Kemper’s conversations with Douglas and Ressler were featured prominently in the book 'Mindhunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit.' They represented not what my mother was, but what she liked, what she coveted, what was important to her, and I was destroying it.” Kemper also said in a interview, “There’s a lot that leads into that happening, but that’s what happened.

In Douglas' interviews with other serial killers, he said that when they reached the topic of their mothers, the most hardened criminals would start “breaking down.” He told “Kemper on Kemper,” “It seemed to always be the mother thing with these guys They love the mother, they want the mother’s love, but at the same time, they hate the mother.” Douglas and his team also discovered that a hatred of the mother was a common characteristic between serial killers. … And they’re going out on a date, where I’d love to be going, and I’m aware of both of these realities, and the distance between those two was so dramatic, so amazing, so violent”

… Walking up to my apartment past a happy, young couple coming down the stairs who nodded and smiled at me as they went by. … To be walking up the stairs with a camera bag that belonged to a young woman that had her severed head in it. 11 o’clock at night, the lights are on, all they have to do is walk by, look out and I’ve had it. I started flaunting that invisibility - severing a human head at night in front of my mother’s residence with her at home, my neighbors at home upstairs, their picture window open, the curtains open.

When he was arrested, many people in Santa Cruz were shocked that Kemper’s mother or neighbors didn’t pick up on Kemper’s behavior.Įxplained Kemper in a 1984 interview: “It was getting easier to do. Kemper laughing with unidentified detective. Scroll below to see what authorities uncovered. The crime scene photos taken throughout the investigation - along with Kemper's various interviews - provided major insight into how a shy, mild-mannered boy turned into one of the most twisted serial killers in US history. Dubbed “friendly” and “cooperative” by law enforcement, Kemper divulged every detail of his crimes to law enforcement and even agreed to show detectives the locations of “the articles of clothing, personal effects and the bodies” of the missing co-eds. On April 24, 1973, Kemper turned himself over to the police, and the 6-foot-9-inch, 285-pound 'Co-Ed Killer' was charged with eight counts of first-degree murder. Known for abducting and killing female students before dismembering their bodies and hiding them in remote areas along the coast, Ed Kemper also murdered his grandparents, mother and his mother's best friend.

Edmund Emil Kemper III was the serial killer responsible for 10 grisly murders that terrorized Northern California's sleepy city of Santa Cruz from 1964 to 1973.

Crime scene photos