Hello!
Welcome back to another episode of Diagnosing a Killer.
I'm Kenna.
I'm Koala.
Are you excited?
Yes, I just feel like it's way later in the day because the time change and all that stuff, and I feel like we're rushing but we're not.
You know, it's that the time change really messes with your perception of time.
Yeah, it feels like it's time.
Ten o'clock already.
It really does.
But we have a fukinduzi for you all.
Yeah.
But we want to talk about it.
I'm excited.
You're so funny because like this whole week you've been like, oh my god, this case is such a doozy.
No.
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
I was trying not to tell me anything with also while giving me hints but like not.
She can't contain it.
Kenna can't contain it.
She's just like, she has to tell me but she can't.
Because I live everything internally out loud.
Yeah.
But also I think the reason I'm so excited about this one and the listeners already know because I clicked on the episode is that I think that you maybe wanted to do it or you were thinking about doing it.
I mean, I think it's on your list.
I hope it's not the same person I'm doing right now.
Oh, what if it's not the same person?
Oh no.
No.
But I think it's, I mean it's definitely a case that you know.
I'll just say that.
Okay.
But before we get into who it is, let's talk about a couple of other things.
Would you like to just give everyone our handles really quick and then I'll talk about the DMs and stuff that we've gotten?
Sure.
You can check us out at diagnosingatkiller.com.
There you will find links to merch and resources.
Check us out on any social media platform at diagnosingatkiller other than X which is atkillerdiagnosis.
Email us.
X, that's so funny.
Please email us.
Email us.
No, seriously, we want to hear from you guys.
Well, talk about the Instagram posts.
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
So we actually, first before that, I would like to talk about a DM that we got on Instagram recently and it was from a listener of ours.
Named Aubrey and she says, hello.
I love that you guys start your messages with that.
I love that.
That like makes my life.
My name is Aubrey and I just absolutely love y'all's podcast.
I love anything true crime and I loved how y'all do disorders like ADD which I have and it makes me happy that y'all care about it.
Y'all make my day every time I listen to y'all so keep up the good work and I love y'all so much.
Love you.
Bye.
Love you.
Bye.
Yeah, no, seriously.
I love that you guys make me happy to have the listeners that we do because they're really getting the concept of what we set out to do.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's exciting.
And then we did recently, I'm sure you guys all remember post a suggestion story asking you guys what you wanted to hear and we got a lot of great responses.
So we made sure to write those down as well as a couple of responses for our mental breakdown topic ideas.
So thank you guys for responding to those.
It's cases obviously that we haven't done yet but some that I don't even think we've heard of.
Right.
So I'm really interested to look into those.
And honestly, like we always use the mental breakdown as like a loophole of sorts or not always but sometimes.
So if there's a case on there that doesn't really fit our dynamic, we can always like pepper it into the mental breakdown.
I know there's so many people that I'm like, oh, that would be a really interesting case.
And then I look into it and I'm like, well, they haven't really been diagnosed with anything or they were found not guilty or we need to revisit some of those.
Exactly.
But it was really fun when we do like top five or like, you know, certain examples of certain outcomes of cases.
For sure.
Absolutely.
And just lastly, before we get into this case, we are talking about maybe doing a recap episode at the end of the year about all of the cases that we've covered and maybe any updates.
If you guys have any updates that you want to talk about or any personal stories about any of the people we've already discussed or even any mental breakdowns we've already discussed, let us know.
And we'll make sure to include that in the episode as well.
Yeah, we can definitely revisit those topics.
Okay.
What?
Are you ready?
I'm scared.
It's like a doozy and a half, honestly.
Oh, also people commented about the average length of the episode, like their ideal episode.
We got a lot of about an hour and an hour and a halfers.
Yay.
This episode is going to be longer than that.
But I think we're kind of on the right track because we kind of have every once in a while maybe like a 45 minute episode and then we have like an hour and a half episode and an hour and then we kind of like go back and forth.
So I feel like everyone's kind of getting what they think is their ideal length.
Yeah, sure.
I definitely have been one of those people that I'll listen to the really long episodes of something and then they have little 20 minute ones and I'm like, you know what, I've been just all of the long ones.
Yeah.
I'm going to go back and listen to the shorter ones.
I can do a 20 minute.
I can do a two hour.
Yeah.
Exactly.
So thank you guys for all of your feedback.
We're going to really try to be better about reaching out to you guys and getting your input because obviously you guys make this show possible.
So we really appreciate it.
Are you ready?
I already said are you ready earlier?
I'm just like my nerves are shot because I keep...
You're like, oh wait, yeah, I'm going to tell you who I am.
Or who I am.
I'm telling you.
I'm telling you what I'm doing.
This is me.
I'm kind of, I'm Quelle.
Yeah.
I know that, yeah, just tell me, David.
Okay.
So we're going to be talking about Ed Kimber, aka the coed killer.
I wanted to do this case.
So sorry.
We did.
We talked a long time ago about me doing this case.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, I'm very encouraged by the fact that it's long because...
No.
Oh yeah.
No, there's a lot of info.
And I really don't know a lot about him.
I just remember him from that Mine Hunter show.
Yes.
And that's where he got a lot of his recognizable, I don't know the word I'm thinking of.
Cameron Britton.
Yes.
He did so good at him because I went back and I looked at side by side videos with Cameron
Britton and Edmund Kimber.
And I was like, oh my God, it's uncanny.
Yes.
He's so good.
I will say that while this episode is extremely detailed, there's a lot more that you can look
at documentary wise.
Mine Hunter, like you said, interview wise that I didn't put in here just for the sake
of like not having a three hour episode.
But I mean, it's going to be very detailed nonetheless.
Okay.
I'm excited.
Content warning, this episode contains depictions of animal abuse, tile neglect, sexual assault,
murder including minors, negative ideations of specific groups of people, necrophilia,
extremely graphic defamation of a corpse, talk of cannibalism, and suicide.
If this episode is not for you, we encourage you to find another one of our episodes.
Remember, your mental health is extremely important to us and we love you.
Love you.
Bye.
So yeah, there's that.
There's that.
This is a doozy of a case for this non-patreon.
I'm just realizing that.
No, yeah.
And we definitely want to make sure that we're not just doing the really crazy extreme cases
for Patreon because as much as we love our Patreon members, we love all of our listeners.
And we want everyone to get like the graphic content.
And especially now that we're doing the content warning, it's like why shouldn't we, you know,
put all that in there.
Alright, so without further dudes, we're gonna get into this.
Further ado.
I know what it's actually.
Yeah, right.
It's not one of your, and this speaks.
Yes.
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18th, 1948 in Burbank, California to parents
Clarnel Elizabeth Strandberg Kemper and Edmund Emil Kemper II.
Clarnel.
Oh, and we'll hear that name a lot throughout this case.
In 1943, the Kemper's would welcome their first child, Susan Huey, to the world.
Huey.
And they would go on to have two more children, Ed in 1948 and Alan Lee in 1951.
Alan is A-L-L-Y-N, but she is his sister.
Oh, Alan.
Oh, okay.
His sister.
Okay.
Yes.
Like an Allison.
Like Allie.
Yeah.
Maybe it is Allie.
I don't know.
A-L-L-Y-N, right?
Yeah, I think Alan.
Yeah.
So, Edmund Emil Kemper II was a World War II veteran, so the father, and after leaving
the war, he worked testing nuclear weapons at the Pacific Proving Grounds.
When the couple moved to California, Edmund Jr. again the father would begin work as an
electrician.
Clarnel was known about often complaining about Edmund's electrician job, calling it
quote, menial, end quote.
Edmund Jr. would later say about his life that quote, suicide missions and wartime and
the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with Clarnel.
Oh, damn.
Well, she's all like, I think, medial.
You're just in like fishing.
Also, like, does she work or?
Oh, no.
Okay, well, then she can just shove it.
No, literally.
And like, she's the worst.
He would add that Clarnel had an effect on him that was quote, more than 396 days and
nights of fighting on the front did.
What?
So like, he was saying like living with her was worse than the war.
His wife was worse than the war.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
There is evidence and we'll talk about it that she was also very mentally ill.
Okay.
When Ed was born, so this is Edmund the third, he came in on a whopping 13 pounds.
I'm sorry, no wonder she was a little order.
That literally hurts me.
So 13 pounds.
Oh, God.
So it was no surprise that he was an entire head taller than his classmates by the time
he reached elementary school.
He was just a big boy.
Big kid.
I mean, he was six nine in adulthood.
Yeah, that's true.
Clarnel was by all accounts a physically and emotionally abusive alcoholic who made quite
the negative impact on Ed's life growing up.
She was known as locking Ed in the basement alone at night on several occasions as well
as a child.
What?
So most sources said that the thought like Clarnel's thought behind locking Ed in the
basement was that she thought that he was going to sexually assault his younger sister.
I couldn't tell if it was like because of something that had happened that maybe suggested
he might or it might have just been entirely entirely in her head.
Yeah, like a like a dalulu or some kind.
Yes.
It is thought that Clarnel possibly suffered from borderline personality disorder, but
this was never officially diagnosed.
Yeah.
On top of all of the abuse, Clarnel was noted also noted, excuse me, as refusing to coddle
Ed when he was throwing up, especially in times of distress, fearing that it would quote
turn him gay and quote.
So she couldn't be nurturing because she was afraid that he would be gay.
Yeah, like that's the worst thing in the world.
Was she like nurturing to the other kids though?
It didn't really say I kind of seem like she was cold all the way around, but like especially
the Ed, she's like, oh, if you're upset, like go away from me.
Like I'm not going to hug you.
We can also assume this is likely from Ed's perspective as well, right?
Yes.
It's going to be from his like understanding, right?
Yeah.
So having no emotional connectivity, Ed would turn to unusual behaviors growing up.
He would frequently be known to steal his older sister Susan's dolls, like her Barbie
dolls and remove their heads.
What?
At what age is this?
I mean, he was like, I mean, he's only under 10.
Yeah.
I mean, he was young.
Yeah.
Ed would comment on this behavior later in his life quote, I remember there was actually
a sexual thrill.
You hear that little pop and pull their heads off and hold them up by the hair, whipping
their heads off, their body's sitting there, that would get me off.
End quote.
So it probably wasn't five.
Maybe it was like 12 or something.
I mean, I wouldn't want to know.
I wouldn't know.
I feel like on set with alongside like sexual abuses earlier than someone who hasn't.
But again, we don't know if that was something that had been perpetrated against him.
And maybe that's why his mom was very like, he has been abused, was the likelihood of
him abusing one of his sisters.
Yeah.
I mean, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah.
Or maybe she knew about the Barbie doll thing, which is to be...
I don't know.
Ed was also noted as borrowing his dad's bayonet and going to his second grade teacher's home.
This was after he was obviously out of second grade, so like his past teacher was walking
down the street with a bayonet at six.
Here he would watch his teacher through the windows.
On one occasion when his sister Susan jokingly asked him why he didn't try to kiss his teacher
ever, Ed responded with quote, if I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first.
End quote.
Like as a kid.
Like he already knew though that like that was, it was hand in hand.
Yes.
Like she's like, I don't know if it was this complex at a young age, but I think that the
thought behind it maybe growing up was, I can't get that to happen to me.
To me unless someone is against their will.
Like it's not something that's going to come easily to me.
And it's probably another thing that his mom was constantly like feared that he was going
to turn gay.
She probably said that to him a lot, you know?
And maybe that was a complex.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I think so you're saying that because she kept saying that to him that he was like being
intimate with someone must be impossible for me.
Yeah, I feel like it's so out of reach.
Kind of.
Yeah.
I know that's an interesting question on my part.
As an adult, Ed would look back on his childhood and recall that some of his favorite games
to play as a kid would be what he called gas chamber and electric chair.
Oh, cute.
Yeah.
He would ask one of his sisters to flip an imaginary switch and when they did, Ed would
either fall on the floor and act as if he was like suffocating from the gas or being
electrocuted.
I bet the neighborhood kids loved to play that game.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, it was the hottest new game.
So, so popular.
Yeah, it is.
Next to tag.
It was the most popular game.
Yeah, exactly.
Ed was known as being quite the troublemaker while in grade school exhibiting anti-social
behaviors and cruelty to animals.
At the age of 10, Ed had buried one of their pet cats alive and then dug it up again, proceeded
to decapitate it and then mounted its head on a spike.
Yeah.
Whoa.
