Crime Junkie - SERIAL KILLER: Ed Kemper

Episode Date: August 17, 2020

When female college students started turning up dead in Santa Cruz in 1972, local police had no leads and no reason to suspect their friend Ed might be behind the grisly killings.We want to learn more about YOU! If you fill out our brief listener survey you will be entered to win a $250 Amazon gift card!! 4 Winners will be chosen at random after the survey ends on 9/6. If you won, you will receive an email on 9/14/20. You can take the survey HERE. For current Fan Club membership options and policies, please visit https://crimejunkieapp.com/library/.  Sources for this episode cannot be listed due to character limitations. For a full list of sources, please visit https://crimejunkiepodcast.com/serial-killer-ed-kemper/ 

Hi, Crime Junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers, and I'm Britt, and the story I want to tell you today is about evil that manifests young. This particular evil has been studied quite a lot over the years, and there's a lot to be said in, you know, the whole nature versus nurture debate, what shapes us as kids and makes us who we are, and how we as humans can overcome even the worst childhood traumas. But every once in a while, the worst circumstances don't just come from outside forces. They come from within and lead to murder. This is the story of Ed Kemper. On August 27, 1964, police in North Fork, California get a strange phone call. On the

other line is a 15-year-old boy named Edmund Kemper III, who tells them something unthinkable, that he's just murdered his own grandparents. Now, North Fork is this super rural area in the Sierra Mountains, sort of smack dab in the middle of the state. It's farm country, not super exciting, and things like this don't happen here. I mean, really, as far as the police are concerned, things like a teenage boy murdering his grandparents in cold blood don't happen anywhere. And yet, as soon as they get out to the Kemper farm, there's Edmund, who everyone calls Ed, waiting patiently to be arrested and taken to jail. Naturally, the first question the police ask him is why he did it. Ed says that he killed them because

he was mad at the world, but he doesn't stop there. He says he also killed them because he wanted to see what it felt like to take a life. Simple as that. Police are chilled to the bone by how calmly Ed is saying all of this, almost as if committing a double homicide is just an average part of his day. Now, since he's already confessed, Ed keeps going, and the whole terrible story unfolds. According to Ed, it started after a fight with his grandma, Maude, when his grandpa, who's also named Ed, was out running errands. Now, our Ed and Maude had a tense relationship, and the fight escalated when she tried to take his gun away. That gun was a Christmas gift from his grandpa, and he didn't want

to give it up. So instead of giving it to her, he wound up shooting her in the head right there in the kitchen of their farmhouse. And then he shoots her a couple more times in the chest just to make sure she was dead. According to an article on Crime Library's website, Ed goes on to tell police that he killed his grandfather so he wouldn't have to find out that his wife was dead. With Maude's body still in the kitchen, Ed went outside with his rifle and waited for his grandfather to get home. As soon as he pulled up, Ed cocked it, took aim, and fired, finishing the grisly work that he started inside. Even the most veteran officers in the force are shaken by the brutal murders, because here's

this big, strong boy. I mean, he's nearly six foot four at just age 15. He's smart as a whip and calm as can be while he explains the rationale behind doing something so terrible. They arrest him right away, and since Ed is a minor, he's under the California Youth Authority's jurisdiction. But get this, they're so appalled by the murders that they kind of, I mean, I don't want to say cop out, but they realize that this kid and his crimes are way out of their league. It's just unfathomable to the justice system at the time that a child could commit crimes like this. So they turn him back over to the adult branch of California's legal system. Was trying a minor as an adult like a thing back then, like, yes, like he's like a

big kid, but he's still 15. Like it seems not okay for him to go to like a regular prison. No, I don't think they were planning on putting him in regular prison. According to the Billings Gazette back in September of 64, the first thing they do is sentence Ed to an indefinite term. He's then given a psychiatric evaluation and diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, but the judge like everyone else considers these murders to be just beyond comprehension. And so instead of sending Ed to a typical juvenile facility, and they're definitely not going to send him to an adult facility, he's actually sentenced to Atiscadero State Hospital, which is a maximum security mental institution for the criminally insane.

