All language subtitles for Kemper.on.Kemper.Inside.the.Mind.of.a.Serial.Killer.2018.WEBRip.x264-ION10

[dark music]

♪

- Just a week ago today,

four more bodies
were discovered.

in a connected series
of murders

that now numbers at least ten.

- He went for someone who he
knew was weak and vulnerable.

Co-eds, college students.

- He eviscerates them,
decapitates them,

has sex with the body parts.

- Roz Thorpe was a free spirit.
She was bright.

- Aiko Koo was a little girl,
really.

Who knows what these victims
would've turned into,

and I think that's
the tragedy of it all.

- By 10, 12 years of age,

he was getting abuse
from his mother.

"You're nothing. You'll never
amount to anything."

- We're still fighting.
She's still belittling me.

I'm like a puppet on a string.

- If mom wasn't there,

he wouldn't
have been a serial killer.

- He killed his mother.

He wanted to just humiliate
and defile the corpse

any way he could, and he did.

- Here was a guy
killing coeds.

He's a necrophiliac,
what he did to his mother.

How is he different from us?
What's going through his mind?

To understand the artist,
you must look at the artwork.

Kemper is gonna be
the first one

to help the FBI know
what makes these guys tick.

- Kemper was very helpful
because he's very intelligent.

He's more than just
average intelligence.

- He's got total recall

for everything
that he has ever done.

- He changed
law enforcement forever.

- I'm not an expert.
I'm not an authority.

I'm someone who has been
a murderer for almost 20 years.

I was playing a dangerous game
with a loaded gun

that got us all.

- In the '60s, Santa Cruz
was a beach town

by basically a Yosemite-quality
redwood forest.

- It was beautiful.

It was just really
make-believe.

- UC Santa Cruz
had opened in 1965

and was just
gathering popularity,

and it was becoming
a real counterculture location

where hippies loved to go.

It was a real party time.

Come to Santa Cruz
and be free and easy.

Until the bodies started
washing in on the beach.

- There are a number of
unsolved murders in this area.

Four of these victims
were co-eds from nearby UC.

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

- People were buying guns,

making sure
their doors were locked,

and it was
an atmosphere of fear.

- Until he called the police
on himself,

I don't think
anybody felt safe.

[tense music]

♪

[phone rings]

- So at that point, I'm feeling
all of the blood

run from my head
down to my feet.

- It was a shock to everybody.

Everybody was
just buzzing around.

It was, like, all of a sudden,
things were happening.

[sirens wailing]

- The police came up.
He filled up the entire booth.

He was arrested
in the telephone booth.

- He stands 6'9", 285 pounds.
Just a huge man.

So the officers said
when they arrived

he came out
of the phone booth,

he literally put his hands
on top of the phone booth

to say "I give up."

He's that big.

- Why did you wind up
giving yourself up?

- It had to stop.

- This was such a crazy time
and such a hideous evil

that Kemper perpetrated
on these people.

- He tells me exactly,
in graphic details,

what he did to these victims.

Just think if had
he not turned himself in

and he just kept killing,
he could've gone killing

for a long, long period
of time.

- In those days,
all of the research

that has been conducted
on criminal psychology

has been from
a rehabilitation perspective.

We've had to develop
more of a proactive technique

to try to catch these guys.

I told my partner,
"We got to go

and talk to the experts."

We did not ask
for FBI permission

because the old saying,
it's better to ask

for forgiveness
than permission.

And the first person
we'd be interviewing

would be Edmund Emil Kemper.

- He was not insane.
He was perfectly conscious

of exactly what he was doing
and how he was doing it,

and he told the police
everything.

You can learn exactly
what you wanted to learn.

- He was perfect for the FBI.

- The best way to understand

is to look
at Kemper's childhood.

- Ed Kemper never had
a normal childhood.

- It was a chaotic relationship

between
his mother and his father.

This went on
for a period of time,

this bickering and yelling,

demeaning his father.

The father couldn't take it
any longer, so he took off.

And junior here
was now left with the mother.

- His mother was
very verbally abusive,

didn't like him,
maybe hated him.

- His mother was
very belittling

of him and humiliated him,

but somebody doesn't
wake up one day

and decide, "I'll go out
and kill women,"

because someone is trying

to symbolically
kill their mother.

It begins 10, 15,
20 years earlier

in his mind, in his fantasies.

♪

- He had an older sister,
and he had a younger sister,

and he played games called
gas chamber, electric chair,

and what that was, was just
like reenactment of death.

They would strap him
to a chair,

and then his sister
would make-believe

she's pushing on a button

to execute him,
and he'd writhe

in the chair
like he's being executed.

- And that was a game,
and you wonder if there was

something in that experience
that began

some of these
very death-oriented fantasies.

[sinister music]

♪

- His mother was afraid of him.

- She put him in the basement.

- The rest of the family
went upstairs

to retire for the evening.
I went to the basement.

So we had an entire floor
of the house between us,

and it was very scary.

My mother wouldn't allow me any
negotiated settlement of light.

I couldn't have a night light.
It was too expensive.

- And he talked about the rats
running around at night

and how afraid
he was of the rats.

[rats chittering]

- He'd be all alone
in the dark

with only
this furnace light going.

- And he would look in
this gas furnace, and he would

just kind of fantasize
that this was hell,

this was Satan.

♪

And the flames are coming out.

- And to me, that was
the fires of hell.

All I saw was
the flame shadows

or light playing on the grill

of the furnace shining on
a wall and a hissing sound.

That I was making a bargain
with demonic forces

that I was convinced

were gonna consume me
and somehow do me in.

[creepy music]

♪

- And he had these dolls
belonging to his older sister.

She loved these dolls.

So that's where he first
started cutting the heads,

the arms,
and legs off the dolls.

It didn't stop with the dolls.

He then transitioned
over into animal cruelty.

Which we know that's
a predictor

of future violence.

So he buries the cat alive

and then brings the cat up
after it's dead,

decapitates the head
of the cat.

He puts it on a stake.

If you see these
characteristics in children,

there's a good chance he or she
will become a violent offender.

They shipped him up
to the paternal grandparents,

in a remote area.

- He loved his grandfather.

It's the only person
I ever heard him

say that he loved.

His grandfather got him
a rifle

and taught him to shoot.

[gun clicks]

- He was shooting birds.

And grandma,
her name was Maude,

didn't like that.

- She took the gun

- We begin now to see

the dynamics
of when he gets upset.

Her telling him to do something
triggered a lot of rage.

- And unfortunately Maude
was the same personality

as his mother.

- [yelling indistinctly]

- Very, very controlling,
domineering,

nagging type of mother.

- He described her
as verbally abusive.

He used the same terms
for his mother.

