At nine in the morning on July 25, 2017, in a hearing room at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, Presiding Commissioner Cynthia Fritz put the time on the record and opened the subsequent parole consideration hearing of Edmund Emil Kemper, CDC number B-52453, received into the Department of Corrections on November 9, 1973, for eight counts of first-degree murder out of Santa Cruz County. He was sixty-eight. He had been in custody for forty-four years, and before that, from the age of fifteen, in the state hospital at Atascadero for killing his grandparents. His lawyer sat beside him. A deputy district attorney from Santa Cruz sat across the room to oppose release. At 12:21 in the afternoon the panel came back from its recess and denied parole for seven years.
In between, Kemper talked. He answered 603 times, and the commissioners let him run: the cap gun from New York that his sister threw and broke, and the Barbie doll's head he pulled off in return; the Christmas of 1963 when the family drove up to his grandparents' ranch and left him there, his stepbrother warned in German not to tell him; the afternoon in August 1964 when he stood at the window with the rifle under his arm while his grandmother typed with her back to him. Of the two Fresno State roommates he picked up hitchhiking in Berkeley in 1972 he says that when they asked what he was going to do, "I said, what do you think I'm going to do, I was referring to sex." Of the fifteen-year-old he killed he says she was pretending to be a college student and he would not have killed a high school girl. Asked about remorse he says he demonstrated it the day he gave himself up, by telling on himself.
Then a woman named Pat Kemper spelled her surname for the record. She is his cousin, and the grandparents he shot in 1964 were hers. "We knew one another as children; we played together as children. He had a great sense of humor." She had come to say that her grandmother was not the aggressive woman he described, that she had taken him in out of love and had refused, that Christmas, to take the gun away from him because she wanted him to know she trusted him; that her grandfather was not senile but hard of hearing, and helped her sister with her algebra. It is the only time in the record that anyone speaks for the dead, and it is three paragraphs long.
The commissioners' decision lists five grounds: his past and present mental state and attitude toward the crimes, a lack of remorse, a lack of the skills and tools to succeed on parole, his institutional behavior, and his parole plans. Fritz tells him, in as many words, that after so many years the panel still does not know why he did it.
This is the complete official transcript of a parole suitability hearing before the California Board of Parole Hearings, 157 pages from the cover sheet to the transcriber's certificate, including the panel's decision read back on the record after the recess. It is not an interview and not a confession. Kemper is speaking to a body with power over his release, with his attorney present and a prosecutor listening, about crimes committed in 1964 and 1972 to 1973 and about the forty-four years since. He is a fluent and practiced narrator of his own life, and has been giving accounts of it for half a century; everything he says here should be read with that in mind. Where the commissioners say a thing about him, it is their finding and is labeled as theirs.
The record of a public proceeding of a California state agency, and a public record under the California Public Records Act. The transcript's last page carries the line "Copyright 2017/All Rights Reserved by BPH," and that is reproduced here as a fact about the document: California, unlike the federal government, does not bar its agencies from asserting copyright, and the Board asserts it. This archive publishes the transcript as the same class of public record as the 1992 Manson hearing it already holds, under the rule that every interview in the collection is published with a note, and the Board's claim is stated rather than disputed. The custodian is the Board of Parole Hearings; the copy used here was obtained from a Kemper enthusiast site that posts the PDF, which is a copy host and not a custodian.
What has and has not been checked. The PDF carries a native text layer, typed by the transcriber, so there is no scanner between the reader and the words and no spelling repair was run or needed. The file was extracted by script, and all 157 printed page numbers were verified present. What was done here: the transcriber's line numbers, page numbers and the running "Dictate Express" footer were removed, the decision section's running header was removed where it had fallen inside sentences, and each speaker's turn was set as its own paragraph under the label the transcript gives it. Nothing was corrected, including "Berkley," "Today date's" and the transcript's own hesitations. No recording of the hearing was heard. The cover sheet lists the deputy district attorney as Celia West and the transcript's first page has her as Celia Rowland; both appear below as the record has them.
The transcript's index is preserved in the order of the hearing: proceedings and case factors, then the commitment offenses and pre-commitment history, post-commitment factors, parole plans, closing statements, a recess, and the decision. The Board's boilerplate about the decision becoming final within 120 days is printed as part of the record because it is part of the record.
P R O C E E D I N G S
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, we’re on the record.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: We’re on record. The time’s 9:00 a.m. This is for the Subsequent Parole Consideration Hearing of Edmund Kemper, K-E-M-P-E-R, CDC number B52453. Today date’s July 25th , 2017. We’re located at the California Medical Facility. Mr. Kemper was received into the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation on November 9th , 1973. He was taken to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for the offense of murder first, Penal Code Section 187, eight counts, and the county of commitment is Santa Cruz. This hearing’s being tape recorded. We’re gonna go around room, put our names on the record; please give your names, spell your last name, when I get to you, Mr. Kemper, give your CDC number also. Start with myself, Cynthia Fritz, F-R-I-T-Z, Commissioner.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I’m Dan Blake, B-L-A- K-E, Deputy Commissioner.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY ROWLAND: Celia Rowland -- Celia Rowland with the Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You’re supposed to be looking forward, sir. Go head, yeah.
MS. PAYAN: Angel Payan, P-A-Y-A-N, Correctional Case Records Manager.
MS. KEMPER: Pat Kemper, K-E-M-P-E-R. Did you want me to say my relationship?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Yes. PAT KEMPER: Uh, the victims were my grandparents.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you.
MS. NIETO: Sylvia Nieto, N-I-E-T-O, Victim Advocate.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you.
ATTORNEY HALL: Jeffrey Hall, H-A-L-L, attorney for Mr. Edmund, um, Kemper.
INMATE KEMPER: Edmund Kemper, uh, the third, uh, Bravo 52453.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Spell your last name.
INMATE KEMPER: K-E-M-P-E-R.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you. All right, we also have two correctional officers present for security purposes only --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Commissioner, would you move the mic, there you go, perfect.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you get all that or?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I got it, but it was, uh, (inaudible)
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, Mr. Kemper, raise your right hand so I can swear you in. Do you swear or affirm to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. You can put your hand down. Let’s see if you need any accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. I’m gonna ask you some questions. I’ll not that you came in, in a wheelchair. You -- its intermittent wheelchair use, correct? Do you know what that means?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so you can -- you can walk, but you use it on occasion?
INMATE KEMPER: Mostly.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Mostly. And do you, um, I -- I have that you had a mobility vest, too. Do you have that?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you wear the vest?
INMATE KEMPER: I don’t wear it.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, you don’t wear it? Okay. All right, you’re wearing your glasses. So are your glasses working okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Can you hear me okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, ma’am.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. Are you CCCMS or EOP?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No. Have you ever been in -- in the mental health?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: When’s the last time you were in the mental health?
INMATE KEMPER: Back when I first got here.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Are you taking any psychotropic medication?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Any medication for any medical reason?
INMATE KEMPER: A number of them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so let us know. You’re on elderly parole, okay? So this is an elderly parole hearing so medical issues are, um, -- we give special consideration to your age, the amount of time you’ve been in prison, and any medical issues. So if you can remember any of the medications or medical issues that you have, can you put that on the record?
