heading to Los
16:12
Speaker 1: Angeles to seek out the dad he idolized.
16:16
Speaker 6: He had hoped to go and live with his father,
16:20
Speaker 6: and he described to me that when he went there,
16:25
Speaker 6: he was rejected by his father.
16:29
Speaker 1: Edmund Kemper was sent to live with his paternal grandparents
16:32
Speaker 1: on their remote farm. Here, the troubled teenager's violent fantasies
16:39
Speaker 1: would be realized for the first time.
16:44
Speaker 6: He found his grandmother to be an authoritarian and a
16:47
Speaker 6: disciplinarian like his mother.
16:51
Speaker 11: His grandfather was out shopping or whatever, and he took
16:56
Speaker 11: a twenty two and shot and kill his grandmother. When
17:06
Speaker 11: he realized his grandfather would be coming home and finding
17:08
Speaker 11: his wife dead, they were elderly, he decided he couldn't
17:15
Speaker 11: allow his grandfather to go through that trauma. So when
17:18
Speaker 11: his grandfather came in, he shot and killed him.
17:22
Speaker 7: He said he didn't want the grandfather to suffer knowing
17:26
Speaker 7: that his wife was dead.
17:27
Speaker 8: It's the most bizarre statement.
17:30
Speaker 7: I mean, you don't go out and just shoot somebody
17:32
Speaker 7: to keep them from finding out that their wife is dead.
17:42
Speaker 1: Kempell was diagnosed a paranoid schizophrenic and sent to the Secure,
17:47
Speaker 1: a Tascadero State Hospital.
17:53
Speaker 6: That was a very harmful place for him to be institutionalized.
18:00
Speaker 6: He certainly learned a lot of bad things.
18:06
Speaker 1: Dr William Schanberger was one of the facility's staff.
18:10
Speaker 14: In those days, we had sixteen hundred patients in the hospital.
18:16
Speaker 14: There were probably several dozen people who had committed murder,
18:23
Speaker 14: eight hundred mentally disordered sex offenders. We had psychology staff
18:29
Speaker 14: of only ten people or so.
18:35
Speaker 1: Although not Kemper's therapist, Shanberger would have regular contact with
18:40
Speaker 1: the inmate.
18:42
Speaker 14: It is a bright fellow, and that was obvious when
18:46
Speaker 14: you were talking with him.
18:48
Speaker 5: He was kind of a moral patient.
18:55
Speaker 1: The likable Kemper soon became a trusted assistant to the
18:59
Speaker 1: psychology staff that dealt with the hundreds of sex offenders.
19:04
Speaker 6: He had so much access to the records and there
19:08
Speaker 6: would be detailed descriptions that the message used in carrying
19:12
Speaker 6: out the crimes techniques of deception.
19:16
Speaker 11: Remember, he was fifteen when he went into the mental hospital,
19:21
Speaker 11: and he really had never had any sexual experience at all.
19:28
Speaker 15: Generally, what you'll find is that the child will pursue
19:32
Speaker 15: these silent fantasies, and in adolescents the sexual element will
19:37
Speaker 15: come on board and they will have sexual fantasies that
19:42
Speaker 15: develop along the lines of using people as an abject
19:47
Speaker 15: rather than a partner. They want to do something to somebody,
19:52
Speaker 15: not with somebody.
19:54
Speaker 4: He had a fantasy life.
19:56
Speaker 11: He described himself as masturbating new times during the day
20:01
Speaker 11: when he was in the mental hospital.
20:04
Speaker 1: As part of his duties, Kemper had access to the
20:07
Speaker 1: hospital's psychological test papers.
20:10
Speaker 5: Kemper was very smart.
20:12
Speaker 12: He knew what a psychiatrists psychologists wanted to hear. He
20:16
Speaker 12: knew all the criteria for different diagnoses. They treated him,
20:20
Speaker 12: and I think they thought they cured him.
20:25
Speaker 1: After five years in the secure hospital, Edmund Kemper, now
20:29
Speaker 1: twenty years old and six feet nine inches tall, was released.
20:40
Speaker 14: He was discharged by the way to the Youth Authority
20:44
Speaker 14: with the recommendation not for him to live with his mother. Unfortunately,
20:50
Speaker 14: the youth authority didn't follow the advice, and he wound
20:56
Speaker 14: up living with his mother.