Ed would later admit that around this time, he would find immense pleasure in lying to
his parents and family members about being responsible for the death of their family cat.
So he, he enjoyed lying saying that he didn't?
Yeah, like he liked the secrecy of like getting away with like this and no one knew, like
no one was the wiser.
At the age of 13, Ed had begun to notice another one of the family cats was taking a liking
to his sister, Alan.
In response to this, Ed would kill this cat as well.
He would actually keep pieces of this cat in his closet for a while until his mother
would come across them.
Nothing happened after that.
Nothing.
Yeah, she was just like, oh, boys will be boys.
Yeah, that's weird.
Yeah.
At least he's not gay.
Oh, God.
That is terrible.
That is seriously terrible.
But you know, she's both in the back.
I mean, that's true.
Yeah.
It was not clear at what point Ed began feeling that he wanted to harm people, but he was
noted as saying in a later interview about when seeing a pretty girl, quote, one side
of me says, I'd like to talk to her, date her.
The other side says, I wonder how her head would look on a stick, end quote.
That's wild.
Like how is that not?
I don't know.
That's just, how do you have two halves of yourself say that?
I just don't.
It doesn't make sense.
It's like, no, here's the thing.
He feels that second way all the time, but his moral compass supposedly is trying to
tell him otherwise.
Yeah, that makes sense.
It's just like, oh, should I take this route home or this route home?
Well, either way, you're going to get home, right?
Yeah.
Well, I will learn that he knows a lot about psychology as well.
Yeah.
So he probably studied himself a lot.
Of course.
So this is extremely interesting, and I'm really excited to bring this up because this
is the first time ever that I have come across an extremely detailed analysis of an interview
of the person that we're talking about.
So while doing my research, I came across an article in which criminal psychologist,
her name is Adrienne Arno, was analyzing an interview with Ed that was given, of course,
later in life.
This article is written by one Kelly Christ, and I'll link the website, of course, which
I found the information in the show notes, but I'm going to include every quote that
was on the website in this episode because I think it's really important, especially
because we're going the psychology angle.
Yeah, and it's his own words.
Well, it's not quotes from him, it's quotes from Adrienne's analysis of the interview.
But I'll kind of say what Ed was saying in the interview because I didn't watch the interview,
I just read the interpretation of it.
So I'll kind of say what he was saying and then what Adrienne's response was.
So we're going to get into the beginning of this interview.
Ed explains why he hated his mother growing up, but he also states that he tried to
love her.
Okay.
Again, these are really like very vague kind of comments, but you'll understand more when
Adrienne talks.
So, Adrienne's analysis of this part is as follows.
Quote, tragically, we see this a lot in my line of work.
A broken and or abusive relationship with the mother creates an environment ripe to grow
a serial killer.
Ed Kimper's mother hated men.
She bred this hate into her children.
So Ed, being male gendered, grew up in a world paradigm where he believed he was bad and
never had any intervention to challenge his mother's warped worldview.
Kimper was a ticking time bomb probably by the age of seven or eight, which is the age
when we form the foundation of our personalities.
It's in our primitive nature to want the love and acceptance of our mothers, both biological
and neurologically speaking, but the more Ed tries to win her love, the more he fails.
The ultimate irony being that in his own actions to punish his toxic mother and rebel against
her beliefs about men, he only proved her right.
She force-fed child Ed and paradigm men are terrible and in his efforts to break free
of her prediction, he fully becomes the monster she always said he was.
It's like a self-fulfilling prophecy or something.
No, yeah, absolutely.
But she's so right.
He's trying so hard to please her and she's shoving him off and then she's saying, oh,
all men are like, ugh, you know?
And she's like, well, you're being like that, you know?
And then creating a monster, I mean, essentially.
They're both proving their points, I guess, right?
Like her point is being able to be proven by his behavior and his point, eventually,
you know, I'm sure we'll see that it comes out.
His is that all women are disgusted by him.
Of course.
And he's always gonna, he feels like the only way he can obtain it is to take it.
Of course.
Huh.
Without knowing the exact age, all sources point to two near-death experiences that Ed
had as a child, both at the hands of his older sister, by the way.
So the first one, his older sister Susan pushed him in front of a train.
And the second one, in which the same sister Susan pushed him into the deep end of a swimming
pool where he almost drowned.
Oh my gosh.
So she's probably learning the behavior from the mother.
Yeah.
And now he's feeling like all women hate me.
Especially older or, well, I guess, people, yeah.
And I don't know what's going on with Susan.
I didn't really see much more information on those two experiences.
Yeah.
Both at the hands of her.
Yeah.
Like I said, I'm sure she's just trying to emulate her mother.
And she doesn't have an older male figure to look up to like the younger sister does
with Ed.
Right.
Yeah.
Ed was noted in a later interview about his, this time in his life, quote, 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 end quote.
Hmm.
And I'm trying to like essentially just give him advice or just check in on him.
Yeah.
But not asking him what was actually going on in his head.
Yeah.
It's just like a guidance.
It's not necessarily like therapy.
Yeah.
While the relationship he had with his mother was nothing short of tumultuous, Ed was noted
as having a really good relationship with his father.
When his parents separated in 1957 and eventually divorced in 1961, Ed was notably devastated.
During the separation, Ed was sent to live with his mother and Helena Montana against
his wishes.
Among the abuse he was suffering, Clarnel would frequently mock Ed for his size as he
stood six feet four inches tall or 1.93 meters for our non-American listeners by the age
of 15.
Oh my gosh.
That's tall.
That's very tall.
15.
We have tall cousins though.
I pretty sure the boys were about that tall.
Yeah.
15.
That's true.
We were playing basketball and football.
Yeah.
It's really interesting that she would hate on him so much, but when the opportunity arose
for him to stay with his dad, she didn't allow that.
Well, it might have been the dad too, just being like, I don't want this life or whatever
because he didn't want anything to do with her.
Right?
So he's like, you just take the kids.
Yeah.
But also, it's like, I feel like this is kind of, I want to say, like, meticulous, like
on the mom's part, because I feel like she's like, okay, he's like much bigger than me.
I need to ridicule him so that he still feels smaller even though physically he is bigger.
That's true.
And like, eventually one day, you know, that's, I feel like that might be a scary moment
for a lot of parents.
You know, when your kid starts getting bigger and you're like, oh my God, they're like,
like, they're bigger than me.
They're like a quarter of my age and they're like huge.
Yeah.
You know, they could beat me up at any moment.
Yeah, I find, you know, also to the point of the dad not taking the kids or at least
Ed, you know, this is also in the 1950s where I think a lot of women were expected to raise
the children.
Yeah, absolutely.
So yeah, when you divorce the dude, the money and the man are gone, right?
And then you're left with the kids to fend for yourself.
At one point, Ed was eavesdropping on a phone conversation with his mother and father, seemingly
wanting to know what his dad was doing, so he's like, oh, we're on the whole of dad.
His mom didn't know he was listening.
When he overheard his mother refer to him as quote, a real weirdo and quote.
He's a real weirdo.
Okay.
In a later interview, regardless of his want to please his mother as a child, Ed would
refer to her as a quote, sick, angry woman and quote, suggesting that she was mentally
ill.
Yeah.
At the age of 14, Ed would take it upon himself to leave the home in search of his father.
When he reconnected with his dad and van noise, I think, say, California, he was shocked to
find that his dad had remarried and he now had a stepson.
Ed would continue to live with his dad and the family for a short while until he was
eventually sent to live with his paternal grandparents, Edmund Sr. and Mod Kemper on
the foothills of Sierra Nevada, about two miles west of North Fork, California.
Okay.
So his dad's parents, obviously.
Ed would describe his time with his grandparents negatively, stating that his grandfather
was quote, senile and quote, and his grandmother quote, was constantly emasculating me and
my grandfather and quote.
So again, another strong woman or perceived to be a strong woman, strong headed woman,
I guess.
Yeah.
He would state that his grandmother quote, thought she had more balls than any man and
was constantly emasculating me and my grandfather to prove it and quote.
Oh my gosh.
Like all of the, yeah, right, all the women in his life that are older than him are like
this like gun hoe like women, you know, kind of thing.
Yeah, with an iron fist.
Ed would also later state about his grandmother as well quote, I couldn't please her.
It was like being in jail.
I became a walking time mom and I finally blew and quote.
Ed would explain that before he was sent to live with his grandparents, he had taken an
extreme liking and learning about firearms.
He had even obtained a rifle while living with them that his grandfather would purchase
for him with the idea of hunting.
However, his grandmother did not like the fact that Ed was using the rifle to shoot
birds and he would, she would quickly confiscate the weapon from him.
It's like the only sense of control he actually feels like he has.
On August 27th, 1964, a 15 year old Ed was sitting at the kitchen table with his grandmother
when the two began arguing.
Extremely irritated from the contents of the disagreement, Ed got up from the table and
stormed off.
Unbeknownst to his grandmother, Ed had gone to retrieve the rifle that had since been
taken away from him.
Ed would re-enter the kitchen, coming up to his grandmother from behind and first shoot
her in the back of the head.
Ed would then fire two more shots into his grandmother's back.
According to Ed, his grandmother's final words were quote, oh you'd better not be shooting
the birds again, end quote.
Now the comment of him shooting her in the back of the head is speculation on my part
since he shot her in the back following this.
But the comment may not make sense, like how would she know he has a gun?
Well it's literally like, I'm sorry but like her brain was dying.
Well I think that he may have like cocked the gun or something that indicated he was
holding it.
Oh you're gonna shoot birds again?
And she heard that exactly and that's probably how she knew he had the gun.
Some accounts mention that Maude was also inflicted with several stab wounds as well
as the bullet wounds but this has never been confirmed.
So where's Edmund Sr. at the grandfather?
He was out grocery shopping at the time.
Oh it was just the two of them?
Yes.
After killing his grandmother, Ed's grandfather would come home from the grocery store.
Ed would meet his grandfather outside in the driveway with the gun and fatally shoot him
as well next to his car.
He didn't do anything wrong though.
After killing both of his grandparents, Ed found himself not knowing where to turn or
what to do.
He would actually phone his mother and tell her of what he just did.
What?
Clarnel would advise Ed to call the police to which he did and he would await their arrival
to take him into custody at the house.
I actually think he sat on the front porch.
End of the story?
Yeah right and he was gone forever.
It is interesting though that he would first phone his mom.
It's like either he wanted that shock factor of like look what you made me do or he's still
in his mind like seeking her approval.
Yeah.
Like yeah I think that it would be like he's still wanting that nurture right from her
but maybe it is also like an omen.
You know like maybe this is like look this could have been you.
I did this because of you.
Well the thing is too it's not even her parent.
This is dad's parents and he didn't call his dad first which is interesting.
Police would show up at the home and arrest Ed who stated to their question of why that
he quote just wanted to see what it felt like to kill grandma and quote.
Oh yeah that good old nostalgic feeling.
We all know that feeling.
As far as his grandfather's death Ed stated that he killed his grandfather so that he
didn't have to walk into the home and see his wife dead and also that he knew he would
be angry with him for killing her.
Yeah.
So he's like you know what I'm just gonna put him out of his misery so to speak.
So maybe yeah maybe it's just not the beef with like because it's his dad's parents because
it's it's more of the beef with the woman.
Yeah.
And maybe that's why he also didn't call his dad and be like I shot your mom.
Yeah.
And he's like he loved his dad and wanted to protect his dad so he doesn't he's not
gonna call with that information and that's true.
So it makes for the whole him not killing his grandfather or not wanting his grandfather
to deal with the pain more believable.
That's actually really true.
I didn't think about it that way.
Psychiatrist Donald Lundy would later interview Ed regarding these crimes.
He stated quote in his way he had avenged the rejection of both his father and his mother
and quote because rejection so to speak when his father left.
After being taken into custody Ed would undergo a series of psychological tests.
He would be subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia despite his IQ being tested
at a 136.
Oh 136.
Very above average.
What was Bundy?
Oh God he was like probably about the same.
140.
I don't know.
I think he was probably about the same.
Let's look it up.
So Bundy was you said Kemper was 136.
So so was Bundy.
Oh interesting.
And Dahmer was the one that had a higher IQ at 144.
Oh got it.
Dahmer.
Really?
Yeah.
Well he has some old meat in my freezer.
I mean I'm not saying that he didn't seem smart.
He didn't act smart.
He just yeah.
I guess it's the accent.
Oh God don't say that.