After he's locked up at Atiscadero, doctors, psychologists, and law enforcement all remain kind of fascinated by Ed. I mean, he stands out, I mean, literally stands out because like I said before, he's a big guy and still growing, but he stands out because he's also super well behaved and still so smart, like really, really smart. Doctors give Ed all sorts of assessments and IQ tests, and he registers at near genius levels. According to a former FBI agent, John Douglas, in his book, Mindhunter, Ed gets so good with the tests that the hospital authorities let him look at the tests, and even they let him give the tests to other inmates. Like this guy is literally giving psychological assessments to adult male sex offenders. Him, this like disturbed teenage boy.

Oh my god. I know. I mean, to me, that just seems so out of line. Now, Ed's behavior while he's incarcerated leads some of his doctors to question the paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis. They keep studying him and reevaluating him, and Ed, because he's so bright, is able to figure out just what they want to hear. Remember how we kind of talked about this in our Rodney Alcala episode two, how he learned to appear sane and rehabilitated in front of the parole board so that he could go free? Yeah. Well, that's pretty much exactly what Ed does. And to me, this is a big sign of how dangerous he really is, because not only does he now have access to these evaluations, but he's using the information within these to get his diagnosis reduced to a personality disorder with passive

aggression. Right. He's figuring out how to game the system. He's totally gaming the system. And passive aggressive, he murdered two people in his own family. Like there's nothing passive about that. Yeah. I mean, you'd think that, right? I mean, he very actively killed two people. But the penal system out in California at the time is more focused on rehabilitation and not necessarily punishment for what you did. And with Ed being so young and being such a model prisoner, they look at him almost like a success story. Their rehabilitation strategy is working. By the time Ed turns 21 in 1969, his doctors are so impressed with the progress Ed's made while incarcerated that he's released from the mental institution on parole in December of that

same year. Even though his doctors advise against it, Ed goes to live with his mom, Clarnel, in Aptis on the Pacific coast in central California. This is about 180 miles away from where he murdered his grandparents in North Fork. And on the outside, everything seems like it's going great. Maybe he was rehabilitated. The city of Santa Cruz nearby is a university town with plenty of educational opportunity. And Ed's mom actually works at UC Santa Cruz. And so she gives Ed a parking pass. So he's on campus a lot. And he sees plenty of coeds out hitchhiking. Now, mind you, he's still on parole, so he's still under law enforcement supervision. But as far as they can tell, he's taking it seriously and behaving himself. According to an article on biography.com,

he starts going to community college. But when that doesn't really work out, he actually applies to be a state trooper. Ultimately, Ed actually gets turned down for this. And not because of his criminal record, which they don't actually know about, but because of his sheer stature. Apparently, because he was so big, that was just like a no go, which I didn't realize was a thing. But by the time he's done growing, Ed is a whopping six feet, nine inches tall and about 300 pounds. Yeah, like he's a giant dude. And that's outside the state's physical requirements. Truthfully, I don't even know that they got far enough to look into his criminal record, or if they just kind of take one look at him and they're like, yeah, we don't have a uniform that fits. Yeah. Yeah, you're too

big, buddy. But either way, he doesn't take it personally. And the local law enforcement in Santa Cruz actually becomes pretty fond of him because they all end up hanging out after work at this same bar, this little place called the jury room. And to the cops, he's just big Ed, their friend, the gentle giant. After getting turned down by the California state troopers, Ed gets a steady job working for the California Department of Transportation doing road construction. It's good, solid work, steady paycheck, further vindicating the parole board's belief that Ed's making great progress. And he really is now a valuable member of society. They're so confident in him that his record actually gets expunged in the fall of 1972.

