Edmund Kemper /// Part 1 /// 261 | Forensic Files

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[Music] many have told the story of Edmund keer but you've never heard it quite like
this before most of the information in this case is well known but I will lay some of it out
here Edmund ail keer III was raised by a mother that even when he was just a small boy she very likely hated him
Edmond liked to play death ritual games with his sister he tried living with his father
but he didn't want him either he grew to be a large man and extremely intelligent Ed was about 6' 9 in tall
and his IQ near genius level some call him the ogre of apus as an adult he was convicted of the
mutilation slayings of eight women was this hulking monster born evil or was he made
evil this week we will study Edmund and those who have studied him before we will try to learn about the angry little
boy that lives inside this giant homicidal man this is a look at the murderous Madness of Edmund keer The Co-Ed Killer
well I'm not an expert I'm not an authority I'm someone who has been a murderer for almost 20 years can you say
how many people might be doing crimes like you were doing it would be a guess but it's not it's far more than 35 it
isn't that impossible in this Society it happens are there more people they didn't give
up how many he she didn't give up I did I came in out of the coold and what I'm saying is there are
some people who prefer it in the cold you were able to appear like a ordinary person non-threatening to I lived as an
ordinary person most of my life even though I was living a parallel and increasingly sick life other life one
victim let me back in the car I locked myself out she opened the door for me my gun was under the seat what in the
hell am I doing telling you that am I looking am I am I a masochist am I looking to be tormented further
I'm trying to show you just how awful this got how commanding these rages [Music]
got the True Crime garage Army loved the hit series mind Hunter the show based on
the real life events of the Genesis of the FBI Behavioral Science unit housed at FBI headquarters in Quantico Virginia
on mind Hunter the main characters Holden Ford and Bill tench are essentially the dramatized on-screen
versions of famous real life FBI agents John Douglas and Bob wrestler like on the show in like in real life these
agents worked in a special unit of the FBI that had many objectives but two of the most important were helping local
law enforcement agencies solve crimes and studying the new phenomenon at the time which was the realization of the
significant increase of stranger on Stranger crimes serial offenders and serial killers which are both terms now
often used but back then serial offender and serial killer were new terms both coined by the special agents working
with this unit at the FBI this week we will be discussing serial killer Edmund keer who spent a lot of time talking
with the FBI over the years the general topics of discussion who was he what crimes did he commit and why the first
series of M Hunter features some of these dramatizations of these talks with keer
and the FBI now we both watched season 1 and loved it and one thing we have discussed on our show off the Record and
I say this almost shamefully Captain we both loved actor Cameron Britain as seral killer Edmund keer heck sometimes
during breaks we when working we would stop the show and we both were doing keer impressions I particularly like the
scene when they were talking about the horrible murders keer has committed and he's offering the agents another slice
of pizza now this is disturbing on several levels because while I'm watching the show and thinking to myself
I could listen to Ed keer talk for days then the realization comes back to you kicks you in the teeth with the reminder
that Ed keer was a despicable human being he's a monster and yet I find him somewhat charming and some might be
saying well that's the TV version of Ed Colonel and it is but if you and we have
watched interviews with the real Ed camper it's very similar so we felt bad about that but we're not alone in our
liking of the TV version of keer because actor Cameron Brittain did win an Emmy for his work on the show yeah well on
some of the lines that they use in the show are direct lines from the interviews that were recorded so let's
go to the real life version of The Genesis of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit and case study of Edmund keer now
interviewing serial killers so it was it was John Douglas that suggested to Bob wrestler that since there were so many
serial killers locked up that they should start talking to them to see if they would talk about what they had done
and why they believed that they did it one just like you hear earlier with the pizza offering the pizza the FBI would
offer them a special meal like hey if you interview with us we can get you a pizza or we can get you some specialty
sub or something that you can't get in prison well Bob westler agreed with Douglas and they decided that they were
going to start interviewing these guys and actually they decided that while they were in California helping law
enforcement to start there because as we all know from the various cases we have
covered here in the garage California has certainly had its more than fair share of weird crimes and serial killers
yeah so this was 1978 and they're going to go interview their first serial killer and they decided to start with ED
keer ED was housed at the California medical facility in Vacaville California they decided their best method of going
about this was to show up unannounced and without permission from the FBI and without giving the prison prior notice