We're gonna get so much hate for like freezer.
It's like okay your IQ is 144.
You have rad meat in your freezer.
Get rid of it.
Throw it away.
So Ed would not be sent to jail but instead to the Atos Gadero State Hospital for the
criminally insane, a maximum security facility in St. Louis Abizbo County that houses mentally
ill conflicts.
Whoa.
Long sentence but because of his diagnosis.
While there the California youth authority psychiatrist and social workers working with
Ed would disagree with the court's findings that Ed was suffering with paranoid schizophrenia.
In fact their report stated that Ed showed quote, no flight of ideas, no interference
with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre
thinking end quote.
The St. Louis Abizbo place was that I think one of the toolbox killers was actually there.
We have had multiple people that have been there and we've talked about yeah.
Well because you know everything happens in California.
Everything happens in California.
Everybody thinks it's Florida.
That's not true.
So the people at the California youth authority used the evidence of Ed's high IQ and the
fact that they observed him to be quote intelligent and introspective end quote as a reason to
write him off as not mentally ill.
In turn these psychiatrists would re-diagnose him with a quote, personality trait disturbance
passive aggressive type.
I mean that still sounds like a mental illness.
I wonder if it's in the I-10.
I don't know.
I want to look it up.
Ed would spend the next six years in this facility with his final IQ test scoring an impressive
145.
Oh my gosh.
Like got smarter while he was there.
I just keep getting smarter.
Right.
During his time incarcerated Ed would impress his psychiatrist by being a model prisoner
and he was even trained to administer psychiatric tests to other inmates.
Okay.
Keep that in mind.
I was going to say what a career.
Then he just got better and he became a psychologist.
Right.
That would be the best story.
Right.
One psychiatrist he worked under during this time would later state about Ed quote, he
was a very good worker and this is not a typical of a sociopath.
He really took pride in his work and quote, I feel like that is a sign of a sociopath
because you can fake it.
Well, yeah, or at least some type of like, like it said earlier, personality disorder
like a narcissism or something that, yeah, that you have to take like a huge amounts
amount of pride in your work.
But the difference is, I think that narcissists think that they're doing better than they
actually are.
Yeah, exactly.
And in this case maybe Kemper was actually performing at a really great high level.
I mean she looked like you, you know.
On top of this, Ed would become a member of the JCs while in Ades Canaro and he would
claim to have developed quote, some new test and some new scales on the Minnesota multi-phasic
personality inventory and quote.
So I'll talk about that in a second, but the JCs, isn't that BTK?
I thought it was, I thought it was Gacy.
One of them was like a huge Gacy or a huge, yeah it was Gacy because JC, right?
Yeah.
Crazy.
Like not crazy, but just like coincidental like this.
So this Minnesota multi-phasic personality inventory is a standardized test of psychopathy
and adult personality.
So Ed like had claimed to have like helped them like rewrite like new things to like
test people on essentially.
So he learned a lot.
On December 18th, 1969 on Ed's 21st birthday, he would be released on parole from Ades Canaro.
I can't say that word very well.
Happy birthday.
Right.
While he was eligible for parole at this time, for some reason, Ed would be released into
the care of his mother, Clarnel, against the advice of his psychiatrist.
Yeah, please just do that.
Just send him away to the person that literally fucking went with him.
Retramatizing him.
Yeah.
And we always say like, he was, I mean he was there for six years, like the routine,
everything like that, model prisoner, regardless of his diagnoses, like he seemed to have been
doing really well.
Not that I could see any like inmate violence or anything like that, you know?
He needed like a halfway house or a reintegration of some kind instead of just thrusting him
back into the chaos.
He needed like anything.
Literally anything would have been better.
Clarnel had sensory married while Ed was incarcerated, changing her last name to Stranberg, which
I actually said that last name in her in the beginning and I thought it was her maiden
name, but I was wrong.
So that's her, that was her married name after his father.
But she had also been divorced twice since Ed had seen her last.
She had been married three times at this point and divorced.
In six years?
Yes.
Oh my gosh.
Clarnel was working as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz,
when Ed came to live with her.
Ed would continue to see psychiatrists during his parole period and was actually able to
get his juvenile criminal record expunged after progress in treatment on November 29th, 1972.
Okay, so it's like it's still, I mean he's still moving in a certain positive direction.
Yes.
The final report from his parole psychiatrist stated, 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 had initiative, intelligence, and
who was free from any psychiatric illnesses.
It is my opinion that he has made a very excellent response to the years of treatment
and rehabilitation, and I would see no psychiatric reason to consider him to be of any danger
to himself or to any member of society.
Because it may allow him more freedom as an adult to develop his potential, I would consider
it reasonable to have a permanent expungent of his juvenile records, end quote.
Which like breaks my heart because if he didn't go back in with his mom, none of this
other shit that we're talking about, I mean it's not the end, you know, we're only fucking
30 minutes in and we have a long way to go.
Clearly this didn't last.
That is really fucking sad.
Like really sad.
I mean like I'm not gonna blame everything on Clarnel, but like she clearly had a huge
hand in the way that Ed's psyche developed.
And by the time he got out he was in his 20s.
He was 21.
So yeah, I mean, again I'm not saying that it's not his choice because really it could
be the court saying, especially if he's being released from juvenile courts or whatever,
then you know they probably do have to have some kind of a placement for him with a family
member.
But that's just like...
Personally, I think like, because what it seems like to me is that after six years he
was released, he was on parole, after his parole ended he literally just lost all the
treatment.
Yeah.
I think that, I mean maybe he was on medication, maybe he wasn't, I didn't see anything, you
know, with either side.
But like you've been diagnosed with multiple different things, continue to see someone.
Even if you're not, I mean it's not, I guess it wasn't being paid for anymore because it
wasn't part of his, you know, parole.
So I don't know if that's the reason, but yeah.
Like literally like this guy was like, oh no, don't see any reason to further treatment,
he's cured.
But also it's like, psychiatrists nowadays, I would hope that they know that like there's
no cure for what he was diagnosed with.
It's not like you take medication for six months and you're fine for forever.
Yeah.
And would state after his second arrest that the education he got from administering the
personality test during his first dent in prison helped him manipulate his psychiatrist
into thinking that he was okay when he most definitely was not.
So that's another reason they probably said, oh he's fine.
He's totally fine, he's convinced me.
And I'm sorry, as a psychiatrist you should be able to see two devils just saying it.
Well, I mean...
Body language though, body language never lies.
But the human brain, I mean, you know, it's like we want to give people the benefit of
the doubt, especially if we feel like we're helping that person.
Oh, sorry.
That was a...
You know, they probably felt like they were helping him and they're like, oh, this is
a success.
He's cured.
Little did they know.
After moving back in with Clarnel, Ed would enroll in community college with the hope
of becoming a police officer.
What?
Yeah.
Right, random.
He would quickly realize when looking into employment that he would be unable to join
the force, specifically wanting to be a straight state trooper due to his size, which had now
reached a tall six feet, nine inches, or 2.06 meters.
Because of his height, Ed would gain the nickname Big Ed in the community.
And although he was not able to join the force, he would maintain close relationships with
the Santa Cruz police officers in the area.
Sure, that doesn't come back.
So from what I could gather, it seems as though there was a height requirement to join the
force at this time because they didn't have the necessary equipment for people above,
like that above average height.
It pretty much came down to the resources available, the techniques the officers used,
and the ability to get in and out of places quickly and efficiently.
Now there's not a requirement or a height restriction.
Didn't Gacy also, wasn't he really in with the cops in the surrounding area?
Oh, yeah, because he was like a politician.
Yeah, that's right.
Or he was like in with the politicians.
At this time, Ed would describe himself as a self-proclaimed quote, friendly nuisance,
end quote, and would frequent a bar that was a popular hangout for local police.
This was called the jury room, which I think is kind of clever.
That's my nickname in high school is the friendly nuisance.
Oh, it's like the jury room?
Yeah, the jury room.
I had to pause because I was literally about to cough so much.
He worked.
I'm getting over being sick, but what's new?
I feel like the listeners always know that I'm sick.
I'm always sick.
It was reported that Ed had such a good relationship with local law enforcement that one officer
gave him a training school badge and handcuffs while another gifted him a gun.
Gifted him a gun?
Yes, he's like, here, this is my last job at the force.
Yeah, I don't need this anymore.
Like that's fucking cool.
Hey, you looking for a gun?
Yeah.
And even went as far as to gain a vehicle that resembled a police cruiser.
Oh, I know.
Because he thought he was in with the crowd.
Oh, my God.
I know.
While looking for a career, Ed would work a series of petty jobs, finally gaining employment
at the state of California division of highways in 1971.
Still living with his mother, Ed and Clornell would be in a constant state of despair, arguing
often.
These fights would be so frequent and loud that the neighbors in the area would often
recognize that they were fighting.
Ed would later describe this time of his life, quote, my mother and I started to write in
on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, boiling and vicious.
I've never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone.
It would go to fists with a man, but this was my mother and I couldn't stand the thought
of my mother and I doing these things.
She insisted on it and just over-stupid things.
I remember one roof-raiser was over whether I should have my teeth cleaned, end quote.
What?
Like, he said that she would just blow up on like the dumbest arguments.
This dude killed two people and you want to be argumentative with him?
Honestly.
Like, I understand that he's done a lot of work, but I feel like maybe she's the type
of person that hates seeing him successful.
Oh, and happy?
I feel like she's also the kind of bitch that would be like, fucking hit me.
What?
You're going to hit me?
What are you going to hit me?
I scare it.
I feel like that's her.
And honestly, that's me.
Sometimes I'm really drunk.
I haven't done that in a long time, but I have definitely said those words to a man.
A stranger nonetheless.
Stranger nonetheless.
Oh, God.
No, don't do that.
Listeners, please don't do that.
Because sometimes they'll snookie you and you'll fucking get the cow.
That is such a reference when we were talking about millennial stuff earlier.
It's just a meme.
So, yeah, no.
I don't think that she shouldn't.
I'm sorry, I'm not here to say that she should or shouldn't be treated a certain way because
of what she's doing.
Yeah, for sure.
But she, again, strikes me as the kind of person that's like, oh, it's the way you're
doing well for yourself.
Oh, you went to therapy.
Oh, you're on the next occasion.
Get pretty, Jen.
Oh, you're doing so much better.
That's the narcissist.
And she wants to break him all over again is probably what it is.
So she's probably going at him three times as hard as she used to.
Fucking sucks, dude, because that's his fucking downfall.
It's yeah.
And would eventually earn enough money to move out of his mom's house and would move
in with a friend in Alameda about an hour and a half drive from Aptos where his mother
lived.
Those are words.
I know, those cities.
Even though he had distanced himself physically from his mother, Edward frequently complained
about how he was unable to get away from her because Clarinell would often call and
check in with him and she would also pay him surprise visits.
Like don't do that.
Like just don't.
Don't show up to my fucking house.
Yeah.
Like when I don't want you here.
She knows what she's doing.
She knows exactly what she's doing.
And she gets gratification out of treating him like a piece of shit.
On top of this, Edward quickly find himself in financial stress having to return to his
mother's home on multiple occasions when he found himself short on rent.
Oh my God.
At this point, Edward was in his early 20s and he would meet a younger girl who was
a student at Turlock High School.
By all accounts, this girl was either 17 or 18 at this time and her name has been redacted
from sources.
The two would quickly get engaged in March of 1973.
No babies, no marriage.
The same year that Ed began working for the state, so again in 1971, he was out riding
his motorcycle when he was hit by a car, badly injuring his arm.
He would file a report against the driver gaining around $15,000 in settlement money.
Clarinell.
Oh no, I thought you were going to ask me how much it was today because I usually do.
I was waiting for Clarinell to be like, yeah, yeah, f**king cash and everything.
Well, it's the equivalent of around $112,000 today.
Oh, that's a lot.
Wait, you're going to get an interview today.
The fumbling around at the end of that last clip, I had to leave that in there if that's
so funny.
It's just a lot of, yeah, trying to find the pot.
Yeah.
If any listeners that we know personally are listening, which I'm sure you are, I feel
like you guys often maybe hear me and Koala when we're out and we do that voice.
I don't know what it is.
It's like a creepy old man voice or something.
It's so funny.
Okay, back to the story.
With the settlement money, Ed would purchase a 1969 Ford Galaxy.
This would be the vehicle that Ed would cruise around in and would begin to notice plenty
of young women that were hitchhiking.
