World's Most Evil Killers - Season 2, Episode 15 - Edmund Kemper - Full Episode | Forensic Files

♪♪ -On August 27, 1964, in North Fork, California, 15-year-old Edmund Kemper shot and killed his grandmother Maude.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] Then, when he returned home, the boy also shot and murdered his grandfather Edmund Sr.
-Do I think Kemper is an evil man? The answer has to be yes. He is the definition
of violence and evil. You pray nobody else is out there like that again. -Kemper Jr. then called his mother,
to tell her what he'd done. -He says, "I've killed my grandparents," and she tells him, "Well, you stupid boy,
just call the police and wait there until they arrive." -Released after just 5 years
in a facility for the criminally insane, Kemper went on a killing spree that targeted young, female coeds.
-She was hitchhiking home from school. She was taken out to a remote area, where she was shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun.
-In all, the vicious serial killer would slaughter 10 people, including his mother.
He would typically dismember and sexually desecrate the bodies, making Edmund Kemper one of the world's most evil killers.
♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ [ Eerie music plays ]
For nearly 10 terrifying years between 1964 and 1973, a 6'9", 300-pound man-mountain,
Edmund Kemper, preyed on the innocent. His hunting grounds were in and around the beautiful beach town
of Santa Cruz, in Northern California. -People know the city of Santa Cruz by its beaches
and body parts of these people were found in the sand, sticking out of the sand.
So you can imagine, now, the fright in the community. You know, "What is going on?"
-Kemper's reign of terror began after he was released from Atascadero State Hospital
for murdering both of his grandparents when he was a juvenile. He would go on to kill another eight people,
including his mother; her neighbor; and six young women, all female coeds. When some of the murdered and mutilated bodies began
to show up, half-buried on local beaches, the public was horrified. [ Gull cries ]
-It's just one of the strangest times in California history. -Terry Medina was a detective
with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office in what were trying times for the Golden State
and the investigators charged with protecting them. -We're trying to say, "Stop hitchhiking,"
and there was a big backlash from that. You have to remember, now, it's flower power.
It's a protest of the Vietnam War and "The man can't tell us what to do and the pigs can't tell us what to do.
We're not gonna stop hitchhiking. It is our right." [ Eerie music plays ] -The fact that we had the protests,
Harvey Milk was assassinated, so, there was a lot of stuff going on in the area.
-Forrest Schall lost his sister Cindy in 1973. [ Melancholy tune plays ] -It was very difficult.
I lost my sister. [tearfully] My mom lost her daughter. -19-year-old Cindy Schall was callously killed by Kemper
on January 7, 1973, in the woods near Santa Cruz and her lifeless body was defiled.
-Oh, she was a rambunctious child. She was a very giving, caring individual, and she was sent to some of the better schools
'cause my mom really busted her butt to make sure she got the best education. -It was not just coeds
who were targets in California in the 1970s. The fear was that anyone could be a victim,
young or old, man or woman. That was because there were at least three serial killers
on the loose in California at the same time. -There was also another murderer, named Herbert Mullin,
who killed 10 girls in the same vicinity as Edmund Kemper, and, on top of that, the Zodiac was loose,
and so there was a lot of fear. ♪♪ [ Sinister music plays ] -But this is the story of one
of the most sadistic serial killers ever known: Edmund Kemper. It began some 70 years ago.
-Kemper was born in 1948 and he came into the world in the postwar years and, rather than being a time of hope
and a time of prosperity for him, it was a time of abuse; it was a time of neglect.
-Kemper lived in Burbank, in Southern California, with his mother, Clarnell; his father, also called Edmund;
and his two sisters. -His father was a World War II veteran and had worked on nuclear testing
before coming back after the war to work as an electrician. Ed's father used the expression,
"Suicide missions were nothing compared to living with Clarnell." Clarnell was an extraordinary personality:
neurotic, aggressive, alcoholic, and utterly domineering. She terrorized both her husband and her son,
favoring the two daughters. -In 1957, when Kemper was 9 years old, his parents divorced.
His mother took him and his two sisters to live with her in Helena, Montana. She would allegedly play havoc with the young boy's psyche.