INMATE KEMPER: My primary medication is, uh, diabetic and it’s, uh, metformin 850 mg three times a day.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, anything else?
INMATE KEMPER: And I take that KOP, which means keep on person. I carry my own medication. Uh, there’s two or three different kinds of, uh, blood pressure meds; lisinopril and, uh, oh -- oh, I can’t remember the others. I had a stroke a couple of years ago so that’s one of the problems I have.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Any memory problems if -- if you’re aware of it?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No, okay. All right, any other issues because of the stroke?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, uh -- uh, PBA, pseudobulbar affect, which means I’ll burst into laughter or crying inappropriately. It just happens --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And that’s the affective --
INMATE KEMPER: -- nothing to -- nothing to do with emotion.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: That’s an affect of the stroke?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, damage to the brain.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Got it. Anything else?
INMATE KEMPER: Not that I can think of.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right. Besides wheelchair, glasses, I have your TABE score as 12.9, that’s the highest you can receive. Um, any other -- and then you’re not wearing the mobility vest, but you said you just don’t wear it, right?
INMATE KEMPER: It’s hot, yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Um, any other accommodations that you need to go forward with the hearing today?
INMATE KEMPER: Not that I can think of.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Any other accommodations your client needs to go forward?
ATTORNEY HALL: I -- I think that’s complete.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
ATTORNEY HALL: Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Wheelchair, glasses, he’s not using the mobility vest. If you need any breaks at any time let us know. Um, let’s go through your Notice of Hearing Rights. Do you recall receiving your board forms from your correctional counselor, reviewing and signing your forms?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, I have that you signed them November 11th -- I’m sorry, strike that, May 11th , 2017. Does that sound right?
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Is that a yes or a no? I need something audible for the hearing.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, I’m sorry.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, that’s fine. Um, okay, so let’s go through portion of the, um, forms with you. The purpose of your parole consideration hearing is to determine if you’re suitable for parole when you’re prior to your minimum eligible parole date a parole consideration hearing will be held. You have a right to attend the hearing, ask and answer questions, and speak on your own behalf. You’re entitled to be represented by an attorney. You may not call any witnesses at your hearing. The district attorney from the county where the offenses were committed will be invited to the hearing to represent the interest of the People. Notice of the hearing will also be given to the judge, um, -- the sentencing judge, law enforcement agency, attorney who represented you at sentencing, victims or next of kin, other designated representative may also attend and address the hearing Panel. You have a right to review the non-confidential documents in your prison central file. We already went through your Americans with Disability Act Accommodations. Do you want to go forward with the hearing today?
INMATE KEMPER: Do I want to go forward?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Yes.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. You’re entitled to a hearing by an impartial hearing panel. You’re entitled to a copy of the record of the hearing. You’re entitled to a copy of the decision. We’ll give you the decision today. Any questions regarding your hearing rights?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. Have you client’s rights been met thus far?
ATTORNEY HALL: Eh, they have, Commissioner, thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Any preliminary objections?
ATTORNEY HALL: No objections.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. So let’s go through procedures. I think it’s been a while since you’ve been to an actual full hearing, right?
INMATE KEMPER: It has.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. So let me explain how it’s gonna work today. We break it down into three parts. The first part is pre-conviction or everything that happened before you came to prison, background information, prior criminality, and then we’ll into the crimes and why you came to prison. From there we’ll move into the second part of the hearing is how you been doing in prison so we’ll go through any upgrades that you’ve had in education, vocation, work history, and self-help programming. We’ll go through your wr -- recent risk assessment. We’ll also go through -- the third part of the hearing is parole plans so if you were given a grant release where would you live, what would you do, how would you support yourself. Those are the three parts of the hearing. Once we’ve completed our questioning, the two Panel members, the District Attorney will have the opportunity to ask clarifying questions, your attorney can also ask clarifying questions. Once all the questioning is done we’ll take closing statements. First from the district attorney’s office, second from your attorney and then you can also make a closing statement if you want to, okay? Once that’s done I’ll hand it back over the district attorney’s office and if, uh, victim’s family member would like to make a statement you’re welcome to do so at that time, okay? Um, once all that is completed then we’re gonna take a break and the two Panel members will discuss your case, we’ll go into what’s called deliberations and then we’ll come and we’ll give you a decision today. Do you have any questions on how it’s gonna work?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, the hearing’s being tape recorded so that -- so that you know, um, imp -- we have a clear record so we don’t want you to guess to anything. If you don’t know -- if you don’t know an answer, you don’t know an answer. Um, if you don’t understand a question, we’re asking you let us know so we can try and ask it a different way. We do need audible answers so we need yes/no instead of shakes of the head and ah-huhs okay, because the transcriber can’t pick that up. We’ll try not to talk over each other so that the transcription is clear. So, um, if you see us correcting you, those are usually the areas that we’re correcting you on so that we have a clear record. Are -- are we clear on that?
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Yes, I need a yes.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, yes, ma’am.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, are you sure you’re clear on that? All right, um, okay, so any questions so far? And again, if you need a break at any time or that goes for anybody in the hearings cause they do get long sometimes, let us know so we can take a break. So with that, any questions on the procedures?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Did you receive, uh, Mr. Hall, 10-day/65-day packets?
ATTORNEY HALL: I -- I did, Commissioner.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. Did you receive all the packets 10-day/65-day?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Yes, I did as well.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you. Any other documents you want to submit on behalf of your client?
ATTORNEY HALL: No additional documents.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. All right, Mr. Kemper, any questions you have before we started?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. So let’s get started. The first part of the hearing is everything -- it’s, uh, what happened before you came to prison. So, um, -- so we’re gonna start off with just a little, uh -- uh, a brief summary of your background. So it’s a brief summary, um, just to kind of figure out what was going on in your life before you came to prison. If you think there are things you’d like to add, correct, or clarify about what we’re saying about you, let us know, all right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, ma’am.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. So I have that, um, it looks like you came from a family where your parents divorced when you were about eight or nine. It looks like your mother had some type of mental health problems. She was an abusive alcoholic toward you. Um, and you also routinely would see parents with their -- with multiple stepfathers engage in domestic violence. Um, you stated that it was instigated by your mother who “started shit with almost everyone -- everybody.” That is what you told the psychologist recently. Um, you were scared and depressed when you watched your mother beat your father. Um, but then it looks like your father, um, also was involved in some violence. Um, at a young age it looks like you were killing your cats, buried one alive, playing games with your sister like, um, playing execution chair, gas chamber, is that right? Are those the types of games you played with your sister?
INMATE KEMPER: Among others.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Right you’d rip up her dolls, decapitate them, um --
INMATE KEMPER: Actually that was in response to something she did.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, but you did it right?
INMATE KEMPER: I made a trip to New York City when I was 10 years old, which she got a bit jealous about. When I came back I had a Mattel Fanner 50, I don’t know if you’re familiar with the -- the, uh, toy. But it’s basically a cap gun, and, uh, I got that in New York. And one day she came in my room, picked it up, and seemed to be mad at me. She has since admitted that this happened and for the reasons that it happened, that she’s in to theatrics.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, so your sister’s jealous and theatrical, your mother’s abusive.
