All language subtitles for Very.Scary.People.S02E07.The.Co-ed.Killer.The.Murder.Capital.of.the.World.Part.1.1080p.MAX.WEB-DL.DD+2.0.H.264-playWEB_track3_[eng]

♪♪

Kemper: I lived as an ordinary
person most of my life,

even though I was
living a parallel

and increasingly sick life.

♪♪

I'm picking up young women

and I'm going a little bit
farther each time.

This fantastic passion,
it was like drugs.

It was like alcohol.

A little isn't enough.

At first, it is,
and, as you adjust to that,

psychologically
and physically,

you take more
and more and more.

It's the same process.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Welcome to "Very Scary People."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

In the early '70s,

Santa Cruz, California,
was a paradise --

beautiful weather,
ocean beaches,

friendly, laid-back --

until young women
started disappearing.

It was hard to imagine
what was really happening.

There was a killer on the loose

and the city had become
a hunting ground.

Soon, it would be known as the
"murder capital of the world."

♪♪

♪♪

Anita Luchessa
and Mary Anne Pesce

were roommates at Fresno State.

They were hitchhiking
to Stanford.

♪♪

Hitchhiking, at that time,
was part of the youth culture.

I mean, it was just
what everybody did,

wherever they went.

Honig: Anita was 18,
from a farming community,

and it was her
first time hitchhiking.

Mary Anne was from outside L.A.

She was also 18
and she was one of five kids.

♪♪

Seems like he's a normal guy.

They treat him fairly
normally in the car.

♪♪

He's having a very normal
conversation with them.

♪♪

They don't know they're
in danger.

♪♪

He's looking back in the window,

trying to figure out,
"Are they casing me?

Are they looking at me funny?"

No, everything seems to be

on the level with these girls.

They're just trying to get
to their destination.

They don't suspect a thing.

♪♪

Because he knows the highways
so well, it's really easy

for him to kind of
take a turn, take a turn.

The girls don't realize
they're off-track

from their destinations.

He's able to get them to a rural
area before they realize it.

♪♪

By this time,
the girls figured out

that something
was terribly wrong

and they started to freak out.

♪♪

He tells the girls,
"I'm not going to kill you.

I'm not here to rape you,"
essentially.

He thinks that's going
to sort of

calm them down a little bit.

Obviously,
this does not calm any woman,

so they're fighting back
against him.

He quickly figures out that
it's going to be easier

if he separates the two girls.

♪♪

So he puts Anita in the trunk

and he stabs Mary Anne,
who fights for her life.

♪♪

After he kills Mary Anne,
he then has to deal with Anita,

who's in the trunk.

Dowd: She has been in there
the entire time,

hearing what is going on,
so she has to know

that her friend is either
mortally wounded or dead

and she also has to know that
that's coming for her next.

He opens up the trunk, where he
realizes he is covered in blood,

but he doesn't want to alarm
the other woman

and he tells her,
"Your friend got smart with me,

so I had to hit her.

That's why there's blood on me."

As if that's going
to make this woman feel

any better about the situation.

But there's something
in his mind that seems to think

this is how people talk
to each other

and maybe this will calm her.

So Anita tries
to get away from him,

but she never had a chance.

He stabs her before she
can get out of the trunk.

♪♪

So he kills both women

in this really frantic
sort of scene.

♪♪

The horrible aspect of this is

that he was pulled over
by a police officer

when he had the two bodies
in his trunk of his car.

He had a broken taillight.

Dowd:
He knows how to talk to police.

He says, "Oh, hey, sorry
about that, Officer.

I'll get that fixed."

And he invited the police
officer to, "Go ahead,

open the trunk,
if you want to look in it."

And he decided that he was going
to have to murder the cop,

if he opened the trunk.

♪♪

But he never did.

So then, he drives off,
a free man.

What happened next
is truly unimaginable.

♪♪

He takes the bodies, takes them
back to his apartment.

He dismembers them.

He particularly seems to enjoy
beheading his victims.

At that point, then, he'll rape
the bodies repeatedly,

usually over a couple of days.

♪♪

♪♪

Aluffi:
I was working as a detective

for the Santa Cruz
Sheriff's Office.

