00:00:04
♪♪ -On August 27, 1964, in North Fork, California, 15-year-old Edmund Kemper shot and killed
his grandmother Maude.
00:00:16
[ Suspenseful music plays ] Then, when he returned home, the boy also shot and murdered
his grandfather Edmund Sr.
00:00:25
-Do I think Kemper
is an evil man? The answer has to be yes. He is the definition
00:00:32
of violence and evil. You pray nobody else is
out there like that again. -Kemper Jr.
then called his mother,
00:00:40
to tell her what he'd done. -He says, "I've killed
my grandparents,"
00:00:46
and she tells him,
"Well, you stupid boy, just call the police and wait
there until they arrive."
00:00:52
-Released after just 5 years in a facility
for the criminally insane, Kemper went on a killing spree
00:01:00
that targeted young,
female coeds. -She was hitchhiking home
from school. She was taken
out to a remote area,
00:01:08
where she was shot in the head
with a .22-caliber gun. -In all, the vicious
serial killer
00:01:15
would slaughter 10 people, including his mother. He would typically dismember and
sexually desecrate the bodies,
00:01:23
making Edmund Kemper one of the
world's most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music climbs ]
00:01:43
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] ♪♪ [ Eerie music plays ] For nearly 10 terrifying years
between 1964 and 1973,
00:01:55
a 6'9",
300-pound man-mountain, Edmund Kemper,
preyed on the innocent. His hunting grounds were
in and around
00:02:06
the beautiful beach town of Santa Cruz,
in Northern California. -People know the city
of Santa Cruz by its beaches
00:02:17
and body parts of these people
were found in the sand, sticking out of the sand.
00:02:23
So you can imagine, now,
the fright in the community. You know, "What is going on?"
00:02:31
-Kemper's reign of terror began after he was released
from Atascadero State Hospital
00:02:37
for murdering both
of his grandparents when he was a juvenile. He would go on to kill
another eight people,
00:02:44
including his mother;
her neighbor; and six young women,
all female coeds. When some of the murdered
and mutilated bodies began
00:02:54
to show up,
half-buried on local beaches, the public was horrified.
[ Gull cries ]
00:03:00
-It's just one of the strangest
times in California history. -Terry Medina was a detective
00:03:08
with the Santa Cruz
County Sheriff's Office in what were trying times
for the Golden State
00:03:14
and the investigators charged
with protecting them. -We're trying to say, "Stop hitchhiking,"
00:03:23
and there was a big
backlash from that. You have to remember, now,
it's flower power.
00:03:31
It's a protest
of the Vietnam War and "The man can't tell us
what to do
00:03:39
and the pigs
can't tell us what to do. We're not gonna stop
hitchhiking.
00:03:43
It is our right." [ Eerie music plays ] -The fact that we had
the protests,
00:03:49
Harvey Milk was assassinated, so, there was a lot of stuff
going on in the area.
00:03:55
-Forrest Schall lost
his sister Cindy in 1973. [ Melancholy tune plays ]
-It was very difficult.
00:04:02
I lost my sister. [tearfully]
My mom lost her daughter. -19-year-old Cindy Schall
was callously killed by Kemper
00:04:12
on January 7, 1973, in the woods near Santa Cruz and her lifeless body
was defiled.
00:04:22
-Oh, she was
a rambunctious child. She was a very giving,
caring individual, and she was sent to some
of the better schools
00:04:33
'cause my mom
really busted her butt to make sure she got
the best education.
00:04:40
-It was not just coeds who were targets
in California in the 1970s. The fear was that anyone
could be a victim,
00:04:48
young or old, man or woman. That was because there were
at least three serial killers
00:04:53
on the loose in California
at the same time. -There was also another
murderer, named Herbert Mullin,
00:05:01
who killed 10 girls in the
same vicinity as Edmund Kemper, and, on top of that, the Zodiac was loose,
00:05:11
and so there was a lot of fear. ♪♪ [ Sinister music plays ] -But this is the story of one
00:05:18
of the most sadistic
serial killers ever known: Edmund Kemper. It began some 70 years ago.
00:05:26
-Kemper was born in 1948 and he came into the world
in the postwar years and, rather than being
a time of hope
00:05:34
and a time of prosperity
for him, it was a time of abuse;
it was a time of neglect.