INMATE KEMPER: So she took the -- the pistol from where it was sitting and flung it at me, and it hit my toe -- my big toe and the floor at the same time, and it broke. Not apart, but it broke inside and it couldn’t be, uh, fired normally by pulling the trigger. It could only be fanned. When I picked it up I was calling out for her not to throw it, and I said, please don’t throw that, and she thew it at me. And, uh, it broke and I picked it up and determined that it was broken, and I chased her out of my bedroom over to her bedroom, when in looking for something of equal value to break, and all I saw in the room basically was her Barbie doll which was seated on its cabinet -- clothing cabinet. And, uh, I snatched it up and I grabbed the head of it and yanked it off and said here, how’s this. And I thought it pops -- it pops off.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, well I mean --
INMATE KEMPER: Well that isn’t broken. That’s just, uh, disabled for a few moments.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay well all this is just sibling --
INMATE KEMPER: So I picked up a pair of --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- rive -- but all this stuff is just sibling rivalry stuff --
INMATE KEMPER: I know.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- that happens in every family.
INMATE KEMPER: That’s all -- that’s all that was back done.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So, I mean, but the killing of the cats, the burying of cat alive, smothering of a dog is not stuff that people normally do.
INMATE KEMPER: Well it got better, the thing with the doll. I picked up a pair of sheers that she had in there and I cut the hands off. Those couldn’t --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Are we still at the -- we’re talk -- talking about the dolls?
INMATE KEMPER: The doll, yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh okay, we’re -- we’re going back to that?
INMATE KEMPER: That -- that couldn’t be stuck back on. But I figured it -- it broke her toy in equal fashion to mine, and I threw it down. She got all hysterical about it, and, uh, we went on arguing.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, well let’s move on, all right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. Um -- um, okay, so why were you killing animals?
INMATE KEMPER: Instead of people.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, but why were you killing animals.
INMATE KEMPER: Instead of people.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So, what, you wanted to kill people but you killed animals instead? Is that what you’re saying?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: At -- at what age, eight, nine, 10, 11? How old were you?
INMATE KEMPER: Probably, uh, 11 or 12.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. No other explanation?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, well the cats were treated -- it was a cat, one cat at a time. The cat was treated as a family member. It was, uh, loved and cared for by all, and, uh, one day --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well wait, we -- we don’t need to get into details.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I want to know why, I mean besides the fact that you said you wanted to kill people so you killed the animals. Do you have any other explanations? It sounds like to me if they were family members and they were treated nicely, you’re probably jealous of them, right?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thought about that?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Any other explanations that you can give?
INMATE KEMPER: Not really.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Then your parents were divorced. I guess you moved to Montana. You’re trying to get back with your father who you had a better relationship with; sounds like there were some issues there. Um, but, at some point you go -- you move in with your grandparents. They seem to have treated you well.
INMATE KEMPER: I was moved in with my grandparents. Uh, what happened was it was Christmas time and all the family members went up there to their house, and, uh, for the holiday. My stepbrother didn’t go this year and it turns out he -- he understood why he didn’t want to go is cause I was gonna be left up there. This was his mother telling him not to let me know. They were German -- ethnic German, and, uh, she told him in German, uh, don’t be telling him --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- what’s happening.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So you start living with your grandparents, but you were left there. You didn’t know that you were gonna be living with them. But they -- did they treat you well?
INMATE KEMPER: Generally.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay and then you killed them both when you were 15?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So why’d you kill your grandparents?
INMATE KEMPER: That’s a complex question for a immediate answer.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well would you like to answer it? You -- it’s up to you.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, basically I had gone to the window where my grandmother was typing and the dog was laying in the shade, my pet dog, Anka. And, uh, I went there to get the dog, I was gonna go hunting, and I stood there and I started having basically an emotional, uh -- uh, I had a moment that I was, uh, going through my history with my mother, my, uh, grandmother. They were a lot alike, my grandmother and my mother, very assertive, very aggressive, and, uh, self-confident. And, uh, while I was standing there not pointing the gun basically at my grandmother, but it happened to be in my -- in my possession under my arm, and was held in her general direction. She didn’t see it because she was facing away from me. But I started thinking about all the times and the years I had been dealing with my mother and my grandmother.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But your grandmother didn’t do anything bad to you. I mean your mother was a -- we know your mother was abusive towards you, but I didn’t get that impression at all that your grand -- maybe she had the same types of character as your mother as far as being assertive and aggressive, but she didn’t do anything bad to you.
INMATE KEMPER: Not really.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay and then you shoot her?
INMATE KEMPER: Huh?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Then you shot her?
INMATE KEMPER: At the end of that, uh, period of, uh, thinking about.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Because you keep saying because you kept going back to how your mother and your grandmother treated you.
INMATE KEMPER: Well I was going --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Your grandmother didn’t treat your bad. I’m just trying to figure out what --
INMATE KEMPER: Not -- not generally --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Yeah.
INMATE KEMPER: -- but there were -- there were moments.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Just because -- well okay, so like everybody, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I mean no one’s perfect and so you just didn’t like that she was an assertive, self-confident, aggressive woman. Is that what you’re saying?
INMATE KEMPER: Kind of flew in my face.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well, uh -- well, so what I’m trying to get at here and -- and we’re gonna get to it because all of your victims are women. You clearly have an issue with your mother. To me I see -- I think it’s hatred, but we’ll get there.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Um, seems to be like you must have had some issues with your grandmother for no reason, so, um, you just don’t -- don’t like assertive, aggressive women?
INMATE KEMPER: Well she had placed herself in the position of being, in essence, my warden. And she said if you ever want to get to go live with your father again, you had better do what I say.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You’re a 15-year- old kid, okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So that’s pretty normal when someone’s under the care of someone else.
INMATE KEMPER: But that wasn’t a good idea when you’re talking, uh, in my -- in my --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Who to -- to you?
INMATE KEMPER: -- in my case I was talking from a position of disturbance, uh, I was trying to -- to share my sense of disturbance, uh, with her cause it bothered me --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and it bothered her too and she wasn’t familiar with it and she told me not to bring that up again.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Sense, uh -- what do mean? What are -- what are we talking about here? Sense of disturbance.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, inner problems I was having - -
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Ahh, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- in coping with other people.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Got it, all right. So --
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- you killed your grandmother. Any other reason because of you thought she was assertive, aggressive, self-confident woman, and she treated you good generally but there are a couple of times that apparently that she didn’t, but, okay, and that she was trying to, um, sounds to me like act like a responsible adult in trying to give you some guidelines.
INMATE KEMPER: Well we had a walk-up freezer in my bedroom. It was a six foot long lift top, uh, freezer. There were four half-gallons of my favorite ice-cream in the whole world in there and they stayed in there the whole time I was there.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Now why did she buy those? She’d heard the story about my mother had brought home a half- gallon of ice-cream, put it in the freezer, and I had turned it around, opened it up surreptitiously, and scraped off little bits of ice-cream.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why didn’t you just ask why there were there then?
INMATE KEMPER: Well I wasn’t getting any. A week later, it was hollowed out to where there was just about a half inch or three quarters of an inch of ice- cream at the top end. And that was the -- the end facing people looking in there.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So wait, are you telling me your grandmother was messing with you or something; is that what you’re saying?