as well so this is for two reasons one the FBI believes these guys believed the FBI would have told them no you can't go
around interviewing serials right and two they also believed if the meeting was scheduled with the inmate that the
inmate would likely be considered a snitch by the other prisoners thus possibly putting their subject in danger
and making them far less likely to cooperate in agree to these interviews so if they showed up unannounced the
other inmates would just assume that they simply were investigating a case or investigating something or other now we
have to consider how terrifying this could be even for federal agents first they can't go in there with their gun or
weapon you know they don't want those things working their way into the you know population right and second they
have to sign waivers agreeing that if they were to be Tak hostage at any time that they understood that they would not
be bargained for well and both of these men they're going to go in as a pair so both of these men are trained but Ed is
also 69 that's a big boy yeah basically locked alone in a room with a 6'9 in tall almost 300 lb man and then another
thing that Douglas was concerned about was the IQ of Edmund keer now I got be honest with you here Captain I've seen
this IQ kind of all over the shop I've seen it listed as high as 146 and as low as 131 yeah or
31 well I I do know that he was tested at least twice so that might be the cause of some of these uh variations I
also understand that there's multiple versions of the what we would just call the IQ test which could give a different
score score so to speak so kind of like credit scores there's different top levels of different credit scores yes
and so we have Douglas who he thought to himself and I'm sure he discussed this with wrestler in advance he was a little
worried that you know these guys are used to being the smartest guys in the room and now they're in there with this
giant and they're worried that he's smarter than them you know so physically he could overpower them mentally he
might be able to manipulate them or to [ __ ] them to put it quite Frank right but like I said both these guys
are trained individuals these guys have made it to the FBI so they've dealt with
some of the scum of the earth mhm oh yeah so they're going to I mean but just imagine if you're not trained at all
right some of these police officers have taken criminals that have done heinous crimes and they had to lock them up uh
handcuff them put them in the backseat of their car and transport them to another prison or to another jail
by themselves mhm and so yes this is U this sounds crazy to us to go hey you're going to go into this little still cage
with this uh killer but but I also think these guys are are a lot tougher than uh
that maybe he gave them credit for well you and I discussed um wickline which was a somebody that was put to death
here in in Ohio for a couple of murders yeah and wickline was a large man he was
he was quite strong as well and he was intelligent too um he was not as big as Edmund keer his IQ was probably not as
high as Edmund Keers and and he was a guy that you know we spoke to several officers that said I knew guys that had
to transport him I knew guys that had to be in a room with Wick line and they told they went to their superiors and
advance and said I refuse to be alone with him right if I'm going to be in a room or in a car with this guy there
better be multiples uh you know there better be a bunch of good guys and only one Wick line so the thing with uh you
know and like you said these guys are trained these guys are skilled individuals Douglas was a um I believe
he was a boxer in in college you know so so a bit of a tough guy I guess yeah I mean this look if you're a trained boxer
and then you have to you had to deal with the scum of the earth those guys aren't they're not afraid of this guy
but keep in mind just the reach alone on Ed keer I mean 6'9 yeah but you know the
difference between a normal human and a and an actual trained boxer like the anytime somebody says hey I I
trained as a boxer you don't want to fight that guy right that guy knows how to throw a punch the thing though too
that that's tough for us regular civilians to get over is just the idea of forget about his size or his
intelligence but just the idea of being in a room with somebody that you know is
not only capable of murder but according to the case File it tells you that he enjoyed it yeah and I'm not trying to
put a damper on this but I also think some of the psychological um Warfare on this is you
know Ed 69 he kills women mhm you know what I mean like it's not like he just killed anybody and
everybody right you mean you mean he's not like like Russell Crow entering the uh Coliseum Lions yeah are you not
entertained are you not entertained so the John Douglas and Bob wrestler they were interested really and
truly in anything that keer wanted to tell them but per the units study they were primarily interested in getting
answers to the following questions one what leads a person to become a Serial sexual offender and what are the early
warning signals two what serves to encourage or to inhibit the commission of his offense three what types of
response or coping strategies by an intended victim are successful with what type of sexual offender and avoiding
victimization four what are the implications for his dangerousness prognosis disposition and mode of
treatment all right so question for you because if you watch mine hunter they don't really have have questionnaires or
really much of a objective at the beginning or that's at least what the show portrays MH so do you think that
this was the first the first things that they're trying to get answered and then that
developed more later um I think that probably that between the two of them John Douglas and Bob wrestler that this