And there's actually this letter of recommendation from his psychiatrist. And I mean, I think it's actually kind of incredible. And here, Brett, I'm going to have you read it to everyone. If I were to see this patient without having any history available or getting any history from him, I would think that we were 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. So as you can see, everyone from police to mental health professionals

are 150% confident that Ed's cured and ready to live a happy and productive life. Meanwhile, though, the city of Santa Cruz, near where Ed's living, is suddenly rocked by unthinkable tragedies. Starting in the fall of 1972, the Santa Cruz police suddenly see a series of shocking murders and disappearances transform their sleepy beach town into a hotbed of horror. As far as police can tell, it starts in August when a skull turns up in the Santa Cruz mountains. Police use dental records to identify it as belonging to a 19 year old college student named Mary Ann, who'd gone missing from Berkeley nearby with her friend Anita. With Mary Ann's skull and no trace of Anita, police are forced to assume the worst about

what happened to these two young women. Then, in the middle of September, a teenage girl named Aiko also goes missing from Berkeley. According to the Oakland Tribune, she disappears while she's waiting to catch her bus into San Francisco for a ballet class. So with Anita and Aiko missing and Mary Ann dead, Santa Cruz's concern turns into a full blown nightmare by mid-October, and it begins to escalate on Friday the 13th, when a homeless man named Lawrence White is found dead after being beaten to death with a baseball bat. That same month, a young woman named Mary is declared missing after she doesn't show up for a job interview. Then, in early November, a priest is beaten and stabbed to death in his own confessional booth. Both the public and the

police are beyond shaken up by this, in part because at the time, and this is the early 1970s in the United States, statistics said that 95% of murders weren't premeditated. Most of them happened as a result of fights or domestic incidents gone really, really bad. So the type of murder happening in Santa Cruz are just, I mean, incomprehensible to them. The local police have never seen anything like it, and they put out warnings to the public, stuff like, be careful, use your common sense about strangers, don't hitchhike. But the fear within the community keeps mounting. Now, before this, Santa Cruz was a really relaxed place, the type of town where people moved to to get away from the big city hustle and enjoy life by the ocean. And now,

suddenly, the whole town is terrified that they might have a serial killer on their hands. The Santa Cruz state troopers share their fears with their big friend Ed at the local bar, and they lament that they don't have any leads beyond a witness from the church and no way of stopping whoever this person is. As 1972 turns into 73, police don't realize the worst is yet to come. In January, another woman goes missing and reappears in a terrifying fashion when parts of her dismembered body washes up on the shores. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, she's identified as Cynthia Shaw, who went by Cindy. Cindy was 19 years old when she died, and she was a local co-ed like Marianne and Anita. As of all of this isn't bad enough, on January 25, literally the

very next day after Cindy's head is identified, the killer terrorizing Santa Cruz kills five people in a single day, fatally shooting and stabbing two families and their young children. Oh my god. Oh, and the killer isn't done. Two more co-eds from UC Santa Cruz named Allison and Rosalind go missing on February 5. The next day, four teenage boys are shot dead at an illegal campsite at a state park just north of Santa Cruz. So that's two murder sprees and two more missing college students in just 12 days. At this point, was anybody connecting these two sprees? Like, to me at least, the MOs seem so different, but I guess I don't know like if law enforcement was using MOs and crime patterns to really analyze these things in the 70s. So I wasn't able to find

anything definitive about this at that exact point in time. Like, I couldn't tell if they got this as one person, if they thought it was five people, but you're right. There's such a variety of victims here in terms of ages and genders and how all the victims are killed. And plus two, I mean, like I said before, this is a whole different type of murder than anything Santa Cruz police had ever seen before. Like, all of this stuff is happening at once. I mean, bodies are turning up left and right. Some of them are in pieces. It's a lot by anyone's standards. And whether they thought this was one person, two people, 10 people, all they knew is that something had changed in their town and it had to stop. But before they could stop it, another set of remains is found on February 12.