We got the report
of a human head

that was found
up in Loma Prieta,

which is in the mountains
back up out of Santa Cruz.

It was decomposed
to the point where

we couldn't identify
the sex of the victim,

so we brought it back
to have it analyzed

and do all
of the forensic work on it.

Through dental charts,
we eventually discovered

that it was a young female
out of Fresno.

I was a reporter for the
Santa Cruz Sentinel newspaper

and the first story I ever did
for the newspaper was that

they had identified the victim
of a skull that was found.

The head belonged
to Mary Anne Pesce,

the Fresno State student.

She'd gone missing
three months earlier

with her roommate, Anita.

♪♪

That was the atmosphere
into which I stepped

my very first day of work,

as a beginning reporter,
in 1972.

♪♪

♪♪

Aiko Koo was 15 years old,

well-regarded sort of dancer,
up-and-coming.

She had, unfortunately,
missed the bus

to go to her dance class
in San Francisco,

so she's out in Berkeley,
hitchhiking.

She's got a little sign
saying where she wants to go.

A 20-something-year-old man
offered her a ride.

♪♪

Dowd:
He takes her on the highway, takes her on a different route.

She doesn't realize
that they've totally missed

where they should've gone.

He drives to the middle
of nowhere.

Honig: And Aiko Koo
was never seen again.

♪♪

The information came
into the sheriff's office

during this time
that there was a guy

who had apparently
had a history of violence

and the cops had found out
that he had purchased a gun.

♪♪

We saw that he
had been convicted

of very serious felonies
in another jurisdiction

and his record had been
sealed by a judge.

So we made the decision,
myself and my partner,

to go and confiscate the weapon
and submit the information

to our local judge,
to get a judicial decision

as to whether or not
he could own that handgun.

And the sheriff's
department, in fact,

they were kidding about it,
they said,

"This guy is supposedly 6'9"

and we've been asked to go
take his gun away from him."

Everybody laughed and said,

"Well, we'll give this
to the new kid,"

because I was
the junior detective.

♪♪

Santa Cruz detectives
had recently heard

that a local man
had bought a gun illegally.

They had found out
about his juvenile record

and they realized he shouldn't
have firearms in his house

and so they went out
to talk to him.

Myself and my partner
drove out to Aptos,

which is like a suburb
of the city of Santa Cruz,

and it's kind of
a complicated neighborhood.

There were several places
with the same address,

so we couldn't find it.
We knocked on some doors,

couldn't find anything.

So, as we're getting
ready to leave,

this car pulls up.

I'll never forget it.

And I told my partner, I said,

"I'm going to go ask him
if he knows

where this guy, Kemper, is."

So I go over there
and I said, "Excuse me,

can I talk to you for a second?"

♪♪

And he said, "Sure,"
so he got out of the car

and he got
out of the car,

and he got out of the car.

And I told my partner, I says,
"I think we found him,"

because he is just huge.

He just towered over us.

Kemper:
They were looking for me

and didn't even know.

See what I mean?

Aluffi: So, I told him
what we were there for

and he said, "Oh, certainly.
I understand."

He understood why
we were taking the gun.

He says, "It's in the house."

He was very friendly,
seemed like a nice guy,

very personable,
very articulate.

I don't wanna advertise

that I've got
a whole bunch of guns

because that loaded .22 was
under the front seat

and would guarantee me
an arrest right on the spot.

♪♪

Aluffi:
So we go to the house

and he walks in the front door

and we walk in the
front door with him.

♪♪

There was a sofa there
with somebody sleeping

and he says,
"Oh, wait a minute," he says,

"that's my mother.
She's asleep."

The man leads them
into his bedroom

before he realizes his mistake.

And the closet door's open

and I have a high-powered rifle
with a scope on it.

I had the personal effects
and identification

of the last two coeds
that had been murdered,

about two months before,

right next to the guns,
in the closet, in a box.

I back up.
I said, "Oh, excuse me.

I just remembered something."

Aluffi:
So he said, "The gun's actually, it's in the trunk of my car."

♪♪

So I said,
"Okay, let's go get it."

And, instantly,
back we go outside,

and he's still thinking,
"Boy, this is a really nice

and helpful guy, here."