INMATE KEMPER: Well my mother I’m saying --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, your mother.
INMATE KEMPER: -- pulled the half-gallon out, set it on the table, opened the top, took this big spoon to serve with --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right, but we’re talking about your grandmother.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and it fell -- right -- it fell apart, it caved in and she went off.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, we’re talking about your grandmother. I’m still trying figure out --
INMATE KEMPER: And she realized the deception.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, um, so you kill your grandmother and then why’d you kill your grandfather.
INMATE KEMPER: Fear.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Fear of your grandfather?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why’d you fear your grandfather?
INMATE KEMPER: Well when he -- I’d heard stories about when he was younger. He was a pretty fierce guy. He was an original cowboy. He carried a 45 on his hip. He was, uh, a tough guy wrangler, and my father had told me that he back-handed him clear across the kitchen one night when he got, I guess, smart with him.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did there -- your grandfather ever hit you?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No, okay I don’t know if I’m -- I’m -- I’m following this. You killed your --
INMATE KEMPER: Well --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Hold on.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I know you’re trying to get out what you want to get out, but I have questions that I would like answered, okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So you kill your grandmother first because you just happen to have the shotgun to hunting with your dog --
INMATE KEMPER: Twenty-two.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- 22, okay. And then do you immediately kill your grandfather afterward or what?
INMATE KEMPER: He wasn’t there. He was down shopping in town.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So when he got back did you kill him?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Immediately?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, within a few minutes, yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did he even know his wife -- that you killed his wife?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so but where would there be any --
INMATE KEMPER: I started trying to tell him.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: There would be no fear at this point. You didn’t even -- I mean if that’s what you’re trying to --
INMATE KEMPER: That built up. I was trying to tell him and I couldn’t even talk. I was, uh, garbled.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right.
INMATE KEMPER: The words kept coming out in batches of different starts, and, uh, he wasn’t paying any attention to it, uh, he was getting a little senile, not totally, you know, responsive to moments.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No problems with your grandfather?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, so --
INMATE KEMPER: But he was walking around to the other side of his truck and he was gonna open the passenger side where there was a bag of groceries for me to take in, and I was arguing with myself trying to figure out what to do, and it became very apparent in just a matter of minutes that there’s no way I was gonna tell him what had happened to his wife of 50 years.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So it would seem then that you killed them because you wanted to get away with it or something, I mean, cause you weren’t gonna tell him about the death. So then, he needed to be killed? I -- I don’t get the whole fear thing cause I don’t see that here. Um, so what else can you tell me?
INMATE KEMPER: I was walking along behind him. I had the 22 in my hand. I tried to raise the barrel up and I couldn’t.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: How old was he at the time?
INMATE KEMPER: Was he?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: How old was he?
INMATE KEMPER: Seventy-two.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So he’s 72, you’re 15; you’re what, 6’5” at this point with a --
INMATE KEMPER: Some -- something like that.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- you’re 6’5”, you have a gun, you have a 22, he’s bring -- trying to bring groceries in the house.
INMATE KEMPER: Just gonna open the door so I can get them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Right, so -- so that’s why I’m not -- I don’t get this fear thing at all because he had no weapon, he had nothing.
INMATE KEMPER: It was something -- it was -- it was something that was building up.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. You feel bad about what you did to your grandparents?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, I do.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so, um, what would you say to them right now? What would you like to say to them?
INMATE KEMPER: Well neither one of them knew what happened to them. They were shot in the head so they went down immediately.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So does that make -- okay, please -- does that make it better? Is that what you’re saying, they didn’t know they were getting killed? I want to know, you shot your grandparents.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Sir, you shot your grandparents who were taking care of you.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: They didn’t do anything to you. For no apparent reason and basically I asked you what would you say to them? You murdered both of them and you basically said they didn’t know what was coming. So what? That makes it better? That’s -- that’s very disturbing.
INMATE KEMPER: No, I -- I’m saying in the reference to your statement that --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: What would you say?
INMATE KEMPER: -- what would I -- you asked what would I say to them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And you’d say --
INMATE KEMPER: First off --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- I shot you in the head so you didn’t know what was coming.
INMATE KEMPER: If they were here suddenly just out of the past, there would be a lot of confusion. For one thing, they wouldn’t realize why time had gone by.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: They didn’t even know what happened to them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. All right, then you go to Ash, right?
INMATE KEMPER: No. I went to Youth Authority.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You went to Youth Authority but then -- then you went to Ash. I mean you got -- you were committed to Ash.
INMATE KEMPER: The Youth Authority and I was processed through Perkins, California.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: It’s a northern reception center.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No, I -- I -- we - - I get it. I’m trying to move forward. You ended up in Ash.
INMATE KEMPER: Over where -- I know, but we’re moving past something that was salient.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, okay. Well tell me what it is.
INMATE KEMPER: I had a youth -- I had a youth authority number, I went through normal processing like everybody else. When I went to the board, the board members said you -- don’t even sit down, he says, we can’t even talk to you. And I looked at him with confusion and he said don’t take a seat. And basically he told me I wasn’t even suppose to be there because mental issues had been brought up at my trial by a psychiatrist hired by the judge, not by me.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, I didn’t -- I don’t know how --
INMATE KEMPER: He said I was mentally ill and I needed treatment, not punishment.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well right, that’s why you ended up at Ash.
INMATE KEMPER: No, the judge mocked at that and sent me YA anyway --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- which he -- I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but shortly thereafter that, that was illegal; he wasn’t even allowed to do that. But he did it anyway because Madera County, as it turns out, is a hang ‘em high county, they do what they want to do.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: We don’t need to go into all this, sir. What’s salient about this whole thing? Tell -- just let me get to the bottom line here cause I’m trying to move forward into --
INMATE KEMPER: I was sent back to Madera County for further processing and rejected by the Youth Authority. They left my case open, but they sent me back to Madera. And, uh, the judge kind of had a fit --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But we don’t need to get in to all this; okay, I’m just saying, if there’s something salient, which I haven’t found yet, what is it besides you complaining about the treatment that you had way back in the ‘70s and it’s 2017. Bottom line is you eventually ended up at Ash, correct?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay for mental health, correct or not? Were you there for mental health issues? Do you know?
INMATE KEMPER: Theoretically.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think that you had a mental health problem?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay is there anything imp -- that you thinks was important about what you were just describing that would add to the story?
INMATE KEMPER: Well, there always is, but, uh, I think you’d be saying I’m holding things up again, so.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. So you’re at Ash and then actually from what I read, and -- and maybe I have this wrong, the -- the psychologist actually their opinion was you should have stayed there, but somehow they -- you ended up getting released. Do you think you should have been released from Ash?
INMATE KEMPER: I wasn’t released from Ash. I left there in chains.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Four years and six months after I got there.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: Because the county judge said I had a hold on me and I could not be released by Atascadero so the -- the psychiatrist asked me, what did I want to do at this point? Do I -- would I want to stay for treatment or go back and face the music.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: The psychologist asked you that? They gave you the choice?
