Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 44 | The GRUESOME Serial Killer That Outsmarted Everyone | Ed Kemper

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

He was brilliant, brutal, and disturbingly self-aware. This deep dive explores the twisted mind of Ed Kemper — the Co-Ed Killer who murdered, confessed, and shocked the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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LG appliances, so much more. Make life easier with LG. See the latest models and savings now at LG.com. He's 6'9-9, has an IQ of 145, and he was charming enough to earn the trust of everyone around him, including the police. But behind that calm, intelligent facade was one of the most cold-blooded serial killers in American history. Edmund Kemper murdered 10 people. And the way he spoke about those crimes later will chill you to your core.

So this is a story of one of the most intelligent, cunningest, and largest serial killer in history. And trust me, the deeper we go, the more disturbing it'll get. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder. All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually minded freak. And yeah, I'm standing up today, okay? I'm feeling...

I'm feeling... I'm feeling... Ow. Well, now I'm upset. I have a weird amount of energy today. Sorry if I bit-bop around. I don't know. I really fucking hate this guy.

I really don't like this guy. He's like, not my favorite serial killer, but the one that makes me the most upset. The one that just... I don't know why, but he's just... He's up there. One I want to fight personally. Couldn't, though, because he's literally six foot nine.

Terrifying beast of a man. But, Without further ado, let's get into it. I'm going to stop rambling. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts go mock five down the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through this windshield into this massive serial killer together. So Edmund Emel Kimmer was born in Burbank, California on December 18, 1948. And he weighed a whopping 13 pounds.

And now it doesn't end well for his mother in all of this, and it turns out didn't start out really well either. for her. She damn near got ripped in half right at the beginning. But anyway, he was the middle child of three children and the only son born to Clarnel Elizabeth Kemper, who was a native to Montana, and Edmund Emel Kemper Jr., his father, who was actually a World War II veteran, who, after the war, tested nuclear weapons at the Pacific Proving Grounds before returning to California, where he would eventually work as an electrician. And Clarnel, Edmund's mother often complained about her husband's menial electrician job.

An Edmund Jr., Ed Kemper's father, later stated that, quote unquote, Sluerslide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with Clarnel. You know, his wife? And he would go on to say that, She affected me more than 396 days and nights of fighting on the front did. Damn! If that doesn't tell you who Clarnel is like a person, though, I don't know what will. She's not fun to be around, to say the least.

Poor guy would rather be on the front lines and have dinner with his wife. So it's not starting out great for little Ed Kemper, or should I say big Ed Kemper? Because Ed Kemper, being that 13-pound baby and all, was a head taller than all his peers by the age of four. He was just a giant baby man. And Ed's childhood parallels that of many serial killers. His parents, Clarnel and E. Kemper Jr., had a very stormy marriage, as we know. And they would actually separate when Ed was only nine years old and divorce four years later after that.

And Ed actually really loved his dad. So this did a number on him when he left. So he would just pine and pine for his real father through a succession of stepfathers. Clarnel, Carlisle got around and she didn't last long because as we know, most men would rather be on the front lines than go to a movie with her, you know? So Clarnel would pack up the kids and move to Helena, Montana. and Ed's mother and sisters would just berate and belittle Ed on a daily basis. And as Ed would grow older, his gem of a mother would banish him to the basement.

So he wouldn't have a room. He would just have to literally live in the basement anytime he was in the house. Because she considered him sharing a room with his sisters unseemly. Which, to be fair, was probably the right call. You know, she's not mother of the year, but she made the right call there. Steve. And his mom thought this specifically because Ed reportedly loved to rip the heads off his sister Barbie dolls and also do obscene things with them. And he's like a young kid at this point. And since he was growing rapidly, even when he was a preteen, which he was at this point. And Clarnel constantly reminded him of this and made him feel bad about this. But this is what made him so scary to Clarnel and his sisters is that he's just this giant rage monster. and instead of his mom, you know, getting him help, the help that he clearly needed, she just thought, you know, let's just belittle and trap a rapidly growing giant violent monster

in the basement, you know? What could go wrong? Turns out a lot. But although Clornell seems kind of like the villain right now, which she partly is, for sure, not so Lil Eddie was a very difficult child to say the least. because Ed reportedly could not sustain friendships, and he basically thought that he was above all of his peers. Because he was very smart, but a little too smart, you know, a little narcissistic, which, you know, first ingredient in the serial killer pot of stew. And another little ingredient is that he also liked to torture and kill animals.

Let's just put a few in there. That's, you know, serial killer 101. So while most kids were playing catch and playing patty cake, Big Ed was killing cats. Specifically, two of his family-owned cats. And one, he had strangled and buried in the yard. And the other, he had completely dismembered and then hid in his closet. And he would also place the head of the cat on an altar of sorts, and his mother would find it later on.