Aluffi:
So I opened up the trunk

and there was a bundle there.

It was like
in a lightweight blanket.

It was wrapped up in it,
so, I opened it up,

and there was the gun.

So, we took the gun
and told him,

"Okay, we'll find out.

We'll let you know
what happened."

He willingly gave the gun up

and there was nothing
more said about it.

And, of course,
detectives had no idea

that that man had killed
15-year-old Aiko Koo

two days before,
on her way to a ballet class.

♪♪

Nowhere, in anybody's mind,

did they connect him
with these cases,

but he did connect it.

He thought, "Oh, no,
they're on to me."

♪♪

Aluffi: Extreme paranoia
had set in with him.

He thought that we were playing
cat and mouse with him

and that we knew
what he was doing.

Dowd: But, of course,
no one had a clue.

Honig: The man was very careful
to cover his tracks

because he knew
he had more killing to do.

Kemper:
And this craving, this awful, raging, eating feeling inside,

I could feel it consuming
my insides.

♪♪

In October, another female
college student goes missing.

What was really upsetting

about the first cases
of the missing women

was that, when a parent would
call in about a missing child,

they would tell
the parents to relax,

they'll probably return home
in a few days.

"Be patient. Your daughter
probably just ran away."

It was the '70s, when a lot
of kids ran away from home

and the cops
didn't do much about it.

There are tons of people
throughout the state

that turn up missing
for various reasons,

whether they be runaways

or maybe they're victims
of a crime.

But those reports
are filed constantly.

It's kind of hard to keep
on top of all of them.

♪♪

And, of course,
panic is taking over

in the small town of Santa Cruz.

There were really no clues.

Dowd:
All people can do is speculate

about who is committing
these crimes.

♪♪

♪♪

Young women were going missing

in the beachside community
of Santa Cruz

and police had just found
the skull of one of those women,

a college student
named Mary Anne Pesce.

Adams: I think all of us
got concerned.

This is kind of crazy.

We really didn't understand
what was going on.

♪♪

In the new year, there was
another grisly discovery.

A highway patrolman found
a woman's body parts

on the side of the road.

One torso washed up at the

main beach in Santa Cruz,

right near the main wharf.

Somebody found it and called
the police department.

The body parts belonged
to a woman

who went missing
about a week before.

Her name was Cynthia Schall.

♪♪

At first, there was a disbelief
in the whole issue,

"This can't be happening
in our community."

But it was happening.

Reporter: Why do you think
this is happening here?

I have no idea.

Panic is taking over in the
small town of Santa Cruz.

♪♪

I remember being at dinner
at somebody's house

and we heard a scream
and we all ran outside

because we thought maybe
this was the next case,

something had gone on.

Turned out it was kids playing.

It was crazy time.

Dowd:
All people can do is speculate

about who is committing
these crimes.

Adams: I don't think anybody
thought it was a townsperson.

I don't think anybody believed
it was a student that did this.

I think people,
pretty much like myself,

were convinced that there
are some other people

that come in and out
of Santa Cruz --

it was that kind of community --
that was doing this.

♪♪

This was such a confusing time

because there were
really no clues.

Why all these
murders here?

Why?

Well, one reason is

that we have a homicidal
maniac, apparently.

When people did find remains,

they would usually call
the police department

and then, whatever forensics
was available at the time

was done on the remains,
in hopes of identifying them.

Aluffi:
In those days, they couldn't do

DNA, anything like that.

You could maybe get
a blood type

and that was pretty much it.

Verbugge: We would ascertain
the blood type

and then do searches
for missing persons

with a similar blood type
and, hopefully,

work out IDs
through that manner.

♪♪

Some of the victims,
as far as we knew,

were female hitchhikers.

♪♪

Honig:
Hitchhikers were all over town.

It was the way you got around,
if you didn't have a car.

Hitchhiking was particularly
important in Santa Cruz

because the UC-Santa Cruz
campus is on top of the hill

and it's a fairly extensive
walk down to the downtown,

where all the restaurants
and things were.

If you drove up on campus,
there would be a group

of 12, 14, 16 people,
all hitchhiking.

Adams: You'd just stop your car,
if you were faculty

or a staff member,
and pick up some students.

I even picked up students
all the time.