was their primary goal right from the onset of everything right I just don't think that they put pen to paper to come
up with an effective strategy so according to the show the TV show and what I think we can kind of infer from
the show is like you said they come up with basically a questionnaire hey here's kind of a script to not share
with the subject but between the two of you you know that you're working to get answers to these set of questions right
but that script happened once they got a doctor involved correct and I think what
that the whole Genesis of that would be and where the smarts of that comes into play is these guys were extremely busy
and what I mean by that is when this first started they weren't being paid to or their superiors didn't even
understand that they were out interviewing these serial killers they were actually supposed to be there on
other business they're training local law enforcement agencies on how to detect and deduce certain crimes they're
also working with local law enforcement agencies to actually solve crimes so while they happen to be in the
neighborhood so to speak they're like okay well what prison is nearby and who is locked up for life or you know and
let's go talk to them yeah and both of these guys were also original members of New Kids on the Block so they had a lot
of stuff going on so most of the time in the beginning until they got their um grant
money they were doing this on their own time in the evenings and on the weekends
so I think the script and I think putting together a list of actual questions is really just a way to
maximize their time and their efficiency while they're there talking to them you've watched plenty of interviews with
Ed keer you you know it's obvious he can just talk and talk and talk and talk for
hours and hours and hours when he graduated he was most likely to have a podcast in his high school class so the
the interesting thing here though is you asked do you believe that these were were questions that they sought answers
to right from the beginning yeah just because if I'm wrong it it made it seem like we don't know what to expect so
let's just go in there and see if we could get him talking I think that's the truth I think that's the truth on some
level we do know that this was their objective um because this was later released many years later this was after
they got their grant money it's kind of too Champion their cause so to speak they released these sets of questions
hey this is what we're looking for when we interview these guys in an FBI News Bulletin to the rest of their uh
Department in their agencies I'm confusing real life with the TV show but also in this TV show wasn't the first
meeting a solo meeting where he actually didn't go in with his partner well that's a dramatization in real life
there were three individuals that sat down with Ed keer the first time um and I don't know the name of the
other um officer involved and I and to be honest with you I think it was a local FBI agent you know Douglas and
wrestler are not local to the area right I think that that FBI agent probably worked because they had not been in a
prison yet and they didn't know that hey you could just walk up with and flash your FBI badge and most of the time that
works to get into the prison right well cuz a lot of these prison guards or local officers had a lot of respect for
the FBI well think about two of the questions that that they listed there within those four you know and they're
all kind of lengthy questions if you really dissect them each one is actually multiple questions worked into one
question right but the Simplicity of it is two things one what is the early warning signals of who this person could
turn into to be I know the answer too much flicky flicky and then two this is interesting what can a victim do if you
find yourself caught up with an individual like this a serial killer serial rapist what can I do to try to
get myself out of this situation and behavioral wise you know are there things that I can say things that I can
do are there actions I can take or reactions to this mad man that I can use to to save my own life and get me out of
this situation right cuz what we've seen with Bundy you're going to see with keer
you're going to see with other serial killers that they will have moments where everything you know this plan that
normally takes place normally these serial killers it's like after the first attack or the second attack then they
start going well this is how I'm going to do it this is my ruse to get them in my car then we go here then we drive
this and then we do this and then I pull my gun on them and they kind of have a routine that they're building but
there's also times where it's like uh my routine was to pick pick up a hitchhiker
or my routine was to pick up a sex worker and they will do that and they just drop the individual off and there
is no murder right so what made those different than the actual attacks the Simplicity of both of those questions
and actually in my opinion almost all four of those questions is really early detection of a serial killer and
preventing more loss of life you know we have how can a victim get out of this situation
one as law enforcement you want a victim to get out of the situation not only to
save their own life but to help you solve the crime help you make an arrest somebody that could later identify
somebody that did something terrible to them or at least attempted to do so and then we have the early warning signals
you know the early signs of of the creation of the serial killers if I could just interject for a second this
has been on my mind all morning but we're talking about serial killer so it's it okay don't give me those eyes