This time, the victim was stabbed and dissected. The next day, the police get yet another call about a murder after an old man weeding his lawn is shot in broad daylight. But unlike in all of the other murders, this time, they're able to catch the killer. A man named Herb Mullen, and in a strange parallel to Ed back in 64 after he killed his grandparents, Herb's very calm when he's arrested. He doesn't resist. He just kind of willingly goes with police. So police get him in custody. But before they can officially charge him, the dissected remains come back with a positive ID from dental records. It's Mary, the young woman who never showed up for her job interview back in October. So with this new identification and Herb being in police's custody, police are

obviously kind of desperate to tie him to all of the missing and murdered people in the area. But according to Katie Dowd's article on SF Gates website, the police and the DA can't find definitive evidence that ties him to all of the crimes. And so when they can't make these connections like they want to, the DA tries to kind of deflect the responsibility on to non-local killers using Santa Cruz as basically like a dumping ground. Okay. So they believe that there's more than one killer, but they don't necessarily want to consent to more than one local person, right? I mean, I think that's what they're trying to say. I mean, I think they wanted it to be him. And you know, they might have even believed it was him, but they didn't have the evidence to prove

it. Right. And yeah, I don't think they wanted to scare the public to be like, yeah, we have a bunch of maniacs just running around among you. Of course. But really, I mean, I think that they knew that it was two separate people. I mean, even if they wanted to pin it on her because that would have been clean and neat, I don't think they could because they noticed something interesting about the technique used in some of the cases. It seems that in some of the cases, there are two very distinct, very different ways that the bodies have been mutilated. Okay. Different how? So for the cases where there was dismemberment or dissection, some of them, I hate to say, they were done better. But I mean, you know what I mean, they were some of them were neater,

like a killer had some and some were sloppier and messier and less planned out even. Exactly. One of them, it almost seemed like someone was a mess and kind of just hacking around where in other cases, it seemed like the killer really had an idea of what they were doing. So even after Herb's arrest, more bodies turn up and these bodies have that very neat and clean style of dissection and dismemberment. Now, this is happening in early March when some hikers in San Mateo County, which is just north of Santa Cruz, stumble upon a skull in a jaw bone. Once law enforcement arrive on the scene, they notice that the jaw bone doesn't match the skull, but they're able to locate a matching skull nearby when they do a search.

The remains are taken back for identification and dental records prove yet again, that a killer is still preying on Santa Cruz's co-eds because the results come back as Allison and Rosalind, the two girls who went missing back in February. Okay, but if they went missing back before Herb was ever arrested, it still could have been him, right? So that was my thought too. Again, I think there's like a very clear distinction between Herb's killing and this other person's killings because for clarification, the ones that they were able to attribute to Herb were those messier, less organized decapitations and dissections. So to me, it's not surprising that we continue to find bodies

and bones, but I think there was just some sort of like belief or maybe like a naive hope that somehow making an arrest would just mean like, okay, we're done, we're not going to find any more bodies, we can all move on, except that's not what happens. And the media in Santa Cruz really pressures the DA about this. Like if you've got the guy, why are people still turning up dead? And his answer is pretty illuminating, I think, because he says, and I quote, we then have another homicidal maniac on our hands. Well, obviously. So on February 17th, Herb is charged with 10 counts of murder for the nine people slaughtered

during the two sprees on January 25th and February 6th, and for that guy who was weeding his lawn on February 12th. Even with Herb off the streets, the police and the DA are just at a total loss here. The city feels like it's on edge. No one feels safe. And worst of all, they have no idea how to stop whoever this second killer is. And then just before Easter, the Santa Cruz police get a strange phone call, one that changes everything they thought they knew about this investigation. On April 23rd, 1973, the Santa Cruz police are just beyond shocked when they get a call from Ed Kemper because their buddy, Big Ed, tells them an extraordinarily disturbing story. He says that he's killed his own mother, who he's been living with ever since he was released from

that hospital back in 1969. He tells them about how he waited for his mom to fall asleep before sneaking into her bedroom to bludgeon her to death with a claw hammer. As if that's not brutal enough, Ed tells them that he cut out her tongue and larynx and put them in the garbage disposal before cutting her head off and using it for dart practice. Ed also says that he engaged in sexual activity with his mom's severed head. Now, this is just totally beyond comprehension all on its own. But Ed goes on to tell them that he's also murdered his mom's best friend, Sally, and cut her head off, too, and that police will find her body in the closet at his mom's apartment. But to follow this up, Ed says they can't come arrest him in Santa Cruz because he's actually