In response to this, Ed would start to stock his car with various items such as plastic
bags, knives, blankets, and handcuffs.
So a kit.
Oh yeah, for sure.
According to Ed, quote, at first I picked up girls just to talk to them, just to try
to get acquainted with people my own age and try to strike up a friendship, end quote.
He would claim that he picked up over 100 girls without incident during this time and
just gave them a ride.
Okay, so same thing with toy box killers.
They literally drove around and practiced picking up girls and legitimately giving them
rides places but trying out different tactics as to how to get them in the car.
Did you say toolbox or toy box?
Tool box.
Killers.
So I was actually thinking why couldn't he just be friends with his girlfriend's friends
or something?
Like why does he...
He's not doing this to make friends and he claims that he was.
No, he's doing it because he's trying, but that's the thing is that people like him and
people like the toolbox killers, their end goal is to kill and do it successfully.
Of course, yeah.
And do the trial and error.
They have the patience which is creepy.
So creepy.
It's not impulsive.
This isn't like, like I just happen to grab someone and then it's just have to have it.
No, it's like, I'm gonna do the process because if I'm gonna do, it's like Dexter.
And I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna do it right.
I'm gonna do it right the first time.
Okay, well Dexter is fine.
He can do it every once.
Okay.
I go see Hall.
Okay.
Nevertheless, this is when Ed would begin having specific urges that he could not explain.
When picking up these women, he would feel that he wanted to do more than just give them
a ride and perhaps make a friend.
Ed would refer to these feelings as his quote, little zapples, end quote, and would begin
unfortunately acting on these urges.
Little zapples.
It reminds me of Sparky Big Time.
Yeah, Sparky Big Time.
That's just for the SBT.
Wait, SBT.
SBT and I was like, what's SBT?
I was like, it's like Sparky Big Time.
So gross.
Oh God, okay.
Between May of 1972 and April of 1973, Ed would kill eight people, six of which were
female hitchhikers, giving him the infamous nickname of the coed killer.
No pun intended.
Ed.
Oh, the coed.
Oh, oh, I see what you did there.
I feel like I want to say that escalated quickly, but no.
This is literally a culmination of a bunch of shit that we've heard so far.
Like we just said, he's been practicing the best way to gain trust and to hold the conversation
long enough for him to maybe go somewhere else.
So eight women.
Yes.
Ed would later state that during this time of his killings, he and his mother's arguments
would continuously get worse, and the context was mostly about his mother's refusal to
introduce Ed to the female students that attended the college where his mother worked.
Oh, so she worked at the college?
Yeah, she was an administrative assistant, I said that earlier.
I'm sorry.
That's okay.
So, but he was like, find me a girlfriend.
Yeah, and she's like, I'm not introducing you to any of these women.
Yeah.
Because you're a sleaze model.
Well, not only that, but she's probably like, you can't move on because if you move on to
your life, I don't have a verbal punching bag.
Exactly.
I don't have a physical punching bag.
He would later recall about these arguments, quote, she would say, you're just like your
father.
You don't deserve to get to know them and, quote, that's so gross.
I hate when people do that.
Gross.
I know I've said this before on the podcast, I think at least once, but there was a little
girl that I used to, you know, we were the same age and her mother used to say, just
wait until your father gets home.
And I'm like, how much threatening your child, you're threatening your child's about their
own parent.
Like it's just, oh my gosh, this is the worst.
So when you said that, it literally just made me go, she's going to grow up and be like,
or she's going to talk to her friends and be like, oh my gosh, her father's an asshole
too.
It was literally was like, what happens when your dad gets home?
Because I didn't know because our dad's always, our dad is a saint.
Very, very privileged to have the father that we do that.
And yeah, it just, so yeah, when I was like, you're just like your father.
I hate that.
What does that mean?
No, seriously.
Oh my God.
On May 7th, 1972, Ed was driving his Ford Galaxy around in search of female hitchhikers, his
usual MO.
He came across two 18 year old co-eds from Fresno State University, Mary Ann Pesky and
Anita Mary Luchesa.
Ed pulled up to the girls who expressed interest in getting a ride to Stanford University.
Ed would drive the girls for nearly an hour, seemingly gaining their trust or contemplating
his next move.
During this time, he had taken a wrong turn that he knew would lead them to a secluded
wooded area, which he was familiar with due to his work with the highway department.
But he was actually able to make this quote unquote wrong turn without the girls knowledge
that they weren't headed in the right direction.
Oh, okay.
So I guess he convinced them that they were going to where he was taking them, where they
wanted to go.
Yeah, that's kind of what I was going to say.
It's like, oh, you made a left, you made a wrong turn.
And he'll be like, oh, I did.
Like, yeah, you can just turn around right there or right there.
Yeah, or right there.
No, I think he was like, I know this area.
This is like a shortcut maybe like to Stanford.
And I'm like, oh, you know what?
Yeah, I did make a left here, but you know what?
I'll just make a left at the next street.
Yeah.
Oh, wait, this is a dead end.
Uh, let me make a right right here.
But then also it's like, it's not like today where you have Uber and then you have your
own map in the backseat, you know, that's true.
After arriving in this area, Ed would pull over and handcuff Mary Ann and subsequently
lock Anita in the trunk.
Ed would later state that he intended to sexually assault the two girls, but he quote, panicked.
And quote.
Instead, Ed would then stab Mary Ann and unfortunately strangle her to death.
Ed would then turn his attention to Anita, killing her in a similar manner.
Ed would later state about these murders that when handcuffing Mary Ann, he accidentally,
quote, brushed the back of his hand against one of her breasts and it embarrassed him.
Quote, stating that he said to her, quote, whoops, I'm sorry, or something like that.
And quote.
He would later add that he chose to pick up the two girls because they seemed, quote,
of a better class of people than the scroungy, messy, dirty, smelly hippie types that I wasn't
at all interested in.
And quote.
What?
Like, fuck you.
Like what the hell?
I think that it's, it's so strange.
It's so like convoluted.
It's like he intended to sexually assault them, but then apologizes for brushing up against
her.
Exactly.
Or like, he says that they're a better class of people, but his intention is to kill them.
No.
It's just so strange.
And that's what I'm saying.
And like, it's actually different than what we've covered before.
A lot of people do try to abduct people that have maybe transient or not as wealthy looking
or not as put together looking because they, because they figure no one's looking for them,
right?
And he's so arrogant that he's like, oh, I want the good looking girls that are probably
more like cleaner.
Yeah.
And I'm still going to get away with it.
Yeah.
That's gross.
That's, yeah.
That's so gross.
Do you think that he did that with the intention of like wanting it to be news?
I actually don't know.
That's a good point.
Maybe not at this point.
Maybe like later on.
Yeah.
After both girls were deceased, Ed would put their bodies in the trunk of his car and
head back towards his apartment.
On the way home, Ed would be pulled over by a police officer for having a tail light
out.
But somehow, maybe because of his good relationships with police in the area, he was free to go
after some basic procedures.
And they were with, but they were both in the trunk deceased at this point.
Now remember, Ed is living with a roommate at this point as well.
Once he arrived home, he found that his roommate was actually not home.
So he took the bodies into the apartment one by one.
Could you imagine?
No, I can't.
I literally can't.
Ed would then take photos of each corpse before committing necrophilia and dismembering them.
Ed would then place the body parts into plastic bags and later dispose of them near Loma Prieta
Mountain.
Ed was noted as engaging in oral necrophilia with each of the girls' decapitated heads
before disposing of them in a ravine close by.
That is horrific.
Oh, it's disgusting.
And beware, I know we already put this in the content warning, but if you look this
up, it's like much more graphic than that.
Yeah.
Ed and Anita's families would report the two girls missing shortly after their disappearances,
but nothing would come for multiple months.
On August 15th of the same year, Mary Ann's decomposed skull was found in Loma Prieta
Mountain.
After this was discovered, a search was implemented to also look for the remainders of Mary Ann's
remains and hopefully to find some of Anita's.
Unfortunately, nothing else would be found in connection to these girls.
Ed was noted as commenting on his mentality about his first murders, quote, if I killed
them, you know, they couldn't reject me as a man.
It was more or less making a doll out of a human being and carrying out my fantasies
with a doll, a living human doll, end quote.
So you think he had like a doll fetish?
I think that he's referring back to his childhood when he, the only real true connection he
felt he had was with the dolls because they couldn't talk back to him.
And he's like, I'm just going to do this with people, you know?
Almost like a fear kind of thing.
Would it be like a blow up doll guy?
I don't think so.
You know how they make those like realistic ones?
I just think like, yeah, I know what you're talking about.
I just think that as soon as he like got old enough, essentially, like he was like, oh,
I don't have to play with dolls anymore.
Like I can just like take advantage of women.
Yeah, you know, that was kind of like a dommer thing too.
He wanted like, what do you say, sex zombies?
Yeah, like that's why he sedated all of his victims.
So now we're going to refer back to criminal psychologist Adrienne Arno for her perspective
on Ed's interview about what escalated him to kill again after being, you know, rehabilitated
apparently.
This is all a quote with quotes in twint.
Quote, whether he wants to say it out loud or not, whether he even recognizes it or not,
you don't just casually hide a loaded gun in your car unless you know you're going to
have a need to use it.
This is something I see a lot of in anti-social personalities that have been in treatment for
a while.
They're okay with admitting to some of their culpability, but only take partial responsibility
for their intentions.
It gives the illusion of taking responsibility for their crimes, but it's a parlor trick
of semantics, particularly intelligent inmates in a long-term treatment, learned to use as
a defense mechanism.
He admits to building up his first, to his first kill with a series of trial runs, quote,
a daring kind of a thing.
He called it.
But a dare is something someone else put you up to or risk presented you must be brave
enough to take.
It's external.
But his quote, fantastic passion, is described as an internal push.
What he's really doing is testing his boundaries, seeing how much he can get away with and how
easily.
Furthermore, he knows he shot his grandparents at the age of 15.
Now, if you're someone who feels consumed by rage and you've committed two murders
before with a gun and been through psychiatric treatment, why in the world would you seek
out a gun in the first place?
What he's describing is a process of planning.
He reports knowing that if he took the gun out while in the car, he'd use it.
But in reality, the very act of putting the gun in the car in the first place was the
point of no return.
Kemper has always presented as incredibly self-aware by comparison to most anti-social
personalities.
No one can argue he possesses a complex intelligence.
Given that we know how self-aware he is, we know there was a part of Kemper that knew,
even if it was subconsciously, that he was going to use that gun for a deviant purpose,
and it was just a matter of when.
He wanted to be ready when the right circumstances presented itself.
Putting that gun in his car was as good as putting Marianne Pesky and Anita Luchesa in
their graves."
And quote.
Woo!
I know, right?
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Especially with the kit too, like he had to have known that he was going to use any of
those instruments at any given time.
Yeah, so I will say, and I'm sure the listeners have recognized, I brought up in this quote
the idea of a gun being in the car, and I didn't say that earlier when I was telling
you about him putting his kit together.
We will see that he does put a gun in his car later, but she was referring to the first
two murders in that quote, so I felt it was right to put it here.
So again, I'm sure we can all agree that she's right on the money.
Going further into the interview, Ed continues to explain that he felt as though the first
two murders of the girls was a horrible experience, and he felt that his hands were tied, so
to speak at certain points.
He explains that when he approaches Anita after killing Marianne, he felt the need to
not tell her that she was about to be deceased as well.
Adrian comments on this quote, when he said I just went through a horrible experience
referring to how he had to stab Marianne while Anita was tied up in the trunk and was in
shock because of that.
That's classic narcissism.
He made an active, planned choice to stab a teenage girl to death and was so traumatized
by it.
Really?
This comment strikes me as another very well concealed attempt to manipulate the listener,
a low-key call for sympathy.
Then he justifies his murder of Lou Chesa by telling himself I have to do this, aka I
don't have a choice.
She's gonna tell on me, justifying why he doesn't have a choice.
But he did have a choice.
A lot of them, between even the first time he picked up the roommates in his car and
the murders, so this whole I don't have a choice is another way to justify knowing it's
wrong and doing it anyway.
End quote.
Yeah, it's like, you know, you're essentially saying like, I have to clean up after myself.
Yeah.
Like, I can't just like, I can't just leave her alive.
Yeah.
I have to clean up the mess.
No, it's disgusting.
And she's so right.