big shout out to Bill Burr the comedian I was watching his show last night his uh cartoon show on Netflix F is for
family and there's a scene where he's arguing with this kid and he starts fighting the kid mhm and then the dad
comes up and he's like what you what are you doing you're trying to fight my 9-year-old son what what are you some
kind of [ __ ] right and then you notice that the guys name on his name badge that's fighting Bill Berg's
character his last name is dmer and he's then he starts calling his son Jeffrey and the kid has blonde hair with
the little glasses and I just thought I can't one I can't get away from True Crime but how clever it is that he just
kind of threw it in there like I I wonder how many people watched that and didn't even know that it was Jeffrey
dmer and True Crimes kind of seeped its way into all all different kinds of media well and the fact too that like
the cartoon is based around that time period where Jeffrey dmer would have been a child okay okay well but a key
thing to keep in mind when talking to these serial killer types um and we've touched on this a bit already is that
they are often skilled manipulators and some of them quite intelligent which as is the case with keer so it was it was
and is extremely important that the FBI agents know know the case inside and out
in order to hopefully get the answers to the questions and to advance the FBI's ability to prevent detect and capture
serial offenders and serial killers now the agents are going to want to learn everything they can about Ker's
childhood environment relationships crimes habits and his arrest but they're going to want to know this in his own
words right from his mouth and when we come back we will talk about some of the things that they
learned you were involved in the campus because your mother worked there yes I was also involved in killing
co-eds because my mother was associated with college work college co-eds women and had had a very strong and
violently outspoken position on men for much of my upbringing my mother was a a sick angry
hungry and very sad woman I hated her but I wanted to love my mother and I watched the alcohol increase I watched
her social life drop off I watched her get bizarre she had terrible pain from her life earlier life her upbringing uh
a failed marriage with my father I'm a constant reminder of that failure I hate to distill it down into such uh into
onew realities like that there's a lot that leads into that happening but that is what happened they represented not
what my mother was but what she liked what she coveted what was important to her and I was destroying it why did you
actually kill the girls my frustration my inability to communicate socially sexually I wasn't
impotent but emotionally I was impotent I was scared to death of failing in male
female relationships I knew absolutely nothing about that whole area even if just sitting down and talking with the
young lady I need to be able to really communicate and ironically enough that's why I began picking people up and I'm
picking up young women and I'm going a little bit farther each time it's a daring kind of a thing at
first there wasn't a gun I'm driving along we go to a vulnerable place where there aren't people watching where I
could act out and I say no I can't and then a gun is in the car hidden and this craving this awful raging
eating feeling inside I could feel it consuming my insides this fantastic passion uh it was overwhelming me it was
like drugs it was like alcohol a little isn't enough at first it is and as you adjust to that psychologically and
physically you take more and more and more it's the same process so it finally came down to the thing of do I dare
bring this gun out already realizing if that gun comes out something has to happen Edmund Emil keer the was born
December 18th 1948 in Burbank California now during his childhood keer was physically and emotionally abused by his
alcoholic mother clarnell who was divorced from his father before the divorce Ed was close with his father
after the divorce Ed's mother hated him and it's believed this is because Ed looked almost exactly like his father
one of Ed's favorite games to play as a boy was a game that he invented in which
he called it gas chamber or the gas chamber this would be a game that he played with his sister where they would
take turns basically pretending to be gassed or gassing one another and then he would ride around pretending to be in
pain on the floor as he's pretending to die because of this uh game that they were playing now why clarnell and Ed's
two sisters slept upstairs she made her son at the age of just 8 years old sleep
in the dark and cold basement alone at night this is likely that she did this for many reasons but the reason most
often cited for this treatment or abuse was she was afraid Ed would molest or rape one of his sisters so and we've
heard in several interviews Ed describe this and he describes it in a way that makes you really realize
how tormenting this was for him this was a form of some kind of psychological abuse because he was afraid to be in the
basement by himself right but there was there any evidence that he would do this
or is this just a a madeup nonsense fear by his mother oh that he would rape or molest the sister right that's a really
good question and I've this is the thing that I've often wondered about because now let's say you're his mother
you're now in a situation where much later in life this is projected as being a form of abuse and torment that you
instilled on only one child out of three right you kind of signaled out this dude
singled out this dude and put him through hell and you know it's it's kind of like a Cinderella situation right
