Age, Biography and Wiki
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948. As of 2025, he is 76 years old. Kemper is infamous for murdering seven women and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Prior to this, at age 15, Kemper murdered his paternal grandparents. His non-familial victims were primarily female college students hitchhiking near Santa Cruz County, California. Kemper’s crimes often involved necrophilia, decapitation, dismemberment, and possibly cannibalism.
At his 1973 trial, Kemper was found sane and guilty, receiving eight concurrent life sentences. He remains incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Kemper was diagnosed with antisocial, narcissistic, and schizotypal personality disorders.
| Occupation | Serial Killers |
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| Date of Birth | 18 December 1948 |
| Age | 76 Years |
| Birth Place | Burbank, California, U.S. |
| Horoscope | Sagittarius |
| Country | U.S |
Height, Weight & Measurements
Edmund Kemper is notable for his imposing physical presence. He stands at 6 feet 9 inches (206 cm) and, during his prime, weighed approximately 280 pounds (127 kg). His stature contributed to his infamous persona and ability to overpower victims.
The same year that he began working for the Highway Division, Kemper was hit by a car while riding a motorcycle that he had recently purchased. His arm was badly injured in the crash, and he received a $15,000 settlement in the civil suit he filed against the car's driver. As he was driving around in the 1969 Ford Galaxie he bought with part of his settlement money, he noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking, and began storing plastic bags, knives, blankets and handcuffs in his car. He first picked up young women hitchhiking, then peacefully let them go; according to Kemper, he picked up around 150 hitchhikers who were in line with this pattern. This was before he felt homicidal sexual urges, which he called his "little zapples," and which he later began acting on. At times, he blamed his victims for his killing them, saying that they were "flaunting in [his] face the fact that they could do any damn thing they wanted, and that society is as screwed up as it is."
| Height | 6 ft |
| Weight | 127 kg |
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Dating & Relationship Status
Edmund Kemper has no known romantic relationships since his incarceration began in 1973. During and before his murders, Kemper struggled socially and was rejected by women, which contributed to his violent impulses and crimes. There is no public information about any current or past partners or marital status beyond his immediate family history.
In his youth, Kemper performed rites with his younger sister's dolls that culminated in his removing their heads and hands. On one occasion, when his elder sister, Susan Hughey Kemper (1943–2014), teased him and asked why he did not try to kiss his teacher, he replied, "If I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first." Kemper recalled that as a young boy, he would sneak out of his house armed with his father's bayonet and go to his second-grade teacher's house to watch her through the windows. Kemper also stated in later interviews that some of his favorite games to play as a child were "Gas Chamber" and "Electric Chair", in which he asked his younger sister to tie him up and flip an imaginary switch; he would then tumble over and writhe on the floor, pretending that he was being executed by gas inhalation or electric shock.
Kemper had a close relationship with his father, and was notably devastated when his parents separated in 1957 and divorced in 1961. Kemper's parents, Clarnell and Edmund Jr, had had an acrimonious relationship. Clarnell often complained about her husband's "menial" electrician job. Edmund Jr. later stated that "suicide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with [Clarnell]" and stated that she affected him "more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did."
After his parents' divorce, Kemper lived with his mother Clarnell in Helena, Montana. Kemper had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who he claims frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him.
Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would harm his sisters, and stated he was "a real weirdo" in a phone conversation to Kemper's father, unaware that her son had been eavesdropping. She would often smack him for the slightest act of insubordination.
Kemper claims that his mother refused to show Kemper affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay". Kemper also claims that she told the young Kemper that he reminded her of his father and that no woman would ever love him, though Kemper also complained that his mother was always trying to get him to go out with girls. Kemper later described her as "big, ugly, and awkward" and as a "sick, angry woman,". Others have postulated that she had borderline personality disorder.
At the age of 14, Kemper ran away from home to his father in Van Nuys, California. Once there, Kemper learned that his father had remarried and now had a stepson. Kemper stated that his father "cared more for his second family than he did us."
In different tellings, either Kemper's father or his mother shipped him off to live with his paternal grandparents, who lived on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on Road 224, about two miles west of the town of North Fork. Kemper described his grandfather as "senile" and said that his grandmother "emasculated" him.
On August 27, 1964, at the age of 15, Kemper killed his grandmother Maude Matilda (Hughey) Kemper (1897–1964) with a rifle after an argument, shooting her once in the head and twice in the back, then stabbing her several times. When Kemper's grandfather Edmund Emil Kemper Sr. (1892–1964) came home, Kemper fatally shot him in the driveway. Kemper phoned his mother, who told him to call police. Kemper did so and waited for police to arrive.