She's like, he's making it seem like he didn't have a choice.
In reality, the first choice he made was picking them up in the first place.
That was the choice.
You put yourself into position to where you felt like you didn't have a choice because
you made the decision to go prowling for women.
According to the next part of the interview, it seems as though Ed comments on having to
lie to Anita about the fact that there's blood on his hands.
Like he actually actively had blood on his hands.
So when he goes to get her from the trunk, he's like, what am I gonna have to tell her
about this?
Adrian quote.
Why does Kemper lie to Luchesa about what he did to her roommate?
Simple.
Luchesa easier to control than Peske was.
Remember, he just talked about how he went through a horrible experience killing Peske.
He didn't want more of the same antics from her roommate.
By telling the terrified Luchesa that there's blood on his hands because her roommate got
smart with me, he's making sure fear-addled Luchesa goes with him less of a struggle and
makes it easier for him to kill her.
Victims in a life or death situation have only two choices.
Try to fight or try to escape.
By making it clear to Luchesa that anyone who gets smart with him is going to receive
violence, he's sent a clear message to her that she can expect violence if she doesn't
cooperate.
Also, the surprise contempt in his voice when he says she's referring to Anita about to
die, why does she need to know that, is apparent.
His facial affect remains neutral.
His choice of words reveals his self-centered state of mind.
What he's actually saying is, why does she even think what she wants to know matters?
I'm going to kill her.
This is about me and what I want.
It inconvenience him to have to answer Luchesa's question.
She interrupted his fantasy.
Again, it's so good.
And it's like everything that I think when I look at an interview or whatever, I'm not
as educated as her clearly.
She's a criminal psychologist, licensed and all that stuff.
But it puts everything that I want to say or want to think into words and it reminds
me of the behavior panel.
And it's super interesting.
Will you speak on that just for a second, just for the listeners?
Sure, yeah.
Behavior panel is a group of four guys.
They're FBI profilers, they're body language analysts, linguistics analysts.
And like I said, they work for the FBI and the military doing interrogation tactics.
But they look at footage, most notably one of my favorite ones to watch over and over
and over again is the Amber Heard one.
I know it like the back of my hand.
I've only watched a few but I have seen the Patty Ramsey, John Bunny Ramsey's mom interview
and that one was really interesting.
The Burke Ramsey one is really interesting.
I know I watched that one.
Oh my gosh.
And they, so again, they show clips and then they dissect the clips.
Again, linguistically, like their body language and everything like that.
What speculate at certain times what their background might be based off of what they're
experiencing by what they're watching and the Amber Heard one is really interesting to
me.
It is not the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial that we all watched as a nation just a few
years ago.
It's the one a few years before that.
I think it was 2015 or 16 where it was like in the UK, it was I think Sunset magazine
or something.
It was another defamation case.
This one was lesser known.
And her, she's sitting in this room, you know, it's very just like a blank wall behind her
and they're filming her and it's a deposition.
And her lawyers start arguing with these other lawyers and she just looks to the left, looks
to the right.
She's like chewing gum or something.
And she looks bored.
And I don't remember who it was either.
I want to say it was Chase or maybe even Mark.
I don't remember.
Chase says, look at how calm she is.
She is so used to discourse that she couldn't like they might as well be talking about what
they're having for dinner.
Yeah.
And it was just it was really intense.
Anyways, they're really awesome guys.
The behavior panel so super interesting.
Yeah, absolutely.
And Adrian, I mean, hits the nail on the head like with every quote and we'll hear more
from her a little bit again.
We're going to tag her in this episode because I feel like she's this episode is hurt.
Like she gives us so much information.
Yeah.
And it really helps us kind of get to the root of what again, what we try to do with
this podcast, which is dive into the psychology of the person.
So it's really interesting that we got a lot of information from her on this.
It is.
And I think that like you said, it's it's everything that you think it's it's why do
I feel uneasy about this person?
And then someone comes along and puts it into words.
So you're like, I'm educated on this.
That makes total sense as to why that person makes me feel heebie-jeebie.
The full buddy heebie.
On the evening of September 14th, 1972, four months and one week after the killings of Maryanne
and Anita, Ed picked up a 15 year old dance student by the name of Aiko Kuu.
Aiko had been at dance class and was planning on taking the bus back home.
When she accidentally missed the bus, Aiko decided her next option was to try and hitchhike
home.
Once in the car, Aiko pointed Ed to the direction of her home to which he obliged.
Ed began driving, but instead of taking her home, he began his journey to another remote
area.
Oh, wrong turn.
No, yeah.
Once there, Ed would pull a gun on Aiko.
Shortly after this, Ed would exit the vehicle, accidentally leaving his keys in the process
and somehow locked himself out of the vehicle.
She's locked in though?
Yes.
Once the gun was still in the car with her, Aiko would ultimately open the vehicle for
Ed, most likely trying to follow his orders to avoid any negative altercation.
Cause I'm sure he said that whole thing of, well don't get smart with me.
Unfortunately, Ed had another sinister plan and he would begin to strangle Aiko to the
point of unconsciousness.
After she was passed out, Ed would sexually assault Aiko and ultimately kill her.
During her death, Ed would put Aiko's body into the trunk of his car, but instead of
immediately returning to his apartment, he decided to stop at a local bar for a drink.
With her body in the car?
In the trunk.
Ed would later admit that once he exited the bar, he would open the trunk in the parking
lot, quote, admiring his catch like a fisherman, end quote.
That is fucking disgusting.
That is so sinister, like I can't even.
That's what I'm saying, like even with the girls where he was like, oh they refined,
they're special, they're like, he thinks he's playing the most dangerous game or something.
He really is.
And he, and he again has this grandiose sense of self where he thinks that he's just getting
away with everything.
It's disgusting.
Once back at his apartment, Ed would sexually defile the corpse before dismembering it and
disposing of it similarly to his previous two victims.
Following her disappearance, Aiko's mother would file a report with the police, even
putting up hundreds of flyers in hopes of locating her daughter, but was never given
a response on the progress of the missing persons report or any details regarding a search.
Just for context, Ed is still consistently hanging out in the jury room bar at this time,
chatting and being homies at the local police.
Criminal psychologist Adrian Arno comments on this part of Ed's later interview when
he was describing himself as a normal, trusting person, quote, Kemper's interaction with
the police was much like his interactions with mental health authorities.
It helps him sustain the high he experienced during the crimes.
It's a power trip to be so close to the investigation.
It's exciting to know something he's done is getting so much attention, not to mention
how much useful information sociopaths like Kemper can gather to help them continue to
elude capture, end quote.
So true.
So you're right.
If he knows where their heads are at, then he's like, oh, I'll be able to...
Yeah.
I was like, so what about this killer on the loose?
What do they call him?
The coed killer?
Oh, it's coed?
Yeah.
It's the coed men killer?
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's the coed.
What a coincidence.
Ed was notoriously bad with money, and around this time, he would lose the ability to continue
to pay rent, resulting in him moving back with his mother.
Oh, great.
Great.
Yeah.
Here we go again.
In 1973, Ed was driving around the Cabrillo College campus when he came across 18-year-old
Cynthia Ann Cindy Shaw.
He would drive the girl to a secluded wooded area and fatally shoot her with a 22-color
pistol.
Once Cindy was deceased, Ed would bring her body back to his mother's home while she
was out of the house.
Oh, my God.
So it's first with the roommate, and now same thing with his mother's home.
The balls, though.
Oh, yeah.
Ed would bring the body into his room and hide it in his closet overnight.
Just went to sleep casually.
Just casually.
Yeah.
It's just cash.
Like she's a load of laundry and hasn't folded yet.
When Clarnel left for work the following morning, Ed would take the corpse out of his closet
and engage in necrophilia with it.
He then removed the bullet from the body before dismembering it in his mother's bathtub.
What?
So ballsy.
Ed would keep the remains together, but would single out the decapitated head, keeping it
in his room.
Over the next several days, Ed would engage in necrophilic acts with this part of the
corpse.
After a few days, Ed would bury the head in his mother's garden, intentionally facing
it upwards as if it was looking into Clarnel's bedroom.
Ed would later state that the reason behind this was because his mother, quote, always
wanted people to look up to her and quote, what the fuck is that fucked up bro.
Like this whole thing is fucked up, but that's fucked up.
Like he really hates his mom.
Like he really does.
Like and he's just screaming for her to notice this psychiatrist and Ed alike would later
suggest in interviews that the women Ed killed were taking place of his true wanted target,
his mother.
Yeah.
And I would speak on this specifically, quote, my victims represented not what my mother
was, but what she liked, what she coveted, what was important to her, and I was destroying
it, end quote.
Like vanity or, you know, being wanted or desired or pay attention to or whatever.
And that also kind of goes back to the whole wanting to capture and abduct and murder women
that looked like they were maybe more well off than other women.
Because he wanted something that resembled his mother.
Right.
And she was fucking prideful probably.
Ed would then dispose of the rest of Cindy's remains by throwing them over a cliff in a
desolate area.
Over the following few weeks, Cindy's remains would be discovered slowly after washing up
shore, I guess there was water nearby.
Investigators were covering everything but her head.
Investigators would state that finding Cindy's remains, quote, pieced together like a macabre
jigsaw puzzle, end quote.
A pathologist would later determine that Cindy had been dismembered with a powerslaw.
That sounded good.
Thank you.
Stop, I tried so hard to pronounce that.
Well, I've said macabre because it's French.
But I guess there's different pronunciations.
But that sounded really nice.
Thank you.
Our French listeners can just let us know.
I mean, I know how it's pronounced in every, like, inflection.
Inflection, inflection, okay.
I don't know how to say words.
I don't know how to say it.
On February 5th, 1973, after a heated argument with his mother, Ed left his home with the
intent of finding a new victim.
At this time, the media had let out news that there was a suspected active serial killer
in the area praying on college women and urged everyone to not accept rides from strangers,
and also insisted only accept rides from cars with a university sticker on them.
So what does he do?
He gets a university sticker?
Ed, however, was able to obtain a university sticker due to the fact that his mother worked
on a university campus.
Oh my god, okay, alright.
While on campus, Ed came across 23-year-old Rosalind Heather Thorpe and 20-year-old Alice
Helen or Allison Liu.
According to Ed, when he approached the two women, Rosalind entered his vehicle first,
seemingly willingly, and assured her friend to get in expressing her belief that it was
safe because it had the sticker.
Oh my god, I cannot.
Oh my gosh, that's awful.
I can't imagine what that feels like.
And it sucks because he thought of that.
Ed would quickly shoot both women in the vehicle and would drive off the campus, past security
at the gates, while both women were horribly wounded but still alive.
Like how?
This guy's so brazen.
So ballsy.
Ed once again brought his victims back to his mother's house, the two passing away by
the time that they had arrived.
This time, he would dismember the bodies in his vehicle, decapitating both corpses.
That is so much though.
I think his mom was probably home and that's why he did that.
That's like a lot though.
Like that would be so, I mean, not to get graphic, but that would be really messy.
Yeah, I know it would.
Ed would later comment on this quote, the head-trip fantasies were a bit like a trophy.
You know, the head is where everything is at, the brain, eyes, mouth, that's the person.
I remember being told as a kid, you cut off the head and the body dies.
The body is nothing after the head is cut off.
Well, that's not quite true.
There's a lot left in the girl's body without the head.
End quote.
Oh my god.
So fucking gross.
Just I keep thinking about the Barbies like a century young age, you know?
I think so.
Ed would dispose of the bodies separately and in March of the same year, some of the remains
would be located but nothing further.
On the same timeframe of Ed's murders, two other serial killers were roaming the area,
John Lindley Fraser and Herbert Mullins.
The fact that there were multiple serial killers in the same area during this time led the media
to dub Santa Cruz the infamous nickname, quote, murder capital of the world.
Yeah, I mean classic California writing for during that time.
Well during any of the 70s or 80s.
Ed himself would come to be known as the co-ed killer and the co-ed butcher.
In the next part of the interview analyzed by Adrian Orno, Ed speaks about the fact that
he picked up multiple women who would comment on the murders during their interaction.
Ed would state that the women who would mention the killings in the area would get themselves
a quote free ride end quote.
So if he picked anybody up and they mentioned like, oh, thanks for picking me up.
I felt so unsafe because of no, not that, but he would say like, even if they brought
it up, he'd be like, it's not worth it.
Yeah.
Like it's not, it's not smart to write on my end.