treat one bad and the other good well but you hit on something important here what if there is some type of evidence
that he would have molested Ed or maybe even raped his sister yeah then in a sense you're preventing the torture or
abuse of another of your children you see what I mean by putting him in the basement well right and you're not
putting him out in a shed right but now this is also the 50s so the basement they're not what basements are now the
basement must have been terrible in the 50s right and the they're probably wet and I I heard also that he could hear
rats possibly yeah so the thing when we talk about Edmund keer here that we should be completely clear about
regarding this story is that there has been variations of his childhood and variations of his story throughout the
years I do wonder what is fact and what is fiction after all these years have passed I do know from an interview that
he gave he described sleeping in the basement and described it simply as every night he would go down he you know
he would he would walk down the stairs right so picture like an old rickety wooden staircase he would walk down the
stairs and there was a single light at the bottom of the staircase and he would you know it has the string hanging from
it he would reach up and he would pull the string to turn it on and then he said that that would only light up
basically that corner of the basement right well he slept in the far Corner away from that so he would walk all the
way because he was afraid of being in the dark in the basement by himself well that was that's the age where your mom
says go get the a towel out of the basement you go okay and then you Brave the courage it's middle of the day and
you turn on the light and then you grab the towel and now you have to turn off the light but you have to run up the
steps cuz you're so afraid that something's going to grab you right so he would walk the length of the basement
basically to the other end where there was another light hanging and he would put you know with a string and he would
pull the string and turn that light on and then he would walk all the way back to turn off the light that was near the
stairs and he there most reports and stories would say that he was locked in the basement every night I don't know if
that in fact is true because his own words state that he he was in charge of closing the the basement door uh he
actually references that he would get yelled at by his mom because of the the cold would seep up into the house uh if
he didn't close the basement door and she didn't want to feel the cold that's so nice of her I don't know
if he could hear rats you know that that's the other rumor was that he could hear the rats scratching around in the
night yeah or if that was just made up in his head yeah or or if it's just a story to make it worse than what it
actually was in all reality let's say there were no rats at the very least we have an 8-year-old boy somebody who's
very young um mentally young as well emotionally young sleeping by himself in a dark cold
basement to which it's so cold that he's required to shut the door so the cold doesn't seep into the rest of the house
and at the very least in the middle of the night he's going to hear the furnace turning on and off uh so there would be
noises that would probably startle him and wake him up or Scare him throughout the night right and on top of that why
are you there why are you in the basement if you know it's because your mother fears this then it's like and
again if there's no evidence that you're going to do this or even capable of doing that do you then become capable of
doing it because you are essentially being accused of being capable of doing it well the other thing too Captain is
it is no question that his mother was an alcoholic so there could be a skewed perception on her behalf as to what was
going on on in her home if she was drunk or under the influence a lot of the time
while she was home but keer did engage in psychotic and Psychopathic Behavior early on so he started off by
dismembering his sister's dolls uh this was all based around a violent fantasy that he would later tell us about uh
killing his mother and his sisters now one book describes this scenario pretty simply and something something like this
stating that as Ed sat awake in the cold dark basement at night and his hatred grew and grew he fantasized about
killing the females upstairs so right because he's less thin right and they've made him less thin but also just because
your son rips apart your daughter's baby you know or Barbie dolls I don't know if that's a sign of
anything the fact that he is stating that it was a replication of how he would murder his family now that's
that's a whole different level but a kid just ripping apart a doll that's sometimes boys will just be boys yeah
and he said that he started off by like popping off their heads you know so like
if you picture like a Barbie doll or any kind of doll they usually have like that
plastic head uh connected to a much stiffer stronger sturdier plastic body and he says you know he would get like
pleasure from hearing that that noise when he would pull the head from the body right well later he said that he
actually believes he even received some kind of or or got some kind of sexual arousal by doing this and look I'm just
going to put this question out now because we're going to be talking a lot about his viewpoints on things and again
this is this is also hindsight is he just making some of this stuff up later in life to make him seem more interested
I mean this is a guy that wants to talk he wants to be heard he wants people to listen to him are they more likely to
listen to you if you're coming up with these interesting scenarios mhm well and here's Captain where I think we should