00:05:40
-Kemper lived in Burbank,
in Southern California, with his mother, Clarnell; his father, also called Edmund;
00:05:46
and his two sisters. -His father was
a World War II veteran and had worked
on nuclear testing
00:05:55
before coming back after the war
to work as an electrician. Ed's father used the expression,
00:06:02
"Suicide missions
were nothing compared to living with Clarnell." Clarnell was
an extraordinary personality:
00:06:12
neurotic, aggressive, alcoholic, and utterly domineering. She terrorized
both her husband and her son,
00:06:24
favoring the two daughters. -In 1957,
when Kemper was 9 years old, his parents divorced.
00:06:32
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.
00:06:42
-She demeaned him
and she abused him and basically ostracized him
and made him feel terrible.
00:06:47
♪♪ -Kemper expresses, more than almost any serial
killer I've ever heard of,
00:06:54
a hatred of his mother
that's indescribable. [ Sinister chord strikes ] -The young Kemper develops
some macabre fascinations.
00:07:02
-He would play games
with his sisters, like gas chamber
or electric chair. He would get them to tie
himself to a chair
00:07:09
and then he would pretend
to be electrocuted. [ Ominous chord strikes ] [ Suspenseful music plays ]
00:07:15
-Afraid that he would harm
his sisters, when he was 10, Kemper's mother ordered him
to sleep in the basement.
00:07:23
-Now, you can have two
different views of this. One is that it's horribly cruel,
00:07:28
and the other is this is a mother who did
the only thing she could to protect her daughter.
00:07:35
Regardless of the explanation, from Kemper's point of view,
it was torture and he reviled his mother.
00:07:46
-Aged 13, young Kemper took off and went to find his father
in California. -He goes and he finds
his father,
00:07:54
but his father doesn't
really want to know 'cause he's got a new life now.
00:07:57
He has a stepson.
He has this new family unit and Ed feels incredibly
rejected by that.
00:08:03
-But his mother rejected
him, too. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] A year later,
she sent the boy, aged 14,
00:08:12
to live with his paternal
grandparents on a farm
in North Fork, California. It would be a fatal decision.
00:08:21
-His grandmother is very
similar to his mother. ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪
She's incredibly domineering.
00:08:25
She's not particularly
nice to him. -Kemper would grow to be
an imposing physical figure.
00:08:31
At 15, he already stood
6'4" tall. -He grew to 6'9";
weighed 21 stone,
00:08:39
300 pounds. He was, in a way,
almost a Frankenstein figure. -Tragically, the die was cast
00:08:48
and the powerful teen was about
to strike with a monstrous rage. On August the 27th, 1964,
00:08:57
a 15-year-old Kemper
would kill for the first time. -His grandmother is sitting
at the kitchen table.
00:09:05
Without really any warning, Kemper goes and fetches a rifle,
which is in the house,
00:09:12
and shoots her. [ Two gunshots ] In fact, he shoots her twice,
just to make sure she's dead.
00:09:20
Then, he sits down
at the kitchen table, opposite the body
of his grandmother, and waits for his grandfather,
00:09:26
and he shoots him, too. [ Gunshot ] -Then, in a bizarre twist,
Kemper made a surprising move.
00:09:34
-Immediately after he killed
his grandparents, he calls his mother
and he says, "I've killed my grandparents."
00:09:41
[ Suspenseful music plays ] And she tells him,
"Well, you stupid boy. Just call the police and wait
there until they arrive."
00:09:49
-And he sits there,
waiting for the police. He doesn't run. He doesn't do anything.
00:09:53
And, when they get there,
he explains it, "Well, I wanted to find out what it felt like
to kill Grandmother."
00:09:58
♪♪ -Arrested, and diagnosed
with paranoid schizophrenia, Kemper was incarcerated
00:10:06
in the Atascadero State
Hospital in California. In the high-security facility
for the criminally insane,
00:10:14
Kemper seemed
to have found peace. -He was an absolutely
model inmate. He helped the staff;
he organized visits.
00:10:25
He started doing
psychiatric testing. They realized, at Atascadero, that he actually had
an extremely high IQ:
00:10:32
It was 145. -He's very smart,
very manipulative, and he did what many
serial killers can do.
00:10:39
He convinced the staff of the
hospital that he was cured and so he was released.