Because then they would have expressed, I don't know, I don't know, concern.
I think that he was more so like, thanks for thinking of me.
Like you get a pass or whatever.
But I'm sure like, and like he probably justified it and saying like, well, if they knew about
me, they're probably doing their due diligence.
Yeah.
They're probably like telling people where they're going.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
Or maybe witnesses or have a friend looking out a window.
Yeah.
What kind of car they're getting into.
Yeah, Adrian comments on this quote, this seems to me more like he appreciated the fame
his killings brought him.
There's a twisted kind of pride in his voice when he speaks about his crimes.
It's low key, but it's there, which isn't entirely unheard of in an anti social personality.
Killing is the one thing that got Kemper what he so desperately wanted from the world to
be seen, to be recognized, to feel powerful.
He felt powerless most of his life.
I have little doubt that picking and choosing his victims gave him a rush, a chance to play
God.
There was a power play involved.
I don't believe vulnerability had anything to do with it.
He already knew he could kill women efficiently.
He was controlling most of the variables by the time the potential victim was getting in
his car.
He'd won her trust or she wouldn't have gotten in the car at all.
He had her isolated in the car.
He had a lethal weapon, the gun, and he'd gotten away with it before so he knows he's
capable.
The deck was always stacked in his favor whether he knew it consciously or not.
Yeah, I think that's very much what...
Again, it's like one of those things like, I know what I want to say, but she puts it
into words so beautifully.
But yeah, it's the attention that he's sought his whole life from his mother.
He's getting this like, like you said, notoriety or local fame and he's just eating it up because
people know who he is.
Even though they don't know who he is.
As the interview continues, Ed describes how a specific memory of his father may have inspired
him to kill.
Adrian quote.
Here we see another emotional moment from Kemper.
What he's describing is the classic reenactment of a childhood situation where the offender
felt powerless as a helpless child and now seeks to take back the power he lost by repeating
the violent behavior of his own offender, Kemper's father.
You see this dynamic illustrated far too often in children who commit sex crimes.
After acting out the violation done to them as a way to psychologically distance themselves
from feeling like a powerless victim.
They achieve this by aligning themselves with the behavior of their own offender, thus making
someone else a victim in the same ritualistic way they were made to feel powerless.
Only now the victim has become the offender and the offender is the one with all the power.
It's complex and yet it's a process that we see happening in children as young as four
or five.
And while it's absolutely heartbreaking, it's important not to forget that Kemper wasn't
a five year old who didn't know any better and his victims were not chickens, they were
humans.
He was a grown man almost begging to be caught the way his child's self likely wished someone
would have interceded and stopped his father.
End quote.
So is she suggesting that the father was sexually abusing him?
I think so, but again I didn't listen to the interview and all of the sources that I found
didn't really say that so I don't want to make that assumption.
But based on her interpretation it kind of seems like he said something along the lines
of or maybe suggesting that.
Yeah, because then it would make sense, you know like we talked about that at the beginning
of the episode that the mom was real concerned that he would be abusing the girls.
So yeah, but yeah that's really interesting that he's wanting to be caught much like a
five year old would expect to be caught.
Exactly.
Furthering the interview, Ed would also try to explain his mindset that he was living
in two separate lives at one, remember he said that earlier about the different different
lives.
Adrien comments on this quote.
Let's look at this rationally.
Kempert comes across as so non-threatening that all these women keep getting into his
car.
He had tons of opportunities to work on his social skills with women.
He's alone chatting with them over and over again.
But rather than using those experiences as ways to work through his social anxieties,
he made the choice over and over again to use them as victim selection runs.
If Kempert had spent half the time he'd spent killing instead of building up his social
skills, he could have gone on some dates, but it would have taken him more courage to
risk possible rejection from a woman than it did to kill a woman.
Yeah, can't reject that.
No, that's what he was exactly saying.
Ed goes on to explain that he thinks he did not go insane so to speak and also he didn't
get quote unquote lost while growing up.
It seems to be that these were common thoughts among the media after his final arrest.
So like, oh, what went wrong?
When did he get lost or whatever?
Do you think that for him he was more like, I'm a serial killer, but I happen to have
this trauma in my past?
Or do you think that he knew verbatim what he was doing and why he was doing it?
I think that he was in denial about what happened in his childhood and that's what caused him.
I think the former is what he doesn't say with all of his psychological education and
his high IQ, I don't think that he's relating the two.
I think he's like, yeah, I had a fucked up childhood, but the only reason I'm killing
this is my mom, not because of anything else.
Like not fully understanding your own MO.
Exactly.
Like it wouldn't be until after the fact.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
Is he like, well, yeah, I had a fucked up childhood, but I'm past that now and now I
kill people.
Yeah, I think that's kind of what it sounds like, honestly.
Like he thinks that it was, well, maybe it was so repressed that it didn't, this is how
it manifested, but it wasn't necessarily the work.
The work wasn't done until after.
And he didn't, exactly, he didn't reflect on it until after he was incarcerated and
gave all these interviews.
Yeah.
Ed did make comments that suggested he was blaming the women that he killed stating that
they were, quote, flaunting in my face the fact that they could do any damn thing they
wanted and that society is as screwed up as it is, end quote.
No, they did not.
No, sorry, Ed.
No, they did not.
Absolutely not.
They weren't flaunting anything in your face.
Absolutely not.
You weren't, you were looking for a problem.
For sure.
Adrian states about this, quote, Kemper is uncommonly self aware, which is what makes
all of his distorted thinking that much more manipulative.
He's right.
He didn't go insane.
The lack of nurture and healthy relationships in his early childhood set the stage for his
adulthood behaviors, and then his teenage fantasies wrote the script he acted out.
And it's tragic.
But at the same time, he's also a man with a high IQ and self aware enough to recognize
he's not insane, which makes him, by the legal definition, sane.
He was sane and he was doing all these things anyway.
He wasn't insane.
He was angry and fed up and taking his power back from a world that led him be mistreated
as a child and then let him get away with murder of his grandparents when he was in
his teens.
At heart, Kemper is a troubled, abused child who was throwing murderous tantrums as a way
of crying out for help.
Hope he didn't get as a child and help that came much too late as an incarcerated serial
killer to do him or the victims of his crimes any good.
End quote.
Again, everything we're trying to say, she just puts it in perfect words.
I think that what I find most interesting about this case, especially so far, is that
he is highly intelligent.
We can see that.
He's highly self aware.
What is he telling us and what is he keeping to himself?
Of course.
Because he has to be letting these things out, whether it's with the intention of painting
a specific picture or if it's with the intention of seeming to be more powerful than he was
or there's some type of a motivator as to why he wants to talk about it.
Maybe it is, oh, I can talk about this and it still makes me relative and interesting
to people.
But again, if he, I mean, he has these tendencies and these traits, like if he's really that
highly intelligent, there are things he's keeping to himself that he'll never talk about.
And that's what she's saying.
It's like he has all the manipulation tactics that one would need to fool people and they
only tell you what they want you to hear and they say things that you immediately interpret
it the way that they want you to and not form your own opinion on it.
And just to put this into perspective, the interview I keep referring back to was given
in February of 1984 just so that everyone knows.
That's my son's favorite year right now.
Why?
I don't know.
Like our niece was on the couch and she was playing this lap harp and he goes, that's
a violin from 1984.
Oh my gosh.
It's so funny.
It's like, bro, that's a lap harp, not even a violin.
He's so funny.
I don't know why he keeps referencing 1984.
He said when we were at Dairy Queen yesterday getting his first blizzard, we were walking
in the parking lot and he saw this kind of older Cadillac and he goes, that's from 1984.
And it wasn't.
It was like from the 90s.
But it's so funny.
1984 is like his year right now.
That's really interesting.
So lastly from the interview for now, Ed begins to explain his approach after the killings
of each victim, stating that he would keep mementos in a box that he kept next to his
guns.
Adrian, quote, this is another example of what Kemper called flaunting that invisibility.
He was confident he could get away with it.
It's further proof of how smart he felt he was and how good he was at killing.
This idea of being the master manipulator comes into play once again, like a skilled
parlor magician.
He knew the diversion of his speech and the movement of his hands instinctively draw a
person's eye.
It's a survival instinct.
But like a master magician, he's controlling where the attention of police officers is
focused so they're not looking where he doesn't want them to.
And quote.
It's like he's so calculated.
And realistically, like this sounds really bad, but realistically I can't help but think,
like, he could have gotten away with so many more murders and he was only doing one every
couple months or two every couple months.
On April 20th, 1973, Ed's mother, Clarnel, came home late from a party, waking Ed from
sleep in the process.
Clarnel went to her bedroom, got herself prepared for bed, and began reading a book.
Shortly into her book, Ed would come into Clarnel's bedroom and greet his mother.
According to Ed, Clarnel looked at him and stated, quote, I suppose you're gonna want
to sit up all night and talk now, end quote.
Like oh you want to come in and hang out with me?
I just got fucking home.
You know, kind of like that at that too.
Ed would respond to her, quote, no, good night, end quote, and leave the bedroom.
Ed did not want to sit up all night and talk, but instead he had another plan.
After waiting for Clarnel to fall asleep, Ed would sneak back into her bedroom and bludgeon
her with a claw hammer before slitting her throat with a pen knife.
What?
A pen knife is like a folding knife.
When Clarnel being deceased, Ed would then behead her and, quote, humiliated her corpse
and, quote, according to him.
So he didn't go into detail about what he did?
Ed stated that he, quote, put her head on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour, threw
darts at it, and smashed her face in, end quote.
What the fuck?
It's horrible.
Oh my god.
Following this horrific act, Ed claimed that he then cut out the tongue and larynx and
placed them in the garbage disposal, but the disposal was not strong enough to pulverize
the tissue and it ended up back in the sink.
Oh my god.
Ed would later state that, quote, that seemed appropriate as much as she'd bitched and
screamed and yelled at me over so many years, end quote.
So I'm just gonna pause really quick.
It's like he still wants that approval from his mom, but he waited until she was asleep.
He kills her very quickly and then he took his time with everything else.
I think he's very scared of her and he always has been.
He did everything else after he knew that she couldn't retaliate.
Yeah.
I mean, that's one of those things is like Butch DeFeo, right?
Butch DeFeo, Jr.
He, kind of the same thing.
He was scared of his dad.
He hated that his parents fought.
He killed his whole family in the middle of the night, but he did it at a relatively
young age and I find it really interesting when we come across cases like this where
someone is so mad at a parental figure, but they wait until they're like 70.
It's very interesting that the psychological holds that the parent has over the child is
so immense that you still see that person as that dominating figure that you just can't
let yourself, even in as big as Pemper is.
And he couldn't confront her when she was awake.
That's why he probably walked into her room thinking she passed out because she had been
drinking and he was gonna do maybe do it then or just check to see if she was asleep and
then she wasn't.
And then she made one last comment that he was like, I don't like that.
After this heinous killing, Ed would hide what remained of his mother's corpse in a closet
and went out to drink at a local bar.
He would spend some time at the bar and when he arrived back home, he would phone his mother's
friend, 59 year old Sarah Taylor, Sally Hallett, inviting her over for dinner and a movie.
Why?
Mind you, it's like 4am at this point.
Why would he do that?
He had said, I guess that him and his mom wanted company they couldn't sleep or something.
I didn't see exactly what it was, but this was like his mom's like best friend.
Yeah.
Upon her arrival, Ed would strangle Sally to death, intending to create a cover story
that the two women had left town together for a vacation.
I was gonna say, who's gonna be sniffing around?
It's gonna be the best friend.
The best friend's gonna be like, I'm worried about my friend, I haven't heard from her.
Ed would place Sally's body in a closet as well and clean up the scene of the home, erasing
any sign of a disturbance.
Could you imagine being the person at the bar that knows Kimber?
This guy cleans the room.
He looks tired every day like he works in a fucking factory or some shit and he's just
killing people all day.
And you find out that he killed his mom, came to have a drink with you, probably bought
you a fucking drink and then went home and killed someone else?
Like, are you fucking kidding me?
Like I just saw that guy.
No, I'm totally that guy's alibi.
He was there all night.
I think he was there all night.
What time did he leave actually?
Ed would then, after cleaning up the house, write a note he intended to leave for police.
It stated quote, approximately 5.15am Saturday.
No need for her to suffer anymore at the hands of this quote, horrible murderous butcher.
It was quick, asleep, the way I wanted it.