So, you know, the reasons for putting him in the basement kind of start to add up. But, I mean, mental health and all that kind of stuff wasn't as prevalent as it is at this time. So can we blame Clarnel? I mean, you know, nature, nurture. I don't know. If I've been saying Carnell, it's Clarnel, I apologize. And at this point in his life, he would entertain the dark fantasies he was having, which combined sex and violence from a very early age. And in interviews after Ed's eventual incarceration, Ed would recall his mother keeping him in the basement. He said that he believed that he must have been a constant prickly reminder to his mother.

He said he hated her, but often spoke as if he understood her motives and behavior. My mother and my sisters, or my sisters themselves would go up to bed upstairs, where I used to go to bed upstairs. I had to go down to the basement, and an eight-year-old child had a tough time differentiating the reason in that. Why am I going to the basement? I'm going to hell they're going to heaven. And in different interviews, he described his fear and anger growing up, along with things he envisioned doing. And he said that he killed the family cat, placing its head on an altar, and he said that he killed the family cat, placing its head on an altar, and he felt empowered after persuasively lying about it to his family. And he would basically eventually hone this ability to present a public facade that people trusted,

while his private world contained much darker ideas. So it's like he was in constant training to be the ultimate serial killer. And by the time he was 10, he was already thinking about females in violent sexual terms. He was basically just developing a violent inner world of his own. He would say, quote, unquote, When I was in school, I was called a chronic daydreamer, and I saw a counselor twice during junior high and high school. And that was very routine. They didn't ask me a lot of questions about myself, and that was probably the most violent fantasy time I was often to. And stories from his sisters involved disconcerning memories to say the least.

One of his sisters goaded him to kiss his teacher, and this teacher was one that Ed had a crush on. And Ed apparently said that if he did, he'd have to kill her. You know, as 12-year-olds do. And he would go on to stalk that teacher with the thoughts of killing her, but luckily, he wouldn't go through with it. And instead, that's when Kemper would slaughter his own pet cats, as we know, and stuff the remains in his closet, which his mother would find. So again, instead of getting him any sort of professional help,

his mother would take him out of the basement and ship him off to Los Angeles, to live with his father and his new stepmother, which Ed did kind of like because he missed his dad. He loved his dad, so he was actually kind of excited to live with his dad and to get away from his mom and sisters who constantly belittled him. But his dad and stepmom's reaction to him was not ideal. It was kind of the same as his mother's because the strangeness and hugeness was threatening. And they quickly were just at their wit's end for something to do with him. So completely fed up, Kemper Jr., which is Ed's dad, shipped Ed off again to his grandparents.

So Ed's just going through multiple family homes just not being wanted by anyone. Like, way to stir the fucking stew, way to heat the pot up. Like what? Just not good. Not good for Ed. Ed's already having a lot of trouble at this point. I'm not giving him any sympathy because he's a literal monster. But, you know, the nurture is definitely a causation in this factor for sure.

on top of the nature, because that's there. We know that. So Maude and Edmund Kemper Sr., which are Ed's grandparents, a lot of Eds, had a 17-acre farm in North For California. And Ed will be brought there during the Christmas holidays of 1963. And Ed was, he was not happy about being left at his grandparents' farm when the holidays ended. But he would begin school anyway and seemed to actually make a lot of progress at this point. And his teachers at Sierra Joint Union High School in nearby told,

House, California, found him actually just quiet and that he kept to himself. He wasn't really bothering anybody. He wasn't doing anything nefarious at this point. That we know, you know. So he didn't really cause much trouble to anyone at this time. And he made average grades, even though he probably could have easily made really, really good grades. He just didn't really care. And he drew really no bad attention to himself, apart from his massive size. So time would go on and he would kind of be on the up, you know? But then things would get 10. hence at home, at his grandparents' home. But it was still bearable.

Because they would find Ed, again, odd and unsettling at times, as his mother and father did. But he would keep busy and out of the way with his dog and a 22 rifle given to him by Kemper Sr. His grandfather, which is just, you know, yeah, man, give a gun to an animal-slaughtering giant psycho child. What could go wrong? What do I know, though? I don't have kids. So anyway, Ed would go on to shoot rabble. and gophers. And he would also shoot birds, even though his grandmother told him he cannot shoot birds.