INMATE KEMPER: Psychiatrist.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Psychiatrist, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: He was -- he was -- he was the head man of the unit, and, uh, I said well, you’ve given me therapy and you’re saying that I’m ready for a minimum security hospital in a program there so I think I’ll go back and face up to whatever they got. But he - - he was under the misapprehension that I was going back for trial as an adult.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, so --
INMATE KEMPER: I knew that I had been tried as a 15-year-old as a juvenile in juvenile court. It was a one day trial.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think you should have been released from Ash? That’s my questions that I want you to answer now.
INMATE KEMPER: No, I was being transferred.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But, no -- I know what happened but do you personally think you should have been released?
INMATE KEMPER: That wasn’t the issue at the time. That wasn’t what I came up for.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I -- I understand that, sir. Do you think you should have been released from Ash? Do you think CDCR made a mistake in releasing you?
INMATE KEMPER: I went back to Youth Authority.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so your -- you just don’t want to answer the question. Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: No. I went back to the Youth Authority.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But you’re not ask -- answering the question --
INMATE KEMPER: I wasn’t up for --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- but that’s okay --
INMATE KEMPER: I wasn’t up for release --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- you don’t need to answer it.
INMATE KEMPER: I wasn’t up for release.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, uh, let’s --
INMATE KEMPER: The issue is --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- let’s move on. It’s okay, you don’t need to answer questions, it’s up to you. Um, all right, so you -- you’re out -- out for a few years I guess and -- and then went on a crime scree -- spree where you ended up killing what, eight people, six were strangers, correct?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Uh, mostly college students, I think one high school student, all women hitchhikers. Um, I guess you lured them in, um, ended up killing them, dismembering them. According to this, you had sex with them after they were dismembered or died. And I’m just wondering why you did that?
INMATE KEMPER: At the time it was frustration.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Over what?
INMATE KEMPER: That I couldn’t do anything with them when they were alive.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: What do you mean you couldn’t do anything with them when you -- they were alive.
INMATE KEMPER: Well the first two --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you know --
INMATE KEMPER: -- we got into quite an argument --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you know their names?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: What are their names?
INMATE KEMPER: Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: They were hitchhiking together. They were roommates at Fresno State. They were in Berkley hitchhiking going to Stanford on their way back to Fresno. And when I pulled my gun out, when I had them in a quiet place, uh, and they asked me what I was going to do, and I said, what do you think I’m going to do, I was referring to sex. They were thinking -- they didn’t want to be thinking death so I wasn’t encouraging that at all. And, uh, when they refused to be involved with me sexually, I stated that it could get worse, it, uh, you know, you could die today. You can end up getting dumped in the ditch, is that what you want? And, uh, they basically were, uh -- they were arguing against rape. And, uh, naturally that didn’t happen. Also I didn’t shoot them. I had a 9 mm automatic and I didn’t use it other than for gesturing.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So instead you did what?
INMATE KEMPER: Reached in my pocket and pulled a knife out.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so it made it better -- what that you didn’t rape them and you didn’t shoot? Instead you took a knife and --
INMATE KEMPER: I wish I hadn’t because, you know, I didn’t have any experience with such things, and the -- well the only experience I had was theatrical stuff on television. When somebody gets stuck with a knife they fall over dead for theatrical purposes. That doesn’t happen in real life.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So you took the more personal approach of using a knife. Why -- why’d you do that?
INMATE KEMPER: Well I thought it was going to be quick.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well I -- the whole story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me cause what, at this point you’re 6’9”, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You’re this huge guy, you have a gun; you could’ve easily forced rape.
INMATE KEMPER: Neither one of them were impressed with the gun.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So, I mean, then you take a knife out and you’re saying you -- you thought they would just die. Okay and then why -- did you dismember them?
INMATE KEMPER: Not immediately, no. It was later on.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But you did it, and so why’d you do that?
INMATE KEMPER: I didn’t dismember them. I cut their heads off.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. All right, so you beheaded them --
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Or dismembered them; it just depends on how you want to say it, but you did it and I want to know why?
INMATE KEMPER: They’re both beautiful, but after I got done with the knife, they weren’t. They were bloody and, I mean, they were covered in blood.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: It was messy and I didn’t -- once I got into it, it just got -- I got sucked in deeper and deeper, it just -- it didn’t go away. So something had to be dealt with.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So -- so, I -- I - - I need to -- I’m -- I’m gonna redirect you again cause I -- I’m still waiting for the answer on why you beheaded them.
INMATE KEMPER: And I took their heads up to my apartment. I cleaned them up. I cleaned their hair out and posed them as they would have -- as they were two hours earlier.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: For what reason?
INMATE KEMPER: To look at.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why?
INMATE KEMPER: I was a nut. I wasn’t able to do anything more than that.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well okay. I -- I think that’s kind of a poor choice of words, but okay. Um, so they were you trophies. That’s the way you treated them, like objects?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why is that? Cause that’s, uh, what your whole history is, is treating women like objects. So I’m kind of --
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- wondering why.
INMATE KEMPER: Huh?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why? Where’d that come from?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, my limited exposure to women at -- at that time.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well --
INMATE KEMPER: I had never been on a date and I’m suddenly paroled by the Youth Authority.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But there’s plenty of people that are not experienced with dating and things like that, and they don’t go on a crime spree, and you know, killing --
INMATE KEMPER: Atascadero intended that I go on dates, and you know, work my way out into society --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But you’re not hearing me. Sir, you’re not hearing me. There’s plenty of people that are -- were similar as far as abusive families or abusive mothers, and you know, not involved --
INMATE KEMPER: Highly erotic you --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- well -- wait -- wait -- wait don’t interrupt me, and, um, you know not experienced with women and stuff, and they don’t go out and kill six women and then dismember them and what? You had sex with the corpses? That’s what I read. Is that right?
INMATE KEMPER: Occasionally.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And so what’s that all about?
INMATE KEMPER: Frustration.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: That’s your reasoning for six murders?
INMATE KEMPER: Well, it grew to that number. It didn’t start out that way.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well of course. Um, but that’s your -- that’s your reasoning that you were frustrated.
INMATE KEMPER: And not being able to treat them more normally.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So instead of treating them more normally you killed them, dismembered them, and had sex with them when they were dead?
INMATE KEMPER: I dismembered two of them because I had a broken arm. I had a motorcycle and I shattered my left arm. It was in a cast all the way to my shoulder. So I couldn’t carry them normally so I had to be very careful how I treated them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: The first two you cut off their heads and then you displayed them in your house. All right, okay, so you don’t like that being called dismembered. We’ll call it beheaded, um --
INMATE KEMPER: Partial dismemberment.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- partially, all right, you know, I guess semantics are important to you.
INMATE KEMPER: But there were some very thorough dismemberment, too.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, I know. Um, all right, and then you’re saying because you had a broken arm you couldn’t carry them correctly so you had to dismember them? Is that really what you’re telling me?
INMATE KEMPER: I couldn’t safely carry them from my car to my house or my house to the car.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you enjoy dismembering them?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But you did it with almost every single one at some -- either partially or beheading or however you want to describe it, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So sometimes you had the broken arm, sometimes you didn’t cause this was over a period of a year and a half or more. So then there is no reasoning for any of the others unless you just enjoyed doing it or unless you have another explanation for me.
