Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Co-Ed Killer” Pt. 2 - Edmund Kemper

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

Edmund Kemper despised his mother so much, he tried to destroy everything she had ever loved. As Edmund began to express his hatred, the trail of bodies he left in his wake between 1964 and 1973 would earn him the name of the Co-Ed Killer. ASSASSINATIONS - Check out Parcast's new show Assassinations. Search and subscribe to Assassinations now! Sponsors! Upstart - Hurry to Upstart.com/SERIALKILLERS to find out how low your Upstart rate is! Zola - To start your free wedding website and also get $50 off your registry go to Zola.com/KILLERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Watch only on Prime. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Ed Kemper felt isolated and incompetent, detached from the people around him. He searched for a place where he could feel powerful and in control. He lived most of his life in his imaginary, vicious world, where he could live out as darkest and most deranged fantasies.

He dreamed of raping women, killing women. and dismembering their corpses. His rage simmered, egged on by thoughts of his controlling, abusive mother. The longer Ed fixated on vengeance, the more hatred towards his mother consumed his every thought.

He longed for her death, and he wanted it to be at his own hands. Finally, when his twisted daydreams became too hard to resist, Ed Kemper's violent fantasies became Santa Cruz's horrific reality. Hi, I'm Greg Polson. From the Parcast Network, this is Serial Killers.

Today we finish our deep dive into the life of Edmund Emile Kemper the Third, also known as the Coed Killer. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. Many of you have been asking us how you can support the podcast. If you enjoy the show, one of the best ways to help us is to leave a five-star review, wherever you listen to podcasts.

While you're there, you can listen to previous episodes of Serial Killers. as well as Parcast's, other podcasts. A new episode comes out every Monday. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and on Twitter at Parcast Network or on our website, parkast.com. Ed Kemper killed his first victims, his own grandparents, at age 15,

on August 27, 1964. He later killed eight women between 1972 and 1973. Ed Kemper, stalked the streets of Santa Cruz, California, killing and dismembering female hitchhikers. He became most famous for killing his own mother, and for the lengthy interviews that he did with FBI agents, Robert Ressler and Johnny Douglas, which played a significant role in developing the FBI's serial killer profiling system. Last week, we covered Ed's childhood, the beginning of his hatred for his mother, and the murders of his grandparents.

When we left off, Ed was imprisoned in a Tascadero State Hospital. However, he used his genius IQ to trick his psychiatrist into believing he had been cured. At the age of 21, Ed Kemper was released from prison on parole, with his juvenile criminal records sealed. This week, we'll follow Ed's murderous path along the California roads to his final destination, murdering his own mother. On December 18, 1969, Ed moved into his mother's home in Santa Cruz, California. Ed and his mother, Clarnel, actually managed to get along for a short while. Ed enrolled in a local community college in order to pursue a career in law enforcement. In the early months of 1970, Ed was getting better grades in school than he ever had before.

He worked hard to earn a job as a police officer. He craved structure, and he still wanted to help instill that structure into the world. After months of hard schoolwork, Ed applied for enrollment into a police academy. They rejected Ed's application. Ed initially thought that he might have been rejected for his criminal record. After all, any reasonable person would not want someone who had committed a double homicide to have a badge and a gun. But that wasn't it. Instead, Ed's application had been rejected on the basis of height.

Ed stood six feet nine inches tall, four inches taller than the six-five height limit the Santa Cruz depot. Hartman had for its officers. Ed had been mocked for his height all throughout his youth. He had internalized this bullying as rejection from his peers, and now he was being rejected on the basis of height again. For Ed, this was deeply upsetting. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Everyone has been rejected at some point, and they likely remember how it feels to be told you're not wanted. Neuroscientists Naomi I. Eisenberger, Matthew D. Lieberman, and Kipling D. Williams,

published a study titled, Does Rejection Hurt, an FMRI study of Social Exclusion? This study took brain scans during incidents of social exclusion and found that activity in certain parts of the brain paralleled the activity of the brain when the person felt physical pain. They concluded that social rejection registers as physical pain. In the case of Ed Kemper, this pain served as a twisted justification to hold on to his resentment and hatred for those around him. And indeed, Ed felt crushed. His only goal in life, the only thing he had ever wanted, was now impossible.

Everything his mother said about his uselessness, everything his classmates mocked about his height, felt true. Ed withdrew further into his face. fantasy, vicious world, where he could extract bloody vengeance against all who had wronged him. He had become consumed with his hatred for his mother and longed to escape her. All of the psychological progress he had made in Atascadero was slipping away. Ed said, quote, my mother and I started right in on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. I've never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone, end quote.