It was just part of everyday
life in Santa Cruz.

♪♪

These murders raised
anxiety on campus,

as it did probably every
college in the Bay Area.

That raised our eyebrows,

as to, "We have to be concerned
about our students."

And we went on this big campaign

to discourage people
from hitchhiking.

Bulletin boards were installed
on campus that read,

"When possible,
girls, especially,

stay in the dorms
after midnight, with doors locked.

If you must be out at night,
walk in pairs."

Verbugge: Every newspaper
we had contact with,

they were asked to put stories,
warnings in there.

Being a hitchhiker,
especially a female hitchhiker,

is very, very dangerous.

♪♪

I used to hitchhike
'cause I have classes at night.

I have a ballet class
off-campus at night

and, out of necessity
to get to it on time,

I had to hitchhike.

And I stopped now.

Reporter: Why?

Well, I'm afraid,

to put it point-blank.

Hitching is dangerous.

There's no question about it.

♪♪

Dowd: But that was only
the half of it.

Santa Cruz was ground zero

for another string of murders
at the same time,

and these murders didn't seem
related to female hitchhikers.

A homeless man was found
brutally murdered

and a priest was stabbed
inside his own confessional.

We started getting all kinds
of homicides

that were occurring
throughout the county.

In early 1973,

a young mother and her two boys
were found shot to death.

Aluffi:
Santa Cruz was a safe place, in those days.

Our crime base was pretty much
like car thefts,

burglaries,
things of that nature.

Sometimes we'd get
the occasional armed robbery.

And, in a period
of about eight months,

we had, I think it was 26
or 28 homicides.

♪♪

We only had
one little newspaper.

It's called
the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

And, on the front page,
they had

"Santa Cruz...the
"murder capital of the world."

♪♪

We're trying to figure out
what was going on

because there were
different types of crimes.

One was shootings,

the others were like
dismembered females.

These crimes don't seem
to be connected at all.

Aluffi: A lot of these women
that were being dismembered,

that kind of fits one profile,

where the others fit
a different profile.

We didn't know whether there was
one killer or several killers.

All we knew was that our safe
town wasn't the same anymore.

And I think that was confusing
to the police,

who were trying to figure out,
"How can we profile this?"

But before they could figure
that out,

two more women went missing.

♪♪

I opened my office door,
after hearing a knock,

and there were several students
there, and they said to me,

"Rosalind Thorpe is missing."

23-year-old Rosalind Thorpe
disappeared

after getting
out of an evening class

and she was hitching a ride
off the UC campus.

♪♪

And, because there were
all these rumors

about coeds being killed,

they were very concerned
about her.

I knew her from the time I came
as a counseling psychologist

in April of '69,

so I knew her as a bouncy,
energized,

enthusiastic, adventurous,

willing to take chances --

a real mensch.

As it turned out,
another student,

a quiet Asian young woman
by the name of Alice Liu,

went missing the same night.

They were seen waiting
for a hitchhike on campus.

♪♪

Reporter:
Alice Liu and Rosalind Thorpe

were last seen February 5th,
while hitchhiking from campus.

Alice Liu and Rosalind Thorpe,

they didn't even
know each other.

♪♪

The girls were picked up
at the foot of the campus.

Morrison:
He was not threatening to them.

He looked like a regular guy

who was just out
to give them a nice ride.

♪♪

Welcome back
to "Very Scary People."

By February 1973,

the city of Santa Cruz was
in a panic.

So many murders,
people of all ages and types --

men, women --
no one felt safe.

The killings seemed random,

but many of the victims
were young women,

college students,
last seen hitchhiking.

They would have no idea that
the shy man who picked them up

had dark secrets
and a violent past.

♪♪

Honig:
In December of 1969,

a young man walks out
of Atascadero State Hospital

in Southern California.

He was there for killing
his grandparents

when he was just 15 years old.

♪♪

He shot his grandmother,
once in the back of the head

and twice in the back.

♪♪

And then, after he kills
his grandmother,

his grandfather comes home

and he explains this as,
"Well, I can't have

my grandfather be upset
to see his wife dead,

so I might as well
kill him, too."

♪♪

And so he shot and killed

his grandfather as well,

whom he actually had
a very close relationship with.