INMATE KEMPER: Well you are over simplifying, I think.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well, I’ve been trying to get the answers from you but I’m only getting frustration. So if you want to get into more -- in more -- a -- a different explanation, I -- I’d like to hear it.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, well there’s embarrassment now too in this whole thing. It is a very embarrassing memory. It’s not a pleasant memory. It hasn’t been for years. I’ve had years and years of therapy; twelve years of therapy here in prison, and, uh, it’s a very involved explanation. Nothing explains a way, right?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well let’s hear it.
INMATE KEMPER: Nothing like explains a way. But, it’s not a simple answer on the head of pin, you know, bing, here’s your answer.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well just tell me besides just telling me that it’s not simple. Tell me then what it is.
INMATE KEMPER: Very complex problem.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, you keep saying that, but I -- now I just want to hear it. Like, you know, okay we get it. It’s complex, I think we get it, so let’s hear it.
INMATE KEMPER: Well some of the issues are not available to me right now because I’ve gotten frustrated, and, uh --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You’ve gotten frustrated right now?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: One thing I’ve not ever had a problem with is people throwing how did you do it or what did you do and run it down to me in one sentence, you know?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well I’m not asking for a one sentence answer.
INMATE KEMPER: No, I’m saying --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I’m just asking for something besides a one word answer, frustration, and --
INMATE KEMPER: No --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- and some issues are not available to me right now cause I’m getting frustrated. But, I’m just thinking to myself, this is what I’m thinking; you’ve been here for how many years?
INMATE KEMPER: Over 40.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, so you’ve had a long time to think about why you’ve killed all these people. You’ve been to tons of therapy. Um, if you actually wanted to think about it and not be embarrassed by it, and -- and having no pleasure in it. I’m sure the victims would think otherwise, but you’ve been here for almost 40 years, you’ve been through tons of therapy, and I’m not -- this is what I’m getting? That some of the issues aren’t available right now cause I’m frustrated and it was because of frustration and embar -- I’m embarrassed.
INMATE KEMPER: No, I said it’s an embarrassing issue.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, I would --
INMATE KEMPER: It’s an embarrassing memory.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I think again, a different choice of words is perhaps something that, uh, should be used, but any way.
INMATE KEMPER: There’s no simple explanation.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: We know, and you keep saying that, so I’m gonna ask you one more time and then we’re just gonna move on because you keep saying there’s no simple explanation so I’m waiting to hear this complex explanation. Um, I know you’re capable of it. I mean -- I mean, you don’t have any -- as far as you don’t have any intellectual issues that would hinder you from being able to get through this process to explain why you did this, but -- so, what -- just one more time and then I’m not gonna keep pressing you on it, cause like I said you don’t have to answer questions if you don’t want to, but you keep saying it’s more than -- it’s -- it’s not simple, but -- then what is it?
INMATE KEMPER: I explained it, uh, in years past a lot.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, but it’s a new hearing.
INMATE KEMPER: It’s still embarrassing. It’s still dimin -- diminishing of my manhood. I’m not much of a man for having done things like that to people who are innocent and just looking for a ride.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. And then you, what, kill your mother and her friend?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And so what was that all about?
INMATE KEMPER: My mother -- I went to Mary Ann Pesce’s grave and I made an oath to her that my mother and I were going to pay for what happened to her.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So you blame your mother for your murder?
INMATE KEMPER: I blamed her for a role in it.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why? What’s your mother have to do with your actions?
INMATE KEMPER: She played a role in the decisions I made earlier in life. For her is expediency or frustration or humor or whatever motivated her at the time. Sometimes it was alcoholic and sometimes it was sober as hell. But, I knew that as long as she lived, I wasn’t going to stop doing that to other people -- to strangers, cause that I could get away with.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I’m sorry; you could get away with killing strangers?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, that was not linking back to me.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Got it, okay. All right, so you --
INMATE KEMPER: And every time I got mad at her I went out and got in my car, went driving around, found someone to pick up, took them off somewhere quiet, and blew them away with a 22.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Or stabbed them, right?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No?
INMATE KEMPER: I stopped that very early on. I did that to the first two.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: To the third girl, Aiko Koo, I smothered her.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And you call her girl, what, she was a college student, right? No she was a high school student.
INMATE KEMPER: High school.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: She was pretending to be at University at Berkley. She was hitchhiking in front of Berkley and pretending to be 18 - 19 years of age, and I mistook her for that. I wouldn’t of killed a high school girl.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, so all of these were precipitated on having a -- some type of argument with your mother. So the -- the point, it -- I think what you’re trying to tell me is you -- you needed to kill your mother so you would stop killing other people, is that what you’re saying?
INMATE KEMPER: Or kill myself and for some reason the frustration that I had lived earlier in life didn’t allow me to simplify by killing myself.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well when you --
INMATE KEMPER: I made the effort.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- when you have a narcissistic personality, sir, narcissists don’t usually kill themselves. Do you know what that means?
INMATE KEMPER: Generally.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You think you’re a narcissist?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No? You don’t think so?
INMATE KEMPER: No, one of my therapists since then, here, someone I had for five years one on one, said it was a toss up between that and another type of disease that, uh, I can’t recall. It was a complicated name. And then finally he said it wasn’t the narcissist one, it was the other. It was, uh --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, but other --
INMATE KEMPER: -- some kind -- some kind of psychosis.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But other psychologists, many have said that you have a narcissistic personality trait. So I guess there’s one that --
INMATE KEMPER: Eh, when you see someone one time, I mean, you know they can get images.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But all the psychologists?
INMATE KEMPER: Hmm?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All the different psychologists that have come to the same conclusion; they’re all wrong?
INMATE KEMPER: Mm, they cited other people before them.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, um, all right, so that -- I guess that’s the explanation for killing your mother. Why’d you kill her friend?
INMATE KEMPER: Her friend, her lover, uh, it sounds really dumb saying it this way, but my mother had her only vacation and it was a big one, and she went to Europe; two weeks in England and two weeks in France. And she was suppose to do it with this woman, Sally Hallett. They planned on it all summer long or spring long, and, uh, made serious plans, and her friend, Sally, in fact got mad at her when she -- when she over it -- iterated that, uh, you know, be sure and let me know if you’re gonna change your mind or if you’re not gonna be involved, and she said, of course I am, quit asking me that. Then at the last minute, this is a non- refundable down-payment of sixty -- six hundred dollars that has to be paid by each party, and Sunday night was the deadline for that six hundred dollar deposit, and my mother was frantically calling Sally all weekend trying to get a hold of her. She couldn’t reach her even though she was local. So finally she went ahead and made the decision to make -- mail the deposit --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, I --
INMATE KEMPER: -- on Sunday night --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- you really like gone way --
INMATE KEMPER: -- on Monday morning --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Hold on, wait a second. What does this have to do with killing her friend? Let’s get to -- let’s focus. You kind of --
INMATE KEMPER: Revenge.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Revenge. Okay, got it. So wh -- revenge for what?