00:10:45
-On his 21st birthday, December 18, 1969, Kemper was set free and his criminal records
as a juvenile were sealed.
00:10:56
In hindsight,
a psychiatric report conducted after his release
made for shocking reading.
00:11:02
[ Ominous chord strikes ] -The report stated, in part, "Edmund Kemper is no longer
a danger to society."
00:11:10
[ Suspenseful music plays ] "He, in fact, is no more
dangerous to society than the motorcycle
that he rides."
00:11:18
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
-But, tragically, that was all about to be
proved very wrong.
00:11:23
Living with his mother, Kemper's rage was once again
welling up inside. -From the perspective
of people with this,
00:11:32
what I will call
psychopathic rage? [ Eerie music climbs ] Nothing less than killing,
00:11:40
torture, and mayhem is sufficient to give
even momentary relief. -In May 1972, the dam full of rage
would break.
00:11:51
In just 11 months,
Kemper would callously kill, disembowel, decapitate, and perform necrophilia
00:11:58
on eight new victims
across California, [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
including six beloved coeds.
00:12:05
♪♪ After serving just 5 years
in a state mental institution for shooting his grandparents,
00:12:12
he moved to Santa Cruz,
California, and went to live
with his mother, near to the university
where she now worked.
00:12:20
With his criminal record
as a juvenile sealed, Kemper was able to get a job,
in 1971,
00:12:27
with the Department
of Transportation. But, it ended prematurely. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:12:35
-Ed Kemper was involved
in an accident and he received quite a lot
of compensation for that.
00:12:39
It was around about $15,000. [ Melancholy tune plays ] He injured himself quite badly
in this accident,
00:12:46
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.
00:12:54
He's got a lot of time
on his hands. -Now age 23, Kemper spent
his days drifting, driving,
00:13:02
and picking up young,
female hitchhikers. [ Suspenseful music plays ] In the 1960s and early 1970s,
00:13:10
hitchhiking up and down the sun-soaked highways
of the Golden State was a carefree pastime
00:13:18
and an activity that soon-to-be serial killer
Edmund Kemper thrived upon. -He starts cruising around.
00:13:27
He starts going up and down
the state highways and he's essentially
doing trial runs.
00:13:33
He's becoming aware that
he can have access to people. He has the opportunity
to harm people.
00:13:38
[ Sinister chord strikes ]
-In one year, in 1970, Kemper would later claim that he picked up
and then dropped off
00:13:45
as many as 150 young women. But Kemper's interest
in hitchhikers would soon take an ominous turn.
00:13:55
-He would drive around
the university where his mother was working
and pick up coeds
00:14:01
and he describes
this specifically as being done because those coeds
had a connection,
00:14:07
however ephemeral or symbolic, with his mother
and her place of work. [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
00:14:13
-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.
00:14:19
He doesn't look like a monster. ♪♪ -On May the 7th, 1972, Kemper's trial runs were over.
[ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:14:28
On that day, Kemper picked up
two young students in Berkeley, Mary Ann Pesce
and Anita Mary Luchessa,
00:14:36
both aged 18. They wanted a ride
to Stanford University, about 40 miles away. -Kemper's modus operandi,
his MO,
00:14:48
was pretty straightforward. He would drive around. He would look for hitchhikers:
00:14:54
vulnerable, available. They had to have
the characteristics which reminded him
of his mother:
00:15:01
desirable. And then he would
offer them a ride. -These were coed girls. These were girls
that were in college.
00:15:08
They had their entire
lives ahead of them. They were happy. And, for him, this represented
what he didn't have.
00:15:17
These would often be girls
that would reject him and he couldn't have
relationships with them,
00:15:22
but he still wanted them, so this was his way of actually
getting access to these women.
00:15:29
-Kemper drove the two young
women to some secluded woods. [ Suspenseful outro plays ]
00:15:34
[ Dirge plays ]
The big, 300-pound man then got them out of the car and handcuffed both of them.
00:15:43
Kemper then put one
of the women, still alive, in the trunk of the car, while he killed her friend.
