Serial Killer of the Month: Edmund Kemper

When he was released from Atascadero maximum security mental hospital in 1969 in California, there were orders that Edmund Kemper not be returned to the care of his mother. Having spent five years in the facility, Kemper graduated from being the youngest inmate, to being one of the smartest and tallest — 6 feet 9 inches and 280 pounds — he also resumed the quest to clear his murderous mind of its final object. Having killed his grandmother and grandfather when he was 14 – his mother remained alive.

The black center at the personality of Kemper revealed itself early, following his parent’s divorce — which he blamed exclusively on his mother and her “castrating” treatment of his father when he returned from World War II. He would play a condemned man and writhe in pain as his sister released imaginary cyanide gas pellets into the death chamber. He would steal her dolls and cut off their heads and hands. He soon started doing this with the house’s pets and local animals. When it was revealed that he was attracted to one of his teachers, his sister chided him, saying “You’re gonna kiss your teacher.” Kemper soberly replied, “If I kiss her, I have to kill her first.”

When his mother finally couldn’t deal with his odd behavior keeping her from finding a man to sleep with, Edmund was sent to live with his grandmother. Before long, her chiding drove him bonkers. One day, while heading out to shoot birds with a .22, she made an angry warning about killing the birds as he left the house. He shot her. Then stabbed and hid the body. He considered necrophilia, but didn’t have time, when he heard his grandfather returning. He shot him as he opened the trunk.

When he called his mother to ask what he should do, she told him to call the police. He was found insane and placed in Atascadero indefinitely. Kemper soon learned all the answers to the mental health tests, as he was a psychiatrist’s assistant in the hospital. In five years he walked and talked like a sane and healed man – a sane and healed sadistic murdering motherfucker (or soon would be). Kemper spent some time at a halfway house, then ended up at his mother’s again. He practiced driving, and then practiced picking up hitchhikers. He would drive them in wrong directions, and make other mistakes, just to watch their reactions. When he had learned how to do what he wanted while driving hikers around without arousing suspicion, then he was ready.

With a body-sized bag, handcuffs, a knife and a bat, some tarp, some cord and a .9mm Browning handgun, he went looking. He picked up a pair of hitchhikers from Fresno State College: two girls, Anita Luchessa and Mary Ann Pesce, both 18. It was 1972, and the two trusting girls ended up in an abandoned orchard with Kemper. When they asked what he wanted he said, “You know what I want.” Luchessa sagged, but Pesce started calmly talking with Kemper about his problems. He acted like he would return them to their apartment, but Luchessa would have to get in the trunk. Then with Pesce handcuffed to the seatbelt latch, he put Luchessa in the trunk. Pesce then was placed with the handcuffs behind her back, and a bag was tightened over her head. He said he would put a hole in it. But he tied it across her neck with a cloth instead. Then she started screaming but with control, demanding to be let go. So he took out a knife and stabbed her several times in the back, until bubbles started to come out in the blood. The bag had worked its way loose from her head with her convulsions. Finally he cut her throat. “There was absolutely no contact with improper areas,” Kemper later said.

Then he opened the trunk, and stabbed Luchessa in the side, and then in the eye, trying to go through the socket. Then he stuck his fingers in her mouth to silence her, and watched while she slowly died.

As all the rest of his hitchhiking victims would be treated, Kemper took the two bodies home and cut their heads and hands off.

Kemper killed four more young hitchhikers in roughly the same way, but left their headless and handless bodies scattered around streetsides and backyards. The heads and hands he would keep near him, either in his room, or buried in the lawn behind his mother’s house.

He took Polaroids of his victims in various states of dismemberment, and had sex with the headless bodies. Some of the victim’s flesh was often eaten and hair and personal effects kept.

When the murders started showing up in Kemper’s neighborhood, and his presence was placed near some of the crimes, the cops came to his house, but he talked his way out of the situation. Time was running out. Kemper went that night to his mother’s house, and bashed her skull in, cut her head off and fucked her. Then to cover his tracks, he went to his mother’s best friend’s house, killed her, cut her head off and fucked her too. Then he left a note on her front door saying that the pair had gone on vacation. He also called his mother’s work to say that she was ill, and wouldn’t be in for a few days.

Within two days, Kemper broke, called the police and confessed to all the crimes. One officer later said, “He is the nicest, smartest monster I have ever met.” Kemper got life without parole.

Read more Serial Killer of the Month:
Serial Killer of the Month: Herbert Mullin
Serial Killer of the Month: Richard Chase

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