- They get into an argument,

and he was just so fed up...

with her, and he decided to
pick up that gun

and while she's at
her kitchen table...

He came up and shot her

[gunshot]
once in the back of the head

[gun cocks]

and a couple of times
in the back.

Surprisingly it's not done.

He was getting abuse
from his mother,

and he can only take
so much of this,

and it's going to,
you know, overflow.

- I said, "She's got to die,
or more girls are gonna die."

And that's when I decided
I'm going to murder my mother.

[ominous music]

♪

- So then he became horrified.

He was so concerned
about how this was going

to affect his grandfather,

so he decided
the only reasonable thing

to do was to kill
his grandfather

to keep him from suffering.

- Why did you shoot grandpa?

You liked him.

And he said,
"I didn't want Grandpa

"to see that his wife is dead.

He would've had
a heart attack."

It doesn't make sense.

And they call the cops.
They come. They arrest him.

- At the time I was 6' 7 1/2".

I weighed 173 pounds.

They couldn't believe
I was under 16.

The judge had appointed
a psychiatrist.

His report was that
I was mentally ill,

that I was what he called...

how did he put that?
I was salvageable,

that I should be treated
and not punished.

[TV playing indistinctly]

- Atascadero,
that's a place basically

for the criminally insane,
and you're dealing with a lot

of severely psychotic,
mentally ill people that

did something in the throes
of a psychosis.

Kemper didn't fit that mold.

- They felt he must be crazy
because look what he did,

but unfortunately
his condition

didn't fit within any of the
diagnostic mental illnesses.

He wasn't
a paranoid schizophrenic.

He didn't hear voices.

- This type of pathology

was not at all
on anybody's radar screen,

even mental
health professionals,

and I'm not sure that they knew
what to do with him.

And so he was locked away.

- So from age 15 to 21,
he was in a cage,

and that's just
how he developed.

Here's a kid that had
never had a girlfriend.

And he described
that he would masturbate

several times a day.

A lot of what
he was thinking about

during this--these activities
was what he would do

to his mother
and perhaps to other women.

- He hated his mother,
and it's sexually arousing

and stimulating.

What that tells me is,
as an early adolescent,

when people
are just reaching puberty,

and their sexuality
begins to take place,

you already see the early signs
of a fusion

of sex and aggression.

- They do some psych tests
on him.

- He's very intelligent.

He's more than just
average intelligence.

- His IQ was 145.

- I wasn't aware
of any intelligence.

I was being called stupid
pretty frequently,

and unfortunately
it was sinking in.

I was very positively impressed
and surprised

to find out I wasn't
mentally defective.

Literally. I thought I was
a slow person.

- He's very, very disarming

because of his
high intelligence

and his pleasant demeanor.

He's a very friendly
and engaging

and really
a very likeable person.

- They trusted him.

[daunting music]

- They thought
he was just the perfect

recovered criminal,

and he assisted them as, like,
a secretary in their offices

and administered tests
to the inmates.

- He learned the buzzwords.
He learned what to say

to make himself sound normal.

He memorized the questions.

- So he knew what the answers
were supposed to be.

And that's why he passed
his final examination.

- When Kemper was allowed out
of Atascadero,

he was declared sane.

- Psychiatrists really
didn't believe

he was a danger
to himself or others.

He had been a model patient.

So they recommended
that he be released.

But when they paroled him,

they made him live
with his mother.

- Now he's with mom.

He's back in this environment,
the nagging, the yelling.

She broke him.

- Within nine months,
he killed his first hitchhiker.

- Mary Ann Pesce
and Anita Luchessa

were the first ones
that were murdered.

- He said he cut her
ear to ear.

- When I attacked her,
she didn't

at first realize
what was happening.

I had just gone through
a horrible experience

stabbing her,
and I'm walking back there

with her roommate, bewildered.
I got to kill her.

I can't let her go.
She's gonna tell on me.

Everybody's gonna get me.

[suspenseful music]

♪

- After juvenile hall,

he was a bit of a loner.
He didn't really fit in.

He wanted to hang with the cops
and fit in with them.

- He actually had ambitions
of becoming a policeman.

[chuckling] I mean,
that's sort of crazy.

[ominous music]

- Many murderers wanted to be
law enforcement officers,

and a few of them actually
were law enforcement officers.

These guys are interested
in law enforcement

because they want to learn
investigative techniques

in order to avoid apprehension.

And how do you learn
investigative techniques

any better
than hanging around cops?

- Kemper wanted to be
a police officer,

but he never could get on
because he was 6'9",

300 pounds.

He exceeded the height limit.

- So he got a job
with the highway department.

- What did people see?

- A nice guy.

I lived as an ordinary person
most of my life,

even though I was living
a parallel

and increasingly sick life,
other life.

- He really couldn't function
well at all in society.

- His love life
was very lacking.

- He would see normal people,
a man and a woman going out

on a date or being together.

The level of jealousy in him
was just out of this world.

- He claimed that his mother
was the one that

kept him from being
with women his own age.

- He wanted his mother
to fix him up with some girls

on campus,
and the mother said, "No.

"You'll never get to date
any of these girls.

You're just worthless."

[woman yelling indistinctly]

- My frustration, my inability
to communicate socially,

sexually--I wasn't impotent,

but emotionally I was impotent.

I was scared to death
of failing

in male-female relationships.

I knew absolutely nothing
about that whole area,

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

I need to be able
to really communicate,

and ironically enough,

that's why I began
picking people up.

- Hitchhiking culture
in Santa Cruz was very active.

- People hitchhiked
all over town.

But especially they hitchhiked
at the university.

- He could've gone
to prostitutes,

but prostitutes
are street people.

They're strong. They're tough.
They take care of themselves.

Kemper was too smart for that,
so he went for someone

who he knew was weak
and vulnerable.

[dramatic music]

Co-eds, college students.

He gained comfort
by becoming familiar

with the process
of picking up hitchhikers.

- He wanted to see how far
he could get,

and he would advance it.

He would pick up a co-ed,

and he wanted to see
whether he could let her go.

So he's testing himself,
practicing.

- I'm picking up young women,

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

It's a daring kind of a thing.

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."

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

I could feel it
consuming my insides,

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.

So it finally came down
to the thing of,

"Do I dare bring this gun out?"

Already realizing
if that gun comes out,

something has to happen.
It was going to happen.

I didn't see it then,
but it was going to happen.

I was playing a dangerous game
with a loaded gun

that got us all.

[tense music]

♪

- It would be displaced anger.

These are girls
his mother said

and swore by,
you can never have them.

But even though now,
in his warped ways,

he's able to gain control
over these girls. They're his.

And he decided
on this one day,

this precipitating event,
the argument

with mom,
to pick up that gun.

[intense music]

- He thought about it
for a long time,

and he just did it.