00:15:51
-Often, he'll say to them,
"I'm not going to kill you," in order to placate them
and make sure
00:15:55
that they don't make a fuss
and try and run away, and then he does murder them
00:16:00
and then he has sex
with their dead bodies. ♪♪ -Kemper stabbed,
then suffocated,
00:16:06
each girl, in turn, to death. He then put the bodies
in the trunk of his Ford Galaxy
00:16:13
and took them home
to the apartment he now rented,
near to Santa Cruz University.
00:16:19
There, he dismembered the bodies and gratified himself
with the lifeless corpses.
00:16:26
[ Eerie music plays ]
-The horrifying aspect of Kemper, now, is that his sexuality
is completely deformed.
00:16:37
He cannot effectively
operate sexually if the woman is alive. -The only reason that he's not
raping them before he kills them
00:16:47
is that he doesn't want
to be rejected by them. When you're having sex
with a dead body,
00:16:52
it's not going to reject you;
it's not going to insult you or demean you in the same way
00:16:56
that his mother had insulted
or demeaned him. [ Suspenseful music plays ]
-Kemper then stashed
00:17:02
the body parts in plastic bags and stored some bits in his home and others
in the trunk of his car.
00:17:09
-This is something
that's known as partialism. It's a sexual arousal
through keeping body parts
00:17:14
and, I think, for Kemper, this is his way of staying
close to his victims, of owning them
and possessing them
00:17:20
and literally carrying
a part of them with him. -Kemper would later dump
the violated body parts
00:17:26
in the Santa Cruz Mountains,
near Berkeley. -A couple that were out,
hiking and walking their dog,
00:17:35
came across these heads. ♪♪ Subsequently, we identified Mary Ann Pesce
and Anita Luchessa
00:17:44
and we find out that these two
young women were hitchhiking. Unbeknownst to us, those were the first two victims
of Edmund Emil Kemper.
00:17:57
♪♪ -Four months later,
in September 1972, [ Melancholy tune plays ]
Kemper killed again.
00:18:06
This time, his victim was
a 15-year-old girl: Aiko Koo. -This one really hurt me.
00:18:14
This was really -- This was really, um, a difficult victim for me. Aiko Koo was this young,
Korean American girl
00:18:32
who lived with his mother,
who worked in the library at the University of California
at Berkeley.
00:18:40
Her mother was dedicated
to this young girl. She was a single mom,
raising this kid.
00:18:46
She was learning how
to dance and take ballet and her mom made her costumes. [ Melancholy tune climbs ]
-On the 14th of September,
00:18:55
Aiko was heading
to her ballet class in San Francisco, 25 miles away. Usually, she would take the bus,
but, on this day,
00:19:05
the conscientious student
was behind schedule. -She was at a bus stop
and she missed the bus.
00:19:13
She didn't want to be late
for the dance class. She was so anxious about that,
and so frustrated,
00:19:21
so, she started
to look for rides and Edmund Kemper
was cruising the area, looking for victims.
00:19:32
[ Suspenseful music plays ] And pulled over. He drove across the Bay Bridge
to San Francisco
00:19:43
but just kept driving, and this young girl knows, now,
she is driving through San Francisco,
not where she wants to go.
00:19:54
He gets to Highway 1
and is now traveling south, towards Santa Cruz, and she is just
panicked and crying
00:20:05
and wants to be let out. And he makes a turn
on a country road. She has a chance here.
00:20:14
He pulls into a field
on the edge of a forest. He's gonna kill her. ♪♪ He gets out of the car
00:20:24
to get a weapon
out of the trunk, a knife. She locks the door. She locks him out of the car,
00:20:31
but she doesn't know how
to start the car, let alone drive the car. -Kemper turned on
his fatal charm
00:20:39
to try and convince the girl
that he meant her no harm. -As he explained to us later,
00:20:46
he spent over an hour
coaxing her, [ Melancholy tune plays ]
encouraging her, to unlock the car
and let him in.
00:20:54
As I recall,
it was things like, "I'm sorry. I'll let you go. Let me in.
00:21:02
I won't harm you." And she let him in. And she was killed. -Kemper strangled,
then raped and murdered her.
00:21:15
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.
00:21:24
♪♪ -Women were a source of rage. They became a focus
of his sexuality. It evolved around death,
rather than around life.
00:21:37
He didn't want to celebrate
a relationship with a woman. He wanted to humiliate
and to destroy a woman.