-She demeaned him and she abused him and basically ostracized him and made him feel terrible.
♪♪ -Kemper expresses, more than almost any serial killer I've ever heard of, a hatred of his mother that's indescribable.
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -The young Kemper develops some macabre fascinations.
-He would play games with his sisters, like gas chamber or electric chair. He would get them to tie himself to a chair
and then he would pretend to be electrocuted. [ Ominous chord strikes ] [ Suspenseful music plays ]
-Afraid that he would harm his sisters, when he was 10, Kemper's mother ordered him to sleep in the basement.
-Now, you can have two different views of this. One is that it's horribly cruel,
and the other is this is a mother who did the only thing she could to protect her daughter.
Regardless of the explanation, from Kemper's point of view, it was torture and he reviled his mother.
-Aged 13, young Kemper took off and went to find his father in California. -He goes and he finds his father,
but his father doesn't really want to know 'cause he's got a new life now. He has a stepson. He has this new family unit
and Ed feels incredibly rejected by that. -But his mother rejected him, too. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
A year later, she sent the boy, aged 14, to live with his paternal grandparents on a farm in North Fork, California.
It would be a fatal decision. -His grandmother is very similar to his mother. ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪ She's incredibly domineering.
She's not particularly nice to him. -Kemper would grow to be an imposing physical figure.
At 15, he already stood 6'4" tall. -He grew to 6'9"; weighed 21 stone, 300 pounds.
He was, in a way, almost a Frankenstein figure. -Tragically, the die was cast and the powerful teen was about to strike with a monstrous rage.
On August the 27th, 1964, a 15-year-old Kemper would kill for the first time. -His grandmother is sitting at the kitchen table.
Without really any warning, Kemper goes and fetches a rifle, which is in the house,
and shoots her. [ Two gunshots ] In fact, he shoots her twice, just to make sure she's dead.
Then, he sits down at the kitchen table, opposite the body of his grandmother, and waits for his grandfather,
and he shoots him, too. [ Gunshot ] -Then, in a bizarre twist, Kemper made a surprising move.
-Immediately after he killed his grandparents, he calls his mother and he says, "I've killed my grandparents."
[ Suspenseful music plays ] And she tells him, "Well, you stupid boy. Just call the police and wait there until they arrive."
-And he sits there, waiting for the police. He doesn't run. He doesn't do anything.
And, when they get there, he explains it, "Well, I wanted to find out what it felt like to kill Grandmother."
♪♪ -Arrested, and diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, Kemper was incarcerated
in the Atascadero State Hospital in California. In the high-security facility for the criminally insane,
Kemper seemed to have found peace. -He was an absolutely model inmate. He helped the staff; he organized visits.
He started doing psychiatric testing. They realized, at Atascadero, that he actually had an extremely high IQ:
It was 145. -He's very smart, very manipulative, and he did what many serial killers can do.
He convinced the staff of the hospital that he was cured and so he was released.
-On his 21st birthday, December 18, 1969, Kemper was set free and his criminal records as a juvenile were sealed.
In hindsight, a psychiatric report conducted after his release made for shocking reading.
[ Ominous chord strikes ] -The report stated, in part, "Edmund Kemper is no longer a danger to society."
[ Suspenseful music plays ] "He, in fact, is no more dangerous to society than the motorcycle that he rides."
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -But, tragically, that was all about to be proved very wrong.
Living with his mother, Kemper's rage was once again welling up inside. -From the perspective of people with this,
what I will call psychopathic rage? [ Eerie music climbs ] Nothing less than killing,
torture, and mayhem is sufficient to give even momentary relief. -In May 1972, the dam full of rage would break.
In just 11 months, Kemper would callously kill, disembowel, decapitate, and perform necrophilia
on eight new victims across California, [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] including six beloved coeds.
♪♪ After serving just 5 years in a state mental institution for shooting his grandparents,
he moved to Santa Cruz, California, and went to live with his mother, near to the university where she now worked.
With his criminal record as a juvenile sealed, Kemper was able to get a job, in 1971,
with the Department of Transportation. But, it ended prematurely. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
-Ed Kemper was involved in an accident and he received quite a lot of compensation for that.
