Free Serial Killer Investigations by Colin Wilson

what happened. When he lost his temper with his domineering grandmother one day in August 1963, he pointed a rifle at the back of her head, and shot her. He then stabbed her repeatedly. When his grandfather came home, he shot him before he could enter the house. He then telephoned his mother, and waited for the police to arrive. Donald Lunde, a psychiatrist who examined him later, remarked: ‘In his way, he had avenged the rejection of both his mother and father.’
    After five years in mental hospitals, he was sent back to his mother. She moved to Santa Cruz, where she became administrative assistant in a college of the University of California. She and Ed had violent, screaming quarrels, usually about trivial subjects. Kemper loathed her. He bought a motorcycle and wrecked it, suing the motorist involved, and then did the same with a second motorcycle. Using the insurance money he bought himself a car, and began driving around, picking up hitchhikers, preferably female. And on 7 May 1972 he committed his first sex murder, picking up Anita Luchessa and Mary Anne Pesce, both students at Fresno State College, in Berkeley. He produced his gun, drove to a quiet spot, and made Anita climb into the trunk while he handcuffed Mary Ann and put a plastic bag over her head. She seemed unafraid of him, and tried to talk to him reasonably. He stabbed her several times in the back, then in the abdomen; finally he cut her throat. After this he went to the trunk, and stabbed the other young woman repeatedly. He then drove home—his mother was out—carried the bodies up to his apartment, and decapitated and dissected them. Later, he buried the pieces in the mountains.
    On 14 September 1972, he picked up 15-year-old Aiko Koo hitchhiking to a dance class in San Francisco. He produced his gun, drove her to the mountains, and then taped her mouth. He suffocated her by placing his fingers up her nostrils; she fought fiercely but vainly. When she was dead, he laid her on the ground and raped her, achieving orgasm within seconds. He took her body back to his apartment, cut off the head, becoming sexually excited as he did so, then her hands, and dissected the body. He took the remains out to the mountains above Boulder Creek and buried them. By then, newspapers were reporting that the ‘Chopper’ or the ‘Co-ed Butcher’ was preying on young women.
    On 8 January 1973, he picked up Cynthia Schall, who usually hitched a lift to Cabrillo College. He produced the gun, drove her to the little town of Freedom, and stopped on a quiet road. For a while he played a game of cat and mouse with her, assuring her that he had no intention of harming her, enjoying the sensation of power. Then he shot her, dumped the body in the trunk, and drove home. She was a heavy girl, and he staggered with her into his bedroom and stuffed her into his closet. His mother came home, and Kemper talked to her and behaved normally.
    As soon as she was gone the next morning, he took out the body and engaged in various sex acts. He then dissected it with an axe in the shower, and drove out to Carmel, with the pieces in plastic sacks, and threw them off cliffs. This time, parts of the body were discovered only a day later, and identified as Cynthia Schall.
    After a violent quarrel with his mother on 5 February 1973, he drove to the local campus, and picked up Rosalind Thorpe, who was just coming out of a lecture. Shortly after, he picked up 21-year-old Alice Liu. As they drove along in the dark, he shot Rosalind in the head. Alice covered her face with her hands, and he shot her several times in the head.
    He then put both bodies in the trunk, and drove home. His mother was at home, so he could not carry them in. Unable to wait, he took his big hunting knife (which he called ‘the General’) and hacked off both their heads in the trunk. The next morning, when his mother had gone to work, he carried Alice into the bathroom, cleaned off the blood, and had sexual intercourse