00:21:46
-But one crucial
characteristic of Kemper, something he has in line
with many lust killers, is
00:21:53
there are times when the level of rage, hatred,
and intensity in him is truly beyond control.
00:22:07
-Kemper's unrelenting rage
and violence now knew no bounds. In the next few months,
00:22:14
his killing spree
would pick up apace, and Kemper would callously kill, decimate, and defile the bodies
00:22:22
of five more women. -He engaged in necrophilia. He engaged in sexual acts with the dismembered
parts of the body.
00:22:32
-Kemper eviscerated some
of his victims. Evisceration is simply
the process of removing organs
from the body.
00:22:40
Opening up the body cavity and seeing that organs
were missing would be immediately apparent
00:22:46
and obviously
[chuckling] very worrying. -Making matters worse,
at the time, local detectives had little idea
of what they were dealing with.
00:22:55
-What we did not know
at the time was, during the time period of late '71 through
the beginning of '73,
00:23:05
two serial killers
were operating in the same place,
at the same time. Herbert William Mullin
killed 13,
00:23:15
so, it was confusing to us. In the beginning,
our thinking was, "They had to be connected.
This is unusual."
00:23:23
But the evidence
did not connect them. -With the Zodiac Killer
also on the loose
00:23:28
and thought to have
murdered seven people in Northern California in 1969, and Charles Manson on trial
in Southern California in 1970,
00:23:39
the citizens of the state
were in tumult. -We had two stores
in our community and they were selling out
of guns and ammunition.
00:23:51
[ Melancholy tune plays ]
-In January 1973, Kemper struck again. His prey was 19-year-old
Cindy Schall.
00:24:00
For her family, the pain
they felt is still hard to bear. Her brother Forrest recalls
00:24:06
those harrowing first few days
after she vanished. -It was very scary
'cause, you know,
00:24:12
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
00:24:19
and, you know, you just
start thinking of things. ♪♪ -Cindy was a dedicated student
00:24:28
and worked hard
to help support herself. -She took a job as an au pair
in Santa Cruz, California,
00:24:35
and attended school
during the day and then would take care
of the children thereafter
00:24:43
and she went to a -- it was a junior college,
called Cabrillo. It was adjacent to the Cal State
University, Santa Cruz.
00:24:50
♪♪ ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪
-On January the 7th, Kemper was on the prowl again. He was on Highway 1, driving
east, away from Santa Cruz.
00:25:01
-She was hitchhiking home
from school. It was cold
and a car pulled up and it had a school staff
sticker on the bumper.
00:25:12
From the police reports,
they said that she probably felt comfortable getting in.
00:25:17
And she was taken
out to a remote area, where she was shot in the head
with a .22-caliber gun.
00:25:25
[ Gunshot ]
[ Sinister music plays ] And then, we don't know
all the details,
00:25:30
but she was dismembered. Parts of her body were thrown
into the Pacific Ocean. Kemper kept her head.
00:25:40
♪♪ [tearfully]
This is hard to speak about, but it's been almost 50 years, so, it's a little
[chuckling] easier now.
00:25:49
[ Melancholy tune plays ] -At the time,
Kemper was still subject to regular psychiatric analysis,
00:25:59
a condition of his parole
after serving time as a juvenile
for killing his grandparents.
00:26:06
-He was having an interview,
a final interview, with a psychiatrist
in a nearby city.
00:26:14
The psychiatrist,
in his report to the court, said that Edmund Kemper
was rehabilitated.
00:26:22
The problem with that, that whole thing? Cynthia Schall's head was in a bag in the backseat
of Edmund Kemper's car
00:26:32
at the time of that interview
with the psychiatrist. -You often see this type
of behavior with serial killers.
00:26:40
They get a kick out of it. They get bored
with their offending and they wanna mix things up
00:26:44
and keep it interesting
and have some fun. -This kind of bizarre,
pseudo-schizophrenic logic is --
00:26:53
is classic
of a level of pathology we see in very few people
in the world. -Early in 1973, low on money,
00:27:03
Kemper moved back in
with his mother and the murders continued. Just 4 weeks
after his last attack,
00:27:11
on February 5, 1973, Kemper killed again. -Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu
were our next two victims.
00:27:22
He would later tell us that he actually shot them
as he drove off of campus. [ Suspenseful music plays ]
00:27:29
Stabbing all these victims
to death was getting to be a lot of work. It was starting to bother him.