INMATE KEMPER: Ruining my mother’s holiday.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Her vacation. She came, eh -- Monday she found out that Sally had changed her mind and then made herself unavailable. So she had to go by herself and she went over to Europe. She spent this vacation time by herself going to places and seeing things by herself when she had intended to go with this other woman. And when she got back, she tried sharing those vacation moments with Sally, and Sally got very loud with her and rude, and told her I don’t want to hear about that. I didn’t even go on that vacation, why are you brining this up? So she -- that cut off that release. So here I am at the house having heard this from my mother and she’s frustrated and I said I’d like to know, I’d like you to share with me. So she went and got all of her travel logs and the --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: okay, I got. Um - -
INMATE KEMPER: And the -- and the papers and stuff from the places that she went and she started systematically sharing this stuff with me, and then all of a sudden she stops and she looks at me in this strange way, and she said, I’m not gonna let you pity me. And she just walked away from the whole thing. And I said, hey, I wanted to hear this stuff.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. So, I mean -- I --
INMATE KEMPER: So what I did, I said to myself - - self --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Now wait; you’re interrupting me again, okay? You said it was revenge for your mother’s vacation, I get that. But, I get the impression you hated your mother, I mean that’s why you killed all these people.
INMATE KEMPER: Off and on.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And, um, so that - -
INMATE KEMPER: I loved my mother, but I also had a lot of hatred for her too.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So then why would you revenge your mother’s vacation by killing the friend if you had --
INMATE KEMPER: I had told myself that if my mother ever dies over this stuff that I did, she’s going with her. That’s one trip she’s not gonna miss. She’s not gonna back off on that one.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, um --
INMATE KEMPER: I swore an oath to it. I was angry at the time.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right.
INMATE KEMPER: I haven’t sworn many oaths in my life and everyone that I have sworn I followed through with.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you, um -- did you have sex with any of the victims before they were killed?
INMATE KEMPER: No, uh, well --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You did, well that’s what it says.
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No?
INMATE KEMPER: Not the victims, no -- no.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. And I don’t know if I ever got the answer as to why you had sex with some of the victims after they were killed.
INMATE KEMPER: They were beautiful women.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But, they were dead.
INMATE KEMPER: That’s true.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you have sex with your mom after you bludgeoned her with the hammer?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No? I thought I read that somewhere, too.
INMATE KEMPER: I said something to that affect at my trial, but that was a choice of moments and words.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Why’d you use a hammer because you said you used the knives in the beginning, it was too messy for you, started using the gun, then you used a hammer.
INMATE KEMPER: And that made it very quick.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I’m sorry?
INMATE KEMPER: Using the gun, the 22 pistol, became very quick.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so then why did you use a hammer to kill your mother?
INMATE KEMPER: That was a childhood fantasy.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: To kill your mother with a hammer?
INMATE KEMPER: To bludgeon her with a hammer, uh, one time to hit her with a hammer and incapacitate her and then cut her throat.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: That was a fantasy from when I was eight years old, and locked in the basement and I used to sneak up in the middle of the night when everybody was asleep and I went through the ritual, but I didn’t follow through with the act.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I guess she thought you were gonna harm your sister so that was why she put you in the basement? That’s what I read.
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No?
INMATE KEMPER: That was a solution for my older sister sneaking out. She was five years my senior; she was 13 at the time and she was caught at a, uh, teenage hangout along with another woman’s son. And the wo -- other woman told her, oh by the way your sis -- your daughter, Sue, was there too. And, uh, she called Sue up and had this little conversation with her doing homework and stuff like that and let her get herself deep and then said, I know that you were at the Dutch Maid.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well you still have a lot of frustration towards your fam -- your mother, your sisters, cause it -- it comes out in your testimony which is surprising after all this time, but you still feel like you got short-shifted or something because it comes out. You have a lot of issues related to that. I’m -- you -- you --
INMATE KEMPER: I got put in the basement when I was scared to death of the dark. That was my fear.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, any questions?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I have developed some questions, thank you. Um -- um, Mr. Kemper, do you think you’ve ever had a, well one could call a normal relationship with a woman?
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve had several.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, where?
INMATE KEMPER: But not necessarily sexual.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, I mean friendships or professional --
INMATE KEMPER: But I have -- I have had sexual relationships with women also.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Have you?
INMATE KEMPER: On the streets.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And ironically --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What do --
INMATE KEMPER: -- some of them were at assistance in the provost up at UCSC. You -- something that escaped our conversation earlier was that a lot of my mother’s friends, uh, got hot pants for me. They wanted to do it. And that was obvious after our first meeting, and you know, they raise the -- the -- the hem of the skirt, and, uh, of a -- a lovely woman that’s so old enough to be my grandmother, I mean, you know, uh, 50 some years old. But, I said to myself, self, she wants to get in your pants, and it turned out to be very true and at a later meeting we did it, and my mother, of course, found out about it because they would talk about when I’m like in bed. And she got so mad and she come at me with, uh, I can’t even bring my friends by the house anymore cause here, uh, and I said why not? And she says cause your scrotum.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you think the -- those were normal relationships?
INMATE KEMPER: No -- no -- no, I’m saying that was, uh, something in the wr -- in the -- my case --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I understand.
INMATE KEMPER: Like one woman I could have done the same thing to her as I did to Sally Hallett, but I didn’t because she was a lover. She was someone I had a normal relationship with and we both had enjoyed it, and I had no intentions of doing anything harmful to her.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: So while I had that opportunity, I didn’t take advantage it.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, you mean the opportunity to -- to kill her? Is that what you mean?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why would that even occur to you that you would have an opportunity to -- to kill this person?
INMATE KEMPER: Thoughts after my mother passed - -
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, sir --
INMATE KEMPER: -- I’m trying to think is there anything else I want to do along that line and different names came up, and for various reasons I said no.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you -- so -- let’s -- the -- the question was whether you’ve ever had, uh, a normal relationship with a woman. Can you think of something where you can describe a friendship you had with a female peer or a working relationship, or, um, I mean, um --
INMATE KEMPER: Here.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Here, okay --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, in prison.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Who’s that?
INMATE KEMPER: Right now there’s a young woman in her 30s in France who’s very heavily involved in a relationship with me on paper because that’s all we can do right now is write. But, uh, and she sends money, sends pictures, and, uh, now she sought me out through the media.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um --
INMATE KEMPER: It’s not someone I sought out, it’s someone who sought me out.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: When you -- when you say you had, um, sexual relationship -- relationships on the streets, did you ever have, uh, a girlfriend or anyone close to your age?
INMATE KEMPER: Not at the time. There were times when I had relationships with young women, and, uh, in one case it was jailbait, it was someone that was underage, but she was in a bar faking age, and I took her home that night, and we did it, and she brought her girlfriend by the gas station I worked at to introduce me to her as, you know, I’m -- I’m her young lover, right. What she didn’t know is that she had given me a really nasty case of gonorrhea, and I had been getting it treated. Wasn’t too happy about it, so when she brought this young lady by and introduced her I -- I was pretty sarcastic about, uh -- and we didn’t see each other anymore.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I -- I got the sense that you were sexually inexperienced when you began murdering your victims.
INMATE KEMPER: Essentially I was.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you believe that you probably wouldn’t be able to have sex with the victims unless they were dead? I mean it sounds like you just gave up on the idea.