21:02
Speaker 6: His social life, i'd say was very inadequate. As he
21:05
Speaker 6: described it, felt particularly inadequate around women. So I think
21:11
Speaker 6: he was lonely.
21:13
Speaker 14: Here was a young man, he's twenty one, twenty two,
21:16
Speaker 14: and he probably never had a date in his life,
21:18
Speaker 14: probably have the usual interest in needs to connect with women.
21:25
Speaker 14: What can you tell someone about yourself that I murdered
21:29
Speaker 14: my grandparents and I was in a mental hospital for
21:33
Speaker 14: the last five years of my life. I can't imagine
21:37
Speaker 14: how difficult it would have had to be. That doesn't
21:40
Speaker 14: excuse you anything, but in my mind describes the situation.
21:48
Speaker 14: So he started picking up codes, and some of them
21:51
Speaker 14: he wound up murdering. And I'm doing even worse things.
21:54
Speaker 1: At times in custody, Edmund Kemper would reveal to investigators
22:01
Speaker 1: the full horror of his extraordinary crimes in minute and
22:05
Speaker 1: graphic detail.
22:09
Speaker 6: It's about as serious and complex series of sexual pathologies
22:17
Speaker 6: as I've come across.
22:21
Speaker 4: He said a lot of things that they're kind of disturbing.
22:33
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, after the disappearance and murder of
22:37
Speaker 1: half a dozen young college girls. Detectives held Edmund Kemper
22:41
Speaker 1: in custody, and the six foot nine inch killer was
22:48
Speaker 1: eager to talk, leading detectives to the scenes of his crimes.
22:54
Speaker 1: He would explain his murders in chilling detail to anybody
22:58
Speaker 1: who'd listen.
23:01
Speaker 3: He talked and talked and talked, and just gave every
23:05
Speaker 3: bit of information you could ever dream of. And he
23:08
Speaker 3: goes into great detail about the things that he did
23:10
Speaker 3: to these girls.
23:14
Speaker 16: Most of the serial killers I've worked with fall into
23:16
Speaker 16: two distinct types. One group of serial killers will never
23:20
Speaker 16: like to talk about their offending behavior at all, whereas
23:26
Speaker 16: the second group of serial killers are desperate to talk
23:29
Speaker 16: about their killing. They're desperate to be at the heart
23:33
Speaker 16: of the story.
23:36
Speaker 3: He said a lot of things that they're kind of disturbing.
23:44
Speaker 1: Investigators learned how Kemper had taken months to develop his
23:48
Speaker 1: strategy for production.
23:51
Speaker 3: He spent a lot of time traveling all over central
23:53
Speaker 3: California and even down in the Los Angeles. And what
23:57
Speaker 3: he would do is he would find hitchhikers and he
23:59
Speaker 3: would essentially do a practice rode.
24:02
Speaker 6: As he would drive off with the young woman, he
24:06
Speaker 6: would look over at them, think about fondling the breast,
24:13
Speaker 6: and have great sexual curiosity about them.
24:17
Speaker 1: Over numerous trips, Kemper honed his harmless persona and perfected
24:23
Speaker 1: his plans. Only then did he feel confident enough to
24:27
Speaker 1: act out his fantasies. On the seventh of May nineteen
24:40
Speaker 1: seventy two, Edmund Kemper picked up two eighteen year old friends,
24:45
Speaker 1: mary Anne Pesh and Anita Lukes near the university campus
24:51
Speaker 1: in Berkeley.
24:56
Speaker 3: They would get in the car and he would drive off,
24:58
Speaker 3: and immediately he would say, oh, I don't think your door,
25:03
Speaker 3: Cardora is closed.
25:04
Speaker 4: And he's huge. He's a big man.
25:06
Speaker 3: He could reach all the way across the car, open it,
25:09
Speaker 3: close it, and then he would drop a chapstick behind
25:15
Speaker 3: that mechanism, so if they became afraid or they wanted
25:20
Speaker 3: to get out, it wouldn't allow the mechanism to work.
25:26
Speaker 1: Kemper drove them to a remote spot. He teld detectives
25:30
Speaker 1: that holding the girls at gunpoint, he had forced Anita
25:34
Speaker 1: to climb into the trunk. He then returned to the
25:38
Speaker 1: car and stabbed mary Anne until she was dead.