It was around about $15,000. [ Melancholy tune plays ] He injured himself quite badly in this accident,
so, he could no longer do his work for the state highway authority. So you've got a young man, now, who's got a lot of money.
He's got a lot of time on his hands. -Now age 23, Kemper spent his days drifting, driving,
and picking up young, female hitchhikers. [ Suspenseful music plays ] In the 1960s and early 1970s,
hitchhiking up and down the sun-soaked highways of the Golden State was a carefree pastime
and an activity that soon-to-be serial killer Edmund Kemper thrived upon. -He starts cruising around.
He starts going up and down the state highways and he's essentially doing trial runs.
He's becoming aware that he can have access to people. He has the opportunity to harm people.
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -In one year, in 1970, Kemper would later claim that he picked up and then dropped off
as many as 150 young women. But Kemper's interest in hitchhikers would soon take an ominous turn.
-He would drive around the university where his mother was working and pick up coeds
and he describes this specifically as being done because those coeds had a connection,
however ephemeral or symbolic, with his mother and her place of work. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
-He has a sticker on his car from the university where his mother works, so girls feel that they can kind of identify with him.
He doesn't look like a monster. ♪♪ -On May the 7th, 1972, Kemper's trial runs were over. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
On that day, Kemper picked up two young students in Berkeley, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Mary Luchessa,
both aged 18. They wanted a ride to Stanford University, about 40 miles away. -Kemper's modus operandi, his MO,
was pretty straightforward. He would drive around. He would look for hitchhikers:
vulnerable, available. They had to have the characteristics which reminded him of his mother:
desirable. And then he would offer them a ride. -These were coed girls. These were girls that were in college.
They had their entire lives ahead of them. They were happy. And, for him, this represented what he didn't have.
These would often be girls that would reject him and he couldn't have relationships with them,
but he still wanted them, so this was his way of actually getting access to these women.
-Kemper drove the two young women to some secluded woods. [ Suspenseful outro plays ]
[ Dirge plays ] The big, 300-pound man then got them out of the car and handcuffed both of them.
Kemper then put one of the women, still alive, in the trunk of the car, while he killed her friend.
-Often, he'll say to them, "I'm not going to kill you," in order to placate them and make sure
that they don't make a fuss and try and run away, and then he does murder them and then he has sex with their dead bodies.
♪♪ -Kemper stabbed, then suffocated, each girl, in turn, to death. He then put the bodies in the trunk of his Ford Galaxy
and took them home to the apartment he now rented, near to Santa Cruz University.
There, he dismembered the bodies and gratified himself with the lifeless corpses.
[ Eerie music plays ] -The horrifying aspect of Kemper, now, is that his sexuality is completely deformed.
He cannot effectively operate sexually if the woman is alive. -The only reason that he's not raping them before he kills them
is that he doesn't want to be rejected by them. When you're having sex with a dead body,
it's not going to reject you; it's not going to insult you or demean you in the same way
that his mother had insulted or demeaned him. [ Suspenseful music plays ] -Kemper then stashed
the body parts in plastic bags and stored some bits in his home and others in the trunk of his car.
-This is something that's known as partialism. It's a sexual arousal through keeping body parts
and, I think, for Kemper, this is his way of staying close to his victims, of owning them and possessing them
and literally carrying a part of them with him. -Kemper would later dump the violated body parts
in the Santa Cruz Mountains, near Berkeley. -A couple that were out, hiking and walking their dog,
came across these heads. ♪♪ Subsequently, we identified Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa
and we find out that these two young women were hitchhiking. Unbeknownst to us, those were the first two victims of Edmund Emil Kemper.
♪♪ -Four months later, in September 1972, [ Melancholy tune plays ] Kemper killed again.
This time, his victim was a 15-year-old girl: Aiko Koo. -This one really hurt me.
This was really -- This was really, um, a difficult victim for me. Aiko Koo was this young, Korean American girl
who lived with his mother, who worked in the library at the University of California at Berkeley.
Her mother was dedicated to this young girl. She was a single mom, raising this kid.
She was learning how to dance and take ballet and her mom made her costumes. [ Melancholy tune climbs ] -On the 14th of September,
Aiko was heading to her ballet class in San Francisco, 25 miles away. Usually, she would take the bus, but, on this day,
the conscientious student was behind schedule. -She was at a bus stop and she missed the bus.