in Pueblo, Colorado, where he took off after killing his mom and her friend. According to the Santa Cruz Sentinel, he says police need to come get him before he goes on a killing spree and takes even more lives. Now, at first, and you're not going to believe this, police think it's just a prank call. I mean, not a very funny one, but they know Ed. He's a nice guy. He's totally harmless. So they hang up and brush it off. It actually takes Ed calling back. And this time he asked to speak to one cop in particular, someone that he knows pretty well and someone that he thinks will take him seriously. So what makes them finally understand that he's not kidding about this? So Ed has to end up giving them details about the crime that only the killer would know. And little

by little, it finally starts to sink in for police. This is no joke. This is real. And the police know that they have one chance to stop a killer. And even Ed himself seems to understand that he needs to be stopped because as the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph reported, he said he quote, just got to worrying about the murders end quote. So they're clearly weighing on him, staying on his mind. And he knows that he's never going to be able to stop. And at some point, it's got to catch up with him. Even though they're reeling from Ed's confession and how he's describing these heinous acts, the police keep Ed talking on the phone while they trace the call and get in touch with law enforcement out in Colorado where he is. They work fast to locate

the phone booth that Ed's calling from and the Pueblo police make an arrest. Meanwhile, the police back in Santa Cruz hurried to the duplex where Ed's been living with his mom. And sure enough, just like he said, they find his mom's mutilated body and Sally stuffed in the closet. But as shocking as this all is, Ed isn't done. Because once he's in police custody, he also says that he's the one who's been killing all of those hitchhiking students. He's claiming to be the co-ed killer that's held Santa Cruz in terror for months. The Santa Cruz DA and other law enforcement officers hurry out to Colorado to pick Ed up and bring him back to California to answer for his crimes. To their surprise and horror, Ed's not only willing to

talk, but he's almost eager. Like it's a relief to tell the truth and kind of unburden himself from all of these feelings. Yeah, I was going to ask what his demeanor was during all this. Like, was it just as cool and collected as when he had confessed to killing his grandparents? Yeah, cool, calm, collected. I mean, again, I think there was a little bit maybe of frazzled like him knowing that again, it's going to catch up with him. He's never going to be able to stop. But again, it was more of this unburdening like, oh, I can finally tell someone what I've been really doing and who I really am. Biography.com reported that Ed tells police that he'd been planning his actions for years, pretty much as soon as he got out of that mental hospital.

He said he bought a car and made his own kill kit with things like handcuffs and plastic bags, but the urge wasn't out of control yet. He still was very organized, so he weighed it. By Ed's own estimate, he says that he picked up somewhere around 150 female hitchhikers around Santa Cruz and the nearby counties between 1970 and 1972. And he let them all go before he picked up Mary Ann and Anita and started to kill. And I don't 100% sure know why, but a little part of me wonders if he was practicing. How can I act that makes these people calm? How do they act? Like, what, what startles them? I mean, he was studying his prey and he was learning the same way he learned in prison and figured out how to act. Right. When he started his killing with Mary Ann

and Anita, Ed says that he took them back to his mother's house and dismembered them both, engaging in sexual activity with their bodies before disposing of pieces of them in the Santa Cruz Mountains. I know you said earlier that they found Mary Ann's skull, but what about Anita? Did they ever find her body? So to this day, no trace of her has ever been found, despite some pretty intense searches. Both Anita and Mary Ann set up Ed's patterns and his proclivities, though. And as he tells police, between May of 72 and April of 73, he killed eight women. Ed confesses to being responsible for some of the disappearances of some of the hitchhiking coeds who went missing while Herb was still also doing his killings in the area.