And by kind of letting his aggression out by, you know, quote unquote hunting, it would evidently contain his anger to this one outlet for a little while. And at the end of the school year, he would actually return to his mother and sisters in Helena to spend the summer. But within two weeks, he was back at grandma and grandpa's farm because his mom could not take it. She just really didn't like Ed. So when he returned back to his grandparents being rejected again from his mother, his grandmother commented that he had completely regressed at this point. He seemed more sullen and ominous, and now he wasn't in school anymore because he was done. And he didn't have a whole lot to do at this point either, but hang out on the farm and continue his various

hobbies of, you know, killing animals with his 22 rifle. And Ed, personally, found his grandparents to just be nags and boars and his violent fantasies would return full tilt. And this time, his fantasies would star Maude, his grandmother. For example, he would imagine Maude in the outhouse and he would shoot it full of holes in his imagination. You know, with the gun, he was gifted by his grandfather. Great gift, by the way. That's sarcasm. And although those were fantasies, he would even go as far as to line her up while she was obviously unaware in his rifle sights, and he would think about what it would feel like to kill her.

So as tension at the farm started to mount, his grandmother grew very nervous, which is totally fair. I mean, she's got this, you know, massive, angry grandson who has a weapon. I, like, I can't even imagine. And he has nowhere else to go. So she would take Kemper Sr., her husband, who's Ed's grandfather's, 45 caliber pistol with her on her outings. For fear that it would fall into to Ed's hands, which I don't know if she forgot that he had a 22, but she, I feel like she took it partly for protection for herself and partly just to have another gun out of the reach of Ed. But on August 27, 1964, Ed would sit at the kitchen table with his grandmother. And they would be going over proofs from a children's book that she was writing because she was a writer. And she would look up and she would notice that Ed had a very odd stare and a frightening look that she had seen many, many times before.

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Like, stop what you're doing right now. You're freaking me out. And after a moment, Ed would just pick up his gun, whistle, and leave out the door with his dog. saying that he was headed out to go shoot some gophers, as he did many times before. And Maude would warn him, again, like she did many times before, not to shoot any birds. And she would just return her attention back to her work as Ed left. But Ed would turn around upon exiting the house, and he would watch her through the screen door.

And her back was to him at this point, and that's when he would raise his rifle, take aim, and shoot at Mod's head. He would fire once and Maude would slump onto the table completely. And then he would fire once more hitting her in the back. Now inside the house again, he would stab her multiple times on top of already shooting her. Just an aggressive, violent kill. Like just pure frenzy rage. Because at this point, she was already dead. And then he would wrap her head in a towel and drag her body into a bedroom.

And within a few minutes, Kemper Sr., his grandfather, would return home. from buying groceries. And as Ed Kemper Sr. began to unload the truck, Ed took with his rifle again and shot him in the back of the head. And Ed, at this point, was immediately upset. Not only because he realized what he had done, but because he knew he'd be caught. Because his grandparents weren't the sorts to take off all of the sudden for an extended vacation. So even if he hid the bodies, his family and friends would notice that they went missing immediately. So not knowing what else to do, he would call Mommy Dearest in Montana who would advise him to call the sheriff. Surprisingly, he did. And then he would obviously be taken

into questioning. And soon he confessed to both murders, saying he'd often thought of killing his grandmother and that he basically just killed his grandfather in an act of mercy to protect him from seeing his dead wife and possibly having a heart attack. Which the, oh, how sweet. What the fuck? So you killed him because you thought that he would die anyway? It's just, it doesn't make any sense. It's, it's basically just, psychotic, selfish, insane behavior. So Ed would be incarcerated in juvenile hall while the California Youth Authority decided what to do with him. And a court-appointed psychiatrist diagnosed Ed as paranoid and psychotic.

We knew that, thanks. And the youth authority committed him to Atascadero State Hospital. And he would enter the facility on December 6th, 1964. And at this point, he was not even 16 years old yet. So off to a Tascadero State Hospital, he would go. and definitely where he should have stayed, but we know he did. So Ed would take an extensive amount of tests while there and began to gain insight, if not into the nature of his own crime, into what others thought of the crime.

It's like Ed Kemper was always studying again how to become a better criminal. So he never accepted actual responsibility for his crime, saying it had been beyond his control. But he worked hard at learning the language. of treatment and appearing recovered. Basically, the guy was an Oscar-winning actor, essentially, because he would actually go on to even work in the psychology laboratory and help administer tests to other patients.

And by work, I mean, he was still a patient, but he would basically assist. And he took a lot of pride in doing this job, which his doctors interpreted as a very good sign. He's rehabilitating. Wow, he's turned a new leaf. No, you idiots, he's Meryl Streep. But because at the time, sociopaths, which Ed had been diagnosed as, were usually reluctant and uncooperative to work with. But Ed always seemed really eager to do his best.

So he was just too smart, basically. Because again, I know I've said this before, but he had a genius IQ of 1.45. Just a fucking recipe for a final boss serial killer. So he would thrive in his new hospital environment, learning how to be a better serial killer. And he would make some friends along the world. including a serial grapist who shared stories of his own crimes with Ed. And all of these just fucked up stories would leave a massive impression on teenage Ed. And as rapidly developing sexual awareness would become inextricably linked with domination and violence.

