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

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n 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 Emil keer III was raised by
a mother that even when he was just a small boy she very likely hated him Edmund 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 slangs 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 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 he she didn't give up I did I came in out of the cold and what I'm saying is there are
some people who prefer it in the cold you were able to appear like a or 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 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's 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 onscreen 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 Edmond keer heck sometimes during breaks we when working we would
stopped 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 keer 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 camaron Britain 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 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 believe 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 and 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 taken hostage at any
time that they understood that they would not 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 to be honest with you here Captain I've seen this I Hue 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 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 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 keer and
and he 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 in 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 in 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 but 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 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 fighting 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 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 in
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 questionnaires or
really much of 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 it 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 in their efficiency while they're there talking to him 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 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
to Champion their cause so to speak they leas 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 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 that 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 because 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 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 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 relevant 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 kidm 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 guy's 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 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 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 about some of the things that they
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2023 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
violent ly 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 father I'm a constant reminder of that failure I hate to distill it down into such uh
into one word reality is 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
was 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 Edmond Emil keer thei 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 the round 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 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 they're probably wet and I
I heard also that he could hear rats possibly yeah so the thing when we talk about Edmond 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 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 in 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 and they've made him less thin but also just because you're 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 or 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 seral 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 serial killers are men and many have suggested that the cat on some 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 PCA NADA but in that scenario 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 a half minutes fast forward to 2 and A2 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 firear twisted fire so um with Ed Edmund um is he
wetting 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 these 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 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 vanise Califor 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 Edmund staying with them
so keer said just him being around gave his stepmother migraine head 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 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 his 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 when I say he I mean Edmund's father would have 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 Edmond'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 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 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 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 Edmund's
father at all I don't I don't see he sounds like a use 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 I will give him credit for is
sending him to his parents' home rather than shipping him back to clear now all right so you a piece of
[ __ ] but you a little less piece of [ __ ] cuz 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 environment into 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 mhm 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's 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'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 said 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 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 Edmund 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 just done and that they're 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 happen
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 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 atesa 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 I
mention a few of them here one the honey and Barry Sherman case the ti Lewis case
the am mahalic case and Laura spor 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
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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

This episode examines the life and crimes of serial killer Edmund Kemper, focusing on his upbringing and psychological profile.

Key points

The Co-Ed Killer. A look at the murderous madness of Edmund Keer, who was raised in a toxic environment.
Mind Hunter's Inspiration. Exploring the real-life origins of the FBI's Behavioral Science unit and their work with serial killers.
Interviewing Serial Killers. The FBI's groundbreaking approach to understanding serial offenders through direct interviews.
The Complexity of Serial Killers. Understanding the early warning signs and the psychology behind serial killers is crucial.
Edmund Kemper's Troubled Childhood. Kemper's abusive upbringing shaped his violent tendencies and complex psyche.
The Homicidal Triad Explained. The behaviors of fire starting, bed wetting, and animal cruelty are common in serial killers.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

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

Question about Edmund Keer's nature

5:00WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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