He then goes inside,
picks up the phone,

calls his mother,

confesses the whole
thing to her,

and she tells him,
"You need to call the police."

♪♪

He goes, calls the police,
confesses,

and they take him into custody.

♪♪

So he went to court
and he was essentially found

insane, legally insane.

He was sentenced to serve
his time as a juvenile

at Atascadero State Hospital,
in Atascadero,

and that was the place
that a lot of criminals

with mental illnesses
were housed.

♪♪

Back then,
Atascadero was a place

for sexual deviants,
pedophiles, rapists.

It's about the worst place
for a young man to come of age.

Kemper: I was 15 years old
when I went there.

Honig: I can only imagine what
it must've been like for Ed,

being in a mental hospital
in his teenage years,

when, all of a sudden, your body
hormones start screaming at you.

I can only imagine what demons
were coming out

while he was maturing
from a boy into an adult.

When he went
to the mental hospital,

they ran the whole gamut
of tests on him

and they felt that he was
criminally insane

and then started treating him.

Well, it turns out he was
a model prisoner

and he was very smart

and he figured out what the game
was with the doctors all along.

He's a highly
manipulative person.

He got involved in administering
tests to other patients

and he learned from them.

And what he's basically learning
is terminology, diagnoses,

criteria,
various mental disorders,

and he's going to use
this information that he's got

to convince the staff
that they cured him.

So he became very, very familiar
with the different tests,

how they're interpreted,
how they're scored, and so on.

He learned what the correct
answers were,

he knew how to manipulate it,

and he was very bright
and knowledgeable

about issues of psychiatry.

Dowd:
He was nice and quiet.

He took pride in his work.

Schlesinger:
He's smart enough to know

that he should keep
fantasies private

and keep it to himself.

When you get evaluated
by a psychiatrist, psychologist,

or some other
mental health person,

they could only know what's
in your mind

if you reveal it to them!

And, when you look at him,
he's not psychotic,

he doesn't hear voices,
he's not delusional,

he's not a behavior problem.

He's bright,
he's friendly, likable.

Dowd: He was smart.
He was very smart.

At one point,
he was given an IQ test.

He scored a 140, which is
considered highly intelligent.

Kemper:
Ironically, I have a high IQ.

I always thought I was a little
missing up here, a little short.

♪♪

Dowd: So they really trusted
him, and they trusted

that he was being rehabilitated.

He seemed like a good,
moral citizen.

At least, that's what everyone
thought at the time.

He knew what it took to get
considered non-dangerous

and to be released
from Atascadero,

and he did it.

Honig: After spending five years
in Atascadero,

he got released, at age 21.

The staff at Atascadero
had recommended

that he not go back
into society fully,

that he go to a halfway house.

The doctors were adamant
about one thing --

that the 21-year-old should stay
far away from his mother.

♪♪

Kemper:
My mother was a sick, angry, hungry, and very sad woman.

I hated her.

California youth authority

had a different idea,

and they released him
to the custody of his mother.

Narrator: He was released
to the one person

that authorities at the
state mental hospital

recommended he never see again.

His mother was now working
on the campus of UC-Santa Cruz,

but this was a woman
who had been harassing him

since he was a child.

Kemper: I had an upbringing
that was --

some have called dysfunctional.

Schlesinger:
His parents didn't get along.

They fought all the time.

His mother was an alcoholic.

Kemper: I was very
intimidated by her.

She's 6'0" tall,
she weighs two and a quarter,

225 pounds.

She's just this great, big woman
who I was terrified of.

♪♪

His father decides
to leave the family

and he took that
as an abandonment,

I suppose you could say,

but he also lost someone
who was keeping him in check.

Dowd:
His mother is very unbalanced.

He quotes his father as saying
serving in the war

was easier than living
with his wife.

Kemper:
She wanted him to change this, she wanted him to change that,

and he couldn't handle that.

After 13 years, he'd had enough.

So his mother moves
the family to Montana

after she divorces
and separates from her husband.

♪♪

Kemper: My mother, she tried
psychological tactics.

She tried, "I'm going
to put you in an orphanage.

I'm going to disavow you,"
and terror tactics --

"Okay, we're going
to eat dinner and I'm going

to beat your ass afterwards,"
you know,

so I could think about it
for a half hour.