probably drop a bit of a warning for the listeners um as we're going to get into
a couple of things that I know some people don't like to hear about and this is typical behavior of a lot of these
serial killers so some of you might want to just kind of fast forward about a minute minute and a half or so so one of
these behaviors that keer keer was showing us as a as a Young Man uh when he was a teenager early in his teen
years this included the torture and killing of animals now the family had two cats one of them he buried alive and
he later dug it up and would he stored the carcass of the cat in a closet in their house and then the second cat he
killed with a machete so this is a different situation much different one buried alive the other he's actually
physically attacking it with a machete to the point of he's getting blood on himself during the course of killing
this animal right but this is a huge step up from dismembering dolls yes and actually I found this quite interesting
some psychologists say that cats are the most killed animals by these young later
to be serial killers because of a couple of psychological reasons one most by far
most Sero killers are men and many have suggested that the cat on some psychological level is representative of
the female gender right and that a lot of these guys kill for their hate of a single female or of all of the gender
well I think you see this with uh dmer you also saw with the cat torture videos of Luca magnata AKA puka
NADA but in that area with the Luca magnata case his victim was was a male yeah and so that's that's why they
believe that cats are usually you know we see the torture of different animals we we certainly did when we talked about
BTK and as you mentioned several others but uh seems to be that cats are the most often killed by these guys now this
is a good time for us to introduce what the Mind Hunter guys would refer to as the homicidal Triad well hold on uh this
is a good time to apologize for people that we probably should have said 2 and 1/2 minutes fast forward 2 and 1/2
minutes so you probably caught that tail in and we're sorry about that yeah so the the homicidal Triad as the Mind
Hunter guys would later come up with this is after years of studying these serial killers and interviewing them and
coming up with and getting information straight directly from them um so these behaviors these three behaviors that we
would see time and time again in the childhood of these eventual serial killers are these three types of of
things one Fire Starting two bed weding and three cruelty to animals I'm a fire starter Twisted fire
star so um with Ed Edmund um is he wet in the bed is he making the wet basement wetter I don't know about wetting the
bed or Fire Starting but we do know he was doing the cruelty to animals but this is I mean throughout their studies
this is something that they would see enough to the point that they came up with a name for it the homicidal Triad
and this is something that they would see out of the serial killers where they would often exhibit one or two or all
three of these behaviors during their the course of their childhood well there's different levels too of like
pyromaniacs I mean when you're a kid especially a young boy and you get a a box of matches or you get a lighter
you're going to light every toy that you can on fire mhm but then sometimes you're hanging out with one of your
buddies and they're like to the extreme and I think that's kind of what they're talking about there's always going to be
somewhat of a Fascination especially with little boys playing with lighters or matches yeah yeah so people out there
listening shouldn't freak out if they've experienced some I would freak out if your son or daughter is doing the
cruelty to animals thing that seems to me to be a different level um but like you said some kids play with fire some
some kids wet the bed I mean right um and I don't know how much I think years later um I'm curious to see how much
they think the bed wedding is actually involved because it's not that's not a destructive behavior when you compare it
to the other two you know it's not a destructive Behavior at all did you have a wedding of the bed problem well but
they're talking about seems like you're defending this one no I'm not defending any of it what I'm saying is it they
what they mean by bed wedding is of of a considerable older age right you know if
you have a three-year-old kid and they're wet in the bed sometimes they're just a three-year-old kid right um
anyway it's what we do know is Edmund grew up to hate his mother and at the age of 14 he ran away from home this is
in search of his father and he finds his father in vanis California so when he caught up he was looking for a better
basement well when he caught up with his father his father had a new family and he didn't want Edmond staying with them
so keer said just him being around gave his stepmother migraine he headaches so he was shipped off to go live with his
father's parents on a 17 Acre Farm in North Folk California yeah but can you imagine though
okay let's say you're not well okay say you are married and then you bring your son around and your wife is saying I get
migraines this kid gives me migraines M you really going to pick this Looney Tune over your son well you got to keep
in mind he's already chose to not choose his son he's he's not been living with son he's already walked away from that
job and from that responsibility and that's why yeah but you also see I wonder what the actions were
between or what kind of relationship was there violence or anything between uh Ker's mother father what what was their
Dynamic like because if she is you know this alcoholic Looney Tune then you think on some level okay yeah I didn't