25:48
Speaker 3: Just think about Anita lukesha in the trunk listening to
25:53
Speaker 3: her best friend being stabbed and hearing her screaming, I mean,
25:58
Speaker 3: you know, it's pretty pretty heavy stuff.
26:01
Speaker 1: Actually, Kemper then opened the trunk and killed Anita. He
26:09
Speaker 1: took the dead girls to an apartment he was renting. There,
26:13
Speaker 1: he dismembered them before dumping their remainers in the mountains.
26:22
Speaker 1: All the while the police hunted the mysterious co ed butcher.
26:26
Speaker 1: The seemingly harmless Edmund Kemper was sitting next to them
26:31
Speaker 1: in their favorite bar.
26:34
Speaker 10: I remember I'd being there on many occasions, especially during
26:38
Speaker 10: the time of the homicides that were going on. He
26:41
Speaker 10: would come in and have a few beers with the guys.
26:44
Speaker 10: He was a likable guy.
26:46
Speaker 6: While he was with them, he was able to think
26:49
Speaker 6: about here, I am an ongoing murderer, and they don't
26:54
Speaker 6: know anything about it, and they foy except me, and
26:57
Speaker 6: I'm one of the boys. A police groupie. Actually, it's
27:01
Speaker 6: the best way of describing it.
27:03
Speaker 12: Many serial sexual murderers have a fascination with police. That's
27:08
Speaker 12: part of their psychology, and they do that for a
27:12
Speaker 12: number of different reasons. To hang out with them was one,
27:16
Speaker 12: but they also sometimes can follow the investigation and see
27:20
Speaker 12: if they're talking about it at all. This is very
27:23
Speaker 12: stimulating for them.
27:26
Speaker 10: It was just talk about, you know, a girl found here,
27:29
Speaker 10: a girl found there, and body parts washed up on.
27:33
Speaker 5: Shore, this kind of thing.
27:35
Speaker 10: It was a conversation among the guys when we were
27:38
Speaker 10: at the jury room.
27:47
Speaker 1: On the fourteenth of September nineteen seventy two, kemp Has
27:51
Speaker 1: spotted fifteen year old ballet student Hikokup hitchhiking. She missed
27:58
Speaker 1: her bus and was worried about being late for dance class.
28:03
Speaker 3: She had made a sign because she missed the bus
28:06
Speaker 3: she needed to get to San Francisco. She was very young, small,
28:12
Speaker 3: easy to overpower.
28:15
Speaker 4: Got in the car. He drove across the.
28:18
Speaker 3: Bay to San Francisco, but unfortunately for her, just kept going.
28:24
Speaker 4: This little girl was terrified.
28:26
Speaker 1: Obviously, Kemper bound, gagged, and then suffocated his captive. But
28:37
Speaker 1: it was only when Kemper took his victims' bodies home
28:41
Speaker 1: that he could fully act out his twisted fantasies.
28:48
Speaker 6: With most of them. He would actually have intercourse with
28:51
Speaker 6: the dead woman. He would have sex with her entire body,
28:58
Speaker 6: then sometimes all so with a decapitated body, and then
29:06
Speaker 6: sometimes he would have oral sex with a decapitated head.
29:16
Speaker 7: It's not unusual for a serial murderer to have sexual
29:19
Speaker 7: actions with a decapitated body. It's because it's not a
29:24
Speaker 7: person to them. To them, it's an object.
29:28
Speaker 6: I have the power to do anything I want with
29:30
Speaker 6: this woman. She's mine, and I can do anything that
29:35
Speaker 6: I'm curious about, do anything I've only dreamed about doing,
29:41
Speaker 6: and nobody can do anything about it. Power is a
29:44
Speaker 6: big part of it, but extreme sexual pathology is another.
29:50
Speaker 1: In order to evade detection, Kemper would separate his victims'
29:54
Speaker 1: body parts and dump them in different locations, just minutes
30:02
Speaker 1: from Detective Terry Medina's home.
30:07
Speaker 17: When I did find out that he was up here,
30:10
Speaker 17: that that was that maybe reflect on my wife.
30:18
Speaker 5: You know, we had two small kids.
30:21
Speaker 4: Up here and.
30:25
Speaker 3: She would be home alone a lot. So that gave
30:29
Speaker 3: me kind of a funny feeling in the pit of
30:31
Speaker 3: your stomach. He was a predator. Well, this is would
30:45
Speaker 3: be approximately the place that Kemper parked the car.