- Mary Ann Pesce
and Anita Luchessa

were the first ones
that were murdered.

One has flowers in her hand.

Petite little dolls
and they're hitchhiking,

a couple of real experts.

I want to see
how together I am,

if I can resist
this temptation.

- These two victims really fit

the fantasy, the profile.

They're very, very petite,
very attractive.

But he says, "I knew
I was going to kill them."

♪

- Because he worked
for the state,

he knew areas
where to take the girls.

Luchessa was
in the front seat.

Pesce was in the back.

He cuffs Pesce.

- [screams]

[screaming]

- Gained control of Luchessa.

Takes Luchessa,
puts her in the trunk.

He's favoring Pesce
in the back seat.

But he's going to kill her.

- When I attacked her,
she didn't

at first realize
what was happening.

It didn't go through.

- [screaming]

- She had
very heavy coveralls on.

It knocked her
right into the lid of the car,

but it didn't pierce
the clothing.

It wasn't that swell
a knife anyway.

I kept on just mindlessly
attacking.

♪

- He said he cut her ear
to ear.

He said,
"It's not like in the movies.

You know, it's so tough.

It's so tough
to kill somebody."

"You know, like in the movies,"
he says, "you cut somebody,

and then they bleed out,
and it just didn't work."

Like many serial offenders--he
would be the first one

to tell us this--he wasn't good
at the beginning.

He didn't have control
of his victims.

Now he had Luchessa
in the trunk.

- I had just gone through
a horrible experience

with her roommate,
stabbing her,

and I was in shock
because of it.

I couldn't believe
that it was that way,

and I'm walking back
there, bewildered.

I got to kill her.
I can't let her go.

She's gonna tell on me.

Everybody's gonna get me.

She sees the blood
on my hands.

"What are you doing?"

She pulled back,
and she gasped.

And I think, "Whoa,

I don't want her
to know what happened."

I said, "Your friend got smart
with me, and I hit her.

I think I broke her nose.
You better come help."

She's about to die.
Why do--

Why does she have
to know that?

I couldn't deal with
telling her that.

- [screams]

- He said, "I was stabbing her
in the back."

- [screaming]

- "And I was hitting her bone,
and then as she turned around,

"I was stabbing her
in the chest.

"Her breasts were there,

"but I couldn't stab her.
That'd be terrible

for me to stab her
in the breasts."

And it just seemed so weird

what's going through
his brain.

So then he tosses them
both in the trunk of his car.

- I slammed down the lid
of the trunk.

She isn't dead.
She's dying.

And I panicked.
I thought,

I just locked
the car keys in there

'cause I can't find them
in my pocket.

Oh, my God,
I locked them in the trunk.

I'm kicking on the trunk lid
and yanking on it.

Oh, no, I don't believe this.

I stopped. I said,

"Stop and think."

I collected my wits.

Check all your pocket.

I checked all my pockets,

and there's the keys
in the back pocket.

I never put them
in my back pocket.

- He's driving now back
to his apartment.

There are two dead bodies
in his trunk.

[sirens whooping]

He was pulled over
for a taillight.

He pulls him over,
and he gets out of the car.

What's wrong, officer?
You have a broken taillight.

And he says, "Do you want
to go check in the trunk

to see what's wrong?
Maybe it's a loose wire."

And the officer then

thinks that this is
the most cooperative citizen

and just gives him a warning.

I said, "Ed." I said,
"What would you have done--

"what would you have done
if he took a look in there?

He's gonna find two bodies."

He was prepared to kill him.

[indistinct chatter]

[ominous music]

♪

- The first 24 hours,
I should have been busted,

and I wasn't because
people got scared

and minded their own business
and looked the other way.

I thought I was pretty slick.

[keys jingle]

[door creaks]

- He takes those victims,

Pesce and Luchessa,

back to his apartment,

where he then...

eviscerates them...

and has sex with,

you know,
the head and the body parts.

- I think what haunted me
was that he had sex

with both the heads

and with
the decapitated bodies.

You can picture that.
You know, you just can,

and it sounded so brutal
and so cold

and so calculated
and so awful,

just so awful.

- But what people can't really
understand easily is,

why do they have to go
beyond the murder,

and the answer is,
the killing alone

is not
psychosexually sufficient.

And the idea is,
someone kills someone

and then has sex
with the body,

because if she was alive,

he'd be too intimidated,
so if you kill her,

she's unresisting.

- He felt he would
be rejected.

His sex life,
it was almost nonexistent.

I don't think
he felt comfortable

that he could have sex with
a woman when she was alive.

By murdering them
and dismembering them,

having sex with them,
he was able to possess them

in a way that he felt he
couldn't possess them alive.

[creepy music]

♪

- The only effect it had on him
is ,"God, this was tough.

"It was tough killing them.

"I thought
it would be a lot easier.

"I have to maybe modify
my M.O.

a little bit in the future."

[ominous music]

♪

- My mother was a sick, angry,

hungry, and very sad woman.

I hated her,
but I wanted to love my mother,

and I watched
the alcohol increase.

I watched her
social life drop off.

I watched her get bizarre.

She had terrible pain
from her life, earlier life,

her upbringing,

a failed marriage
with my father.

I'm a constant reminder
of that failure.

- His mother belittled him.

Told him that nobody's
gonna want him,

that he was no good.

[woman yelling indistinctly]

- She was an alcoholic.

She would come home soused
at nighttime

and tell him,
"You, you bum, I haven't had

sexual relations
with a man in seven years."

Everything was on him.

Now, Kemper, he had
what we call a murder kit.

A murder kit would include
a knife, a gun, a gag, cuffs.

The next victim, Aiko Koo,
was precipitated on the fact

that his mother
was on his case again.

- Aiko Koo was a little girl,
really.

She was just 15 years old,

and she had been going
to dance class.

♪

- She misses a bus,
so she's hitchhiking.

Up comes Kemper, sees her

at a distance,
perfect victim, petite.

- She gets into
the car with him,

and he starts driving.

She realizes she's not being
taken where she wants to go.

- And he pulls a gun on her.
It freaks her out.

So he soon realizes that
"I can't do this with a gun,"

so he hides the gun
'cause she's freaking out,

so she calms down.

Then he has to get out
of the car for some reason.

But the mistake
that he made was,

is that he locked himself
out of the car

with Aiko Koo in the car,
with his gun.

He was such a mastermind,
a manipulator.

He was able to convince her,

to talk her into
opening up that door.

- She let me back in the car.

I locked myself out.

She opened the door for me.

What in the hell am I
doing telling you that?

Am I a masochist? Am I looking
to be tormented further?

I'm trying to show
you just how

awful this got,
how commanding these rages got.

- He's gonna use a scarf on her
to strangle her to death.