She didn't want to be late for the dance class. She was so anxious about that, and so frustrated,
so, she started to look for rides and Edmund Kemper was cruising the area, looking for victims.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] And pulled over. He drove across the Bay Bridge to San Francisco
but just kept driving, and this young girl knows, now, she is driving through San Francisco, not where she wants to go.
He gets to Highway 1 and is now traveling south, towards Santa Cruz, and she is just panicked and crying
and wants to be let out. And he makes a turn on a country road. She has a chance here.
He pulls into a field on the edge of a forest. He's gonna kill her. ♪♪ He gets out of the car
to get a weapon out of the trunk, a knife. She locks the door. She locks him out of the car,
but she doesn't know how to start the car, let alone drive the car. -Kemper turned on his fatal charm
to try and convince the girl that he meant her no harm. -As he explained to us later,
he spent over an hour coaxing her, [ Melancholy tune plays ] encouraging her, to unlock the car and let him in.
As I recall, it was things like, "I'm sorry. I'll let you go. Let me in. I won't harm you."
And she let him in. And she was killed. -Kemper strangled, then raped and murdered her.
He took the lifeless body back to his apartment, where, as he later detailed, he cut up the body and had sex with the corpse.
♪♪ -Women were a source of rage. They became a focus of his sexuality. It evolved around death, rather than around life.
He didn't want to celebrate a relationship with a woman. He wanted to humiliate and to destroy a woman.
-But one crucial characteristic of Kemper, something he has in line with many lust killers, is
there are times when the level of rage, hatred, and intensity in him is truly beyond control.
-Kemper's unrelenting rage and violence now knew no bounds. In the next few months,
his killing spree would pick up apace, and Kemper would callously kill, decimate, and defile the bodies
of five more women. -He engaged in necrophilia. He engaged in sexual acts with the dismembered parts of the body.
-Kemper eviscerated some of his victims. Evisceration is simply the process of removing organs from the body.
Opening up the body cavity and seeing that organs were missing would be immediately apparent
and obviously [chuckling] very worrying. -Making matters worse, at the time, local detectives had little idea of what they were dealing with.
-What we did not know at the time was, during the time period of late '71 through the beginning of '73,
two serial killers were operating in the same place, at the same time. Herbert William Mullin killed 13,
so, it was confusing to us. In the beginning, our thinking was, "They had to be connected. This is unusual."
But the evidence did not connect them. -With the Zodiac Killer also on the loose
and thought to have murdered seven people in Northern California in 1969, and Charles Manson on trial in Southern California in 1970,
the citizens of the state were in tumult. -We had two stores in our community and they were selling out of guns and ammunition.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] -In January 1973, Kemper struck again. His prey was 19-year-old Cindy Schall.
For her family, the pain they felt is still hard to bear. Her brother Forrest recalls
those harrowing first few days after she vanished. -It was very scary 'cause, you know,
we didn't know if she'd run away or had been, you know, abducted. It's the middle of the winter and very depressing
and, you know, you just start thinking of things. ♪♪ -Cindy was a dedicated student
and worked hard to help support herself. -She took a job as an au pair in Santa Cruz, California,
and attended school during the day and then would take care of the children thereafter
and she went to a -- it was a junior college, called Cabrillo. It was adjacent to the Cal State University, Santa Cruz.
♪♪ ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪ -On January the 7th, Kemper was on the prowl again. He was on Highway 1, driving east, away from Santa Cruz.
-She was hitchhiking home from school. It was cold and a car pulled up and it had a school staff sticker on the bumper.
From the police reports, they said that she probably felt comfortable getting in.
And she was taken out to a remote area, where she was shot in the head with a .22-caliber gun.
[ Gunshot ] [ Sinister music plays ] And then, we don't know all the details, but she was dismembered.