30:51
Speaker 5: Very remote.
30:52
Speaker 3: It was even more remote thirty years ago than it
30:57
Speaker 3: is today. There was nothing up here there and it
31:00
Speaker 3: was just in the mountains. Picked up a sack and
31:03
Speaker 3: then carried it right to the edge, and remember there
31:10
Speaker 3: was no fence here.
31:13
Speaker 4: Heaped it over.
31:14
Speaker 3: And that was the remains of my cuckoo.
31:21
Speaker 4: Of all of these.
31:22
Speaker 3: Murders, that's the one that I think affects me the
31:25
Speaker 3: most as I think about it. I mean, they're all brutal,
31:29
Speaker 3: but that one just seemed to.
31:31
Speaker 4: Stick with me.
31:32
Speaker 3: There's there's some those of us that do murder cases.
31:37
Speaker 3: There's always some that seemed to get inside you.
31:53
Speaker 1: Kemper would go on to claim the lives of three
31:55
Speaker 1: more co ed hitchhikers, three year old Rosalin Thuorpe, twenty
32:04
Speaker 1: one year old Alison lou and eighteen year old Cindy Shall,
32:09
Speaker 1: babysitter to police officer Jim Connor's kids.
32:12
Speaker 5: She was young, you know, she needed money like anyone else.
32:16
Speaker 10: She was very pleasant and knowing that she was a
32:20
Speaker 10: student at the university, we felt very safe that we
32:25
Speaker 10: could trust her with her children.
32:28
Speaker 5: He had shot her with the twenty two.
32:32
Speaker 1: Kemper took Cindy's body to his bedroom in his mother's apartment.
32:37
Speaker 3: He had dismembered her, but in his mind there was
32:42
Speaker 3: some relationship there. He had an attachment and he kept
32:46
Speaker 3: her head.
32:47
Speaker 1: Kemper told detectives he'd hidden Cindy's head in his mother's
32:51
Speaker 1: backyard beneath his bedroom window.
32:55
Speaker 3: He buried it was about two feet down in the
32:58
Speaker 3: backyard face his bedroom window, so that there was some
33:05
Speaker 3: connection in his mind.
33:08
Speaker 10: It was unbelievable because Ed seemed like, excuse the phrase,
33:14
Speaker 10: a general giant, you know, with a very nice personality
33:19
Speaker 10: and likable kind of guy, that he could be responsible
33:23
Speaker 10: for something like that.
33:31
Speaker 1: In addition to the murder of his grandparents, Edmund Kemper
33:35
Speaker 1: had taken the lives of six young women. Next he
33:40
Speaker 1: would commit a murder he dreamed.
33:42
Speaker 4: Of all his life.
33:53
Speaker 1: By March of nineteen seventy three, six feet nine inch,
33:57
Speaker 1: Edmund Kemper had kidnapped and six female co Edes without
34:02
Speaker 1: attracting suspicion. But in April, Detective Michael Alufi's routine visit
34:10
Speaker 1: to confiscate a firearm had unwittingly sent the suspicious Kemper
34:15
Speaker 1: into panic.
34:18
Speaker 3: This whole process of me taking the handgun away from him,
34:22
Speaker 3: he was under the impression that I was playing cat
34:24
Speaker 3: and mouse with him. He thought we were playing a
34:27
Speaker 3: game that we really knew he was the murder.
34:32
Speaker 1: Kemper worried his mother Klanel would now learn of his actions.
34:37
Speaker 3: He did not want her to suffer the embarrassment of
34:40
Speaker 3: what he did.
34:46
Speaker 1: Edmund Kemper resolved to finally commit a crime he had
34:50
Speaker 1: fantasized about since he was a child.
34:53
Speaker 3: He got up at four o'clock in the morning, took
34:56
Speaker 3: a hammer, went into his mother's bedroom, just jammed that
35:02
Speaker 3: hammer through her head several times.
35:06
Speaker 4: That was a very messy murder.
35:13
Speaker 1: Kempa's mother would suffer the same fate as the young
35:16
Speaker 1: co eds and more.
35:21
Speaker 6: He cut off her head and then he inserted his
35:23
Speaker 6: penis into her mouth, put it.