Then he decapitates her.

- Why did you keep the heads?

Why did you cut them off,
and why did you keep them?

- Something out
of my childhood.

Um... [chuckles]

I could put it on an incident,
I mean,

my father chopping the heads
off our two pet chickens

and my mother insisting
that I eat them for dinner.

Uh [laughs]
you know?

We could say it was something
that simple.

I don't think it was.

Now, my dad heads out back
with a hatchet.

I got on my bike,
and I rode over.

I tried to stop it.
I remember that.

I got on a bike,
rode around the block.

I was crying. I haven't talked
about that for a lot of years.

I'm sure that may have
implemented something.

That may have gotten something
rolling along fantasy lines,

but it took a lot of years
of development

along those lines
to really get off.

- The day after he murdered
Aiko Koo,

he had to see a psychiatrist.

- When he got out
of Atascadero as a juvenile,

he had to go through
a certain period of time

and then be reevaluated.

- Kemper was smart.

He knew what they were looking
for to determine

whether or not
someone was sane or insane,

and because of that,
he did extremely well.

- Kemper is gonna say,
"You guys cured me

over there at Atascadero.

You guys are phenomenal."

And so the psychiatrist
did what he thought was

right and basically said,
"He's fine.

He doesn't need us anymore."

- Well, what they didn't know
is that Aiko Koo's head

happened to be
in the trunk of his vehicle.

- He had bodies in his trunk
when he was declared sane.

It really bothered me
as a therapist

that two psychiatrists
had declared him sane.

I was horrified.

- In the meantime,
bodies were turning up

in the city of Santa Cruz
that might've been linked

toward the drug industry,
but we had no idea.

[somber music]

♪

- My first day at work, my very
first story that I wrote

was that a head had been found
in the Santa Cruz mountains.

It was a shock to everybody.

- It's like a fog settled
over the county.

People were scared.

- Being a small person
--I'm 5'1"--

I never saw myself
as somebody

that could defend myself.
I never felt safe.

- Police were besides
themselves.

What the hell
do they have going on here?

Surf City was now evolving
into Murder City.

- We were under a lot
of pressure.

People would always want
to know what's happening.

Why is this happening?

We had no idea.

We didn't have
any real crime scenes,

so the evidence
couldn't be traced back.

- There is no apparent motive.

The victims are all unrelated,

and they're just unprovoked,
senseless killings.

- There wasn't DNA evidence.

There wasn't anything
like that,

so they were trying to track

where bodies were coming from,

what pattern there was
in there, and it was hard

to figure out
any sort of pattern.

They would just throw up
their hands and say,

"We don't know
what's happening."

[dramatic music]

♪

- We're still fighting.
She's still belittling.

I'm like a puppet on a string.

- It's like boiling water,

and he can only take
so much of this.

- I knew a week before she died
I was gonna kill my mother.

[dark music]

♪

- The minute he'd get upset
with something,

his immediate response
was to kill.

- And once he did it once,
it was so stimulating

and so arousing that the urge

or the compulsion to do it
again just took over.

- But rather than strike out
at mom at this point,

he's going on the hunt.

He's a lion on
the Serengeti plain

looking for that weak,
vulnerable person.

- 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,

and the second
they started talking that,

they didn't realize it, but
they were getting a free ride.

I couldn't touch that
with a 10-foot pole, I swear.

But they'd be telling me
all about this guy,

and they're comparing notes,

speculating on
what he looks like,

how he carries himself,
why he's doing this stuff,

telling me about it.

- So how come they get
in a car

with somebody at that time?

- She judged me
not to be that guy.

I didn't look like him.

- He was getting
better and better.

- And one of the things
that he told me was,

eventually,
when he picked somebody up,

once they got in and sat down

and they closed
the passenger door,

he would reach across that
passenger, open up the door,

and close it,
pretending to make sure

that the door was closed,
but in actuality

he was dropping
a ChapStick in the track,

so that you could not open
the door from the inside.

And he figured once
they got in the car,

they belonged to him.

- When he decapitated her,

he then went outside
with the head

and placed this victim's
head in the ground,

facing up at mom's window.
Why'd you do that?

And he laughs, and he says,

"Because Mom always wanted
people to look up to her.

That's why I did it."

He was boasting
about the crime.

- Meanwhile, why his mother
didn't know that

there had been digging going on
in the back yard, I don't know.

Neighbors could've found out.
It was a small backyard.

There was a fence around it,

but, you know,
it was very visible

from the other houses.
I'm just trying to think

what time of day
he must've buried them.

- It was getting easier to do.
I was getting better at it.

I was getting less detectible.

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.

11:00 at night,
the lights are on.

All they have to do is walk
by, look out, and I've had it.

To be walking up the stairs
with a camera bag

that belonged to a young woman

that had her
severed head in it,

walking up to my apartment,
past a happy young couple

coming down the stairs

who nodded and smiled at me

as they went by.
"Good evening."

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
is so dramatic,

so amazing,
so violent that it really--

I could feel the wheels
squeaking inside.

Some people go crazy
at that point.

I felt it.
It was one hell of a tweak,

and I imagine at that point
some people break,

but I didn't literally
go insane.

I didn't get lost.

- Remember, Edmund Kemper
wanted to be a policeman,

but there was no way
he was gonna be a policeman,

but he did like to hang out
with the policemen

at the Jury Room
on Ocean Street.

[mellow rock music]

And he knew them.
He drank with them.

- Sleazy little bar

across from the courthouse
in Santa Cruz.

A lot of cops would go there
in those days

[pool cue strikes]
and have a drink.

[indistinct chatter]

He loved to hang out there.

He was a real groupie.

- It's what they call
a wannabe.

- They'd buy me a beer.
I'd buy them a beer.

Casual relationships.
But that was--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.

- Did the cops like you?

- I could say,
a friendly nuisance.

I got in the way,
and it was deliberate.

Friendly nuisances
are dismissed.

- He was just trying to gain
whatever information he can.

If he overheard
somebody say, "Well,

this guy did this,
and he shouldn't have

done it that way.
He should've done it this way.

- The dynamics of this type
of behavior are very important

to make him feel unique,

to make him feel

ahead of everybody else,
of getting away with it.

He's kind of the super killer,

not just an ordinary killer,

that he can put it
over on them.

- High intelligence like that

helps Kemper
in avoiding detection.

- How did you get
the knowledge

to outsmart the police?

- Watching television,
believe it or not.

Joseph Wambaugh,
"Police Story."

I got some tremendous insights
into not just the gimmicks,

the actual things, the tidbits

that you would pick up
from their procedures

but the mechanics behind that,
the logic behind it

was, I would not allow myself
to walk into

even a potential trap
of behavior.