Parts of her body were thrown into the Pacific Ocean. Kemper kept her head. ♪♪ [tearfully] This is hard to speak about,
but it's been almost 50 years, so, it's a little [chuckling] easier now. [ Melancholy tune plays ]
-At the time, Kemper was still subject to regular psychiatric analysis, a condition of his parole after serving time
as a juvenile for killing his grandparents. -He was having an interview, a final interview,
with a psychiatrist in a nearby city. The psychiatrist, in his report to the court,
said that Edmund Kemper was rehabilitated. The problem with that, that whole thing?
Cynthia Schall's head was in a bag in the backseat of Edmund Kemper's car at the time of that interview with the psychiatrist.
-You often see this type of behavior with serial killers. They get a kick out of it.
They get bored with their offending and they wanna mix things up and keep it interesting and have some fun.
-This kind of bizarre, pseudo-schizophrenic logic is -- is classic of a level of pathology
we see in very few people in the world. -Early in 1973, low on money, Kemper moved back in with his mother
and the murders continued. Just 4 weeks after his last attack, on February 5, 1973,
Kemper killed again. -Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu were our next two victims. He would later tell us that
he actually shot them as he drove off of campus. [ Suspenseful music plays ] Stabbing all these victims to death
was getting to be a lot of work. It was starting to bother him. A lot of blood. He was cleaning everything.
So he went and bought a gun, purchased a gun, and, as he was traveling towards the city of Santa Cruz,
he just turned and shot them. [ Two gunshots ] One was in the backseat; one was in the front seat.
♪♪ -Within a week of the latest two coed murders, body parts started washing up on shore in Santa Cruz.
[ Eerie music plays ] -As time went along, we were finding body parts on Cowell's Beach.
Other parts were found down below Monterey, between Carmel and Big Sur, and that started to create huge issues,
as we started to identify people: Cynthia Schall, Aiko Koo, a number of young women.
Clearly, there was a pattern in the coeds. Number one, they're young, student women.
They are stabbed to death. They are dismembered, common. All the investigators starting to focus on,
"Okay, now, this is one set of crimes," and the thread that weaved between them was hitchhiking.
[ Sinister chord strikes ] [ Suspenseful music plays ] -During his 11-month killing spree,
Kemper was said to frequent a bar in downtown Santa Cruz called The Jury Room. It was here his behavior took an even more sinister turn.
-It's a bar across from the courthouse. A lot of cops hang out there. A lot of people that work in the courts hang out there.
Lawyers hung out there. -By all accounts, personally, Kemper was a gentle giant.
Even some of the police officers he had befriended him described him that way. -They called him Big Ed, in a kind of friendly manner,
so he knew that he was coming across as nonthreatening. -There's only one occasion that I remember seeing him there.
He was at the far end of the bar. He didn't like push himself onto anybody, that I saw.
To me, it was almost like he was listening. Are any of the detectives there talking about any of these murder cases?
Is he getting any information from us? Very interesting. He blended in very well there.
-He was picking their brains. He was trying to find out if they knew anything. I don't fault the cops, you know.
How the hell would they know? I've never faulted the police, by the way. They did their job.
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -But, unbeknownst to Kemper, in April, a diligent clerk in Santa Cruz
ran a routine check on a gun dealer's sales records. -A records clerk at the sheriff's office
finds a 3x5 card, Edmund Emil Kemper, same as on the dealer record of sale for the gun.
All the information is blacked out. Why? Because his record had been sealed! But she could read through the blackout, and it said,
"187 PC, Madera, California." 187 PC is the California penal code for murder. Madera County was where he killed his grandparents
many, many years ago. She brought that card to the detective lieutenant in the bureau and said,
"This gun has already been delivered to this guy. I'm not so sure he's supposed to have it,
but his record is sealed." [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -On April 6, 1973, two detectives went to question Kemper.
He was not at home. They were driving away from the home he shared with his mother
when the killer finally showed up. -Kemper drives up and they watched him get out of the car.
Remember, he's 6'9". He's huge. He blocked out the sun. They identified themselves and made the inquiry about,
"Did you buy a gun?" He said, "Yes, I did." They said, "We don't think you're supposed
to have this gun, and we want it." Now, he later said, "I thought they knew I was the killer,"
that he was gonna open the trunk and shoot 'em both. But, they're very good cops, good training.
They took his keys. They wouldn't let him open the trunk. They made him move far to the side.