choose you then but hey things are probably pretty bad for you so maybe I should do something well he would have
had a good idea and when I say he I mean Edmund's father would had a good idea because I believe his and I don't
remember the exact words but something something similar to this he stated that being with clarnell with Edmund's mom
was worse than the time he spent fighting in the war and he was from my understanding like he referred to his
time in the war he was in in served I don't know which war it was but he served over a year in combat to what he
referred to as suicide missions and he said being with her was worse and more frightening than being in those suicide
missions see there you go so you would have to so you're you're a bit Yeah but well here's my point though it's worse
than a suicide mission and that's what you're putting your eight-year-old son through in his opinion yes and then when
your son finally shows up and leaves there and says look I didn't like living there so i' I I sought you out I came
and I found you I do have to give some some credit here um you know I'm not liking Edmond's
father at all I don't I don't see he sounds like a used a piece of [ __ ] I don't appreciate him not being around
for Edmund's childhood or for taking the responsibility of being a real father but what what I will give him credit for
is sending him to his parents' home rather than shipping him back to clar now all right so 's a piece of [ __ ] but
you a little less piece of [ __ ] because you sent them with your parents well he
probably figured hey if I can't raise you here then I'm going to look I turned out you maybe he considers he turned out
pretty fine and he maybe he has good fond memories of his childhood and thought well I'll send you to go live
with my parents can you imagine what this country would be like or what this world would be like if if every man
actually manned up and raised their kids well that's a big portion of of the study into the serial killers and why I
said that we'll take a look at this situation and try to figure out if Edmund keer was born evil or if he was
made to be evil because the very simplistic thought of a serial killer is this that they cannot have and and you
can email me you can hit me up on the blog you can do whatever you want but you it would be tough to convince me
otherwise for a person to knowing and willingly and plan out the murder of multiple people of multiple individuals
they cannot have the same or share the same emotions that quote unquote normal people have so why don't they have the
same emotions as we do what about is that excluding like soldiers well again that's that to me is a
different situation A Sero killer is a very um defined type of of person and killer okay where a soldier is a
different definition of a killer technically they both are still they both are killers but there are there
huge differences between the two so again why don't they so then the question then becomes why don't they
have the same emotions why don't they have the same responses as we would to their environments and to behaviors
around them into treatments that they're receiving and this when you go back and
you really get to probably the simplest form of this is does it start with being
a little baby and does it start with having a mother that didn't want you and having a father that wasn't there and
not developing those emotions and not of you know developing those uh behaviors empathy not developing empathy
at a very young age well and also not in that it doesn't always have to be that order sometimes it's the mother that
rejects them and the father is still around but he is just a not so such a great father MH so there I think you see
it happen multiple ways yes and and not all Sero Killers had a horrible time growing up a horrible childhood but some
of them did and I do understand that there are a lot of people out there that had bad childhoods because look if if
everybody out there that had a bad a quote unquote what they have determined to be a bad childhood right grew up to
kill people in the double digits in the you know 10 or more people yeah we would
be running out of people on this planet so it's I'm not saying it's an excuse it's more of a question of why and how
all right so his father ships him off to live with his parents yes on a 17 Acre Farm in North Folk California and it
seems like Ed got along well with his grandfather but not so much with his grandmother uh his grandmother was a bit
of a strict disciplinarian his grandparents got him a 22 rifle for Christmas for small game
hunting there are differing stories about what I'm about to tell you but the simple truth of it is this that on
August 27th 1964 15-year-old Edmund keer used his Christmas present to shoot his
grandmother in the back three times as she sat at the kitchen table typing afterwards he stabbed her three times
with a kitchen knife this is because he says that he didn't want her to suffer he wanted to end it for her as quickly
as possible the reason being for killing his grandmother he he's stated over the
years that there's been several reasons but the one that he cites the most often
is he wanted to see what it would feel like so his grandfather was out it was not home during the time when he killed
his grandmother and the reason why I say there are differing stories about this is
because there's the way that these stories go is either his grandfather was out in town
shopping and then returned home or he was out hunting and the Ed was mad that he could not go or upset that he could
not go hunting with his grandfather well if his grandfather in fact wasn't out hunting then we know he wasn't mad about
that right regardless when his grandfather returned to the home as Ed would describe it they had a brief