And one of those was talking
about those crimes too much

to people, initiating
conversations about that.

- He likes to claim that he's
smarter than everybody else.

He may be.

- Some police department, now,
they actually

came to your house
to pick up a handgun.

- Sheriff's representatives.

One of the detectives was

upset because he heard
I had a .44 magnum pistol

and was a convicted
mental patient and killer.

- I got a notification
that a man by the name

of Edmund Emil Kemper III
had purchased a handgun.

In looking at
Mr. Kemper's record,

he had been convicted
of murdering his grandparents

a few years earlier, so there
was some question as to

whether or not he should be
allowed to own that gun,

so when you look
at the dealer's record of sale,

it gives
his physical description.

- They joked about it
at the sheriff's department.

This guy's 6'9" or 6'10".

I'm gonna need some help
getting the gun away.

- So being
the junior detective,

I was the one
that was tasked with

going out
and confiscating this weapon.

So we went out
to Kemper's residence.

- They came to take
the gun away,

he and his sergeant detective.

They were staking out
the wrong house.

It was across the street,
and I'm playing around

with the car,
standing next to the gun

in the trunk.

- So I told Don, I says,
"Hang on a second.

Let's go talk to this guy
and see if he knows Kemper."

So I walk over, and by then
the gentleman in the car

was lying across the seat

like he's working up
under his dashboard,

like, wires
or something like that.

So I said, "Excuse me,
can I talk to you?"

The guy says, "Sure."
So he gets out of the car,

and he gets out of the car,
and he gets out of the car.

He's 6'9", 285 pounds.

I told Don. I said,

"I think we found
the right guy."

- I knew a week before she died
I was gonna murder my mother.

- He drags her
over into the kitchen.

- I cut off her head,
and I humiliated her corpse.

- Having sex
with his mother's head,

I don't know
what it says psychologically.

- Six young women dead because
of the way she raises her son,

and what's her closing words?

"I suppose you want to sit up
all night and talk."

God, I wish I had.

[dark music]

♪

- A week ago today, four more
bodies were discovered

in a connected series
of murders.

- Neither the mayor nor police
are making any predictions

as to when or how
an arrest will be made.

- Women hitchhikers
were in danger.

Not just were body parts
flowing in,

but people were missing,
and nobody was understanding.

- They come over and asked
me about,

"Excuse me, sir, uh,

do you know who lives in this
house across the street here?"

And they were looking for me
and didn't even know that--

see what I mean?
Bad news.

They said, "Are you Ed Kemper?"
Yes. And it goes on.

- I explained to him
why we were there,

what our position is,
that we needed

to confiscate this handgun.

So he said, "Sure, no problem."
He was very cooperative.

- And, uh, I needed to find out
what they were looking for,

the murder weapon,
the .22 automatic

or the .44 magnum,
and I don't want to advertise

that I've got
a whole bunch of guns.

Uh...

So I made a comment to divine
between the two,

and I said, "Yes, quite
a little gun, isn't it?"

And he retorted, "A .44 magnum?
I hope so."

And I said, "Phew, okay,"
because that loaded .22

was under the front seat
and would guarantee me

an arrest
right on the spot,

and the .44 was in the trunk.

[tense music]

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

and helpful guy here."

- We go to the trunk
of his car.

Instinctively,
my partner and I

went to each side of the car.

And so as soon as he popped
open the trunk,

we told him just to step back
and we would take it.

So we opened up the trunk,

and there was--it's,
like, a blanket,

and you unroll the blanket,

and there was
this western holster

with this huge
.44 magnum revolver in there,

so we took it.

- You had some other stuff
in the house too, yeah?

- Yeah.
I had the personal effects

and identification
of the last two co-eds

that had been murdered
about two months before

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

- Could he have seen it?
- No.

But when he arrested me
for having all those guns

and went through the rest
of the closet looking to see

if there were any pistols
or anything else,

he wouldn't have--couldn't have
helped notice

a purse, a book bag,

and co-ed I.D.
inside of those

belonging to their two
latest murder victims.

- He told me later
that had Don and I

not separated
to each side of the car,

that he was contemplating
getting the gun out

and killing both of us.

In the meantime,
all of these other homicides

are occurring,
and we had no clue.

He was a very smart guy.

[ominous music]

♪

- We're still fighting.
She's still belittling me,

like a puppet on a string.
She knows all my buttons,

and I dance like a puppet
with that pain,

and it even got physical

to where I had physically
grabbed her

and thrown her onto her bed,

trying to emphasize
the point that she's--

I was threatening to kill her.

- Ed Kemper's mother was
an administrative assistant

at UC Santa Cruz.

- She was well liked.

She was integrated
into the campus.

She clearly was part of that

Santa Cruz community
at the time.

- You were involved
in the campus

because your mother
worked there.

- Yes.

I was also involved
in killing co-eds

because my mother
was associated

with college work,
college co-eds,

women,

and had had a very strong
and violently

outspoken position on men
for much of my upbringing.

- The university had said
only to accept rides

from people with UC stickers.
Well, his mom worked at UC,

and he was in a car
that had a UC sticker.

- So he looked safe,

and that's how
he was so successful.

- You could see the pattern.

- After a huge fight
with his mother

where they had screamed
at each other for hours...

he would go out and kill.

- The next victims,
Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu

were UC Santa Cruz students

who just were too trusting
and got in the car.

- Roz Thorpe
was a free spirit.

She was bright and lively.

When she'd get a new record,
she'd run into my office

and say, "Got to hear this,
got to hear this."

When Roz went missing,
they knocked on my door

and said did I know
where Roz Thorpe was.

I knew that they were
beginning to worry

about the existence
of this killer.

[intense music]

And I immediately, um...

worried.

- Edmund Kemper
by this time was very

experienced
at what he was doing.

- I thought it was fascinating,
you know, with him

was, how do you make them
feel comfortable?

What I do, I pull up
and look at them

and I wanted myself kinda
almost look like

a little businessman
but having a place to go,

so I'd look at my watch.

By looking at my watch,
it tells them

that I have an appointment.
I have someplace

to go to, and that kind of,
I believe,

relieved any kind
of stress or hesitation

that they had getting
into the car.

- He says that
she's moving around,

trying to cover herself.

She's holding her hands up,

so she gets shot
through the hand.

- He's got both victims
in the car.

He has a dead girl in the front

and a girl that is not dead
but moaning in the back.

[intense, dark music]

He said the two policemen,
they were checking

all of the cars going through.

- When I drove up to
the two officers

and stopped, I mean,
they got very industrious

about looking at me,

and I used that opportunity
to glare at them

with that fascist look, like,
"Oh, you fascist pigs.

You'd like to shoot me,
wouldn't you?"

I had sort of a bored,
annoyed,

tired, end of the day,

"I don't need you guys
right now" look

and they backed off
at that point.