35:27
Speaker 3: On the mantle above the fireplace, and just yelled and
35:30
Speaker 3: screamed at it, and at times he threw darts at
35:36
Speaker 3: her face. He talked about all the time she had
35:39
Speaker 3: screamed at him and yelled at him or belittled him.
35:43
Speaker 6: He cut out her vocal cords and tried to destroy
35:48
Speaker 6: them in the garbage disposal unit at the sink, because
35:53
Speaker 6: it was her chastising him using those vocal cords that
35:59
Speaker 6: so bothered him.
36:03
Speaker 1: Fearing his mother's death would soon be discovered by her
36:05
Speaker 1: best friend, Kemper invited her to the house, murdered her,
36:11
Speaker 1: and then fled. It was only after driving for three
36:19
Speaker 1: days without rest that he called the police and gave
36:23
Speaker 1: himself up. Detective Medina was sent to the mother's apartment
36:30
Speaker 1: to process the crime scene.
36:36
Speaker 3: When we arrived, there was nothing disturbed. It looked like
36:44
Speaker 3: somebody had just left on vacation. We flipped over the
36:51
Speaker 3: mattress and of course it was soaked with blood and
36:59
Speaker 3: there was a note there. He left a note that
37:04
Speaker 3: said sorry, jents for the mass, but really had no time.
37:13
Speaker 3: That's the first time in my career, and I've been
37:15
Speaker 3: in this business forty three years that you know, the
37:19
Speaker 3: suspect left the cops and note.
37:23
Speaker 1: The bodies of Kemper's mother and her best friend had
37:26
Speaker 1: been carefully hidden in two closets. In October nineteen seventy three,
37:40
Speaker 1: Edmund Kemper would be tried for multiple murder. Both prosecution
37:47
Speaker 1: and defense searched for the answer to the question on
37:51
Speaker 1: everyone's lips.
37:55
Speaker 11: Why would this large, friendly, cooperative guy, why would he
38:04
Speaker 11: kill all these people?
38:06
Speaker 1: Defense investigator Harold Cartwright spent over one hundred hours interviewing Kemper.
38:13
Speaker 4: I never at all felt threatened at any time by.
38:18
Speaker 11: You know, two hundred and sixty pounds or something, you know,
38:21
Speaker 11: six foot eight or whatever, and he's an enormous man,
38:25
Speaker 11: but he was just sort of like a gentle giant.
38:29
Speaker 1: But it seems Kemper's demeanor with the opposite sex may
38:33
Speaker 1: have been very different. Cameron Jackson, a graduate psychology student
38:38
Speaker 1: at the time, was asked to perform a standard personality
38:42
Speaker 1: test on him.
38:46
Speaker 9: I was the only person in the room with him,
38:50
Speaker 9: and I read the questions to him, and he was
38:53
Speaker 9: very cooperative, and then suddenly, just out of the blue,
38:57
Speaker 9: he simply he both sort of started to get up,
39:00
Speaker 9: and he just erupted like a volcano of ah like that,
39:05
Speaker 9: and his hands and everything, and I just went like
39:08
Speaker 9: that backwards and in immediately came to one or two
39:12
Speaker 9: policemen who calmed everything down. It was just so fast
39:17
Speaker 9: and such an overwhelming rush of anger and emotion and fury.
39:22
Speaker 9: I don't really remember the exact question now that I
39:24
Speaker 9: was asking, but I'm sure it has something to do
39:25
Speaker 9: with women, and I was a woman asking him questions.
39:35
Speaker 1: In the court room, Kemper's taped confessions were played aloud.
39:42
Speaker 2: I recall it sitting in the trial listening to the
39:46
Speaker 2: taped confession of Kemper, and looking around and seeing the
39:49
Speaker 2: face on the parents of the murdered girls, just the
39:55
Speaker 2: shock and the agony and what they had gone through.
40:00
Speaker 6: In the coverage of these terrible crimes, I think the
40:04
Speaker 6: most neglected aspect of the victims, there's a brief mention
40:09
Speaker 6: of their names. Usually these were all young college girls.
40:13
Speaker 6: They were working towards a career. They might have chosen
40:17
Speaker 6: to have a family. All of that is lost when
40:21
Speaker 6: a murderer comes along and takes them away.
