Edmund Kempter Research Paper

Edmund Kemper—the Coed-Killing Giant

Edmund Emil Kemper the III was born on December 18, 1948 in Burbank, California. From the very beginning of Kemper’s life he experienced parental rejection and severe verbal abuse. Kemper and his mother, Clarnell Kemper never got along. She was constantly teasing and humiliating her son. According to Kemper, Clarnell was what precipitated his killing sprees. At the age of nine, Edmund Emil Kemper the II and Clarnell decided to get a divorce. Kemper was close to his father and the whole ordeal was very upsetting to him. Kemper and his mother relocated to Montana along with his two sisters. Clarnell had become an alcoholic as a way of dealing with the divorce. Kemper had a very difficult time
dealing with the changes that were occurring in his life. Kemper claimed that his mother would lock him in the basement as a means of toughening him up. When Kemper was five years old he told his sister that he wanted to kiss her teacher. When his sister approved and told him he should do so he replied, “I can’t. I would have to kill her first” (qtd. in Fraiser 262). And so it began. When Kemper was ten years old his mother felt as if he might molest his two sisters.
Because of her fears, she moved Kemper into a drab basement room permanently. It was there that Kemper began fantasizing about torture and mutilation. Kemper then began killing his animals. He buried one cat alive and then returned to it once it had died to decapitate it. He then placed the decapitated cat on an altar in his room where he would pray to it. He would pray that everyone else in the world would be killed except for himself. When he was thirteen he slaughtered his pet Siamese cat because he felt that it was showing his sisters more attention then it was showing
him. Kemper was severely emotionally starved for any type of attention from his parents. His mother would call Kemper, “a real weirdo”; she also would torment him about his large size. He went to visit his father in southern California hoping to re-establish a relationship. His father had re-married and had another son. His father’s new wife immediately did not like Kemper, therefore he was sent away by his father to live with his grandparents. His grandparents, Edmund and Maude Kemper lived on an isolated farm. Kemper was also sent to the isolated farm whenever his mother would get sick of him. Kemper’s grandfather gave him a gun to cheer him up. Kemper spent many hours killing birds and small animals with the gun. Kemper’s grandmother reminded him a great deal of his own mother. She would berate him in the same manor as his mother would. Kemper felt as if his grandmother attempted to emasculate him and his grandfather. On August 27, 1963, Kemper’s anger overtook him. His grandmother was sitting at the kitchen table when 15 year old Kemper shot her in the head and then proceeded to stab her three times in the back. When his grandfather pulled into the driveway Kemper shot him in the head. Kemper was sent to the Atascadero State Hospital. When asked why he had done what he did he responded that he “just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma” (qtd. in Fraiser 263). In 1969, Kemper was released over the objections of his doctors after serving five years at the facility.
Kemper was now a fully grown, 6’9, 285 pound 21 year old; and was living with his mother. Clarnell was now working at the University of California-Santa Cruz. Clarnell would remind Kemper on a daily basis that he would never be able to have one of the beautiful coeds as a wife. Between the years of 1970 and 1971 Kemper picked up an estimated 150 female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. In an interview in the Front Page Detective, 1974, Kemper stated, “At first I picked up girls just to talk to them, just to try to get acquainted with people my own age and try to strike up a friendship,” he had told investigators (Beroldingen 1). Kemper learned how to appear nonthreatening and familiarized himself with his “kill zone”. In an interview shown on Mugshots, Kemper said:
I’m picking up young women and I’m going a little bit farther each time. It’s a daring kind of thing. 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, this fantastic passion. It was overwhelming me. It was like drugs. It was like alcohol. A little isn’t enough” (Ramsland). Kemper began to evaluate each girl that entered his car as a potential victim. On May 7, 1972, the killing spree had begun; Kemper picked up Mary Anne Pesce and Anita Luchessa. He killed both girls, transported them to his apartment and photographed them. He then proceeded to remove body parts, took more photographs and savored each erotic moment while engaging in sexual acts with the severed parts. Between the dates of May 1972 and February 1973, Kemper had murdered, raped, beheaded, and dismembered six young female hitchhikers. Kemper told investigators that he buried one of the girl’s heads near his window and would say affectionate things to it as you would to a loved one. On April 21, 1973, Kemper went after his ultimate target, his mother. He waited for her to go to bed and then entered her room with a claw hammer. Kemper stated, “I cut off her head, and I humiliated her, of course. She was dead, because of the way she raised her son” (qtd. in Ramsland). Kemper put his mother’s head on the mantel and screamed at it for over an hour; this was the first time he got a chance to say what he really wanted to her without her arguing with him. He also threw darts at it and eventually smashed her face in. “As a final payoff for what Kemper termed as his mother’s years of “bitching and “screaming” at him, he forced her larynx [and her tongue] into the garbage disposal” (Fraiser 264). That same day he killed his mother’s best friend Sally Hallett. On Easter morning Kemper fled town in Sally’s car. After driving about 1,500 miles Kemper called the police and turned himself in. Edmund Kemper was a seriously disturbed individual.