However, Ed wasn't ready to ask. act on that rage yet. He continued trying to live a normal life. Ed got a job with the State of California Highway Department working road construction. Ironically, this was the same job his grandfather had worked before he had retired. In some strange, twisted way, Ed felt like he was carrying on his grandfather's legacy. Ed enjoyed working on the roads. His massive size was actually put to good use when it came to manual labor. He also found a way to get close to the law enforcement world. After work, he became a regular at the jury room, a bar in Santa Cruz that was across the street from the county courthouse. Because of its location, the bar was frequented by

police officers. Ed used the charm he had learned in a Tascadero to ingratiate himself with the local police. He became a friendly nuisance by pestering them about work every chance he got. The cops soon came to enjoy his presence. They gave him the nickname Big Ed and told him all sorts of stories about their work, not realizing that Ed was absorbing all that info for later use. With the job that he enjoyed and a bar that he liked to frequent, Ed worked for months without acting out. He got permission from his parole officer to live on his own, and he moved out of his mother's home and into an apartment with an unnamed friend. His new apartment was in Alameda, California, a 90-minute drive north of Santa Cruz. Ed felt some freedom for the first time in his life,

and he had plenty of free time when he wasn't working. He began looking for a girlfriend, but he had some difficulty meeting girls his own age. A large part of his problems with women came from Ed's low self-esteem, but a larger issue was the way he thought about women. Ed once said, quote, When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her home, be real nice and treat her right. The other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick.

end quote. Naturally, that would make getting to know a woman difficult. However, according to Ed, he did manage to meet a 16-year-old student at Turlock High School, and the two struck up a relationship. The girl's name is unknown, but she was just Ed's type, blonde, petite, young, and immature. Her immaturity led her to accept Ed without asking about his past. Acceptance Ed had never expected to receive from a woman. Ed said that he loved the girl, but they never had sex because he viewed her almost religiously. Regardless, the 21-year-old Ed Kemper and the 16-year-old girl got along well enough that they actually got engaged. But Ed's mother, Clarnel, was disgusted that Ed was dating someone so young. She began calling him and pestering him, telling him to leave the

girl alone. She even began showing up on his doorstep to relay her disapproval, in person. Ed couldn't take his mother's beratement, and he broke up with his fiancé. When he called off the relationship, he asked his mother to introduce him to some women his own age. His mother refused. She told Ed that he was too much like his father, and that he didn't deserve to meet any nice young women. Ed was now even more furious at his mother, and desperately lonely. He retreated into his fantasy world, where he began planning out intricate, sadistic, and sexual murders. He started pushing boundaries in real life, and in 1971, when Ed was 22, he began driving around the Santa Cruz area, looking to pick up female hitchhikers. Ed's behavior follows

a very similar pattern of escalation to those of other serial killers and serial rapists. According to a study published in Forensic Science International, titled, Crime Scene Analysis and the Escalation of Violence of Serial Rape, Serial Rapists often practice selecting their victims before actually hurting a victim. This repeated practice behavior builds to an inevitable snap when the criminal acts on their dark impulses. Ed said that he initially began picking up young women to help him learn how to talk to them. Unfortunately, Ed learned how to gain their trust, get them into his car, and trick them. He would purposefully take wrong turns to secluded areas, but pretend it was an accident. As Ed became better and better at charming young women,

He grew even closer to carrying out his sick fantasies. He built a stockpile of murder tools in his trunk, adding items one at a time. He collected plastic bags for suffocating victims, hunting knives, blankets to catch their blood and handcuffs. He even rigged the inside handle of his passenger side door to keep it from opening from the inside. If a woman got in, she was trapped.

Eventually, Ed borrowed a 9-millimeter pistol from a friend, He kept the pistol under his seat, all but guaranteeing that someday he would use it. Sometime in the early months of 1972, when Ed was 23, he lost his job with the highway department. He hadn't been paying attention while working and would play hooky to search for hitchhikers. After losing his job, Ed knew that he would soon run out of money. If he ran out of money, he would have to move back in with his mother. The thought disgusted Ed. But instead of finding another job to avert the crisis, he decided to create a crisis of his own.