Not sloppy and incomplete, gents.
Just a lack of time.
I got things to do.
Three exclamation points.
End quote.
He's like, hey, girlfriends, just let you know.
This is what I've been up to.
BRB.
Who is all gonna be there.
Yeah.
Referring back to the interview, Ed would describe the moment that he knew he would kill his mother.
Adrienne analyzes this clip quote, here's Kemper.
He's built up his confidence and ego through his crimes and outwitting police from May of
72 to April of 73, a little less than a year.
He's murdered and vented his frustrations on six women in that time.
That's not counting his grandparents in 63.
And finally, he's got enough confidence to be conscious of what it was all for.
It took the murder and defilement of six women to make him feel man enough to finally cut
the puppet strings he allowed his mother to continue to pull.
Like Pinocchio, he finally felt like a real boy who could exercise deadly agency against
his puppet master.
But still, he wanted to win.
If not her love, at least her submission.
He speaks of getting physical with his mother, throwing her on the bed to prove his point.
All of these were warnings to her, all cries for her to amend her behavior so he wouldn't
have to kill her.
Even as he draws closer to killing her, and the only language of power he's learned
to speak, he's asking her to stop treating him so poorly.
He's asking her to stop so he doesn't have to kill her.
It's the mother-child bond, still there, rooted deep in his brain, even though his
brain and its neutral functions have been twisted and corrupted, hoping he can spare
her, offering her a last chance to spare herself.
Of course, she couldn't understand that.
Even if she could, it's not likely she would have changed her habits and behaviors.
He knew better the whole time.
But to realize that in the end, every choice he made to destroy his own life and the lives
of so many people was all done so he could give his mother the chance to redeem herself.
Really so he could give himself the chance to not have to have his mother's blood on
his hands.
End quote.
Ugh.
It's so true.
The preparation with him, picking chicks up and giving them rides, and it was all preparation
for this one moment.
But I think he was secretly hoping that his mom would catch him in between that time or
someone would.
Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that I made you do this or something.
That's exactly what he wanted, his mom's attention and her to apologize for what she
did.
But at the same time, he knows this.
I'm assuming he knows this, at least this one core thing.
He's doing this because of her and he puts up with it and he knows he's getting to that
point and he knows he's getting to that point.
But does he once say it to her?
No.
No, probably not.
He's never been like, why do you treat me this way?
Why do you hate me so much?
Yeah.
Because what can I do?
Can I do anything to appease you?
Yeah.
That's the narcissism.
And that's also the antisocial, like not even recognizing the other people have feelings.
And it's just, I feel like it's this feeling of like, one day you'll see.
Yeah.
Ugh.
And it would go on to say in the interview that he knew he was going to kill his mother
a week before it happened.
Ugh.
Adrian quote.
We see a slight head nod indicating yes or truth and then we see that obvious and strong
start of the head shake.
No.
This isn't anything conclusive, but what it suggests to me, based on my experience,
is conflict.
He tells us he knew he had to kill his mother, but he was conflicted.
Is it yes or is it no?
Should I nod or should I shake?
And still feels conflicted internally about his revelation.
To me, with the interrupted footage that we have of this moment, I'd begin to wonder
if at the time he honestly felt confident in his decision to finally kill his mother,
because some of his body language is indicating he didn't.
She continues quote.
Notice his Adam's apple when he speaks about knowing his mother has to die.
A hard swallow is noticeable.
A lot of what we might be able to read around his mouth is obscure due to his facial hair.
A hard swallow like this is a non-specific anxiety indicator.
Kemper feels very anxious when he recalls his actions the day he murdered his mother
and does a very good job of hiding most of his anxiety, but again, the body will always
show you the truth in these little moments if you're looking closely.
At time 449, we see his anger evident in the lowering and pulling together of his eyebrows,
as he recalls his mother lying there reading a paperback.
Something about the casualness of just coming home drunk and reading enraged Kemper at the
time.
In addition to anger, we see a layer of contempt in his face here as well.
Without his mid-face tightening a little more on what on camera appears to be the left side
of his face but would be his actual right side, resulting in the dilation of his left
nostril, a subtly more defined furrow above the brow, and a trace more elevation of his
left upper lip on camera, in right, his reality.
This is super subtle and again his facial hair obscures it mostly.
All of this is the face's way of broadcasting strong feelings of contempt.
Then at approximately 451, we see what's called a tight tongue-jut.
This is a micro expression for we know reveals disdain, disgust, or repulsion of a person
or thing.
It's the equivalent of the body saying, you're so repulsive I want to spit you out.
All of the micro expressions we see in this portion of the interview tracks as authentic,
given the footage we have, it appears he's being honest."
So first of all, love it because again, behaviour panel.
Yes, the tongue-jut.
If anybody enjoyed that quote, go watch behaviour panel.
So my second point in that, when you were talking in it, this conflicted thought, right,
when you were talking about the nodding and the shaking, and yes, it was the right thing
to do but it wasn't and I don't know how I feel about it, it reminds me of when he
was saying or when she was talking about his murdering, what was it, Anita?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, when he said, yeah, when he was like, oh, I just had to.
I had no other choice.
I got pushed to this point, you know?
And it's kind of that.
It's like, you know, I just had to murder my mother.
I had to.
What am I going to do?
Put up with this for forever?
Yeah.
So it's like, it's very much, yes, it was the right thing to do.
Did I really want to do it?
No.
Or I'm at least trying to express that I know it wasn't the right thing to do but I
had to do it.
It's funny because of his knowledge in psychology, he thinks he knows the correct way to present
himself physically so that people believe him.
But you can't fake those specific emotions that you have even if he is anti-social personally.
He has emotions internally about his own actions, maybe not about other people's feelings or
whatever, but you can't fake that bodily reaction, right?
So he's thinking, oh, I'm fooling all these people because I'm nodding or I'm shaking
my head at the right times.
But Adrian's like, well, no, because you're tongue jetted out and you're nostril flared.
You know what I mean?
Like certain things that you can't control.
Lastly, Adrian comments one more time about the details of Ed killing his mother.
Quote, there's a number of things I notice here.
Freeze frame on 436 of video two.
Here I see what's called evanescent cheek puff.
This micro expression is an indicator of anxiety.
You see it most often in circumstances when the subject is skilled at not revealing their
true feelings.
But unless someone is a true psychopath, the body doesn't lie.
End quote.
Which is why like people like bunny can actually do it because that is not, I don't care about
anyone else's feelings and I have my own.
I don't have feelings.
I don't have feelings and I'm able to mimic them in a way that is acceptable.
That gave me full body heat.
It's just saying.
Especially with Bundy, it's so able to like you like mirror people and show them their
own like physical or behaviors and then yeah, and then be able to mimic them.
And then that person subconsciously feels like, oh, this person is like me.
They're listening.
Yeah, they're listening to me.
So just a reminder before all those quotes, Ed had just killed his mother and her friend
Sally and written that note that he left for police.
Following this, Ed would flee the scene in Sally's vehicle, driving straight to Pueblo,
Colorado without stopping.
At this point, he believed he was already the suspect of a manhunt.
So he was like, oh, I murdered these two women and now definitely I'm-
Because he left a note, right?
Oh, that's true.
Mm-hmm.
Ed would take caffeine pills to stay awake, not stopping at all for the entire over 1,000
mile drive.
1,000 miles?
All the while listening to the radio.
He believed that if his final murders had been discovered, he would be hearing about
it on the radio.
Yeah.
When he did not hear anything of the sorts and after arriving in Pueblo, Ed sought out
a phone booth and made a phone call to police.
I could have predicted that.
I literally was like, he's like, oh, well, nobody's talking about me.
He's so narcissistic.
Yeah.
Gotta make sure somebody finds him.
But it's also one of those things.
It reminds me of Robert Durst with Susan Berman when he left the note for the police to find
her because he cared about her.
Yeah.
So still, he cares about his mother enough for them to find her.
Yeah, BTK leaving a random cereal box and a random truck, a bed of a truck and a parking
lot and then running back to the trash kid where it was found and he's like, I have to
hide this somewhere.
He didn't get my note.
So Ed would immediately confess to the person on the other line of the phone, the police
department about the murders, but they did not take his call seriously because the police
knew the man known as Big Ed as a friend and certainly not capable of murder.
They're like, oh, this is a joke.
No way of him.
Thinking it was a prank, the operator told them to call back at a later time.
She's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, just call us back.
Sure.
Yeah.
You know what?
Actually, I get up at four if you could call at 4.15, that'd be great.
Yeah.
Well, Ed would take this advice and several hours later, he would call the police station
again and ask to speak to an officer that he knew personally.
He would confess this fame-shocking news to this officer who told him to stay where he
was and wait.
Ed would comply and officers would arrive to take him into custody.
In this part of the interview, Ed talks about his contemplation when it came to turning
himself in.
Hearing this, Adrian states, quote, he turned himself in when the story was over.
He won the game and he lost.
He won in that he proved his power to his mother and he lost in that he knows he has
a deeply held desire to win his mother's approval and love.
It's what has driven him since he was a child and now what does he have?
Kemper lived so long fueled only by contradictory drives, the first being the drive to have
his mother's approval and the other being the drive to punish his mother for withholding
her approval.
Without the strings or a puppeteer, Pinocchio is not sure what to do when he's not performing.
His entire world paradigm was built on either longing for or raging against his mother.
Now that she's gone, he doesn't know who he is or what to do.
At first, he didn't want to give up his freedom, but after killing his mother, perhaps he realized
the freedom he thought he had was an illusion.
He'd always been and now always will be a prisoner of his mother's dysfunction.
Whether the reason, whatever the reason, he turns himself in because he didn't have the
will to keep going anymore now that he'd killed her.
Any quote?
Yeah, what do you do?
You go start a new chapter, you go find a new antagonist.
You're not mad at anybody anymore?
They're not mad.
They're not here.
You're going to what?
Continue to kill coeds?
But the whole point of it was to rage against your mom?
I don't know.
It's weird because yes, maybe subconsciously he felt like he was getting back at his mom,
but did his mom ever really know?
No, of course not.
It's not like he was like, hey, I murdered eight people and I'm going to murder you.
He didn't say that.
Yeah, I don't think he did.
I don't know.
It kind of reminds me of Mark David Chapman too, where it's like this whole, although
he was severely schizophrenic, or on the schizophrenic spectrum, and, you know, but his climax was
killing John Lennon.
Then what do you do after that?
He was totally fine with being taken in.
He was reading the catcher in the rye when the police showed up.
Yeah, he's like, whatever.
My job is done.
Yeah, my job's done.
This is it.
I don't need to fight anything anymore.
Jesus.
That's true though.
Upon being arrested, Ed would verbally confess to six additional murders of female college
students when asked in a later interview why he turned himself in.
Ed stated, 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.
Keep in mind, he hasn't slept in like 48 hours to this point too.
Yeah, he's high off of caffeine bills.
So I'm hearing in this quote though that it's his decision.
He decided that he was going to be arrested, but he could have gotten away with it if he
wanted.
Yeah, it's like, no, it's my decision because I called police and I turned myself in.
You wouldn't have caught me.
Yeah, it's another exercise of control.
Yeah.
So remember the 17 year old girl that he got engaged to in 73?
Oh my God.
They were still together at this point.
This whole time.
The engagement lasted over a year, but the girl broke it off when Ed got arrested.
Yes.
Like what?
Wherever you are, bless you girl.
So he got arrested in 73.
It's the same year they got engaged, but they had met in like 71.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
I can't even imagine.
Right.
Could you imagine?
So like I said earlier, like due to her age, the parents requested that her name be kept
out of the media.
Absolutely.
So I'm not even there, which I don't fucking blame them.
Even then I probably changed my name in stone, honestly.
Yeah.
Ed Kemper would be indicted on eight counts of first degree murder on May 7th, 1973, less
than a month after the killings of his mother and Sally.
Ed would be assigned the Chief Public Defender of Santa Cruz County, Attorney Jim Jackson.
Due to the elaborate confession Ed had given authorities, the defense only had one option
to advise, plead not guilty by reason of insanity.
While in custody in a waiting trial, Ed would attempt to suicide two separate times.
The trial would begin on October 23rd, 1973.
Three court appointed psychiatrists had evaluated Ed prior to the trial and had all found him
legally sane.
One of these psychiatrists was Dr. Joel Fort.
He had investigated Ed's expunged juvenile records, including the one that indicated
Ed was psychotic.