He said that what he would do is he would use his official campus parking pass that he got from his mom to lure his victims into this false sense of security. Like, oh, yeah, I'm, you know, I go here too. Fellow student. Yeah, totally comfortable. Exactly. I'm the same as you. He talked to them once they got in the car, you know, learned their names, made polite conversation, seemed like a perfectly normal guy right up until it was too late. Just like with his mom and Sally, Anita, and Mary Ann, Ed's able to give highly detailed accounts of how he killed Aiko, Cindy, Rosalind, and Allison. And he tells investigators where parts of their bodies still are. Now, although parts of Cindy's body washed up on the shore, police don't find her head until Ed actually takes them

to where it's buried. And it's buried in his mother's backyard. With every passing story, it becomes more and more obvious to law enforcement just how wrong they were about their big buddy, Ed. And I won't go into the details about the killings because, I mean, he was one of the most disturbed killers. I mean, it's so gross, so much dismembering and necrophilia. I mean, horrible stuff that you usually see as deviants escalates. But with Ed, it almost seems like it was there from the very beginning. Behind the gentle giant exterior was a monster capable of acts that almost defy the imagination. And none of them ever suspected him. Like, he was never on any of their radar as like a possible person of interest. No, never. It's super jarring for these

season cops to realize that they got so fooled, you know, because as they know now, whenever they talk about the case, Ed wasn't listening to be polite. He was listening to learn their techniques and to stay one step ahead of them. I think this goes back to a crime junkie rule of you never really know anybody. I think that was our first rule. You never know anyone ever. As police keep investigating into the murders and the DA prepares the case over the summer of 73, which by the way, actually also happens to be about the same time that Herb's trial starts. And the trial starts with the revelation that Herb killed Mary and cut off her head. Wait, what? Yeah. I mean, that wasn't one of the ones that he was tried for. So his lawyer's opening statement just kind of drops

that little factoid along with admitting that Herb also killed Lawrence White and, you know, beat that priest to death back in 72. So, I mean, the way they throw it in was like, oh, no big deal, just bring my client's body count up to 13 instead of like what you already charged him for. Anyway, so at the same time Herb's trial is going on, the Santa Cruz detectives also start digging into Ed's background to see what they can find out about him. And they want the truth this time, not the illusion of the nice guy, because in order to understand his motives and what drove him to do such horrific things, police know that they have to go back to the beginning and they have to learn everything there is to know about Ed Kemper. Ed's willingness to talk about his crimes doesn't fade,

and he starts giving interviews from prison before his trial even starts. Between the interviews as well as numerous interrogations, police are able to dig deeper and deeper into Ed's backgrounds in the months leading up to his trial. They learn that he's been different pretty much right from the minute he was born. He weighed a whopping 13 pounds as a newborn in 1948. I just crossed my legs. Right? I mean, this shocked both his dad, who was Ed the second, and his mom, Clarnel, because while they were both tall, neither of them expected to have a son anywhere near this size. The difference between Ed and other kids only intensified as he got older, because there was really no way around the fact that Ed was a weird kid, a fact that he himself

admits to in custody. His mom was both highly domineering and fond of belittling her son. She was, quote, a complete alcoholic psycho, according to Ed's half-brother David. Although he got along well with his dad, Ed and his mom had an increasingly toxic relationship, and Katie Dowd reported for SFGate that by the time Ed turned eight, his mom was totally convinced that Ed was going to molest his sisters. And so she took to barring him down to the basement to isolate him from the rest of the family. Okay, I know this was a different time, and the dialogue around mental health and child psychology was totally different than what it is today. And I'm never going to claim to be an expert, but I've gone through a ton of trauma-

informed training in foster parenting, and like isolation is one of the worst things you can do to a child psychologically. Like, did anyone try to get this kid any help? Like, take him to a therapist or anything? Not that I could find, no. And, you know, in spite of this, because of this, Ed's behavior only continues to get stranger as he gets older, and it gets even stranger after his parents divorced. Now, his mom moves Ed and his sisters to Montana, hundreds of miles away from his dad back in California. Now, Ed's always had a bad relationship with his mom, but the divorce and being taken so far away from his dad makes the relationship much worse, and his violent tendencies start to manifest in earnest. By age 10, Ed's torturing