On May 7, 1972, after a particularly infuriating phone call with his mother, Ed Kemper decided that the next hitchhiker he picked up would be the first woman to visit Ed's vicious world. We'll meet Ed's first victim in just a moment. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound tersephotide may be able to help. Zepbound. is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zepbound is approved as a 2.5, 5,

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only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Now, back to the story. On May 7, 1972, 23-year-old Ed Kemper decided that the next female hitchhiker here, picked up would die by his hands. He cruised the California highways looking for a suitable victim, preferably a co-ed. Ed hated his mother so much that he wanted to spite her even by association. His mother worked at a university, so he wanted to kill a university student. Around 4 p.m., Ed drove up to California State University in Fresno. He spotted two petite

young women with their thumbs out, looking for a ride. He asked them where they were headed, and they told him they needed a ride to Stanford University. He agreed to take them, and they got in the car. They were both 18, Marianne Pesche and Anita Lucchessa. They were college roommates, who had just spent a few days visiting friends in the area, and they had decided to hitchhike home in order to meet new people. Ed quickly learned that the two girls didn't know the area. He took them all across the highway system, pulling loop-de-loops to throw off their sense of direction. As he drove, he brainstormed secluded locations where he could take advantage of them. As Ed ran through the Rolodex of options, the girls cheerily talked with him about their lives.

He told them he worked for the division of highways, and he showed them a radio transmitter that he kept in his car for the job. The girls cheekily suggested that he was an undercover cop, which they believed might be the real reason he had a radio transmitter. Ed told them that he wasn't a cop, but they acted like they didn't believe him. He felt that their false belief that he was a cop helped them trust him. Instead of taking the women south to Stanford, he took them east to a small town called Livermore. The conversation between the three was pleasant and casual, until Ed pulled into a rural and secluded cul-de-sac. Ed pulled the nine-millimeter gun out from under his seat and pointed it at Marianne in the passenger seat,

who reacted with surprisingly calm composure. Anita was sitting in the back seat, too terrified to move. Ed claimed that he himself was also terrified in that moment. This was the first time he had pushed himself to a point of no return. He had lived in a world of fantasy, and now he had pulled a very real, very dangerous gun on two vulnerable young women. Ed knew there was no going back.

Fantasies aside, if he wanted to avoid prison, he needed to kill these women. By repeatedly imagining the act of murder, Ed had conditioned himself to commit murder without caring about the possible long-term consequences of his actions. This actually has some similarity to the actions of repetitive drug users. In a paper by neuroscientist Antoine Bashara, Bashara proposes the theory that the drug user's brain becomes so used to making the choice to take drugs that at a certain point, the addict's brain loses the ability to resist drugs. The addict physically loses the ability to consider long-term consequences,

just as Ed's years of dreaming about murder made it that much more likely that he would actually go through with murder. Of course, Ed's victim, Marianne, didn't know about Ed's lifelong desire to destroy. When Ed pointed his gun at her, she immediately took on a tone of leadership and authority. Ed was shocked to see the change in her personality. He had assumed that she was a naive, trusting person. Marianne tried to de-escalate the situation. She cracked a joke and tried to speak sympathetically with Ed.

She told him that she was willing to talk through his problems with him. Initially, Ed said he felt a certain level of reverence toward Marianne. Her deep blue eyes made an impression. He said he was really quite struck by her personality and her looks. but the more she spoke, the more he recognized what she was trying to do. Marian's attempts to connect and reason with Ed were eerily reminiscent to the psychiatry sessions he had sat in on while at a Tascadero. Ed remembered watching serial rapists discussing their motives with psychiatrists,

and he remembered the stories of victims who had managed to persuade their assailant not to harm them. Ed said that half of him was impressed with Marianne's competence and coolness in the situation. and the other half was infuriated, that she was trying to resist him. Ed was sure that Marianne could have talked away out of the clutches of nine out of ten rapists, but Ed was not about to let Marianne control him. While Ed may have genuinely believed that most rapists could be talked down, it is important for us to note here that is not necessarily the case. In fact, according to a 1986 article written by Robert Hazelwood and Joseph Harpold,

supervisory special agents in the behavioral science unit at the FBI Academy, quote, different motives operate in different offenders, and therefore what might be successful in dissuading one type of assailant might, in fact, aggravate the situation with a different type of offender, end quote. In other words, you can never be sure what words are going to stop a rapist, if anything can stop them at all. Ed Kemper was certainly unwilling to be stopped. While different rapists react differently to attempt,

at discouraging them, a 1992 study titled Fighting Back Women's Resistance to Rape found that, quote, women who responded with physical aggression to the offender's violent physical attack were more likely to avoid rape than were women who did not resist such force, end quote. According to this study, responding to sexual violence with violence can only help your chances of escape. Of course, Ed Kemper wasn't just looking to rape these women. He was trying to kill them. Marianne made an admirable attempt to talk Ed down,