His sisters picked on him also.

Honig:
He had two sisters, an older sister and a younger one.

They constantly berated him,
constantly made fun of him,

constantly teased him.

Schlesinger:
He said that he was teased and bullied a lot in school.

He was a big, goofy sort of guy,

way larger than most
of the other classmates,

and young kids
are always looking

for someone to target
and to make fun of.

Kemper: I always felt like an
outsider, and it's, again,

because I didn't ever fit in.

On top of all that,
this mother

made her son live
in the basement.

♪♪

She banished him
to the basement,

just didn't want him around,

didn't want him talking to her.

Kemper: My mother and my sisters
themselves

would go up to bed upstairs.

Why am I going to the basement?

I'm going to hell,
they're going to heaven.

♪♪

Morrison:
It was a basement in which

there was very little light,

except from the furnace.

Kemper:
And I've got this horrible terror going on inside of me.

This is every night --
this is every day,

because it's pitch-black
down there, no windows.

♪♪

And I would go off
into fantasy worlds

that got vengeance
on my enemies.

It got even with the bullies

who picked on the kids
and me in school.

It got even with someone
who slighted me.

For about eight months or so,
he was sleeping in the basement.

And he's a young child,
at this point.

♪♪

Kemper: When I sniveled about
it, when I complained

and I cried about it,
I got smacked in the head.

"Now, what's the matter
with you?

Quit being such a wimp."

He hated his mother

and I think it's probably
fair to say

that his mother
probably hated him as well,

at least at some level.

She humiliated him,
belittled him.

So, when 21-year-old
Edmund Kemper was released

from the hospital
to go live with his mom,

only the doctors would've
known that it was a bad idea.

It didn't take long
for the two of them to be

at each other's throats again.

♪♪

Honig:
21-year-old Edmund Kemper

was ready to be released
back into society.

He'd spent six years living
in a mental hospital

for killing his grandparents.

He comes out into the world
and he's very thrown

by what he's experiencing.

Kemper: I'd never
been on a date, you know?

I was locked up since I was 15.

And the world he was released to
was very different

from the one
of five years earlier.

♪♪

In the late '60s, early '70s,

Santa Cruz became like a Mecca
for the hippie generation.

There's free love,
people are having sex freely.

I was scared to death of failing
at male-female relationships.

I knew absolutely nothing
about that whole area,

even of just sitting down
and talking with a young lady.

♪♪

Morrison:
The mother is still telling him

he's not good enough --
he'll never date girls,

he'll never be seen
as desirable,

and he will never be
successful with women.

♪♪

Kemper: I need to be able
to really communicate

and, ironically enough,

that's why I began
picking up young women.

Honig: He started picking up
hitchhikers in his car,

driving them around,
getting to know them,

flirting with them, in his way.

He's learning,
"How do you relate to them?

What do you say?

How do you make small talk?

What are they like?

What do they say to you?"

And he gets pretty good at it

and he has a good ability
to put people at ease.

The women are seeing a nice,
friendly guy.

But all that time,
he is having

really violent fantasies
about these women

and all the plans
that he's sort of making

and gearing up towards,
it's constantly in his mind.

And I'm going a little bit
farther each time.

It's a daring kind of a thing.

At first,
there wasn't a gun.

I'm driving along.

We go to a vulnerable place,

where there aren't
people watching,

where I could act out.

And I say, "No, I can't."

♪♪

During this time, Ed Kemper
claimed that he had given

over 100 rides
to women hitchhikers.

I think a lot of people wonder

how Kemper got all these
young women into his car,

because he's this 6'9",
300-pound guy.

He's not the type of man

who looks safe
to hitch a ride from.

Kemper: I'm a single male young
adult, two-door car.

They're not gonna wanna get in
and ride with me.

I made that a challenge,
almost like a chess game.

And the reason he was able
to do it is

because he did
so many test runs.

He did about a year
of test runs,

where he didn't kill any women,
didn't assault any women.

He would just go
pick up hitchhikers.

So there are dozens
of women out there

that had perfectly
normal rides.

♪♪

He tried to figure out
what made women feel comfortable

getting in the car with him.