One of them opened the trunk. They took the gun, gave him a receipt, and they drove away.
[ Suspenseful music climbs ] -The police had the weapon that Kemper used to murder his last two victims.
Kemper knew it would now only be a matter of time before the police would discover his terrible secret.
By the spring of 1973, serial killer Edmund Kemper had murdered a total of eight people in California.
They included his paternal grandparents, and six coeds who'd been hitchhiking in and around Santa Cruz.
Having just been visited by the police over an issue with a gun license, Kemper decided to end it all,
with one final and ferocious act. -Back in April of 1973, Kemper starts to get a little bit skittish
because he's been visited by the police and I think this is one of the things that brings about the murder of his mother.
-Ultimately, he believes that killing his mother is the only way to stop killing coeds.
He actually figures out the connection and decides, almost like a psychologist, "I've gotta kill my mom
'cause that's the source o' all my problems and, once I kill her, I won't be a killer anymore."
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -On April 20, 1973, Kemper waited for his mother to return from a party.
-She'd got back. She was drunk. She was belligerent. She went to bed. Kemper went to see her.
[ Suspenseful music climbs, chord strikes ] You know, this... young man. We're not talking about anyone who's old.
This young man, always seeking his mother's affection. And she sits up in bed and says,
"I suppose you want to talk all night now." And Kemper is so horrified and upset that, in a way,
perhaps, he just simply snaps at that moment. But, interestingly, he doesn't kill his mother while she's awake.
He kills her while she's asleep. -At 4:00 in the morning, while his mother slept,
he took a hammer, went to her bed, and drove the hammer through her skull a number of times.
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -But he doesn't just kill her. Of course he doesn't. He decapitates her.
He uses her head as a dartboard, throwing darts at it, shouting at it for an hour.
-Yelling at her, "You're not gonna yell at me anymore. You're not gonna yell at me anymore."
-And then, he does something that I know of no other instance of this in serial crimes.
He cuts open her neck, takes out her vocal cords. And, remember, his mother's vocal cords
were the offending organ 'cause that's how she demeaned him; that's how she criticized him.
And he took her vocal cords and put it down the garbage disposal. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
-He then spent the rest of the day, into the afternoon, cutting her into pieces,
washing her completely clean in the bathtub, and hiding her body parts in the back of her closet.
♪♪ -But killing his 52-year-old mother ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪ and desecrating her body was not to be the end of his cruel crimes.
-It was as if this was the only and inevitable ending of his entire life and, yet, there was a sting in the tail, a twist,
because, not only does he keep his mother's body in a cupboard, and the head, but he invites her best friend
round for supper the next night. -Kemper asked 59-year-old Sara Taylor Hallett to come over to the house at 5:00 p.m.
-Mrs. Hallett walks in the door. He pretends to take her coat off, but just pushes it down over her arms, so she can't move,
[thwack] ...bludgeons her to death with his fists, stuffs her in the front closet.
His car is already packed and off he goes. Until he gets to Pueblo, Colorado. -After Kemper has killed his mother and his mother's friend,
he goes on the run for around about 4 days. He takes the car that belonged to his mother's friend.
-He decides he's going to make a getaway. He knew the cops would be on his tail and he planned to shoot it out when they tried to stop him.
-Kemper drove for 3 days, finally stopping in Pueblo, Colorado. On April the 23rd,
he went to a phone booth and made an astounding call. -He dials the Santa Cruz Police Department.
It's a busy Friday night in Santa Cruz. Kemper calls. Officer says, "Santa Cruz Police Department.
Can I help you?" "I need to talk to Lieutenant Sheer." "He doesn't work on the weekends.
You'll have to call back on Monday. I gotta put you on hold." Kemper hangs up. He gets upset. He hangs up.
He calls back and he finally says, "Hey! I got information about all those dead girls!"
[ Sinister chord strikes ] Now we're payin' attention. The officer's puttin' everything else on hold
and does a great job. -It's not a rarity. Oftentimes, serial killers are not the kind
that they're gonna go down fighting. Oftentimes, we see that. They give themselves up
or, once they're caught and they know that they're not gonna get out, then they give it all up.