but she ultimately failed. Ed pointed his gun and commanded that one of the girls get into the trunk. While Ed himself knew that he was going to kill these women, he wanted them to believe that he was only going to rape them, right up until the moment of their deaths. He told them that he was going to drive them to his apartment where they would then go inside. He told them he wanted one in the trunk,

so he only had to keep his eyes, on the woman in his passenger seat during the drive. Marianne continued her attempt to convince Ed to let them go, and Ed then decided that Anita was the more easily controlled of the two. He pointed the gun at her and commanded that she walked to the trunk with him. Ed handcuffed Marianne's arm and told her to attach herself to the seatbelt. He stuck the gun in her face as she did so. Ed got out of the car and walked Anita to his trunk.

he grabbed a plastic bag and knife, then had Anita climb inside. He shut Anita in the trunk, then looked through the car window to notice that Marianne had not actually latched the handcuffs. Ed began to yell at Marianne for not listening to him. He waved the gun in her face, saying things were going to go badly for her and her friend if she didn't start following his orders. Marianne complied, now convinced that Ed was beyond the realm of reason. Ed reached out to grab Marianne.

arms and handcuffed them behind her back. As he reached, he accidentally brushed his hands against one of her breasts. Ed says that he actually became embarrassed, blushing and apologizing, saying, oops, I'm sorry. Even Ed was surprised by his own reaction. Even when he was kidnapping and murdering women, he didn't know how to actually interact with them. Ed decided he was going to be clever with his first kill. He brought out the plastic bag and pulled it over Marianne's head. He forced her face down against the car seat. Marianne still didn't realize Ed was going to kill her. She protested, telling Ed that she couldn't breathe with the bag on her head.

Once again, Ed felt it necessary to hide his real intentions. He told Marianne that the bag was meant to muffle her voice and keep people from hearing her if she screamed. He slid the bag over her head and got excited. He pulled out a cloth rope from a bathrobe to tie around Marianne's neck and strangle her. He tightened his grasp on the rope, but pulled too tight. The rope snapped. Ed had failed at strangling Marianne with the rope, but he hoped the bag was doing its job. He turned Marianne's head only to find that she had chewed a hole in the bag, allowing her to breathe.

As forcefully as she could, Marianne told Ed that she'd been suffocating. She told him if he didn't take the bag off her head, she would die. Ed was enraged by her. Ed was enraged by her. her resistance, as well as by his own incompetence. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a switch blade. He stabbed her repeatedly before slitting her throat. Somewhat dazed by the experience, Ed knew he still had to kill the other girl. He walked to the trunk and popped it open, trying his best to keep his bloody hands concealed. Cowering, Anita asked Ed what had happened with Marianne. Ed told Anita, well, she was getting smart with me. He lowered his hands, and Anita panicked at the sight of the blood. Ed tried to reassure her, saying that he had only

punched Marianne, giving her a bloody nose. Even after killing a woman, Ed still couldn't bear to have Anita know he was a killer. He told Anita that she should get out of the trunk to help her friend. As Anita climbed out of the trunk, Ed grabbed a very large hunting knife called the original buffalo skinner and began stabbing Anita. Ed said that she fought valiantly. Ed said that she fought valiantly. but she never really stood a chance against the six-foot-nine-inch giant with a massive knife. Once Anita was dead, Ed hid both bodies in his car. Ed got in the car and drove away, blood still on his hands. After driving by several people who gave him odd looks,

Ed managed to get the girls' bodies back to his apartment. Ed proceeded to defile the bodies. He grabbed his Polaroid camera and took pornographic photos of their corpses. What he did next was unthinkable. He decapitated them and proceeded to use their severed necks for sex. Ed was fixated with the idea of a woman's head without a body. To him, controlling a head without the body meant he had full control of the woman herself. In following interviews, he says he's not sure where that particular fantasy started,

but that a memory of his dad cutting off the head of a pet chicken might have been an early contributor. Once Ed was finished with the corpses, he butchered their bodies. This way it would be harder for police to identify them. Ed then put each of their body parts into separate plastic bags and scattered them across the backroads of the Loma Prieta Mountain. Ed later said that the memory of Mary Ann and her blue eyes haunted him. She was the only person he claimed to ever feel any remorse for killing. He knew that she was a perpetual reminder that if he had chosen a different path,

a moral path. Perhaps he could have met some nice young lady and had his own children with deep blue eyes. He even went so far as to look at Marianne's driver's license to find her home address, then drove past her house. He imagined the life he could have led if he'd been born to different parents,

in a different town with different classmates. His life could have been so much better if he'd met her sooner. But Fred, it was too late. He already killed Marianne. the only thing that could replace her memory were new victims. We'll meet Ed Kemper's next victim in just a few moments. This is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfume

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additional pieces of either woman. Unfortunately, police had no leads as to who had killed them. Ed Kemper was simply too good at covering his tracks. Ed remained free to kill. For about four months, he was able to hold back his murder surges. However, still unemployed, as his resources dwindled and he came closer and closer to moving back in with his mother, Ed fantasized about killing again.

He soon got his chance. Just after dark, on September 14, 1972, 22, 23-year-old Ed Kemper spotted a young girl hitchhiking at a bus station. He stopped the car and asked her name. The girl was 15-year-old Aiko Koo. She had missed the bus to her dance practice and had no other way to get there. Iko got into Ed's car, and Ed drove down the road, making small talk to set her at ease. Iko didn't suspect that anything was wrong with Ed, until he pulled into the entrance of a dance. dark and deserted forest. He then pulled a gun out from under his seat. Ed had been thinking about

his last kills and what had gone wrong. He felt that he had lost control of the situation near the end, and this time he wanted his victim to trust him until the very last breath she took. After Ico's initial panic, Ed assured her she wasn't in any danger. He told her that he was horribly depressed and that he had planned to kidnap her, kill her, and then kill himself. However, he said that after talking with Ico, he had decided to spare her life. Now he just wanted someone to talk to during his last hours on Earth. Ico was naturally suspicious, but Ed's charm slowly brought down her defenses. After Ico's initial panic, she calmed down, and the two talked about Ed's fictional depression for a short time.

Confident that Ico wouldn't run anywhere, Ed got out of the car to get tape from his trunk. Ico sat calmly in the passenger seat, waiting for Ed to drive her home. Ed closed the trunk and returned to the driver's side door, only to find that he had accidentally locked himself out. It was Ed's turn to panic. He had accidentally saved his victim from himself, as Ico could have started the car and driven away at any moment. He knocked on the window, hoping that he had successfully convinced Ico that he wasn't a real threat. Ico realized Ed was locked out. He was locked out. He was knocked.

was her kidnapper, but she believed that she had reached his troubled soul. She unlocked the car door, allowing Ed back into the car. This was a testament to how manipulative Ed could be. Once Iko unlocked that car door, Ed attacked her and suffocated her until she fell unconscious. He raped Iko, then strangled her. Ed loaded Iko's body into his trunk and admired her corpse, as he put it, like a fisherman. admiring his catch. Ed took Iko's corpse back to his apartment,

where he dismembered her and had sex with her body. Much like his two prior victims, he scattered Iko's body across several deserted areas. Only a small number of her bones were ever found. On November 29, 1972, one month after killing Iko, Ed met with his court-ordered psychiatrist, according to his parole requirements.

After a lengthy discussion, the psychiatrist deemed Ed officially cured, saying, quote, if I were to see this patient without having any history available or getting any history from him, I would think that we're dealing with a very well-adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence, and who was free of any psychiatric illnesses, end quote. At the psychiatrist urging, Ed Kemper's juvenile criminal record was expunged.

The state believed Ed Kemper would never kill again. but he was already dreaming of his next opportunity to murder. Sometime in December, 1972, when Ed was 24, financial pressure forced Ed to move back into his mother's home. He purchased a 22-caliber pistol and went patrolling for his next victim. On January 7, 1973, Ed drove around the campus of Cabrillo College, a community college local to the area. He spotted a hitchhiker and offered her a ride.

The hitchhiker's name was Cindy Shawl. She was 18 years old, petite and pretty, exactly Ed Kemper's type. He followed his usual routine, driving his victim in circles while luring her into a false sense of security with charming conversation. He drove Cindy to a secluded area, pulled his 22-caliber pistol out from under his seat, and shot Cindy in the head. Cindy died instantly, but Ed wasn't done with her. He stuffed her body in his trunk, then drove home.

When his mother fell asleep, he brought Cindy's body into the house and hid her in his closet. He waited for his mother to leave for work the next day before he retrieved Cindy's body. Ed had sex with Cindy's corpse, then decapitated and dismembered her. He disposed of Cindy's body parts in the Pacific Ocean, just along the coast, but he kept her head over the next several days. Ed had sex with Cindy's head several times. When he was done with it, he played his own version of a sick joke. He buried Cindy's head in his backyard with her face looking up towards his mother's bedroom.