and killing family pets, which, as we know, is a huge red flag of antisocial behavior. He tells authorities how he liked to play make-believe with his two sisters, but instead of making up stories about castles or dinosaurs or normal things that you'd expect from little kids, Ed's favorite games were electric chair and gas chamber, where he pretended to die in really horrible ways. He would also mutilate his sister's dolls and talk about killing his teachers. While Ed's cruelty to animals continues, he hasn't hurt either of his sisters by the time he runs away at age 13, heading back to California to his father. Except, instead of being really happy to see him, his dad is already remarried with a whole new family and a whole new life,

so Ed doesn't really fit into that. He sends Ed to live with his parents, his dad, Ed, and Maude at their farm up in North Fort, California. The assumption was, at the time, that Ed was going to grow up and just somehow grow out of his issues and that eventually he'd be fine. Except, as it's all too obvious in retrospect, Ed was not fine, and it culminated in the worst way possible when he killed his grandparents. Also, I think one of the important things we have to look at is Ed's relationship with his mom and how it impacted his life. Obviously, having a bad parent doesn't even begin to excuse anything he did, but that hatred and resentment really fueled him for years, and Ed himself pointed to his mom as the driving force for his rage.

Here, I want to play you a clip from one of Ed's interviews, where he talks about her, and I want you to tell me what you think. To where I had physically grabbed her and thrown her onto her bed, trying to emphasize the point that she's threatening to kill her. So here I pick up these two young ladies in Berkeley on Ashby Avenue. One has flowers in her hand, petite little dolls. They're in granny dresses and they're hitchhiking. A couple of real experts. I want to see how together I am if I can resist this temptation, and they get in my car. They want to go one way. I know they need to go the other.

If they go the way they're insisting on, we're headed right back out to where the first two coeds were murdered. And I'm saying to myself, oh my god, all I got to do is relax, and they'll take me to their death. I've got the gun in the car, the same one I've been doing it with. I insisted as gently as I could. I took them where they needed to go to their college. That was one week before I murdered my mother. I said, she's got to die, and I've got to die. Poor girls like that are going to die. And that's when I decided I'm going to murder my mother. Oh my god, I don't even know how to process what I just watched. It's totally unnerving, right? I mean, the way he talks about it is so creepy.

I literally have full body chills about how normal it is for him to just talk about this. He's not even being elaborate and kind of charming about what he got away with, like some serial killer interviews you see. He's just like, yeah, this happened, and this is what happened, and this is how I did it, and this is how I rationalized it. Like, you would buying something like an expensive cheese at a grocery store, honestly. Plus, is it just me or is this guy like the complete archetype of what we think of when we think of serial killers? He has abusive parents, animal cruelty, violent fantasies. It feels like he checks every single box.

No, you're totally right. And, you know, one of the reasons it checks all of the boxes is because Ed was one of the first people used as like the poster child for what a serial killer could be. So a pair of former FBI agents who helped pioneer criminal profiling at Quantico's Behavioral Science Unit, it was John Douglas and Robert Ressler. They actually do a lot of interviews with Ed, and it's what they learn from him that influences how society now as a whole thinks of modern-day serial killers. So to me, I think that's why he fits into the box so neatly. He was the one who created the boxes to a certain extent. Exactly. And that impact can still be felt today, 47 years after his capture and conviction.

Ed's grim legacy and references to the whore that he caused can still be found in modern pop culture. He was a part of Thomas Harris' inspiration for Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. Clips of his interviews have mixed into songs by bands like System of a Down, and he was recently a character on Netflix's hit show Mindhunter, which is based off of that book we talked about earlier. As far as Ed in reality, he's actually waved several parole hearings over the last few decades and seems to recognize that he's not safe being out in the world. Wow. He is known as a model prisoner, and while the fascination with his terrible crimes continues, Ed Kemper remains behind bars where he belongs and where he'll stay for the rest of his life.

If you want to see pictures or our source material for this episode, you can find all of that information on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram at crimejunkiepodcast. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode. Crimejunkie is an audio chuck production, so what do you think Chuck? Do you approve?