American serial murderer and necrophiliac. A sadistic sociopath, he selected his victims for the purpose of venting deep-rooted sexual and sadistic urges. His victims were high-born, educated, spoiled, perhaps too-pretty, the kind who he felt were cruel to him in high school.
The son of an electrician, Kemper was born after a short two-hour labor. He grew to 6′ 9″ in height, 280 lbs. He was so strong that friends called him “forklift.” He could lift two 98 lb. sacks of flour easily. As a kid in grade school he slaughtered cats and dogs and decapitated his sister Allyn’s dolls. He showed an unusually strong sexual curiosity but had a total lack of sex education other than misinformation from his peers. A middle child, he had two sisters. His dad was not often around and left the family when Kemper was seven years old. His mom moved the family to Montana so he never saw his dad; he blamed his mom entirely. At eight, he began to live in two separate worlds.
When he was 14, Kemper’s mom was having an increasingly difficult time handling him. She was planning to remarry so she sent him, protesting and against his will, to live with his paternal grandparents on an isolated farm. On 8/27/1964, when Kemper was 15, he shot and stabbed both his grandparents, North Fork, CA, then called his mom to tell her what he had done. He was institutionalized as a juvenile in Atascadero mental hospital for five years, when he was released to his mother’s custody as “cured.” He and his mom resumed their repeated arguments, as when he was a kid. In March 1970 he went to work as a laborer at Green Giant farms in Watsonville, CA.
After 1970, he killed, beheaded, dissected and cannibalized eight women, including his mother, whose head he dismembered and placed on the mantle, throwing darts at it. During the act of killing, Kemper had spontaneous orgasms. As an adult, he could only achieve sexual satisfaction with dead women. He told doctors that he was unable to have sex with living women. He took Polaroid pictures of his dead victims, and cooked and ate pieces of their flesh.
Murder No.1 was on 5/07/1972, Anita Luchessa, 18, a straight A student.
No. 2, July 1972, Rosalind Zuniga, a high school student. Kemper denies this one.
No.3, August 1972, Mary Ann Pesce, a Fresno state co-ed. He buried her severed head in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
No.4, 9/14/1972, Aiko Koo, 15, the first victim to be totally dismembered.
No. 5, October 1972, Mary Guilfoyle, 24, a college student, was found stabbed and dismembered.
No.6, 1/08/1973, Cynthia Ann Schall, 18, was shot while hitchhiking to school. (Her head was found in Kemper’s mother’s back yard on 4/26/1973. It had been buried facing his bedroom window so he could look out and know she was looking at him. He had dismembered her body in the bathroom after sex and taking Polaroid porno pictures. Her body parts were found in the ocean at Monterey, CA.)
No.7, 2/05/1973, 08:30 PM, Rosalind Thorpe, 23, a UCSC student. (Her head was found ten days later in Pacifica and the headless body in Alameda near Castro Valley.)
No. 8 was the same day, 2/05/1973, Alice Helen Liu, 20, also from the UCSC campus. Both were shot and beheaded. Kemper’s mom worked at the UCSC administration office and had an official sticker on her car, which Kemper used. Although it was known that a killer was picking up hitch-hiking girls, Kemper wrote in his diary that 110 young women had accepted rides with him.
No. 9, 4/21/1973, during the evening, Kemper killed his mother. He bashed her head with a hammer then cut her throat and dismembered her head, which he put on the mantle. Her larynx was removed and put down the garbage disposal to pay for her verbal abuse. He also cut off her left hand. He wrote in his diary, “She is the left hand of God, very fierce, very formidable, very foreboding.” At his trial, he said, “I was amazed how much like the others she died, how vulnerable and human she was. I was trying to hurt society where it hurts by taking its valuable members.”
No.10, 4/21/1973, he killed Sara Hallett, 59, at his mom’s house. Sara was his mom’s friend and he thought he could explain his mother’s absence by saying she had gone away with a friend.
Three days later he called the police from Pueblo, Colorado and admitted the murder of the two older women. On 4/28/1973, he led Santa Cruz police to four sites where they found remains of three dismembered bodies. He was charged with eight murders on 4/30/1973. On 6/28/1973 he pled not-guilty, and on 9/26/1973, pled innocent due to insanity. A psychiatrist said that he was sane at the time of the murders. Kemper refused to eat or take medication and between May and November, made several suicide attempts. At the trial, he was declared guilty and was given life in prison 11/08/1l973.
Housed in California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Kemper has requested a partial lobotomy and was refused. He is kept sedated because of his fits of rage and uncontrollable size.
Link to Wikipedia biography