This made him laugh because he knew that his mother always wanted people to look up to her. Even after killing six completely unrelated people, his mother was still the true target of his anger. The police retrieved most of Cindy's body from the ocean in less, than 24 hours. They managed to piece her back together, and by analyzing her corpse, finally decided that a pattern was emerging. Female hitchhikers were being dismembered. Their body parts scattered to the wind. The police finally realized a serial killer was roaming the streets. Unfortunately, they had absolutely no leads to pursue. Ed Kemper had eliminated all evidence connecting him to the crimes. The unidentified serial killer was given the nicknames the Co-Ed Killer and The Co-Ed Butcher,

because almost all of his victims were college students. Ed watched the news as it spread, and colleges warned their students to stop hitchhiking. However, many of them didn't listen. For the next few months, Ed continued to pick up hitchhikers, waiting for his opportunity to strike again. He remembered several of the women he picked up talking to him about the serial killer. asking him who he thought the killer was. Ed said that any time a woman brought up the serial killings, they got a free ride.

He didn't explain why he would let these women go. He only said that he couldn't touch that with a 10-foot pole. It's possible that Ed was dealing with some level of subconscious shame about his behavior. According to a study published in the Journal of Treatment and Prevention, titled The Roles of Shame and Guilt in Hypersexual Behavior, shame and guilt, quote, have contrasting complementary relationships related to the maintenance of hypersexual behavior and the motivation to change unwanted practices, end quote. Essentially, when another person brought up Ed's actions, he felt some level of shame that prevented him from acting out his darkest impulses. This would also explain why during his actual murders, he couldn't stand it when his victims suspected he was trying to kill them before he actually did.

Of course, whatever a shame Ed may have felt, it didn't stop him from killing completely. And the Bay Area grew ever more fearful of the co-ed killer. The University of California Santa Cruz advised its students to only hitchhike in cars that possessed official university parking stickers. Unfortunately, Clarnel worked at UCSC, and she had purchased Ed a parking sticker in case she ever needed to use his car to go to work. On February 5, 1973, Ed and Clarnel got into a particularly loud and ugly argument. Ed was furious, and he decided to vent his anger towards his mother by killing once again.

Ed drove to the U.S.C. campus where he picked up two more hitchhikers, 23-year-old Rosalind Thorpe and 20-year-old Allison Liu. They were both college students at the university, and Ed's parking sticker effectively tricked them into thinking he was a safe ride. Ed was so bloodthirsty and so angry at his mother that he simply couldn't wait to kill these two women. Without even stopping the car, he pulled out his 22-caliber pistol, shot Rosalind in the head at point-blank range, then opened fire on Allison in the back seat. Rosalind died immediately, and Allison was mortally wounded. Ed pulled the car over, shot Allison once more, then hid the women's body. And

in his trunk. Ed felt both invisible and invincible. He decided to flaunt his killing prowess by driving to his mother's home, opening the trunk, and decapitating the corpses right on the street. He said if his mother or his neighbors had looked out the window, he would have been caught right then and there. Unfortunately, nobody noticed. Instead of being caught, Ed simply shut the trunk and left the bodies until morning. When his mother left for work, he brought in Alice's body and Rosalind's head. He removed the bullets from both, had sex with each, and dismembered them for disposal. He discarded the bullets so they couldn't be traced to his gun, and he scattered their body parts along the countryside near Santa Cruz.

One week later, several of the body parts were found, but once again, there was no evidence linking Ed Kemper to the crime. The news was filled with speculation about the crime. co-ed killer, and the area became all the more fearful because of it. Ed enjoyed the fact that the police were nowhere near capturing him, which made him feel powerful and manly. While Ed was boosting his ego by killing innocence, another serial killer named Herbert Mullen was also active in the Santa Cruz area. Herbert Mullen was an actual schizophrenic who killed 13 people at the behest of voices that he was hearing in his head. The combined killings of Ed and Herbert are

earned Santa Cruz the macabre title, Murder Capital of the World. However, Ed Kemper's reign of terror was nearing its end. Through March and April 1973, Ed slowly realized that he had gotten enough practice killing that he could finally kill his real target.

52-year-old Clarnel Strandberg, his own mother. Ed told the story of what cemented his resolve to kill her in an interview. Kemper said, quote, I knew a week before she died I was going to kill her. And she went out to a party, she got sauced, came home, went to sleep. I was woken up by that.

