True Crime story
“What do you think his sentence should be?” A reporter asked the judge. The judge replied that, if he had it his way, Kemper would be tortured to death. Instead of fulfilling his wish, during the penalty phase of the trial, the judge sentenced Edmund Kemper to eight concurrent life sentences. Kemper's sentencing took place in November of 1973.
The judge was not able to sentence Kemper to the death penalty, because California had already eliminated capital punishment. At the time of his sentencing, Edmund Kemper was 25-years-old. He was found guilty on eight counts of first-degree murder and would become known as the “Co-ed Killer,” though his victims were not restricted to college co-eds. For Edmund Kemper,
the descent into madness occurred early on. Born November 20, 1968, inborn, Missouri, Edmund Kemper was large from the start, weighing in at 13 pounds. By the time he was four-years-old, Edmund was a head taller than his peers. Edmund was the little child of Kamper Edmonds and Emilie Kemper; he had two sisters. His father, E.E. Kemper II, was a veteran of World War II. After the war, the Kempers settled in Burbank, which at the time was a small town located in Los Angeles County. E.E. worked at the Pacific Proving Grounds, where he tested nuclear weapons. He later became an electrician. The town of Burbank had grown during the war; Lockheed Aircraft had chosen it as a site for the production of planes. By 1943, Burbank had a population of 53,899.
Both of Edmund's parents were strict disciplinarians, and their marriage was strained. Gambar learner was known to be a difficult woman. It has been suggested that Clarnell may have suffered from a borderline personality disorder.
Edmund’s father would later state that testing bombs were nothing compared to being married to Clarnell. He even said that being married to Clarnell had more of an impact on him, “than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did.” Edmund felt close to his father; as his mother was distant towards him, rarely showing him any affection.
Consequently, Kemper’s feelings for his mother fueled a rage that would escalate with the passing of time — a rage foretelling the destiny of both him and his mother. If Edmund’s rage was a ticking time bomb, then the lighting of the fuse was the divorce of his parents in 1957. Edmund was only nine-years-old when his father moved out; his mother was left with full custody.
Clarnell moved Edmund and his two sisters to Montana. It was during this time that Edmund started to express his anger and violent tendencies. At age ten, Edmund buried the family’s pet cat alive; he later dug up the dead cat and played with it. When he was thirteen-years-old, he killed another family cat because it favored the company of his sister, Allyn. Edmund butchered the cat with a machete knife and placed its remains in a closet.
When his mother made the grisly discovery, Edmund denied any responsibility for the cat’s death. Years later, as an adult, Edmund would reveal in an interview that he took pride in the fact that he could successfully lie about the cat’s death, and that he could appear to be an average person despite the rage and fear that he felt inside.
As a child, Edmund considered himself a chronic daydreamer, often fantasizing about committing acts of violence against others, in particular, his mother. He would set fires and engage in play that was violent, like dismembering his sisters’ dolls, or pretending that he was in a gas chamber and mimicking the convulsive movements of a dying prisoner. At ten-years-old, Edmund’s mother made him sleep in the basement of their home out of fear he might harm his sisters. To prepare the basement for him, Edmund’s mother placed a mattress in the dark, barren room.
Edmund would later recall the single, bare bulb that provided light in the rat-infested quarters was his bedroom.
A few years later, when Edmund was fourteen-years-old, he could no longer tolerate living with his mother. He decided to run away so he could be with his father, thinking this would make his life easier. His hopes for a better life were short-lived — dashed when he arrived at his father’s home in California to discover Edmund II had remarried and had a stepson through his new wife. Edmund’s father was less than enthusiastic to see his son but allowed Edmund to stay with him for a while before eventually sending him back to his mother in Montana.
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