On December 18, 1969, his 21st birthday, Kemper was released on parole from Atascadero. Against the recommendations of psychiatrists at the hospital, he was released into the care of his mother Clarnell—who, by this time, had remarried, taken the surname Strandberg, and divorced again. Clarnell then resided in Aptos, California, a short drive from where she worked as an administrative assistant at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). Kemper later demonstrated further to his psychiatrists that he was rehabilitated, and on November 29, 1972, his juvenile records were permanently expunged. The last report from his probation psychiatrists read: "If I were to see this patient without having any history available or getting any history from him, I would think that we're dealing with a very well-adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence and who was free of any psychiatric illnesses... 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... [and] since it may allow him more freedom as an adult to develop his potential, I would consider it reasonable to have a permanent expunction of his juvenile records."
While staying with his mother, Kemper attended community college in accordance with his parole requirements and had hoped to become a police officer, though he was rejected because of his size—at the time of his release from Atascadero, Kemper stood 6 ft tall—which led to his nickname "Big Ed." Kemper maintained relationships with Santa Cruz police officers despite his rejection from joining the force and became a self-described "friendly nuisance" at a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local cops.
Kemper worked a series of menial jobs before gaining employment with the State of California Division of Highways in 1971. During this time, his relationship with Clarnell remained toxic and hostile, the two having frequent arguments that their neighbors often overheard. Kemper later described the arguments he had with his mother around this time, stating the following: "My mother and I started right in on horrendous battles, just horrible battles, violent and vicious. I've never been in such a vicious verbal battle with anyone. 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."
When he had saved enough money, Kemper moved out to live with a friend in Alameda. There, he still complained of being unable to get away from his mother because she regularly phoned him and paid him surprise visits. He often had financial difficulties, which resulted in his frequently returning to his mother's apartment in Aptos. Kemper, who was then in his early twenties, met a female student from Turlock High School at a Santa Cruz beach, and the two became engaged in March 1973. Their engagement lasted over a year before being broken off due to Kemper's second arrest. Her parents requested her name not be revealed to the public; she was reportedly 17 and still attending high school at the time.
Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper killed five female college students, one female high school student, his mother, and his mother's best friend. He picked up hitchhiking college students and took them to isolated areas where he shot, stabbed, smothered, or strangled them. He then took their bodies back to his home, where he decapitated them, engaged in necrophilic acts with their corpses, and then dismembered them.
Kemper has stated in interviews that he often searched for victims after having arguments with his mother. Psychiatrists, and Kemper himself, have espoused the belief that the young women were surrogates for his ultimate target: his mother.
Kemper subsequently packed Koo's body into the trunk of his car and went to a nearby bar to have a few drinks, then returned to his apartment. He later confessed that after exiting the bar, he opened the trunk of his car, "admiring [his] catch like a fisherman." Back at his apartment, he had sexual intercourse with the corpse, then dismembered and disposed of the remains in a similar manner as his previous two victims. Koo's mother called the police to report the disappearance of her daughter and put up hundreds of flyers asking for information, but she did not receive any responses regarding her daughter's location or status.
On January 7, 1973, Kemper, who had moved back in with his mother, was driving around the Cabrillo College campus when he picked up 18-year-old student Cynthia Anne "Cindy" Schall. He drove to a wooded area and fatally shot her with a .22 caliber pistol. He then placed her body in the trunk of his car and drove to his mother's house, where he kept her body hidden in a closet in his room overnight. When his mother left for work the next morning, he had sexual intercourse with Schall's corpse and removed the bullet from it, then dismembered and decapitated her in his mother's bathtub.
Kemper kept Schall's severed head for several days, regularly engaging in irrumatio with it, then buried it in his mother's garden facing upward toward her bedroom. After his arrest, he stated that he did this because his mother "always wanted people to look up to her." He discarded the rest of Schall's remains by throwing them off a cliff. Over the course of the following few weeks, all except Schall's head and right hand were discovered. A pathologist determined that Schall had been cut into pieces with a power saw.