00:27:36
A lot of blood. He was cleaning everything. So he went and bought a gun,
purchased a gun,
00:27:42
and, as he was traveling towards
the city of Santa Cruz, he just turned and shot them.
[ Two gunshots ]
00:27:49
One was in the backseat;
one was in the front seat. ♪♪ -Within a week of the latest
two coed murders,
00:27:58
body parts started washing up
on shore in Santa Cruz. [ Eerie music plays ]
-As time went along,
00:28:05
we were finding body parts
on Cowell's Beach. Other parts were found
down below Monterey,
00:28:12
between Carmel and Big Sur, and that started
to create huge issues, as we started
to identify people:
00:28:23
Cynthia Schall, Aiko Koo, a number of young women. Clearly, there was
a pattern in the coeds.
00:28:33
Number one, they're young,
student women. They are stabbed to death. They are dismembered, common.
00:28:44
All the investigators
starting to focus on, "Okay, now,
this is one set of crimes,"
00:28:51
and the thread
that weaved between them was hitchhiking. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:28:59
[ Suspenseful music plays ] -During his 11-month
killing spree, Kemper was said to frequent
a bar in downtown Santa Cruz
00:29:08
called The Jury Room. It was here his behavior took
an even more sinister turn. -It's a bar
across from the courthouse.
00:29:18
A lot of cops hang out there. A lot of people that work
in the courts hang out there.
00:29:23
Lawyers hung out there. -By all accounts, personally,
Kemper was a gentle giant.
00:29:29
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,
00:29:37
so he knew that he was coming
across as nonthreatening. -There's only one occasion that
I remember seeing him there.
00:29:44
He was at the far end
of the bar. He didn't like push himself
onto anybody, that I saw.
00:29:51
To me, it was almost like
he was listening. Are any of the detectives there talking about any
of these murder cases?
00:30:00
Is he getting
any information from us? Very interesting. He blended in very well there.
00:30:10
-He was picking their brains. He was trying to find out
if they knew anything. I don't fault the cops,
you know.
00:30:18
How the hell would they know? I've never faulted the police,
by the way. They did their job.
00:30:24
[ Sinister chord strikes ] -But, unbeknownst to Kemper, in April,
a diligent clerk in Santa Cruz
00:30:32
ran a routine check
on a gun dealer's sales records. -A records clerk
at the sheriff's office
00:30:39
finds a 3x5 card, Edmund Emil Kemper, same as on the dealer record
of sale for the gun.
00:30:46
All the information
is blacked out. Why? Because his record
had been sealed! But she could read through
the blackout, and it said,
00:30:56
"187 PC, Madera, California." 187 PC is the California penal code
for murder.
00:31:05
Madera County was where
he killed his grandparents many, many years ago. She brought that card
00:31:15
to the detective lieutenant
in the bureau and said, "This gun has already been
delivered to this guy.
00:31:22
I'm not so sure
he's supposed to have it, but his record is sealed."
00:31:25
[ Suspenseful chord strikes ] -On April 6, 1973, two detectives went
to question Kemper.
00:31:32
He was not at home. They were driving away from the
home he shared with his mother
00:31:38
when the killer
finally showed up. -Kemper drives up and they
watched him get out of the car.
00:31:45
Remember, he's 6'9". He's huge.
He blocked out the sun. They identified themselves
and made the inquiry about,
00:31:56
"Did you buy a gun?" He said, "Yes, I did." They said, "We don't think
you're supposed
00:32:03
to have this gun,
and we want it." Now, he later said, "I thought
they knew I was the killer,"
00:32:11
that he was gonna open
the trunk and shoot 'em both. But, they're very good cops,
good training.
00:32:18
They took his keys. They wouldn't let him
open the trunk. They made him move far
to the side.
00:32:25
One of them opened the trunk. They took the gun,
gave him a receipt, and they drove away.
00:32:30
[ Suspenseful music climbs ] -The police had the weapon that Kemper used
to murder his last two victims.
00:32:37
Kemper knew it would now
only be a matter of time before the police would
discover his terrible secret.
00:32:46
By the spring of 1973, serial killer Edmund Kemper had murdered a total
of eight people in California.