I came out. I walked up to her bed. She's laying there reading a paperback, as many thousands of nights before. And she said, oh, I suppose you're going to want to sit up all night and talk now. And I looked at her and I said no. I said good night. And I knew I was going to kill her. End quote.

On April 20th, 1973, 24-year-old Ed grabbed a claw hammer and a knife. He waited until his mother fell asleep. Then he went back into her room, slit her throat, and bludgeoned her to death. After years of fantasizing about killing his mother, simply taking her life was not enough to satisfy Ed's rage. He proceeded to commit several more depraved acts that all symbolized some aspect of his anger towards her. Ed said that he did this to humiliate his mother

and shame her memory as much as he could and show his mother exactly how much he hated her. Lastly, he destroyed her vocal cords. Ed said this was his final attempt to truly shut her up. He had listened to her nagging for his entire life, so he tried to destroy her very ability to speak. Ed hid her remains in the closet. Ed did not want to go to prison, and he knew people would come looking for his mother.

He decided he would skip town, perhaps even flee the country, but he needed to give himself as much time to flee as possible. He came up with what he thought was a clever plan to avoid suspicion. Ed knew that if his mother failed to come into work, people would immediately look for her. But if both his mother and her best friend failed to show up to their respective jobs, their employers would simply assume that the two had gone, on a weekend trip together. Clarnel and her best friend,

59-year-old Sarah Hallett, had been known to go on impromptu vacations every once in a while. It would be strange for them to be absent from work, but not unprecedented. Of course, in order for Ed's plan to succeed, Sarah Hallett would have to go missing along with his mother. Ed called Sarah and asked if she wanted to help him

throw a surprise party for his mother. It would be a simple night. Just him, Sarah, and his mother watching a movie together. Sarah took every chance she could to hang out with Clarnel, and she thought surprising Clarnel with a movie was a wonderful idea. Of course, the real surprise wasn't for Clarnel at all. When Sarah arrived at Ed's home, he invited her in, then lulled her into a false sense of security. Then he strangled her.

Ed decapitated Sarah's corpse and spent the night with her body. He hid Clarnel and Sarah's bodies in a closet and cleaned the apartment. Ed took all the money available to him and the keys to Sarah's car. He drove as fast as he could out of town, heading east across the United States. Over the next three days, Ed grew paranoid that the police were on his trail. He avoided major highways, sticking to back roads to lessen his chance of being spotted. He checked newspapers at every gas station he stopped at, looking for news about his mother's murder. No news had come out. Nobody had found your body.

Ed's mind began to spiral into chaos. At any moment her body could be found, and at any moment, he could become one of the most wanted people in America, constantly on the run. Given that he was six feet nine inches tall, he stood out anywhere he went. His paranoia became overwhelming,

and he decided to put an end to all the running before the chase even began. When Ed reached Pueblo, Colorado, he pulled up to a payphone and called the Santa Cruz Police Department. He told the officer who answered that he had killed his mother and that they could find her corpse in the closet. The officer who picked up the phone recognized Ed's voice.

The two had been drinking buddies at the jury room bar. When Ed confessed, the officer thought Ed was joking and hung up the phone. Ed called again and asked to speak with a different officer. He confessed once more. The police department still didn't believe, that Ed was telling the truth, but this time an officer stayed on the phone while other officers searched Clarnel's house. The police were shocked at the sight of Clarnels and Sarah's dismembered corpses. Ed told them he was in Pueblo, and a Santa Cruz police officer stayed on the phone with

Ed while Ed waited patiently to be arrested. When the Pueblo Police Department arrived, Ed went with them willingly. During the car ride to the police station, he confessed to the other six murders that had earned him the nickname, the Coed Killer. The police were stunned. They simply couldn't understand why such a heinous man would turn himself in. Ed told them that he had to stop himself. He said, quote, the original purpose was gone. It wasn't serving any physical or real or emotional purpose.

It was just a pure waste of time. Emotionally, I couldn't handle it much longer. Toward the end there, I started feeling the folly of the whole damn thing. and at the point of near exhaustion, near collapse, I just said to hell with it and called it all off." End quote. Ed's confession likely held some social value as well. A study published in the Journal of Personality titled Public Confession and Forgiveness,

tested how people reacted to different scenarios while playing games. In one experiment, one test subject was told to cheat and then later confessed to cheating. That person's confession was, quote, found to have strong beneficial effects, particularly when given without a prior accusation, and in ambiguous causal situations, end quote. If a person confessed to cheating,

people were more willing to continue playing with the self-confessed cheater. The confession also increased other players' positive perceptions of the cheater's character and personality. Ed Kemper's crimes could hardly be considered a game, but he confessed before anybody even knew a crime had been committed. People tend to look more fondly on those who confess, even in the case of serial murderers. It explains why the cops initially thought he was joking.