On February 5, 1973, after a heated argument with his mother, Kemper left his house in search of possible victims. With heightened suspicion of a serial killer preying on hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area, students had been advised to accept rides only from cars with university stickers on them. Kemper was able to obtain a sticker, as his mother worked at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC). He separately encountered 23-year-old Rosalind Heather Thorpe and 20-year-old Alice Helen "Allison" Liu on the UCSC campus. According to Kemper, he first encountered Thorpe as she exited a building, having attended a lecture. Thorpe entered the front passenger seat and, believing Kemper to be a fellow student, began chatting amiably as he drove. Shortly thereafter, he observed Liu—whom he described as a "small Chinese girl"—"thumbing a ride". Kemper stopped his vehicle, and Liu entered the back seat of his car.
Kemper again brought his victims' bodies back to his mother's house; this time he beheaded them in his car and carried the headless corpses into his mother's house to have sexual intercourse with them. He then dismembered the bodies, removed the bullets to prevent identification, and discarded their remains the next morning. Some remains were found at Eden Canyon a week later, and more were found near Route 1 in March.
On April 20, 1973, Kemper was awakened by his mother, Clarnell Strandberg, coming home from a party. While sitting in her bed reading a book, she noticed Kemper enter her room and said to him, "I suppose you're going to want to sit up all night and talk now." Kemper replied, "No, good night." He waited for her to fall asleep, then he snuck back into her room to bludgeon her with a claw hammer and slit her throat with a penknife. Kemper then beheaded her and "humiliated her corpse," as stated in a 1984 interview. Kemper stated that he put her head on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour, threw darts at it, and, ultimately, "smashed her face in." He also cut out her tongue and larynx and put them in the garbage disposal. However, the garbage disposal could not break down the tough vocal cords and ejected the tissue back into the sink. "That seemed appropriate, as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years", Kemper later said.
Kemper hid his mother's corpse in a closet and went to drink at a nearby bar. Upon his return, he invited his mother's best friend, 59-year-old Sara Taylor "Sally" Hallett, over to the house to have dinner and watch a movie. When Hallett arrived, Kemper strangled her. He subsequently put Hallett's corpse in a closet, obscured any outward signs of a disturbance, and left a note to the police. It read:"Appx. 5:15 A.M. Saturday. No need for her to suffer any more at the hands of this 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!!!"
Afterward, Kemper fled the scene. He drove non-stop to Pueblo, Colorado, taking caffeine pills to stay awake for the over 1,000-mile (about 1,600 km) journey. He had three guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his car, and he believed he was the target of an active manhunt. After not hearing any news on the radio about the murders of his mother and Hallett when he arrived in Pueblo, he found a phone booth and called the police. He confessed to the murders of his mother and Hallett, but the police did not take his call seriously and told him to call back at a later time. Several hours later, Kemper called again, asking to speak to an officer he personally knew. He confessed to that officer of killing his mother and Hallett, then waited for the police to arrive and take him into custody. Upon his capture, Kemper also confessed to the murders of the six students.
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Net Worth and Salary
Edmund Kemper has no measurable net worth or income from conventional sources as of 2025. He has spent the majority of his life incarcerated and is supported by the state of California. Any earnings noted in public reports are likely to be minimal or nonexistent, as inmates typically have no legal means to generate significant income.
Interest in Kemper’s story has led to books, documentaries, and films (including a 2025 biopic), but Kemper himself does not profit from these ventures. He does not receive royalties or residuals from media about his life, as this is prohibited by California law for convicted felons.
Career, Business and Investments
Criminal Career: Edmund Kemper’s only “career” was his series of violent crimes, which ended with his arrest and life imprisonment in 1973.
Business and Investments: There is no evidence of Kemper engaging in legitimate business ventures or investments before or during incarceration. Any financial activity would be restricted by prison regulations.
Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight concurrent life sentences. Since then, he has been incarcerated at California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
On November 8, 1973, the six-man, six-woman jury deliberated for five hours before declaring Kemper sane and guilty on all counts. He asked for the death penalty, requesting "death by torture". However, with a moratorium placed on capital punishment by the Supreme Court of California, he instead received seven years to life for each count, with these terms to be served concurrently, and was sentenced to the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
Social Network
Edmund Kemper has no active or official presence on major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, X (Twitter), or TikTok. Due to his incarcerated status and legal restrictions, he cannot manage or own social media accounts.
Kemper told police that he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma", and later said he killed his grandfather because he would be angry with Kemper. Kemper's crimes were deemed incomprehensible for a 15-year-old to commit, and court psychiatrists diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. He was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility in San Luis Obispo County that houses mentally ill convicts.