Just classic 1960s mental health care, you know? So Ed's violent sexual fantasies would become more and more intricate and intense. I mean, he's just sitting in a hospital not being treated because everyone thinks he's better, basically. So what else does he have to do? But just think about what he's going to do when he gets out. And he would take note of what the incarcerated rapists around him had done wrong. They had been caught because they hadn't been smart and left witnesses and evidence. They would attack women that they knew or they would attack in too public a place.

So over time, he would just file this information in the corner of his mind basement dungeon, only to go down there and get this information after he was let out. So obviously, he was smart enough to know that he couldn't share these evolving violent fantasies with his doctors. So he didn't, and he would just continue to behave as a model inmate. And as the icing on the get-out-of-jail cake, he even claimed religious conversion and took to looking up biblical references that he had heard. So with this Oscar-winning bullshit performance, he would be released on December 18th, 1969, when he was 21.

But Ed being onside for most of his formidable years was a bit of a shell shock when he walked out into the long-haired hippie culture that had emerged from the 60s. Especially because Ed just wasn't that kind of guy. He was kind of a fucking square. With his short hair and serial killer glasses and neat mustache, she actually wished to be a law enforcement officer. But his hopes, fortunately, I think, would be dashed. Because in addition to minimum height requirements,

both the local state police had maximum height limits, which is so weird to me. Like, wouldn't you want a giant hulking man on your force? I don't really understand that, but anyway, he didn't get on the force, which is for the best. So alas, Ed was a little bit too tall to be a cop. So to cater to his disappointment, he would buy a motorcycle. And with it, he could at least feel like a cop.

This guy always wanted to cosplay as a cop. But meanwhile, he actually did really well with his studies. And after three months, he was paroled for another 18 months. And his doctors at a Teskadero had recommended strongly that he not be returned to his mother, who would actually relocated to Santa Cruz, California. But against their advice, the youth authority would send him straight to her. Bad idea. So Ed would go home to his ever-loving mother, Clarnel, who would the other.

this point was twice revoirced now, just a charmer. And at this point in her life, she had held the position as an administrative assistant on the University of California at Santa Cruz campus. And Clarnel, outside of her home, was actually very liked, and she allegedly enjoyed her life a lot now with her son away. But now he was back. So upon Ed's return home, the fights would wake up the neighbors daily. And she would still harass and belittle and just blame him for everything. And Ed would actually say later in an interview after he got caught. My mother and I started right in on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. I've never been in such verbal battle with anyone. It would go to fists with a man, but this was my mother and I could stand the

thought of my mother and I doing these things. She insisted on it and just over stupid things. I remember one roof razor was over whether I should have my teeth cleaned. So obviously not wanting to be home ever, Ed would seek solilo. at the jury room, which was a local bar frequented by off-duty police officers. And he was obviously still very fascinated by law enforcement and was incredibly smart and knew now how to converse with people. Very, very well. So he would naturally befriend the local police.

And he would be very well respected by him, and they even gave him a nickname, Big Ed, very fitting. So Ed would continue to make friends with the local police, but since he couldn't be one of them, and since he wanted to avoid his mother at all costs, he got a job. So Ed took various positions as a laborer, and finally secured one at the divisions of highways, which enabled him to move out of his mother's home and into an apartment at Elameda,

which he shared with a friend. But still, he said later that his mother would still continue to berate and belittle him. Guy can't catch a break. And little did she know how much she was poking the literal bear. So Ed's job would be good, but it would be somewhat short-lived. because he actually wrecked his motorcycle twice. And since it wasn't his fault, he would actually receive $15,000, which is about $106,000 in today's money, in a settlement in a civil lawsuit that he filed against the other driver.

So the division of highways gave him some time off to recuperate his broken left arm and because of the second accident as well. And with the out-of-court settlement, he would buy a car. Specifically, a 1969 Ford Galaxy that looked very much, like an unmarked police vehicle. How convenient. So the guy was, like I said, basically cosplaying as a cop. For his own nefarious reasons, we will see. So he would go all in with his car and equipped it with a transmitter and a microphone and a large

whip antenna. And he would begin to pick up hitchhikers. Don't hitchhike! I will say it till I die. And his specific targets were petite, pretty female hitchhikers. And at this point, he wasn't killing anybody. He wasn't even hurting anybody. He was just wanting to see how they would react to him. He was literally studying them.

So when he could finally do it, it would be perfect. Because these are the patterns he did in the mental hospital. He figured out how to talk to people, how I'd be able to get away with a crime if I wanted to, how to trick the doctors, how to trick the police. He's just unfortunately incredibly smart. So he would learn to make these hitchhikers try. trust him fully, basically just using them as his test subjects. So he would deliver them safely to their destination and privately he indulged in his violent fantasies,

imagining what he would do to them. So now that he amassed all of this knowledge of acquiring a victim with zero consequences, he began to outfit his car for his future violent plans. So the antenna came off and the passenger door was rigged to keep it from being opened from the inside. Just my fucking worst nightmare. It just reminds me of deathproof, that scene where she gets in the car. The first girl gets in the car, and then she can't open. Oh, my God, it's so fucking scary.