- He gets away with it.

♪

[tense music]

♪

- He went into detail
in saying

how he dismembered them

and how one of them
had more fat on her body

than the rest of them did,
and he said he learned

about cutting through
fat of a human body,

and it just turned my stomach.

- When they found
her body parts, uh,

it was shocking.

The students kept coming into
my office to talk about it.

We knew that something
needed to be done to

address the students
and engage them

in expressing their feelings

and dealing with grief
and mourning,

so they decided
to hold this big event,

and about 1,000 students
and faculty showed up.

- There was a memorial service
for two of the victims.

- Yes.

- Were you tempted to go?
- Yes.

I had seen one
too many episodes

of one too many crime shows

where that is one of the
available resources for clues,

tracking down the attenders.
Take--one man

taking pictures
of the people there

to eliminate
as potential suspects.

- He's forensically aware,

he has a good knowledge base
of criminal investigation,

and he's trying his best
to elude law enforcement.

[ominous music]

♪

- She says, "You're nothing,
you'll never amount

to anything, and you're
just like your father."

It's like boiling water,

and he can only take
so much of this,

and it's going to, you know,
overflow, and that was it.

It was springtime.
It was April.

And for two months
I hadn't killed, and I said,

"It's not going to happen
to any more girls.

It's got to stay between me
and my mother."

♪

I said, "She's got to die,
or more girls are gonna die,"

and that's when I decided
I'm going to murder my mother.

I knew a week before she died
I was gonna kill her.

And she went out to a party.
She got soused.

She came home, went to sleep.
I was woken up by that.

I got--came out.
I walked up to her bed.

She's laying there,
reading a paperback.

- She says,
in a real sarcastic way,

"Oh, you're probably gonna
want to talk now, huh?

You're gonna want to talk."

- Sh--. I looked at her.
I said, "No."

I said, "Good night."

[crying]

And I knew
I was gonna kill her.

[dark, tense music]

♪

- He said that he had gone
into her room

early in the morning, like,
4:00, 5:00 in the morning.

- He killed her
when she was sound asleep.

He beat her to death
with a claw hammer.

- Sadism is the infliction
of pain on someone else,

but more basic
than inflicting pain

is the sadist having
total control

and domination
over someone else,

where inflicting pain is one
way the sadist assures himself

that he is in fact in control
of her life and death.

Killing his mother
was very, very different,

up close and personal.

- He's not finished yet.
He then takes the mother

and drags her
over into the kitchen.

- I cut off her head,
and I humiliated her corpse.

- He put it on the mantel.
He threw darts at it.

- And he spends over an hour

chewing her out
and yelling at her.

- It hurts.

'Cause I'm not a lizard.
I'm not from under a rock.

I came out of her vagina.

I came out of my mother,

and in a rage,
I went right back in.

- He hated her.
He wanted to defile her

in any possible way
that he could, and he did it.

- He does penetrate her head.

- Having sex
with his mother's head,

I don't know what it says
psychologically

because it's unstudied.
All we can do is speculate,

and I think the behavior
speaks for itself.

- It's not done.

He decided to cut out
her tongue

and rip out her larynx
'cause she's such a nag.

He then throws it down
the garbage disposal.

- He describes
throwing the larynx

into the garbage disposal,
popping out.

Him catching it,
throwing back it

in the garbage disposal,
popping out again.

- And he says, "Even now.
Even now, you bitch.

"Even now, after this,
you're still nagging me.

I hate you. You're still,
you know, nagging me."

- She just ridiculed him
his whole life,

and symbolically he just wanted
to take her voice box out

and throw it in the garbage
where he thought it belonged.

- Clearly he was trying to kill
his mother's voice,

even though she was dead.

- So there, you know.

Six young women dead because
of the way she raises her son

and the way her son is raised,

the way he grows up,
and what's her closing words?

"I suppose you want to sit up
all night and talk."

God, I wish I had.

I was suicidal, very disturbed,

grasping out at someone
'cause I was tired

of people walking
away from me.

- We studied him.
We know all about him.

We know your motivation.
We know what makes you tick.

Now we can profile
other serial offenders.

[ominous music]

♪

- I still loved my mother,

and it's hard for somebody
to comprehend

that you murdered
your mother through love.

It isn't a rational process.
It's a very painful process.

It isn't rational, and I've got
to still live with that.

- He decided
that he needed a reason

that nobody would be looking
for his mother,

so he chose her best friend,

and he said that if he were
to dispose of her best friend,

then people would not be
inquiring as to where they are

because they have a tendency
to go away for the weekend,

so he had called Mrs. Hallett.

- He invited her to dinner,
said he was gonna take

both women out to dinner.

- So she thought
that was just fine,

so she went over to
the house that night.

♪

- She comes over.

Punches her once
in the abdomen.

- [groans]

And then he demonstrates,
'cause he's so big,

how he's able to get neck
in the crook of the arm.

- [strained yelling]

And just to put on pressure

and where he hears
cracking in her neck.

[bones cracking]

- He told me that as he was
choking Mrs. Hallett,

he actually had an orgasm.

- He spends the night
with her in bed

and attempts sex acts
with the mother's friend.

The mother is still over
in another part of the bedroom.

[engine starts]

- Kemper had freaked out,

had loaded an arsenal of guns
into his car,

and then he got
the hell out of town.

[engine sputtering]

- He was hoping
for his gigantic man face

to be all over the news,

and he's driving
for three days.

He covers 1,500 miles,
popping NoDoz, NoDoz.

Turning on the radio,
hoping to hear

there's this serial killer.

- But what happened is,
nobody came after him.

- He got as far
as Pueblo, Colorado.

[suspenseful music]

♪

- One morning, at about 5:00
in the morning,

Edmund Kemper calls the
Santa Cruz Police Department.

- And he talks to
the dispatcher

and says, "You know, I'm the
guy that you're looking for,"

and the dispatcher
hangs up on him.

- The person on the other end
of the line

didn't believe him and didn't

want to wake somebody up.

- So he calls back.

- Kemper tells them
that he killed his mother.

He is the Co-ed Killer.

He was the one responsible
for these crimes.

- He told the lieutenant
to get a hold of me

because I knew
exactly where he lived.

We had no idea.
Totally amazing.

- He thought
they were on to him.

The fact is,
they had no idea who it was.

It was a shock to everybody.

- They were keeping him
on the phone

[sirens wailing]

until the police came

and then put him under arrest.

- Why did you wind up
giving yourself up?

- Once my mother was dead,
there was almost

a cathartic process
at that point.

I got physically ill right then

when she died,
when I murdered her,

and once she was dead, there
was no way I could back out.

I had backed down from
giving up a thousand times.