Although he did not endure physical abuse he was severely verbally and emotionally abused. He did not receive the acceptance and love that every child needs and deserves. Instead he was called names and isolated from his peers. “Kemper had spent the formative years of his sexual development isolated from females in a mental hospital” (Fraiser 263). The years that he spent at Atascadero State Hospital were the years that Kemper should have been socializing with peers, especially females. Kemper enjoyed his stay at the hospital; when he was released he had no idea what to do. Kemper stated in an interview, “When I got out on the street it was like being on a strange plant. People my age were not talking the same language. I had been living with people older then I was for so long that I was an old fogy” (Beroldingen
6). Kemper had been diagnosed as psychotic after he committed the murders of his grandparents, but was then pronounced cured and safe. In his 1974 interview Kemper posed a question for himself to answer. He said, “What do you think, now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street? [he answers] One side of me says, ‘Wow, what an attractive chick. I’d like to talk to her, date her.’ The other side of me says, ‘I wonder how her head would look on a stick’” (Beroldingen 10)? A “cured” and “safe” man would not have any sort of thoughts like those of Kemper. Kemper was a very intelligent man, his IQ measured at the near-genius level of 136. While he stayed at the hospital he was the head of the psychological testing lab. It is possible that Kemper learned what to tell the psychiatrists he met with to convince them he was sane. He clearly had to be insane to commit these horrible crimes, but at the same time he knew that he was doing wrong and was feeling guilty. While on trial Kemper told his interrogators that he had felt remorse and had taken to drinking to relieve some of the pressure. He also told his interrogators that he would get a sexual thrill when he removed a female’s head and described killing as a narcotic to himself. These are clear indications of a sadist, one who receives sexual pleasure or gratification in the infliction of pain and suffering upon another person. Aside from being a sadist, Kemper was clearly a serial killer. According to the book Criminology, research shows that serial killers have long histories of violence, beginning in childhood when they start by targeting other children, siblings, and small animals. They maintain superficial relationships with others, and have trouble relating to the opposite sex. Kemper was a thrill killer, one who strives for either sexual sadism or dominance (Siegel 340-41). In his 1974 interview Kemper spoke of a sense of exultation in his killings:
“I just wanted the exaltation over the party. In other words, winning over death. They were dead and I was alive. That was the victory in my case.” He said of the act of decapitation, “I remember it was very exciting…there was actually a sexual thrill…It was kind of an exalted triumphant type thing, like taking the head of a deer or an elk or something would be to a hunter. I was the hunter and they were the victims” (Beroldingen 2).
Kemper loved the feeling of being in control and being able to possess the girls he abducted. Kemper acted out his feelings of hatred and even love for his mother on six unsuspecting coeds. “Kemper told investigators he killed women because they were the ones who had caused him ‘grief’ ” (Santa Cruz Sentinel 2). According to the Ramsland, the only time Kemper broke his composure and started to cry was when he spoke about the murder of his mother. Although Kemper resented his mother, he still loved her. When Kemper was young and banished to the basement he spent a lot of his time fantasizing. Among sexual sadists it is common for them to fantasize the killing of their mother.
“The element of fantasy in serial killer’s development cannot be overemphasized. They often begin fantasizing about murder during—or even before—adolescence. Their fantasy lives are very rich and they daydream compulsively about dominating and killing people, usually with very specific elements to the murderous fantasy that will eventually be apparent in their real crimes” (Wikipedia).
Kemper had developed fantasies early in his life, in later years his fantasies were turned into reality. The way his mother would treat him helped to turn him into a serial killer. Serial killers have many different motives. Kemper showed motives that were hedonistic; he would kill his victims quickly and indulge in necrophilia. He also showed motives of power and control, which is the most common in serial killers. Their main objective for killing is to gain and exert power over their victim (Wikipedia). Although Kemper was a psychotic sadist he was a remorseful killer. When he spoke of the coeds he had sexually assaulted after death and of the “pain” he had caused their families. “The day those fathers testified in court was very hard for me… I felt terrible. I wanted to talk to them about their daughters, comfort them…But what could I say” (Beroldingen 4)? Kemper was well aware of human feelings as well as aware of himself. “Kemper had told investigators and psychiatrists he thought he would kill again if he were ever released. He also admitted under cross examination by District Attorney Peter Chang that he had fantasized killing “thousand of people,” including Chang himself” (Beroldingen 8). Edmund Kemper is a very disturbed individual. For the sake of all people, he should remain in jail and/or a mental hospital for the remainder of his life.

Works Cited

Frasier, David. Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century. : Mcfarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 1996.

"Murder Capital of the World: Three grisly mass-murder sprees plunged the county into terror." Santa Cruz Sentinel 1999-2005. 11 Mar 2006 www.santacruzsentinel.com

Ramsland, Katherine. "Criminal Library." Edmund Kemper: The Coed Butcher. 2005. Courtroom Television Network LLC. 13 Mar. 2006 <http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/kemper/edmund_1.html>.

Siegel, Larry. Criminology: Theories, Patterns, and Typologies. 8th ed.: Wadsworth, 2004.

von Beroldingen, Marj. "Edmund Kemper Interview." Front Page Detective. March 1974.

"Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia." Edmund Kemper. 11 Mar. 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Edmund_Kemper&oldid=43116464>.

"Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia." Serial Killers. 11 Mar. 2006 <http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Serial_killer&oldid=43644022>.