40:26
Speaker 2: What a tragedy in those families where a young woman
40:31
Speaker 2: was murdered and taken away. The tragedy of that is
40:35
Speaker 2: as much alive today as it was back in nineteen
40:38
Speaker 2: seventy two.
40:40
Speaker 1: On the eighth of November, Edmund Kemper was found guilty
40:44
Speaker 1: of eight counts of first degree murder and sentenced to
40:48
Speaker 1: life imprisonment. So wan drove Kemper to take the lives
40:56
Speaker 1: of ten innocent victims?
41:00
Speaker 4: Was it his.
41:00
Speaker 1: Broken family life and the alleged emotional abuse from his mother,
41:06
Speaker 1: or was he simply boom to kill?
41:09
Speaker 4: He only once said something like.
41:14
Speaker 18: It was the way I could control them, And that's
41:17
Speaker 18: the only thing he ever said the entire time I
41:20
Speaker 18: dealt with him that had anything to do with why
41:22
Speaker 18: he did what he do.
41:23
Speaker 4: Ed Kemper is the classic sociopath. He feels no guilt.
41:30
Speaker 3: It's all about him, no compassionistwever.
41:34
Speaker 4: It's very difficult to say how he looked at what
41:36
Speaker 4: he was doing.
41:37
Speaker 18: Would a person who walked into the butcher have remorse
41:41
Speaker 18: about cutting up a chicken?
41:42
Speaker 4: I don't know.
41:43
Speaker 18: I doubt it, and I think that's what he looked at.
41:48
Speaker 5: An object that he could dismember.
41:50
Speaker 11: You know, you look at him and you say, Okay,
41:52
Speaker 11: something happened. His wiring was crossed, he had a chemical imbalance,
41:57
Speaker 11: he had something, and then you look at him and
42:01
Speaker 11: you say, no, this is strictly environmental. You know, the
42:05
Speaker 11: way he grew up, all the life experiences that he
42:10
Speaker 11: had led him to the point that he becomes this
42:16
Speaker 11: serial mass murder.
42:18
Speaker 4: Maybe he was killing his mother all along, Who knows.
42:21
Speaker 7: I think when we're all studying serial murderers, we want
42:24
Speaker 7: to find something to blame. It's got to be this
42:28
Speaker 7: crazy mother that he had who locked him in the cellar.
42:31
Speaker 7: But she must have felt something. You know, people who
42:35
Speaker 7: are around serial killers for a period of time will
42:37
Speaker 7: pick up some type of a feeling. They can't describe it,
42:42
Speaker 7: but they know something.
42:44
Speaker 6: There are genetic and biological factors, there are sociological factors,
42:50
Speaker 6: and there are complex psychological factors, all of which interact.
42:54
Speaker 6: And if we're going to ever reduce and prevent these things,
42:58
Speaker 6: we have to attack it on all these.
43:00
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody is bored to kill.
43:02
Speaker 14: I think everybody is born with a series of pluses
43:05
Speaker 14: and minuses in their makeup, both physically and mentally and emotionally.
43:11
Speaker 14: I think that things happen to people. Most people are
43:14
Speaker 14: able to cope with it, deal with it. Some people
43:17
Speaker 14: are not.
43:24
Speaker 1: Several years after Kemper had been incarcerated, the parcel arrived
43:29
Speaker 1: at the home of psychiatrist Dr William Shamberger, who'd been
43:33
Speaker 1: friendly with the teenage Edmund.
43:37
Speaker 14: I received in the mayor of this cup from ed Kepper.
43:40
Speaker 14: It said that it took him about a year to make,
43:45
Speaker 14: and it's a very very complex.
43:47
Speaker 4: It's like a battered cup.
43:51
Speaker 14: And on the cup has written also, I beg your
43:56
Speaker 14: pardon on the bottom I never promised.
44:01
Speaker 5: Jogh Rosegard meaning to be.
44:06
Speaker 14: I think a very serious apology.
44:09
Speaker 2: I think there is a side of him that would
44:11
Speaker 2: have given anything to be a normal person. I could
44:15
Speaker 2: see that in him. I could see it while he
44:17
Speaker 2: was testifying. There's a part of Ed Kemper that is
44:21
Speaker 2: as horrified and as disgusted with what he did as
44:25
Speaker 2: the rest of us are.
44:26
Speaker 14: I'm sure that there's no part of him that is
44:29
Speaker 14: happy with what he wound up doing.