- He turned himself in right
after he killed his mother

because he then
solved his problem.

He didn't have to kill
symbolically anymore.

He killed his mother.

[dark rock music]

- The root of his problems
goes back to mom.

Killing was
a displacement of anger.

Once she's out,
out of the picture, it's over.

The Santa Cruz police come out
and take him back.

- Kemper is being brought
back here to Santa Cruz

from Pueblo, Colorado,
by car,

a rather unusual method of
transportation in such cases,

a method chosen for security
purposes, authorities say.

- I spent a lot of time
with Ed.

I actually sat
in the back seat

with him for 3 1/2 days.

And he never stopped talking.

It got to the point
where I would think to myself,

"God, will you just shut up?

You know, it's getting
to be too much."

[tense music]

If we had to make a stop
to get some gas,

use the restroom
or whatever...

He was wearing
this leather jacket

with all of the frills
hanging off them.

He had his hands
chained to him,

and he would get out of the car
and just kind of

strut around,
so everybody could see him,

'cause everywhere we went,
it drew a crowd.

He loved the notoriety.

When we finally
got back to Santa Cruz...

he wanted to know
if there was a lot of press

in front of the building,
which there was,

obviously, but we had gone
around the back

and took him upstairs
and booked him.

- The interesting thing about
his whole booking process is,

there's a sheet, and it has
all of his information,

what he's charged with
and everything.

And when it gets down
to the section of who to notify

in case of emergency,
he turned to me, and he says,

"I don't have anybody left.
Can I put you down?"

So that's why my name
is on his booking sheet.

- Kemper was arraigned
this afternoon

on charges of killing
six young women,

his mother,
and a friend of hers.

- By the time he got
to Santa Cruz,

the newspapers were
full of some of the details.

I--I was horrified.

This sleepy little town
along the coastline just

never really recovered.

[solemn music]

♪

- I'll tell you a little bit
about my interaction

with Eddie, with Ed Kemper.

One day I had
a really stiff neck.

I couldn't move my head
hardly at all.

He said,
"I know a lot about anatomy.

I can make your neck
feel better."

So I went around,

and he worked on my neck
for maybe, I don't know,

five minutes,
and, you know, it worked.

Thinking about it,
here's this huge man

who could've probably
killed me with one hand,

and I never, ever felt
unsafe in his presence.

I felt that if somebody
had've attacked me,

he would've come to my aid.

I spent a lot of time
with him.

We were friendly.

- The ability of Ed Kemper
to be able to

be very charming
was really remarkable.

That's how clever
or manipulative he is.

- He was a model prisoner,
and he was a nice guy.

He wasn't crazy.
He wasn't, uh,

he wasn't
particularly violent.

He would joke with the jailers.
The jailers liked him.

- He was this big,
overgrown kid

that was very friendly,
very cooperative,

loved the police...

and would tell you anything
you wanted to know.

[suspenseful music]

[birds chirping]

♪

- He took us to these
various places

throughout the mountains
in Santa Cruz County.

- Where he showed them
all the places

he dropped off body parts.

- We were missing
some body parts,

and those were important
for the families,

so what we would do is, we
would drive him

to those locations,
and he would

point it out to us

just very matter-of-factly.

There's so-and-so.
There's so-and-so.

One of his victims, he had
actually skinned the skull

and put it underground.

- The day they dug up
Cindy Schall's head

was a day I'll never forget.

The thing I remember
about it is them lifting this

rotted head
up out of the ground

and the reality of it
all of a sudden

became all too true,
but what the worst part was,

was the smell.

The smell just stuck with me.

♪

[solemn music]

♪

- And so when he finally had
to go to trial,

his defense will be
the insanity defense.

- When a person admits
to everything they've done

to everybody who'll listen,

you know,
the only possible defense

we had was not guilty
by reason of insanity.

- What a lawyer hopes for
in a case like Kemper

is that the jury
will look at this and say,

"This is so ridiculous.
This is just so bizarre.

He has to be completely
out of his mind."

It has to be to such an extent

that you didn't know
the nature and quality

of your acts, you didn't know
what you were doing.

Well, that wouldn't apply
in Kemper's case.

He knew exactly
what he was doing.

- He felt the need to take
the stand

to show everyone
how crazy he really was.

He went through
all the graphics

of how he did the killings.

- And when
he was testifying...

you found yourself

wrapped up in his words.

He wanted you
to feel sorry for him,

and he was describing what he
had done to these young girls.

I looked over my shoulder,
and I saw the father

of one of the victims,

and the look on his face

was so affecting

that I started crying in court,

and I couldn't stop crying.

He was convicted
and sentenced to life.

[dark music]

♪

- The things I learned
from Kemper

we apply to other cases.

He taught us how we should
link these cases together,

how to classify
different crimes,

and how to profile
for a serial killer.

They bring him in,
and we stand up to greet him,

and my goodness,
the guy is--he's mammoth.

He just towers over us.

Before I even start
talking to him, I told him,

"You're a big case back
at the FBI academy.

"Everyone wants to learn
from you.

We want to take your knowledge
and apply it to ongoing cases."

So I made him feel like
he is my professor.

Teach me.

- Bob Ressler and John Douglas
were top drawer, absolutely.

They were very dedicated.

They were excellent in terms
of getting information.

They were expert interviewers.

- I want to know why, Ed.
I want to know what

transformed you into
participating and precipitating

these particular crimes.

- Ed Kemper was very helpful
because he was so articulate,

and he really gave
important information

that we were able to use
for the basis for profiling.

- He's an insightful guy.
He knows the criminal mind,

obviously, on some level

because he knows
himself awfully well.

- These guys, they go off
in a trance like that,

and then they're back there,
and they start

providing specifics that--

I mean, I can't remember
what things I did yesterday,

and they're remembering all
these specifics of the crimes

and the colors of the victim's
clothing and their hair

and maybe a pendant
they were wearing,

so that was one of the things
that happened

during the interview
with Kemper.

That's the whole thing when you
do a profiling and analysis.

You can't think like me.
I got to think like them.

- You want to get
the information,

so that maybe
you can prevent

somebody from getting hurt
in the future.

- After the first interviews,

we realized that
if we're going to have

a good mythological handle
on this,

we had to have
a survey questionnaire

that they all ask
the same questions

to other killers.

We came up with a 57-page
color-coded survey,

and we had 36 killers
in the study.

- And we came up with very,
very good predictors.

It's a thing known
as the homicidal triangle.

That is bed-wetting

into the teens,

fire setting,

but the big one

is animal cruelty.

I've talked to SPCAs
about that,

and now the FBI
even has that today.

Animal cruelty,
they track that,

where we never tracked
that before,

because we know that's
a predictor of future violence.