Dr. Fort also interviewed Ed separately under truth serum and indicated to the court during
the trial that in his findings, Ed had engaged in cannibalism, cooking parts of his victims'
bodies and putting them in a casserole of sorts.
He said that or that was under this truth serum?
The doctor said that Ed said that under this truth serum.
Although this was his finding, Dr. Fort determined that Ed was fully cognizant in each case of
murder and even added that Ed enjoyed the prospect of infamy that was associated with
being labeled as a heinous murderer.
Ed would later recant this confession that he cannibalized his victims.
When I hear truth serum, I think of Buzz Lightyear in Toy Story and he's like, I am
Mrs. Nesbitt and he's all like woo!
I feel like that and I feel like that's kind of like Ed.
He's like, yeah, I cannibalized him too or whatever.
I don't know.
That's not how he sounds at all.
No, I know.
It sounds like very James Bond, right?
You're under a truth serum, Bond, and within 10 minutes you'll be dead.
He's like, oh, I ate people.
Yeah, exactly.
But there would be no where, at least, I mean we heard the story just now, where would
that have come from?
Because everything else is clearly intertwined.
I think it was just like a silly comment.
The state of California used the I'm not in standard that stated that for a defendant
to quote, establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that
at the time of committing the act, the party accused was laboring under such defect of
reason from disease of mind and not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing,
or if he did know it that he did not know what he was doing was wrong, end quote.
Which he knew he was, but he was wrong.
Of course, for more information on the insanity defense, I just wanted to pepper this in here
and I'm not in listen to our mental breakdown on this topic because we did a whole episode
on the insanity plea and all that stuff.
The court found that Ed appeared to have known that the nature of his acts were wrong and
that he had shown malice a forethought.
Also, I found out while doing this research that it's not malice of forethought, it's
malice of forethought.
A forethought.
I did not know that.
And I wrote it out and was like, oh, I learned something new.
A forethought.
On November 1st, Ed was given the option to speak to the court and he took the stand.
He would testify that he killed his victims because he wanted them, quote, for myself,
like possessions, end quote.
Like, you know how about your fucking case here, buddy?
I don't think I was trying to help this case.
He's not.
He wants to be known as this infamous dude.
Of course.
He also attempted to convince the jury that he was insane based on the reasoning that
his actions could have been committed by only someone that had a skewed mind.
He would also suggest that when he was killing, another personality took over, stating it
was, quote, kind of like blacking out, end quote.
So he's claiming he has DID.
I know.
And I honestly fucking hate that multiple personalities were at this time.
But yes, I hate that though, because it's like you're giving like everyone that's been
diagnosed with DID like such a bad like cloud over their head.
Like that's not how fucking works.
Okay.
I was watching a YouTube thing recently where it was really strange and I definitely did
not feel like this person was purposely doing this.
There was this guy and I think he killed his girlfriend or something.
And he's in this interrogation room and he's like, you talk about like Elliot Roger being
a being a like an anime villain.
This guy was so animated and he's like, I did not kill her and like would like slam his
fist.
And it was this bizarre rage where like his body language didn't even match what he was
saying.
It was so strange.
And then I mean, like within the course of four to five hours during this interrogation,
at a certain point, he starts to like calm down.
And he's so calm in a way that is not that it's a different person.
It was just and it was so gradual that I was like, does this person suffer from DID?
Like it was like watching it in real time.
And then the whole interview over like the course of four or five hours and it just being
so not again, not totally different.
It was the same person.
You're watching the same person and it didn't look like it was out of exhaustion or like
they were because he still wasn't confessing.
It was just like, well, you know, and he was just more calm with his delivery.
Some of his hand like his hand motions were the same, but it was really strange.
Yeah, that is very strange.
Well, it's also, I mean, we've talked, we did a whole episode on DID as well.
So if you're interested in that, go listen to that episode.
But it's, it is very interesting to actually see like people that like switch like during
the interviews.
It's actually really, really interesting.
But I agree with you.
Hems saying like, oh, it's like I blacked out and I became a different person.
That's not well, did you black out or did you become a different person?
How would you know you're a different person if you black out?
Yeah, exactly.
On November 8th, 1973, the jury would deliberate for five hours before declaring Edmond de
Meel Kemper III sane and guilty on all counts.
Ed would request the death penalty, requesting quote, death by torture and quote.
Just torture me to death.
However, at the same time, there was a ban on capital punishment in the state of California
and Ed would instead receive seven years to life for each count to be served concurrently.
He would be sent to the California medical facility in Vacaville.
In his early years of prison, Ed was incarcerated in the same block as other infamous killers,
such as Herbert Mullen and Charlie Manson.
Oh my gosh.
Now, we probably all know the story of Charles Manson, but if you're not aware, Herbert
Mullen was responsible for killing 13 people in California in the early 1970s.
And this was one of the guys that was active at the same time as Ed.
Ed was known as having a specific negative attitude towards Herbert, calling him quote,
just a cold-blooded killer, killing everybody he saw for no good reason, end quote.
I'm like-
I said that about him?
About Herbert.
So you're not just a cold-blooded fucking killer?
No, he has a purpose.
No, yeah.
He's his life's purpose.
Not to that.
Ed was known to manipulate and physically intimidate Herbert in prison, who stood just
five feet nine inches tall, a foot shorter than Ed.
Ed would also state about Herbert that he quote, had a habit of singing and bothering
people when somebody tried to watch TV, so I threw water on him to shut him up.
Then when he was a good boy, I'd give him peanuts, herby-liked peanuts.
No, we did not.
That was effective, because pretty soon he asked permission to sing.
That's called behavior modification treatment, end quote, which is fucking cringy, like
what?
Like, okay, herby likes peanuts, it's hilarious.
Herby likes peanuts.
But that's called behavior modification treatment.
He's not wrong.
He's not.
God, could you imagine if he used his powers for good?
That's what I'm saying.
He could have been an awesome psychiatrist.
Yeah, it could have helped a lot of people.
Today, Ed remains in prison among the general population and is considered a model prisoner.
In fact, he was even in charge of scheduling other inmates for therapy appointments and
has become an accomplished craftsman of ceramic cups.
Like what?
Like ceramic.
Yeah, he realized he had a love for ceramic cups.
Yeah.
He was a shock people when he became a prolific narrator of audiobooks for a charity program
that prepared material for the visually impaired.
Wow.
In 1987, a Los Angeles Times article stated that Ed was the coordinator of the prison's
program and had personally spent over 5,000 hours of his time narrating books with several
hundred completed recordings.
That's amazing.
Obviously, we know that Ed granted plenty of interviews after he was incarcerated.
The last quote I have from criminal psychologist Adrienne Arno is following interview footage
of Ed considering where he might be today if he had never killed in the first place.
Adrienne states quote, What makes me say he knows it's a fantasy is the fact a number
of other sociopath serial killers have had normal mundane family lives as adult men.
So it's not impossible to achieve even with an antisocial personality.
It's not impossible to achieve while still actively murdering people.
Kemper is intelligent enough to have known he could have had it if he really wanted to.
He'd proven to himself and the world he was a master manipulator capable of psychologically
disarming women even in high risk circumstances.
And yet without the hope of repairing his relationship with his mother, he didn't see the point
in even trying.
End quote.
FBI profiler John Douglas would describe Ed after interviewing him as quote, among the
brightest, end quote, prison inmates he had ever interviewed.
He would add that he even personally liked Ed, referring to him as quote, friendly,
open, sensitive, and having a good sense of humor, end quote.
Ed was noted as saying at the end of another interview quote, There's somebody out there
that is watching this and hasn't done that, hasn't killed people and wants to, and rages
inside and struggles with those feelings, or is so sure that they have it under control.
They need to talk to somebody about it.
Trust somebody enough to sit down and talk about something that isn't a crime.
Thinking that way isn't a crime.
Doing it isn't just a crime.
It's a horrible thing.
He doesn't know when to quit and it can't be stopped easily once it starts, end quote.
It's like, I have the full body heaps again because it's like he had the six years in
the mental institution and he was doing miraculously.
And now that he's been in prison for so long, he's doing miraculously.
It's like, he needed structure his whole life and he didn't get it.
And all he got was ridicule and blame and whatever from his mom and his dad.
I'm not victim blaming, but God damn it.
Like, fucking put him up for adoption if you're gonna treat him like shit.
I think just, yeah, the incarceration thing, I just think back to that juvenile thing.
I was like, oh, don't just get his record expunged.
He killed two people and he's 21 years old.
But I mean, he doesn't even have a felony.
He can purchase a gun.
You know, I mean, just things like that.
Just kind of, it's very true.
It's, yeah.
It's hard because again, it's like, it's completely an urcher in this instance.
Absolutely.
Things were the lack thereof.
Yeah.
Edward first become eligible for parole in 1979.
He would be denied parole that year as well as being denied parole hearings in 1980, 1981
and 1982.
Edward waive his right to a hearing in 1985.
In 88, he would attend his next hearing where he was denied as well.
Following this, Edward state, quote, society is not ready in any shape or form for me.
I can't fault them for that end quote.
In 91 and 94, Edward would be denied parole again and waive his right for a hearing in
97, 2002.
And in 2007, Edward attend the hearing once again being denied.
How do you think that feels for him after having killed these women so that he wouldn't
have to be rejected but yet he keeps going to these parole hearings?
Yeah.
And he keeps getting rejected.
Here I think it's Adrian Simons stated about this hearing, quote, we don't care how much
of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes, end quote.
Yeah.
I mean, it's true.
I'll never get out.
In 2012, Edward waive his right to a hearing once again.
In 2015, Edward would be declared mentally disabled after suffering a stroke and he would
retire from the narrations of the audiobooks.
Oh, wow.
In 2016, Edward would receive his first rural violation report ever for failing to provide
a urine sample during a routine checkup.
I think he didn't know what was going on.
Probably.
In 2017, Edward would be denied parole yet again.
The next time Edmund and Mille Kemper III will be eligible for parole will be in 2024.
2024.
It's like in a month.
So that is the story of Edmund and Mille Kemper III.
I want to give a huge, huge shout out to Kelly Christranker's author of the article that
we found so much good information on and an even bigger shout out to Adrienne Arno for
her direct quotes that helped literally make this episode possible.
I feel like that's the first time I've ever found something that I related to so much
and that related to the podcast so much.
I was like, I cannot.
I didn't skip any of those quotes.
Like I put every single one in there and I did it on purpose because I wanted all of
that like information to be there and thank you for providing that honestly that really
made this episode that much better, I think.
Yeah, for sure.
But yeah.
Oh gosh.
I am so grateful I didn't cover this case.
Dude, 10,000 words by the way.
Because that whole episode was 10,000.
He also, more because we bantered.
Yeah.
So I just said more than 10,000 words.
That's amazing.
The last couple hours.
And this is one of our, I mean this, we haven't had a two hour episode in a long time.
Yeah.
This is one of our two hour episodes.
Especially on a, on a, an accessible episode for everyone.
So yeah, really excited about that.
Yeah, absolutely.
And to you guys that answered our poll about the episode ideally being two hours.
Here you go.
Sorry.
Here it is.
All three of you.
I see you Tyler and I see you Brady.
I'm the only one that voted for less than 30 minutes.
You're so funny.
I'm hilarious.
Okay.
I think we're gonna wrap it up.
Oh man, it's late.
It's a late one.
But thank you guys for sticking.
Crack open up.
If you're still here, we absolutely love you guys and admire your responses and all
the stuff that you send us and reach out to us and all that stuff.
And yeah, we look forward to talking to you next time and hopefully getting some of those
requests finished.
Absolutely.
If you like what we do, check out our Patreon, tier two and three gets extra episodes every
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And if you want to support us monetarily, we also have a PayPal.
Yes.
Which is at Diagnosing a Killer.
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Yes.
Because we love you guys.
It would not be possible without you.
Let's live in this.
Why do we both just speak that?
Okay.
Ugh.
All right.
Love you.
Bye.
Looking to expand your wine knowledge or just indulge in your favorites?
Gold Medal Wine Club is what you're looking for.
Enjoy small production award-winning wines from authentic family owned wineries delivered
right to your door.
Unlike other wine of the month clubs, Gold Medal Wine Club never features private labels
or bulk wines.
Instead, every shipment is from a unique family owned winery, each with a personalized
story to tell.
Take advantage of multiple different style offers when using the link in our show notes
and take home the gold today.