interaction where his grandfather waved to him you know he's getting out of his truck and he waves to him and like I
said it seems like the two of them had had a good relationship yeah and Ed waited till his grandfather turned his
back and he shot his grandfather he would later then hide the body in a closet and he said that he shot his
grandfather for reasons that all seem to stem from not wanting him to have discovered that that he had just killed
his grandmother yeah maybe not wanting him to see the body maybe not wanting him to be disappointed and and keer yeah
probably several things here so not wanting him to be angry at Ed or upset with Ed disappointed in Ed as you had
said or also at the the loss of life of his wife right you know his longtime companion the weird thing though here
Captain we've actually heard this with several other serial killers and and I'll reference
BTK uh as a prime example here is Edmond immediately felt like at any time a whole bunch of people were going to come
to get him like everybody in the whole world probably knew what he had just done and that they were going to come up
there they're going to arrest him they're going to attack him they're going to kill him any number of those
things right and we heard that with BTK Dennis Raider would say that often when he would go out and he would kill
somebody or kill multiple people he felt like in the first 48 Hours afterwards that the police were just going to show
up at any time at his door knocking and saying hey we know what you did Buddy now you're arrested it's like this
paranoia sets in yeah that's interesting and so Ed said that in that situation he was going to shoot and kill
anyone that would have approached the the farm or the house at that time that was his mindset at the time so we almost
have to count our blessings here in some form right because he's out on a 17 Acre
Farm out in kind of the middle of nowhere if he were in a major city when he had
done this can you imagine all the innocent people that weren't coming to get him that would have probably have
been killed that day I mean you even something as simple as the person delivering the mail right but then we'd
have a scenario where it would be he'd be a Mas murderer and they would have caught him and then the other the serial
killings would have never happened well that's tough to say that's tough to say not tough to say what I what I'm
assuming is that in the 60s 64 if you had a guy that went on a rampage going around killing people in a city that the
cops are going to come and arrest that individual yes but essentially isn't that what ended up happening and what I
mean by that is that okay so we get lucky that there's nobody else there and at some point his paranoia it it wears
off and he calls his mother and explains what he had done and he is going to be picked up like you said he gets arrested
for killing his grandparents right keer was committed to the ateso state hospital for the criminally
insane all right Captain I want to let everybody out there know I received a lot of great emails several people
asking about specific cases to cover uh mention a few of them here won the honey
and Barry Sherman case the ti Lewis case the Amy mahalic case and Laura spirior I
want to point out that we did cover all of these cases already and you can find all of our back catalog it's a huge back
catalog we're over 260 episodes strong now you can get our back catalog for free and listen to those cases on the
Stitcher app we also have a show on Stitcher premium called off the Record it's $5 a month and you get every
premium show on Stitcher premium all right we will talk more ed keer The Co-Ed Killer tomorrow back here in the
garage until then everybody be good be kind and don't litter [Music]

Edmund Kemper /// Part 1 /// 261

Part 1 of 2

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Edmund Kemper was raised by a mother that very likely hated him, even as a small boy. Ed liked to play death ritual games with his sister. He grew to be a very large man and extremely intelligent. Ed was about 6 foot 9 inches tall and his I.Q. was near genius level. As an adult he was convicted of the mutilation slayings of eight women. Was this monster born evil or was he made evil? This week we take a strong look at Edmund Kemper - The Co-Ed Killer Beer of the Week - You’re a Good Man Charlie - Brown Ale by Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing Garage Grade - 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of 5

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Brief Summary

The episode examines serial killer Edmund Kemper's life, crimes, and psychological background, alongside his interactions with the FBI.

Key points

The Co-Ed Killer. A look at the murderous madness of Edmund Keer, exploring his troubled childhood and horrific crimes.
Mind Hunter Connection. Discussion of the hit series 'Mind Hunter' and its portrayal of real-life FBI agents studying serial killers.
Interviewing Serial Killers. The genesis of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit and their groundbreaking interviews with serial killers.
Edmund Keer's Childhood. Exploring the impact of upbringing on serial killers, particularly Edmund Keer.
The Shocking Murder. At just 15, Edmund Keer killed his grandmother, citing curiosity as his motive.
The Aftermath of the Killings. Edmund's paranoia after the murders raises questions about his mindset.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Was this hulking monster born evil or was he made evil?

Introduction to Edmund Keer's story.

4:03WatchNov 23, 2022

Tension

65/ 100Some tension

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Edmund Kemper /// Part 1 /// 261 | Forensic Files