00:32:55
They included
his paternal grandparents, and six coeds
who'd been hitchhiking
00:33:00
in and around Santa Cruz. Having just been visited
by the police over an issue
with a gun license,
00:33:08
Kemper decided to end it all, with one final
and ferocious act. -Back in April of 1973,
00:33:17
Kemper starts to get
a little bit skittish because he's been
visited by the police
00:33:22
and I think this is one
of the things that brings about
the murder of his mother.
00:33:27
-Ultimately, he believes
that killing his mother is the only way
to stop killing coeds.
00:33:32
He actually figures out
the connection and decides, almost like a psychologist,
"I've gotta kill my mom
00:33:39
'cause that's the source
o' all my problems and, once I kill her,
I won't be a killer anymore."
00:33:42
[ Sinister chord strikes ]
-On April 20, 1973, Kemper waited for his mother
to return from a party.
00:33:50
-She'd got back.
She was drunk. She was belligerent. She went to bed. Kemper
00:33:59
went to see her. [ Suspenseful music climbs,
chord strikes ] You know, this... young man.
00:34:06
We're not talking about
anyone who's old. This young man, always seeking
his mother's affection.
00:34:14
And she sits up in bed and says, "I suppose you want
to talk all night now."
00:34:18
And Kemper is so horrified
and upset that, in a way, perhaps, he just simply
snaps at that moment.
00:34:24
But, interestingly, he doesn't kill his mother
while she's awake. He kills her while she's asleep.
00:34:31
-At 4:00 in the morning,
while his mother slept, he took a hammer, went to her bed,
00:34:40
and drove the hammer
through her skull a number of times. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:34:47
-But he doesn't just kill her. Of course he doesn't. He decapitates her.
00:34:52
He uses her head as a dartboard, throwing darts at it, shouting at it for an hour.
00:35:00
-Yelling at her, "You're not
gonna yell at me anymore. You're not gonna yell
at me anymore."
00:35:06
-And then,
he does something that I know of no other instance
of this in serial crimes.
00:35:13
He cuts open her neck,
takes out her vocal cords. And, remember,
his mother's vocal cords
00:35:19
were the offending organ 'cause that's how
she demeaned him; that's how she criticized him.
00:35:24
And he took her vocal cords
and put it down the garbage disposal. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:35:30
-He then spent
the rest of the day, into the afternoon,
cutting her into pieces,
00:35:37
washing her completely clean
in the bathtub, and hiding her body parts
in the back of her closet.
00:35:45
♪♪ -But killing
his 52-year-old mother ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪
and desecrating her body was not to be the end
of his cruel crimes.
00:35:55
-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,
00:36:05
because, not only does he keep
his mother's body in a cupboard, and the head,
00:36:10
but he invites her best friend round for supper
the next night. -Kemper asked 59-year-old
Sara Taylor Hallett
00:36:18
to come over to the house
at 5:00 p.m. -Mrs. Hallett walks
in the door. He pretends
to take her coat off,
00:36:26
but just pushes it down over
her arms, so she can't move, [thwack] ...bludgeons her
to death with his fists,
00:36:34
stuffs her in the front closet. His car is already packed and off he goes. Until he gets
to Pueblo, Colorado.
00:36:45
-After Kemper has killed his
mother and his mother's friend, he goes on the run
for around about 4 days.
00:36:50
He takes the car that belonged
to his mother's friend. -He decides he's going
to make a getaway.
00:36:58
He knew the cops
would be on his tail and he planned to shoot it out
when they tried to stop him.
00:37:05
-Kemper drove for 3 days, finally stopping
in Pueblo, Colorado. On April the 23rd,
00:37:12
he went to a phone booth
and made an astounding call. -He dials the Santa Cruz
Police Department.
00:37:20
It's a busy Friday night
in Santa Cruz. Kemper calls. Officer says,
"Santa Cruz Police Department.
00:37:28
Can I help you?" "I need to talk
to Lieutenant Sheer." "He doesn't work
on the weekends.
00:37:35
You'll have to call back
on Monday. I gotta put you on hold." Kemper hangs up.
00:37:40
He gets upset.
He hangs up. He calls back
and he finally says, "Hey! I got information
about all those dead girls!"