Of course, when the truth was revealed, the Pueblo Police Department sent out the word, the co-ed killer had finally been caught. Ed's story swept the nation, and when Ed finally went to trial, everybody tuned in to hear the verdict. During the court proceedings, Ed got a hold of some razor blades and attempted to puncture an artery in his wrist. He was caught and saved from suicide. Then, only a few days later, Ed attempted the same method of suicide again. His jail guards managed to find him before he bled out, and Ed was kept alive. When reporters asked why Ed had attempted suicide, he claimed to be suffering from emotional distress after killing his mother.

Ed later said his suicide attempts were the result of antipsychotics the court had prescribed him. On November 8, 1973, Ed Kemper was convicted of eight counts of first-degree murder. He was given multiple sentences of life in prison. Instead of life in prison, Ed insisted that he'd be given the death penalty. However, California had put a moratorium on the death penalty, and Ed was kept alive once more. Ed returned to Atascadero, and Ed's suicidal urges gradually went away. when it became clear to Ed that he was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars, he settled into his role as a prisoner and began to build as much of a life for himself as he could.

Ed looked for any opportunity to keep himself busy. One of his favorite prison activities was volunteering for a charity called The Blind Project, where Ed and other prisoners recorded books on tape for the blind. Ed became a prolific reader, narrating several hundred books on tape over the course of of several decades. Some of the titles he narrated included E.B. Whites, the trumpet of the swan,

God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert, and a novelization of the original Star Wars trilogy. Ed also narrated an audiobook version of Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews. This book must have been a personal favorite of Ed's due to its themes of incest and child abuse from a matriarchal figure. Ed performed well at any task the prison gave him.

He took pride at his work, and his reputation as a talkative, self-aware model prisoner spread. He soon drew the attention of two men named Robert Ressler and John E. Douglas. John and Robert were special agents in the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit. John E. Douglas became one of the first FBI agents to develop the idea of psychological profiling for criminals. He contacted Ed in the late 1970s, and the trio began a series of long-form interviews. Most of what we know about Ed Kemper came from those. interviews. They were personal and extremely in-depth. Ed was an open book, and it appeared to John

and Robert that he didn't just want to talk about his past. He needed to. After thorough fact-checking, John and Robert were also surprised that most of what Ed told them about his life was truthful. They had interviewed other serial killers before, and most of the killers they had spoken with had a difficult time describing their pasts, or telling the truth at all. John and Robert, also took notice of Ed's genius IQ. Ed's intelligence seemed to have led to Ed's exceptional level of introspection. To John and Robert, Ed's seemed to have cracked most of his own psychological code. Ed's self-described motives for murder were unusually insightful and exceptionally helpful.

When John and Robert ran into killers who didn't possess the intellect necessary to understand themselves, John and Robert were able to use Ed's psychological profile to dive deeper into the killers who didn't possess the intellect necessary to understand themselves, John and Robert were able to use Ed's psychological profile to dive deeper into what made them tick. Ed's mind and open discourse became sort of a rosetta stone for the psychology of serial killing, and John and Robert put it to great use. These interviews with Ed Kemper were so influential in the FBI's later methods of criminal profiling that the interviews became immortalized as part of pop culture. The most recent example of being Netflix's 2017 TV show titled Mind Hunter, based on John's book by the same name, and Robert's book, Whoever Fights Monsters. Today, Ed Kemper is still alive and imprisoned in a Tascadero. The 70-year-old serial

killer says he's happy with his life behind bars. He has waived his right to a parole hearing every year since 1985, convinced nobody would let him out of prison anyway. And nor should they, While Ed has managed to build a reputation as one of the friendliest prisoners in a Tascadero, he has said on multiple occasions that if he were ever released, he would likely go right back to raping, killing, and dismembering women. The co-ed killer may be behind bars, but he will always be a terrifying reminder of what happens when our deepest daydreams turn into waking nightmares.

Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. find more episodes of serial killers, as well as all of Parcass's other podcasts on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, CastBox, tune-in, or your favorite podcast directory. Several of you have asked how to help the show, and if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler, is a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Pardcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Michael Langsner,

with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Carly Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Giles Hoveseth and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer of avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music,

and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush. and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something.

I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.