- The FBI back in
the late 1970s,

including John Douglas
and Robert Ressler,

made major contributions

in applying the knowledge
base of sexual murder,

particularly to investigations.

- We came up with
the term serial murderer.

A serial murderer
is three or more people

with a cooling off period

in between
each of the killings.

A mass murderer
is someone who kills

four or more people
in one event.

A spree murderer,

it's a form
of a serial killer,

but there is
no cooling off period.

- Today you can't find a person
in the United States

who doesn't know
what a serial killer is.

You hear it all the time,
and you really have to credit

John Douglas and Ressler
for popularizing that

and making it part
of the consciousness

in the culture
of the United States.

- Then we came up
with descriptions

regarding the different types
of offenders

when we classify a case,

and we came up
with major categories

of criminal enterprise,
group cause,

sexual homicide,
and personal cause.

When we look at a case,
we try to put them

in one of these
four categories.

Then as far as describing
the crime scenes,

when we look at a case
like Kemper,

Kemper, it's obvious
it's very, very organized.

There's planning involved.

- The profiling cases
would come in,

and they would say,
"Is this like Kemper?"

They would be able
to actually--is he organized?

Does he plan? Is there
something new or different?

So they bounced off of these
new cases,

unsolved cases,
and were able to say,

"Why don't you look
for a suspect

that has
A, B, C, D, these factors."

- Look, for example,
at the case of Ted Bundy.

The connection between somebody
like Kemper and Ted Bundy

is that the reason
they're killing is sexual.

It's an abnormal
sexual arousal pattern.

- I found it with Kemper,
and I found it with the likes

of Dennis Rader,
the BTK Strangler,

Jeffrey Dahmer,
David Berkowitz,

the Son of Sam.
There was no empathy.

There was never any remorse
for the crimes at all.

The only time we touched
on the mother.

It seemed to be always
a mother thing

with these guys,
always a mother thing.

- Your grandmother and her
daughter-in-law, your mother,

were two women very important
in your life,

and you killed them both.

Could you say
what they were like

that led them to the same fate?

- The same thing that kept them
from ever being friends.

They were both aggressive,

um,

matriarchal women.

They'd been the daughters

of strong, matriarchal women.

- They love the mother.
They want the mother's love.

But at the same time, you know,
they hate the mother.

They hate her, so then
when you get them to talk,

you get them to talk,
and you reach that point

about mothers,

and you got them back
at that crime.

That's when you'll see them,
you know, breaking down.

Some of the most
hardened criminals

I've talked to,
it happened to them.

Gary Heidnik in Philadelphia,
who kept women in a pit

and I interviewed him
with another agent,

and when I got to the mother,
you know,

he just ripped off the mic
and just, you know--you know,

he just broke down.
He loved the mother,

but he hated her
at the same time

and projected his problems
on his mother, like Kemper.

- There's no question
that he hated his mother,

but that's not why
he went out killing women.

Thousands of people have
horrible relationships

with their mothers.

Thousands and thousands
of people

grow up in horrific conditions
where one parent or another

not only belittles
or humiliates the person

but abuses the person
and burns the person,

but they're not going around
killing people

because they're symbolically
killing their mother.

I just don't believe that.

If Kemper explains
why he did what he did,

you should take it
at face value.

Murderers, in general,
lie all the time.

It was his relationship
with his mother that did this.

He was abused by this person.
It may just not be true.

[ominous music]

- Six young women dead.

There's a lot that leads
into that happening,

but that is what happened.

They represented
not what my mother was

but what she liked,
what she coveted,

what was important to her,
and I was destroying it.

- People think
he's a manipulator

and a psychopath.

That's true.

As far as, like,
the mother part,

where they don't believe that,
I disagree with them.

The mother had a major impact.

The reason he decided now
was the time

to kill them
because of the mother.

I don't forgive Kemper,
but mom is the influence.

If mom wasn't there,

he wouldn't
have been a serial killer.

- I was suicidal,

uh, very disturbed,
grasping out at someone.

I had abducted them,
and I wasn't going to

let them out of the car
because I was tired

of people walking away from me.

- Ed Kemper's murder
of his mother

is done at the end
of his killing career.

It's important to look at
what he does with his victims,

the co-ed victims.

- And where it might
not be realistic

to someone who has decided
I'm just incarnate evil,

there's not much else I can say
other than I did surrender.

I did make it stop.

I didn't kill my mother
in a rage.

I didn't attack her
out of some argument.

I went out of my way
to find her and to kill her,

to make sure that
whatever cover I had was blown.

There was no way I could
explain my way out of it.

I started pursuing ways
out of what I was doing

because it was getting
totally out of hand.

- He said,
"I had schoolteachers

"and counselors talking
to me, but he never

"really talked to me
about my feelings

"and what was going
through my mind.

Had they done that," he said,

"I would've talked to them
about this."

If a counselor talked
to him, he may

or she may get
something out of him.

- If you'd never given in
to the impulse to murder--

- Where might I be?

If my parole
had been successful...

Um,

I believe I'd be married
and have children.

I'd be heading toward
my first grandchildren.

- This story just never
goes away,

and people are fascinated
by it,

how horrid it all was.

- When I get back to the motel
after doing his interview,

I had problems. I had problems

that would then
begin to carry over

where I had flashbacks
of those crime scenes.

- [screaming]
[knife piercing]

- I've been involved in
I couldn't tell you

how many investigations
where people have died,

and this, to me,
has no sense whatsoever.

I still have issues
that come up occasionally.

[dark music]

- [choking, gasping]

- It really, really bothers me.
It does have an effect on me.

- If I could change, um,

things in my life,

I would definitely not have

participated
in these mass murders.

I had a wife
and two little kids.

I worked 13 months
without a day off.

Within five years after
these trials were completed,

the district attorney
was divorced.

I was divorced.

Several of the police officers

involved were divorced.

It took a horrible toll

on us individually

and on our families.

You know, it was difficult,
a difficult time,

and it's always a part of you.

- This was such a hideous evil

that Kemper perpetrated
on these people.

The lesson of Edmund Kemper
is, the human animal

is capable
of just about everything,

and we can't be surprised
by what happens.

I'm sorry it happened.
It was horrible what happened.

I think of the lives
that were not lived

that--who knows what these
victims would've turned into,

and I think that's
the tragedy of it all.

- If there's somebody out there
that is watching this

and hasn't done that,
hasn't killed people

and wants to and rages inside
and struggles for that feeling

or is so sure they have it
under control,

they need to talk
to somebody about it.

Trust somebody enough
to sit down

and talk about something
that isn't a crime.

Thinking that way
isn't a crime.

Doing it isn't just a crime.

It's a horrible thing
that doesn't know when to quit.

It can't be stopped easily.

- For more information,
go to Oxygen.com.