00:37:50
[ Sinister chord strikes ] Now we're payin' attention. The officer's puttin'
everything else on hold
00:37:57
and does a great job. -It's not a rarity. Oftentimes, serial killers
are not the kind
00:38:02
that they're gonna
go down fighting. Oftentimes, we see that.
They give themselves up
00:38:05
or, once they're caught
and they know that they're not gonna get out,
then they give it all up.
00:38:09
It's almost like
they want the notoriety. -The local police arrive
to arrest the man
00:38:15
who had just confessed to being
the notorious Coed Killer. -Kemper takes up
the entire phone booth.
00:38:22
They get him into custody,
put a hold on him, and the story now starts
to get filled in and unraveled.
00:38:31
[ Suspenseful music plays ] We sent the district attorney; the district attorney
investigator;
00:38:38
and my partner,
Detective Aluffi. They flew to Colorado,
rented a station wagon,
00:38:47
and the four of them took three days
to drive back to California. They started out by saying,
"Ed, can you tell us
00:38:57
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,
00:39:10
I was in Berkeley, California." ♪♪ [ Suspenseful chord strikes ] Kemper. connects. every. dot
00:39:20
to every. single. case. He was so precise, we were able
to link the evidence to his statements,
to the crime scenes.
00:39:31
-According to some analysts,
after killing his mother, Kemper had lost
his murderous purpose.
00:39:38
-He said later, "I started feeling the folly
of the whole damn thing."
00:39:44
But he said, and, I think,
more tellingly, "The original purpose was gone."
00:39:50
And that was, of course,
Clarnell. ♪♪ -Given how dysfunctional Kemper's relationship
with his mother was,
00:39:57
I think that perhaps,
had it been different, then Ed Kemper maybe
wouldn't have gone on
00:40:03
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,
00:40:11
but Kemper finished that. ♪♪ -On May 7, 1973, ♪ [Heartbeat] ♪
Kemper was indicted
00:40:20
for the eight murders
he had confessed to. His trial began 5 months later,
on October the 23rd that year.
00:40:28
But, there was a twist
in the case. -Edmund Kemper pleaded
not guilty. He had a great law team.
00:40:35
They hired one of the best
forensic psychiatrists in California,
if not the United States.
00:40:43
I gotta say,
they put on a great defense. -He's all too aware
that, actually,
00:40:46
life in a state mental hospital is more favorable
than life in prison, so he's making quite
the calculated decision here
00:40:53
to plead insanity, but he wasn't fooling anyone
at this point in time. [ Sinister chord strikes ]
00:40:58
-It's not our first rodeo. I've been to court
a thousand times. You know what's coming.
00:41:05
You know how a case
is gonna be attacked. On the prosecution side, we just keep putting the
evidence in front of the jury,
00:41:13
how it connects
to Edmund Kemper. It came down to, really,
his state of mind. [ Distorted tune plays,
suspenseful chord strikes ]
00:41:20
-After just 5 hours
of deliberation, on November 8, 1973, the jury declared
Edmund Kemper sane
00:41:29
and found him guilty
of first-degree murder on all eight counts. He was given 7 years to life
on each count
00:41:37
and the terms are being
served concurrently. [ Melancholy tune plays ]
-Edmund Kemper is
00:41:44
still in prison, as we speak. -He's where he's
supposed to be, and society's better off
for that
00:41:54
and, um,
I hope he never gets out. [tearfully]
It didn't give me closure. I'm not sure
if it gave me peace.
00:42:06
You can cut this out, but,
I could write a letter to him right now, saying,
"Dear Ed fuck you."
00:42:12
[ Eerie music plays ] -Do I think Kemper
is an evil man? The answer has to be yes.
00:42:19
[ Melancholy tune plays ] When I think of Aiko Koo, when I think of his mother, no matter how he
appeared outwardly...
00:42:33
♪♪ ...he is the definition of violence and evil. You pray nobody else is
out there like that again.
00:42:44
♪♪ -Edmund Kemper is destined
to die in prison. The senseless slaughter
and unmitigated violence he used
00:42:56
to kill 10 people -- his grandparents, six coeds, his mother, and her friend -- makes Edmund Kemper one of the
world's most evil killers.
00:43:09
[ Suspenseful music plays ] ♪♪ ♪♪ [ Suspenseful music climbs ] [ Suspenseful chord strikes ]
00:43:29
♪♪ ♪♪