Well, Pam, which way are you going? Left or right? Right. Ah, that's too bad. So we'd also pack plastic bags, knives, guns, and a blanket into his trunk. And then Ed would hit the road and start picking up girl after girl. Picking each girl up as kind of an experiment, just waiting for the right girl. and the right opportunity.

Like, this guy was extremely patient. Ed was the definition of an organized serial killer. So more than a year of picking up girls and letting them go would pass by. But on May 7, 1972, Ed's moment finally came. Marianne and Anita were students at Fresno State College, and they were hitchhiking to Stanford University after a couple of days at Berkeley. So Ed would roll up and offer them a ride. And after driving for an hour, he managed to reach a secluded wooded area near Elameda,

with which he was very familiar with because he worked at the highway department. And he would do all this without alerting his passengers at all and just saying that he had to change directions because he went the wrong way. Just perfectly practiced and perfectly and unfortunately executed. So after driving them around for a bit, he actually took his gun out from under the seat and pulled off into a d'Intyred. deserted area. When that gun was pulled out, I launched it out, for it. I headed it under my leg, out of sight, parallel to my leg in the seat.

And very quickly, he would stop and put Anita in the trunk of his car and turn his attention toward Marianne. He would quickly handcuff her and then lay her across the backseat face down. And that's when he would put a plastic bag over her head, and then he would attempt to strangle her with a length of Terrycloth. But Marianne would bite a hole into the bag and the cloth would snap. So frustrated, Ed would pull out his knife and just stab her repeatedly. And eventually, after stabbing her multiple times, he would also slash her throat.

And that's when he would go to the trunk and remove Anita. And that's when he would grab an even larger knife and he began to stab her as well. Just a heartbreak, just awful, like fucking monster. I just killed the young woman. I slammed down the lid of the trunk. She isn't dead. She's dying. But after he was done, he would put the bodies into his trunk. and he would drive around with the bodies in his car, just deciding what he should do next.

And eventually he brought Marianne's body into his apartment where he would undress her and fully dissect her. And he would also behead Anita's body. And Marianne's body would be buried in the plastic bag he had used to suffocate her, but he would keep both of their heads for a while, eventually disposing of them in a ravine. And Marianne's would be found and identified in August, and neither Anita's head nor her body were ever found. which is just, again, just fucking soul-crushing, just heartbreaking. Like, I can't even imagine the family, like my heart just goes out to the families and obviously the victims as well, but... So the girls' families would shortly realize that the girls went missing, and they would both file a missing person's report.

Though it was really hard to get the police to pursue this case in any sort of serious way, because there were so many runaways and transient in the Bay Area at this time. And obviously, no one suspected polite, clean, cut friend of the police Edmund Kemper. So he would just continue to prowl. And on the evening of September 14th at 1972, he would pick up Iko Koo, a 15-year-old dancer who was on her way to her dance class. She was waiting for the bus at the bus stop, but it was kind of taking too long and she needed to get to dance class, so she decided to hitchhike. And that's when Ed would roll up seeing a very obvious opportunity. So Iko would get in, but it would not take her long to catch on to his plan. She would

actually see his gun and start to panic. And with Ed, quick thinking, he would convince her that he was actually just planning to use the gun on himself and that if she didn't try to signal police or pass her by, he would not harm her. So having absolutely no choice because she was in a moving vehicle with a literal fucking psychopathic giant, she reluctantly agreed to just stay in the car. And that's when Ed would drive off into the mountains and turn off the main road and park out of sight. And after Ed parked, would tape Iko's mouth shut and also try to suffocate her with his thumb and index finger in her nostrils. And she would fight with her life back, but she would unfortunately go unconscious, only to wake up moments later again. And that's when Ed would begin to suffocate her again. And this time, continuing until she completely stopped breathing.

