Edmund Kemper

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948), also known as The Co-ed Killer or The Co-ed Butcher, is an American serial killer, rapist, necrophile and cannibal who is known for having abducted and murdered several women in the early 1970s in Santa Cruz, as well as having murdered both of his paternal grandparents and his mother.

Born in California, Kemper had a turbulent childhood and moved to Montana with his mother at a young age after his parents separated before returning to California where he started his criminal life by murdering his paternal grandparents when he was fifteen-years-old. He was subsequently diagnosed as being psychotic and a paranoid schizophrenic before his conviction of murder as a criminally insane juvenile.[2] Released at the age of twenty-one after convincing psychiatrists he was rehabilitated, Kemper was regarded as innocent and non-threatening by his young female victims - embodying the persona of a "gentle giant",[3] a facade he created using nonverbal cues to deceive them into entering his vehicle. He solely targeted young student hitchhikers during his murder spree, luring them into his vehicle and driving them to quiet, unfrequented areas where he would murder them before taking their corpses back to his home to be violated and desecrated, with Kemper often keeping the severed heads of his victims for several days before disposal. He then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities. He requested the death penalty for his crimes, however capital punishment was temporarily suspended in California and he instead received eight life sentences, since when Kemper has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility.

Kemper is noted for his imposing stature and high intelligence, standing 6-foot-9-inches (2.06 m) tall, weighing over 300 lbs (136 kg) and having an IQ in the genius range, attributes that left his victims with little chance to overcome him.
In the California Medical Facility, Kemper was incarcerated in the same prison block as other notorious criminals such as Herbert Mullin and Charles Manson. Kemper showed particular disdain for Mullin, who committed his murders at the same time in Santa Cruz as Kemper's in a psychotic belief that his crimes would prevent catastrophic earthquakes. Kemper described Mullin as "just a cold-blooded killer ... killing everybody he saw for no good reason".[53] However, Kemper himself commented on the irony of his "self-righteous talking like that [about Mullin], considering what [he had] done".[53] Despite this concession of hypocrisy, Kemper still tormented, manipulated and physically intimidated the diminutive 5-foot-7-inch Mullin – who he nicknamed "Herbie", a name Mullin despised. Kemper stated that "[Mullin] 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. Herbie liked peanuts. That was effective, because pretty soon he asked permission to sing. That's called behavior modification treatment."

Edmund Kemper in his office, scheduling other inmates' appointments with prison psychiatrists.
Kemper remains among the general prison population and is considered a model prisoner, being in charge of scheduling other inmates' appointments with psychiatrists, regularly reading books on tape for the blind and being a skilled craftsman of ceramic cups.[56] While imprisoned, Kemper has participated in a number of interviews, including a segment in the 1982 documentary The Killing of America,[58] as well as an appearance in the 1984 documentary Murder: No Apparent Motive, about serial killers and FBI Profilers.[59] His interviews are notable for their contribution to understanding the mind of serial killers, with FBI profiler John E. Douglas describing Kemper as "among the brightest prison inmates he ever interviewed"[4] and capable of "rare insight for a violent criminal".[60] Kemper is also very forthcoming about the nature of his crimes and has said that he participated in the interviews to save others like himself from killing as he regards himself as much of a victim as the deceased; stating at the end of his Murder: No Apparent Motive interview: "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."[61] Nonetheless, Kemper has continued to display manipulative and potentially threatening behavior. For example, when Douglas's colleague Robert Ressler was in a cell alone with Kemper, Kemper noticed the apprehension in Ressler – after Ressler had pressed a hidden button repeatedly to call a guard to open the cell and had not received a response – and calmly told him to relax, but remarked: "If I went apeshit in here, you'd be in a lot of trouble, wouldn't you? I could screw your head off and place it on the table to greet the guard."[4] Ressler mentally sparred with Kemper, trying to buy time and hoping to give the impression that he had a way to defend himself. The prison guard eventually arrived and Ressler left unharmed, with Kemper displaying no physical aggression and stating afterwards that he was joking, but Ressler never entered a cell alone again with Kemper.

Kemper was eligible for parole in 2007, and again in 2012. On both occasions, he told the parole board he was not fit to return to society and was denied parole.[56] As of February, 2016, Kemper is quoted by his attorney Scott Curney as feeling that 'no one’s ever going to let him out and he’s just happy going about his life in prison', with Kemper stipulating that he is uninterested in attending his next parole hearing in 2017