On May 7, 1972, Kemper was driving in Berkeley when he picked up two 18-year-old hitchhiking students from Fresno State University, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Mary Luchessa, who were trying to visit friends at Stanford University. After driving for an hour, he managed to reach a secluded wooded area near Alameda, with which he was familiar from his work at the Highway Department, without alerting his passengers that he had changed directions from where they wanted to go. It was there that he handcuffed Pesce and locked Luchessa in the trunk, then stabbed and strangled Pesce to death, subsequently killing Luchessa in a similar manner. Kemper later confessed that while handcuffing Pesce, he "brushed the back of his hand against one of her breasts and it embarrassed him", adding that he said, "'Whoops, I'm sorry' or something like that" after grazing her breast, despite murdering her minutes later. He also noted that he chose the women because they seemed upper middle class, "of a better class of people than the scroungy, messy, dirty, smelly, hippy types I wasn't at all interested in."
When questioned in an interview as to why he decapitated his victims, he explained: "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."
On November 1, Kemper took the stand. He testified that he killed the victims because he wanted them "for myself, like possessions", and attempted to convince the jury that he was insane based on the reasoning that his actions could have been committed only by someone with an aberrant mind. He stated that two beings inhabited his body and that when the killer personality took over, it was "kind of like blacking out."
Kemper is forthcoming about the nature of his crimes and has stated that he participated in the interviews to save others like himself from killing. At the end of his Murder: No Apparent Motive interview, he said, "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 that feeling, or is so sure 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. It doesn't know when to quit, and it can't be stopped easily once it starts." He also conducted an interview with French writer Stéphane Bourgoin in 1991.
Kemper and fellow serial killers Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, Jerry Brudos, and Ed Gein were used as an inspiration for the character of Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs. Like Kemper, Buffalo Bill fatally shoots his grandparents as a teenager. Dean Koontz cited Kemper as an inspiration for Edgler Vess, the villain of his 1995 novel Intensity.
The character Patrick Bateman in the 2000 film American Psycho mistakenly attributes a quote by Kemper to Gein, saying: "You know what Ed Gein said about women? He said 'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right... [the other part wonders] what her head would look like on a stick'."
Multiple books have been written about Kemper, including Edmund Kemper: The True Story of the Co-Ed Killer and The Co‑Ed Killer: A Study of the Murders, Mutilations, and Matricide of Edmund Kemper III. Extracts from Kemper's interviews have been used in numerous songs, including "Love // Hate" by Dystopia, "Abomination Unseen" by Devourment, "Necrose Evangelicum" by Brighter Death Now, "Forever" by The Berzerker, "Severed Head" by Suicide Commando, "New Flesh" by Pitchshifter, and "Crave" by Optimum Wound Profile. He is discussed in many songs, such as "Edmund Kemper Had a Horrible Temper" by Macabre, "Fortress" by System of a Down, "Temper Temper Mr. Kemper" by The Celibate Rifles, "Murder" by Seabound, "Killfornia (Ed Kemper)" by Church of Misery, "Edmund Temper" by Amigo the Devil and "Edmund Kemper" by SKYND. The whole musical album Vile Postmortem Irrumatio by Austrian death metal band Monument of Misanthropy is a concept record about Ed Kemper.
Education
Kemper’s formal education was disrupted by his early criminal acts. He was institutionalized as a teenager after murdering his grandparents and received some education in youth correctional facilities. There is no record of higher education or university attendance. His intelligence, however, was frequently referenced by law enforcement and mental health professionals.
Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism.
At Atascadero, California Youth Authority psychiatrists and social workers disagreed with the court psychiatrists' diagnoses. Their reports stated that Kemper showed "no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre thinking." They also observed him to be intelligent and introspective. Initial testing measured his IQ at 136, more than two standard deviations above average. Kemper was re-diagnosed with a less severe condition, a "personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type." Later during his stay at Atascadero, he was given another IQ test, which produced a higher result of 145.
On the evening of September 14, 1972, Kemper picked up a 15-year-old dance student named Aiko Koo, who had decided to hitchhike to a dance class after missing her bus. He again drove to a remote area, where he pulled a gun on Koo before accidentally locking himself out of his car. However, Koo let him back inside, despite the fact that the gun was still in the car. Back inside the car, he proceeded to choke her unconscious, rape her, and kill her.
Kemper was indicted on eight counts of first-degree murder on May 7, 1973. He was assigned the Chief Public Defender of Santa Cruz County, attorney Jim Jackson. Due to Kemper's explicit and detailed confession, his counsel's only option was to plead not guilty by reason of insanity to the charges. Kemper attempted suicide twice while in custody. His trial went ahead on October 23, 1973.