And that's when he would remove her from the car, lay her on the ground, and have his way with her body. And with her own scarf, he would also begin to strangle her. And when he was absolutely sure that she was dead, he put her body in the trunk and drove away from the scene like nothing happened. So again, he would drive around, just trying to figure out what to do, and that's when he would stop at a local bar. And he would just have a couple beers, like literally nothing happened. But before he would actually go into the bar,

he would pop the trunk in a public open parking lot to make sure that she was really dead. And in his words, to admire her. Just fucking disgusting. And he would recount this moment in a later interview saying, quote unquote. I suppose I was standing there looking. I was doing one of those triumphant things too,

admiring my work and admiring her beauty. And I might say admiring my catch like a fisherman. I just, it makes my fucking stomach turn. But after leaving the bar, he actually went back to his. mother's house. And later that night, similar to his other victim, he would bring Iko's body into his apartment and place it on the bed. And he would dissect her just as he did Marianne and Anita. And he would dispose of her head and hands in different locations from the rest of her body as well. And very little

ever turned up and her disappearance was not thought to be related to Marianne and Anita at all. Because there was very little investigation going on in the first place at this point. So four months would go by and other victims from other killers were found in the Bay Area, which like, fucking leave! Leave the Bay Area! So bodies were popping up left and right, and obviously police concerns were aroused, but Big Ed was under no suspicion of any of the killings, so he would just continue. So on January 8, 1973, Ed would buy a 22-calibur automatic pistol, even though he was forbidden to use any firearms given his prior crimes. But he had no trouble with this purchase in spite of his record, but he did fear that eventually the police might

catch on to the fact that he was in a legal possession of a handgun. But regardless, he would hit the road with his gun and his car and continue his hunt. So Ed went driving around Cabrillo College campus when he picked up 18-year-old student, Cynthia Ann, who is Cindy Schall. And he would drive her into the hills near Watsonville, where he would force her into the trunk and shot her with his new gun. And at this point, Ed had actually recently moved back in with his mother. So he brought her body to the duplex and aptos and into his room there. So when Clarnel left for work the next morning, Ed would have intercourse with Cindy's corpse. And then he would go on to dissect her in the bathtub, taking great care afterward to wash away all traces of anything that he had done. And then he

would remove the bullet from her skull and then bury the head in his mother's back, yard. And he would even say that he actually buried the heads to be looking up to his mother's window, like her bedroom window, just for an extra fuck you, basically, which is just beyond fucked up. And later, he would throw all the body parts, which he had in plastic bags off of the cliff. And this time, however, the body was discovered within 24 hours. So Ed took notice to this, noting that he got a little bit sloppy, but this wouldn't worry him enough to stop what he was doing. At this point, he basically just thought he was invincible. But he knew now that he had to be really, really careful.

And within a month, he was ready to kill again. So now we're having a way quicker cool down period. So on the night of February 5th, 1973, Ed and his mommy had a massive fight. And Ed would storm out of the apartment, keyed up, and ready to kill. But with heightened suspicion of a serial killer preying on hitchhikers, specifically in the Santa Cruz area, students have been advised to accept rides only from cars with university stickers on them, which is just so dumb in hindsight because like if the serial killer watches the news and knows that

he needs a sticker, he's just going to go get a sticker. Like I just, I don't under, I, just so dumb. Just take rides from people that you actually know really well, you know? So Kemper, not being, you know, a fucking idiot, was able to obtain a sticker as his mother worked at the UC Santa Cruz campus. So Ed would get his sticker and he would go to. to the campus to hunt. And unfortunately, 23-year-old Rosalind Heather Thorpe and 20-year-old Alice Helen Allison Lou would be on the UCSC campus that fateful night. So he would pick up Rosalind first and engage in conversation with her. And in a short while, he stopped for another hitchhiker, which was Alice. And she had no trepidation about getting in the car, especially with Roslund already

being in the car and having the UC Santa Cruz parking sticker promptly displayed on his car as well. they would ride around for a while and this time, Ed didn't even stop the car to start his killing. He would draw Rosalind's attention to a lovely view off the passenger side and as she looked out the window, he would slow down and he would draw his 22 and shoot her directly in the head. And Alice was in the back seat, just horrified and freaking out. So Ed would quickly turn around and point his gun at Alice in the back seat and fire several times. And unlike Rosalind, she He didn't die immediately. So he would shoot her again point blank once he got out of town.

And that would unfortunately kill her. So after he killed both the girls, he would pull off into a cul-de-sac and quickly transfer the bodies into the trunk. And then he would go stop for gas and then he would go to his mother's duplex, which he quickly left again, claiming he needed cigarettes. And once outside the apartment, he pulled the car to the street, opened the trunk, and beheaded both the bodies. And that following day, he brought Alice's body.

inside and would also have sex with it in his room. And he also brought in Rosalind's head so he could remove the bullet that had been lodged inside of it, as he had done before with Cindy's body. And then he would drive away to Santa Cruz to dispose of most of the body parts, then on to Pacifica to get rid of the heads and hands. So all during this, Clarnel, Ed's mother, never showed any suspicion of Ed committing these heinous crimes. And she probably didn't suspect that she'd become one of his victims as well. So on Easter weekend, about a month after the killings of Rosalind and Alice, he decided the time had come to get rid of her. It was time to rid of the real source of all of his anger, hate, and just violent rage he had pent up after all of these years. So he would wait all night while his mother was in her room sleeping, carefully considering what he was about to do.