So he would test out
various techniques.

One of the things was
he would glance at his watch

as the woman was getting
in the car,

and that was sort of
a subtle signal to her

that this guy is a businessman,
he's in a hurry, he needs to go.

♪♪

Kemper:
I used to glance at my watch and look slightly irritated and,

"Oh, well, I guess I can stop
and give this person a ride."

It seemed to have
a very positive effect.

♪♪

He figured out a way of locking
the door from the inside,

the passenger seat,

by dropping a Chapstick
into the locking mechanism,

and the girls couldn't get out.

He would say, "Oh, ma'am,

the door's not closed
all the way,"

and reach over in the car,
and he would take that Chapstick

and he would put it
in the locking mechanism,

so, once the car door closed,

the woman could then not open
the door from the inside.

♪♪

♪♪

Reporter: Do you do any
hitchhiking, these days?

Nope, not now.
No way.

I'm not gonna take
any chances.

If I was driving down the hill
and I saw students hitchhiking,

I would stop my car, open
my window, and yell at them

and tell them not to hitchhike,
that it was much too dangerous.

I did a story
where I got in my car

and drove up to the UCSC campus
and picked up women hitchhikers

and interviewed them
about why they were hitchhiking.

And I said, "You know, I could
be one of the murderers,"

and they said, "Oh,
you seem like a nice guy.

I don't think that
that would happen."

One hitchhiker girl
got in my car

and I said,
"Are you afraid to hitchhike?"

And she said, "No.
I carry this can of mace.

See?"
And she handed it to me

and I thought,
"Well, that's not very smart."

It was shocking to see that,
even with all the warnings,

that some of the students
didn't change their behavior.

We did have
administrative meetings

about what should be changed,

with regard to protecting
our students.

It was then they decided that
if they hitchhiked with somebody

with a parking sticker
from the campus,

that probably is okay.

They're campus people.

They're staff and faculty
of the university

and, obviously,
they couldn't have

had anything to do
with these murders.

♪♪

What no one realized
at the time was

the man they were looking for

had a university
parking sticker on his car.

♪♪

His mother worked on campus.

He would go pick her up
at work sometimes

and so he got a little sticker
that he could put on the car,

that gave him
all access to campus.

Kemper: Listen, I had an "A"
sticker on my car

and obvious access,
day or night, to the campus.

I was picking up
some very lovely young women.

You know what we were talking
about as we're driving around,

almost as often as not?

This guy that's going around,
doing this stuff, you know.

But they'd be telling me
all about this guy

and they're comparing notes
and speculating

on what he looks like,
how he carries himself,

why he's doing this stuff.

Telling me about it.

He had the method;
he had the experience;

he had the tool,
with the Chapstick;

and he had the UC sticker,

so the stage was set
for what was to come.

♪♪

Female hitchhikers
were disappearing

around the city of Santa Cruz

and other people
were turning up stabbed

or shot to death,
for no apparent reason,

and there were no clues.

We thought that there was
a possibility

that it could be
two different people,

because of the various styles of murders,

but we didn't know for sure

because the country had never
seen anything like this before.

So, from a perspective
of law enforcement,

it's hard to believe that
there are two serial killers

operating in the same location
at the same time.

It was hard to believe
there weren't any clues,

but then, one day,
police got a big break.

♪♪

A lady had come out
and picked up her newspaper,

heard what she thought
was a gunshot,

and, out of the corner
of her eye,

she saw her neighbor,

who was just out working
in his yard, fall.

And there was an older-model
Chevrolet station wagon

stopped on the street

and she saw a man pulling
his gun back to the front seat,

so she called the police.

The vehicle description
was put out over the radio.

An officer from Santa Cruz
Police Department spotted

what appeared to be
the same vehicle.

The Santa Cruz
Police Department

arrested Herbert Mullin.

♪♪

Honig:
Herbert Mullin was a local boy

who had obviously
severe mental problems.

I think he was probably
as criminally insane

as anybody could be.

With the interviews
that we had with Mullin,

it was ascertained
that he was more than likely

the one that was doing the
killings by shooting people.

We had evidence of his rifle
being used in numerous killings.

Those were matched up
with the bullets.

It was an amazing turn
of events.