It's almost like they want the notoriety. -The local police arrive to arrest the man
who had just confessed to being the notorious Coed Killer. -Kemper takes up the entire phone booth.
They get him into custody, put a hold on him, and the story now starts to get filled in and unraveled.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] We sent the district attorney; the district attorney investigator;
and my partner, Detective Aluffi. They flew to Colorado, rented a station wagon,
and the four of them took three days to drive back to California. They started out by saying, "Ed, can you tell us
how all this started?" ♪♪ And he sat there, like I am sitting here, and he said, "On such and such a date and such and such a time,
I was in Berkeley, California." ♪♪ [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] Kemper. connects. every. dot
to every. single. case. He was so precise, we were able to link the evidence to his statements, to the crime scenes.
-According to some analysts, after killing his mother, Kemper had lost his murderous purpose.
-He said later, "I started feeling the folly of the whole damn thing." But he said, and, I think, more tellingly,
"The original purpose was gone." And that was, of course, Clarnell. ♪♪ -Given how dysfunctional
Kemper's relationship with his mother was, I think that perhaps, had it been different,
then Ed Kemper maybe wouldn't have gone on to kill all of the people that he did.
So I think that Kemper's mother, she started writing the story of the serial killer,
but Kemper finished that. ♪♪ -On May 7, 1973, ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪ Kemper was indicted
for the eight murders he had confessed to. His trial began 5 months later, on October the 23rd that year.
But, there was a twist in the case. -Edmund Kemper pleaded not guilty. He had a great law team.
They hired one of the best forensic psychiatrists in California, if not the United States.
I gotta say, they put on a great defense. -He's all too aware that, actually, life in a state mental hospital
is more favorable than life in prison, so he's making quite the calculated decision here
to plead insanity, but he wasn't fooling anyone at this point in time. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
-It's not our first rodeo. I've been to court a thousand times. You know what's coming.
You know how a case is gonna be attacked. On the prosecution side, we just keep putting the evidence in front of the jury,
how it connects to Edmund Kemper. It came down to, really, his state of mind. [ Distorted tune plays, suspenseful chord strikes ]
-After just 5 hours of deliberation, on November 8, 1973, the jury declared Edmund Kemper sane
and found him guilty of first-degree murder on all eight counts. He was given 7 years to life on each count
and the terms are being served concurrently. [ Melancholy tune plays ] -Edmund Kemper is
still in prison, as we speak. -He's where he's supposed to be, and society's better off for that
and, um, I hope he never gets out. [tearfully] It didn't give me closure. I'm not sure if it gave me peace.
You can cut this out, but, I could write a letter to him right now, saying, "Dear Ed fuck you."
[ Eerie music plays ] -Do I think Kemper is an evil man? The answer has to be yes.
[ Melancholy tune plays ] When I think of Aiko Koo, when I think of his mother, no matter how he appeared outwardly...
♪♪ ...he is the definition of violence and evil. You pray nobody else is out there like that again.
♪♪ -Edmund Kemper is destined to die in prison. The senseless slaughter and unmitigated violence he used
to kill 10 people -- his grandparents, six coeds, his mother, and her friend -- makes Edmund Kemper one of the world's most evil killers.
[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
♪♪ ♪♪

Edmund Kemper killed ten people: his grandparents, six co-eds, his mother and his mother's friend. He was caught in California in 1973 and confessed it all.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Edmund Kemper's gruesome murders of ten people, including his mother and six coeds, reveal a deeply troubled psyche and a history of violence.

Key points

Kemper's Reign of Terror. Between 1964 and 1973, Kemper killed 10 people, including his mother.
Edmund Kemper's First Kill. At just 15, Kemper shot his grandparents, marking the start of his violent path.
The Hitchhiker's Nightmare. Kemper targeted young female hitchhikers, exploiting their vulnerability.
The Hitchhiker's Tragedy. A young girl hitchhiking is tragically taken and murdered by Kemper.
The Sinister Discovery. Kemper's chilling actions are revealed as police uncover evidence of his crimes.
Kemper's Dark Transformation. After killing his mother, Kemper's motivations shift dramatically, leading to further violence.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He is the definition of violence and evil.

Describing Kemper's nature.

0:27WatchJul 20, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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