So at 5.15 a.m. Ed would grab a hammer from the kitchen and he would go to her bedroom. And he would stand over her for a moment and then swiftly strike her once. Very, very hard. And then for whatever fucked up reason, he would also slash her throat. So within 60 seconds he had killed and beheaded his mom. And he would also remove her larynx in the process. The larynx being the hollow tube in your throat, otherwise known as, the voice box. And he would also try to put her voice box in the garbage disposal, but the machine spat it back out, which Ed later would find darkly appropriate and unsurprising. Because he basically, in later interviews, would just say she would never shut up. So that's why I did it.

It's just so fun. It's just a fucking nightmare. It's like a fucking horror movie. I hit her in the head with a hammer. She was senseless. And sadly, some people have analogized that to a slaughter of a cow. So that's when he would hide her body in the closet. try to clean up a bit and then he would just leave the house. So that afternoon, after pondering what he had just done, decided that if someone else was to find his dead mother, then suspicion might point away from him. Because at this point, no one suspected Ed of doing anything. He wasn't any sort of suspect of anything. So it wasn't a terrible plan, especially with people getting murdered left and right right now in their area. It wouldn't be farfetched to assume that somebody came

into the house and murdered his mother. So after figuring out his plan, Ed would return back to the duplex and he would call Sarah Hale it, a friend of his mothers to invite her to dinner. And he wasn't able to reach her immediately and he actually started to panic a bit. But unluckily for Sarah, she got back to him around 5 p.m. And he would tell her that he was doing a surprise dinner for his mother and that she should come over for dinner as well. So Sarah would say, yep, I'm on my way and she would head over there, and as soon as she walked in, Ed would strangle her immediately. First, manually, and then with the scarf that he had obtained from Ico, one of his previous victims. And then he would remove Sarah's clothes and put her on his bed. And sometime that night, he attempted to have,

you know what, with her corpse, just fucking sick, fucking bastard. And on Easter Sunday morning, he left town driving east in Sarah's car. But he started to realize being in Sarah's car would look suspicious as hell. So he rented another car and dropped off Sarah's car at the gas station, telling the attendant that it needed repair. So he would drive for 18 hours, stopping only for gas and sodas. And then he would be stopped for speeding in Colorado. But his smooth talking, calm and collected demeanor didn't draw any unwanted attention. He just paid the fine and moved on. And finally, exhausted and finalized on his decision of what he wanted to do, he stopped in Pueblo, Colorado. would place a call to the Santa Cruz Police Department,

where he already knew several of the officers, because they were his bar buddies, and he would begin his marathon confession. And the initial contact required several calls, because first, he had to convince the Santa Cruz police he wasn't a prank caller, which is fucking crazy. And then he had to help them find where he was, using points of interest,

because he was disoriented and how to lead the police the Pueblo phone booth from which he was placing the calls was kind of complicated. So when he was finally taken into custody, a party of investigators from Santa Cruz headed for Pueblo, where they would question him about the crimes for which he claimed responsibility in which they couldn't believe, because this was just big Ed from the bar, the guy that just loves to hang out with cops for some weird reason and ask a lot of weird questions about, you know, how to hide evidence and where they patrol and all that weird stuff. That's crazy, man. It's crazy. But as the tape recorder rolled, Ed just yapped, giving incredibly explicit and detailed confessions to eight of the recent murders.

Because the other two were his grandparents, which he was already punished for. So upon his return to Santa Cruz, Ed led investigators to various disposal sites he had used and continued his seemingly endless confession. Guy love to fucking yap. And when he was finally finished, he'd been so thorough that he left his court-apped. public defender. James Jackson, no avenue for defense except that of insanity, because he literally said every single defense, that there was no defense. The lawyer lost before anything started. And a series of witnesses was brought in to try to establish that Ed was not responsible for his crimes. But the prosecutor undermined the testimony of each one. And prosecutor witness,

Dr. Joel Fort, did the most damage to Ed's insanity defense. He had spent quite a bit of time reviewing Ed's case, going back to his diagnosis after killing his grandparents and during his time at a Teskidero. And he had also interviewed Ed, eliciting previously unknown information about his sexual practices with the bodies. And even allegedly cannibalism. So Ed was not a paranoid schizophrenic, Fort-Sed. He was just obsessed with sex and violence and just craved attention going so far as to slash his own wrists with a ballpoint pen during the tribal in a futile sluer slide attempt. But he was not insane. Just a giant attention whore, basically. He was insanely smart and very aware of what he was doing. Just remember the planning he did over a year of surveillance

before he even decided to kill someone. That's premeditated as it gets, basically. And furthermore, Fort said, if he were ever released, he would absolutely kill him. again. And he would kill the same sort of victim. So during the three weeks of trial, no witness, not even Ed's sister or his doctors from Atescadero, was able to convince the jury that Ed was insane. Not to mention, Ed would take the witness stand himself and say the most awful shit. For the co-ed killing specifically, he would say, quote unquote, Alive, they were distant. Not sharing with me. I was trying to establish a relationship and there was no relationship there. When they were being killed, there wasn't anything going on in my mind except that they were going to be mine.