Who could've guessed that there
could be two serial killers

in the same town?

Reporter:
25-year-old Herbert Mullin

has been charged with 10
of the Santa Cruz murders.

Schlesinger:
He was very delusional. He was hearing voices.

And he would have to listen
to the voices

and go out and murder people.

He is obsessed with this idea
that, if he can commit small,

what he calls
"natural disasters,"

he can prevent a huge earthquake
from taking out California.

Honig: Herbert Mullin ultimately
confessed to 13 murders.

That included a priest
who was found murdered

in his confessional,

and a homeless man
who was beaten to death.

He had killed basically a hobo
who was just walking

down the street one day
and he had this strange feeling

that he wanted to see what was
inside him, and so he shot him.

Because he wanted to determine
if there were signs of pollution

in the victim's internal organs.

However, Mullin's alleged
connection with death

has not involved the
cutting up of the victims.

There are also a number

of unsolved murders
in this area.

Four of these victims
were coeds from nearby UC.

At least two other young women
are missing and feared dead.

We have five unsolved murders
of coeds, local coeds,

from the University
of California at Santa Cruz;

and also Cabrillo College,
which is a local junior college.

We couldn't link them together.

So, the Coed Killer
was still on the loose

and cops had no leads
about who he could be.

♪♪

At a time when pressure is on
for the police officers,

the Jury Room was a place
where they could come in, relax,

have a few drinks,
and enjoy themselves.

Aluffi: The Jury Room was
a working man's bar

right across the street
from the sheriff's office.

It's where the police officers
would go unwind

after a long shift.

Honig:
And, of course, the drinks would loosen them up a little bit

and they would start telling
stories about what was going on.

♪♪

One of the regulars
at the bar was the guy

whose whole goal in life was
to become a cop.

Because he's 6'9",

and at that time there were
very strict height requirements,

you couldn't be above
a certain height,

and so this was second best.

He was like what, you know,

people call
a wannabe police officer.

He found himself drawn
to the Jury Room

and he started hanging out
with the cops.

These were his people.

Dowd:
Everybody kind of knows him.

He's a little bit goofy,
he's a little bit annoying,

but the cops all really
kind of like him.

Honig:
They knew him as Big Ed.

Kemper:
They'd buy me a beer.

I'd buy them a beer.

Man:
Did the cops like you?

Like I said,
a friendly nuisance.

I got in the way.

And it was deliberate.

Again, friendly nuisances
are dismissed.

♪♪

And, of course, one of the
topics of conversation

in the bar is
"Who is the coed killer?"

He was asking them,
had they found this guy,

Had they any clues

as to who this person was,
who was killing these coeds?

I was poking around
a little bit,

trying to find some things out.

I knew they wouldn't be privy
to hot information,

but there were some things
that were bothering me,

like were there any speculations
on how they were dying?

Little did we know that the
person that we were looking for

was in the same bar,
drinking with us.

In a million years,
they never suspected

he was the person
who was killing these coeds.

♪♪

Kemper: I was dreaming,
thinking, fantasizing murder,

all day long.

I couldn't get it
out of my head.

He was in such a blind rage,
he gets in his car

and he decided,
no matter who got in the car,

he was going to kill them
that night.

If you've ever smelled death,
you know that

that's what was going on
in that apartment.

Kemper: It wasn't the aspect
of killing them.

It was the aspect of possessing
their bodies afterwards.

I could actually feel the blood
drain out of my body.

I just turned cold all over.

Kemper:
I was building up big loads of frustration inside,

big loads of hatred,
because I had no outlet for it.

I think the paranoia was building

and building and building,
and it was starting

to make him feel
like he was cracking.

Kemper: I'm thinking all these
horrible things.

And eventually,
it just has to end.

What's he gonna do?

♪♪

Police were desperate
to find the Coed Killer

before he struck again.

Big Ed, the cop wannabe

who hung out
at the Jury Room bar,

continued to joke
with detectives

and quiz them about the case.

He wanted to know
if they were getting close.

Behind his smile,
a rage was building.

There was gonna be
another murder.

In part 2
of "The Coed Killer."

I'm Donnie Wahlberg.

Thanks for watching.
Good night.

♪♪