That was the only way they could be mine. He would even go on to say that that's why he killed those two cats, his family cats, because they had more affection for his sisters. So if he killed them, they would be his. So that's where that stemmed from. But his desire to possess the coeds led Kemper even further than murder. In his fantasies, he literally made the girls, quote unquote, a part of me by eating parts of them, which is just, so fucking sick, like disgusting. And of all of his co-ed victims, he said,

They were like spirit wives. I still had their spirits. I still have them. And regarding his mother's killing, he would go on to say that the desire to punish his mother did not end with a fatal hammer blow. As we know, he cut off his mother's head and would go on to say in court,

put it on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour, threw darts at it, and then smashed her face in. I cut off her head. And I humiliated her courts. It just happened. I have no words like Jesus Christ. So the jury would deliberate for only five hours, and they would find Ed guilty of first-degree murder in all eight counts.

Thank God. But Ed would make a statement about the verdict, saying quote-unquote, I really wasn't surprised when it came out that way. There was just no way they could find me insane. Society just isn't ready for that yet. 10 or 20 years from now, they would have. but they're not going to take a chance. Yeah, nobody's ready for that ever.

Hey, 10, 20 years from now is right now, fucking no. No. So after a short observation stint at Vacaville Medical Facility, he was sent to a maximum security prison at Folsom for the rest of his life. Thank God. And Ed Kemper remains behind bars to this day. Guy is still alive somehow. And Ed, being the attention-grabbing ass hat that he is,

remains very eager to speak of his crimes to the public and basically anyone who will listen. He has done extensive interviews with Robert Ressler of the FBI, which were aimed at building the FBI's nascent serial killer profiling program. If you've ever seen Mind Henter, which I highly recommend you see,

it's one of my favorite shows. You'd know that many episodes were actually based on these exact encounters with Ed Kemper. And the actor is terrifyingly good. It is just, it's fantastic media. I highly recommend watching it. And in 1988, he participated

along with notorious John Wayne Gacy in a satellite broadcast during which each killer described his crimes. And he has done quite a few other interviews as well, one of which was extremely chilling. After the interviewer was done wrapping up the interview with Ed, Ed finished by saying this, quote unquote. You haven't asked the question I expected a reporter to ask. The reporter said, what do you mean? Give me some examples. Ed would say, Oh, what does it like to have sex with a dead body? What does it feel like to sit on your living room couch and look over and see two decapitated girls' heads on the arm of the couch. The first time, it makes you sick to your stomach.

What do you think? Now, when you see a pretty girl walking down the street, one side of me says, wow, what an attractive chick. I'd like to talk to her, date her. And the other side of me says, I wonder how her head would look like on a stick. I literally just got full body chills. It's just fucking disgusting. Fucking monster.

I hope you're fucking rotting in jail, you piece of shit, waste of oxygen. And that quote was actually used in one. one of my actual favorite movies, which just makes me sick now, but it's American Psycho. And he actually, Patrick Bateman, misquotes and says it was Ed Gein that says it. Then that goes all on another thing that he was actually imagining all this stuff in the movie, and it's all this. There's a lot of stuff to go into. Either way, just all around piece of shit.

Ed Kemper was just a monster. And, I mean, they obviously used it in the movie American Psycho because he's supposed to be a monster, too. And as always, he was very explicit, and he seemed to have garnered quite a bit of psychological insight into the nature of his crimes. And in watching him, you see he almost thrives off getting reactions from the listeners or the interviewers. He always wants them to know that he has the upper hand in the conversation, and literally, because he's a literal giant. But in prison where he is now, he's very well-behaved and very cooperative. like he was in the hospital as a teenager, just molding into society to better himself and seems to just take great pride in his status as a genius serial killer, who, if he had not turned himself in,

is sure he would still be out there killing today. But Ed Kemper's story is more than just a record of brutality. It's a chilling example of what happens when a dangerous mind learns how to hide in plain sight. He was intelligent, calculating, and deeply, deeply, disturbed. And while he seemed harmless to those around him, inside he was spiraling into something monstrous. And in the end, the only reason he stopped was because he chose to, which I think is the scariest part of all of this. But with that, that is the deep dive on Ed Kemper. Let me know what other deep dives you want me to do down below. And don't hitchhike. Thank you. I want you to be safe, baby girl. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to the episode. I love you. I appreciate you.

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