INMATE KEMPER: My sister had said to, uh, one of the psyches investigating my case --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: -- that I had said something to that affect about a teacher, uh, a grade school teacher that I really -- really liked how she looked, and I’d say I couldn’t kiss her cause I’d have to kill her.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: So she said that and I’m thinking, oh boy that takes some explaining. But, in essence it was my -- my -- my, uh, youth and my fear of dealing with advanced issues like, uh, sexuality or groping or things like that. That all comes later in life when you’re in your late teens-20s, I was not even a teenager at that time. But, that wasn’t the case with, uh -- I just -- I felt like it was a real waste, and again this is embarrassing. It’s shocking and it’s embarrassing to me, too.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It was a waste? How?
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve murdered someone, and I’d say, what a waste cause I used to say that at movies when I’d see somebody get offed and I’d say, what a waste as she gets rolled into a ditch and they all go on and -- and nothing -- as if nothing happened. And I say, what a -- what a freakin’ waste. That’s still a human being.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: That you could have sex with? Is that what -- is that what you --
INMATE KEMPER: Theoretically. I’d -- I, uh, made myself believe that, yes.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um, can you think of anything that really, uh, would’ve made anything different in your life that, uh, where would you would have had a relatively normal life or at least you wouldn’t have, uh, engaged in these violent acts? Is there any things or anything that you can think of?
INMATE KEMPER: I can think of a whole lot of accidents I almost had that would have ended it as even a consideration. But then I start wondering about why those things didn’t happen, you know. And, uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: How -- how -- for example -- what do you -- I mean --
INMATE KEMPER: Like I’m on a bridge.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: The Golden Gate Bridge, and I’m, uh, I had a fleeting thought about jumping over the side.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: And I said to myself, well why I didn’t I? Later on, I’m saying well why in the hell didn’t I, before I did any of that stuff. When I worked in Caltrans before it was Caltrans it was Division of highways, and I’m working with this highway crew in a very dangerous job with speeding cars going by both sides of me, and it’s like standing on a chain saw on the side of the blade with the -- with the blades whizzing by at 60 miles an hour, and that can be very scary. I got very used to it and I got sometimes within just inches of being clipped by a car. And in that case, if I’d a been even clipped, I’d a been whacked out, completely whacked out.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I --
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, why didn’t that happen?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well I didn’t mean that Mr. Kemper, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean things would have been different had you died --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- and not been alive to commit these crimes. I mean, is there anything you can think of where -- I mean there’s never only one thing, but I mean, you know, obviously your siblings, your sisters, they probably didn’t have these issues that you had.
INMATE KEMPER: That was all very comp -- all very complicated. A bunch of relationships and I wish I had done better in them.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: But it would have been a very different existence for me if it were gonna be benign.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Is there anything, uh, different about you now than when you first came to prison? Any sort of, um, time for, uh, reflection or any in -- insight that you gained that you didn’t have back then?
INMATE KEMPER: Very much.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: What I did before has no chance of happening again in my life.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why not?
INMATE KEMPER: For one thing, I’m not happy with the results. It’s not like I, you know, I’m thinking, oh if I had this head, you know, it doesn’t go like that. I’m shocked that I did things like that. The memory of that has me wincing and saying, I can’t believe I did that. But, I did and I’ve become very responsible for what I did and very responsible for the skeletons in my closet, and I’ve been busy over the years opening that closet and kicking those stupid skeletons out and dealing with them issue by issue, and sometimes with non-professional people, just people I live with.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. We’ll -- we’ll -- we’ll talk more about that in the next segment of the hearing.
INMATE KEMPER: All right.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Thank you. Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right, so we might have some more questions about that, but we’re gonna move on. Um, do you remember how long you, um, had the interview with the psychologist --
INMATE KEMPER: How long?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- back in March 14th , 2017, how long was the interview?
INMATE KEMPER: Two or three hours.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right. Well let’s go through parts of the (inaudible) --
INMATE KEMPER: And he made a comment about my -- I didn’t mean to interrupt, but, uh --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But you keep doing it.
INMATE KEMPER: Well, I --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You can’t help yourself right? It’s just your personality, I guess.
INMATE KEMPER: Well, it’s moving along quickly here and I thought of this at the moment and I’m sorry I spoke so quickly about it, but, uh, part of his report speaks at how I was at the end of the first session when I became nonresponsive and quiet, and he put some other words in there like psychotic and some other stuff. Hey, I had had a stroke less than two years earlier and I’ve just spent two or three hours going through this very intensive stuff psychologically, and even though I’ve had therapy to that effect, it’s having, uh, an impact on me. I was exhausted.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, thank you. Um, so let me ask you question. How do you feel about killing all these people?
INMATE KEMPER: About who?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Killing all these people. You’ve killed what; 10 people in your life?
INMATE KEMPER: Oh, badly. I wish I could take all of them back. But that’s almost an insult because it’s obvious I can’t.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right. So it’s 26 pages, you said it was about a couple hours long. We’re not gonna go through all of it, um, but in the background information on page 426, there is something that I wanted an explanation about. Um, it says that you weren’t close to anybody growing up, you did have some friends grow -- this is at the bottom of that page and I’m just paraphrasing -- you had friends several years ago but saw that the relationship was not going well because the man was “playing a role and supposedly going to find out my secrets and then reveal them to others. Other friends about six or seven years ago were more or less adolescent and beneath my station.” What does that mean? You think people are beneath your station? What are you talking about? It’s in quotes so you said it, and I was --
INMATE KEMPER: That’s not familiar.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: It’s not familiar to you?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think you’re better than other people?
INMATE KEMPER: Well, some people, I am. I don’t know how --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You do think you’re better than other people?
INMATE KEMPER: No, there are some people that -- I have a high IQ, they don’t.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, well, I’m saying.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I mean, so what. Lot -- tons of people in this room have high IQs. That doesn’t make us better than anybody else, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Not in --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Does it make you feel good about yourself to say oh I have a high IQ so I’m better than other people?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so then what do you mean by you are better than other people besides having a high IQ?
INMATE KEMPER: Some people, some of my acquaintances, uh, speak in, uh, a fashion that, uh, tells me they’re happy with much simpler accomplishments moment to moment, day to day, and I might put a lot more energy into that; a lot more effort into that than to so simply speak up to something. In that sense.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right. So you can’t empathize or be happy with the accomplishments they have cause you think they’re simple accomplishments versus your accomplishments?
INMATE KEMPER: Well some accomplishments -- as an example, at Atascadero, I was in the -- working in the, uh, scullery of a kitchen, and a young man that was a couple of years -- well I guess he was about my age, and, uh, he was rolling up a towel and snapping it at people. He thought that was funny. Well he ran by this one guy that was a massive guy, he was over 300 pounds, and, uh, he was not, uh -- advertising how he felt, but he was getting more and more frustrated at how this kid was acting, and when he snapped him and ran by, this big guy got up, headed toward him, grabbed the towel away from him, wrapped it around his neck and squeezed it, and forced him to the floor, and we all sat there going, you know, just the mouth hanging open, like what the hell is that.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, well I’m trying to figure out what this has to do with accomplishments.
INMATE KEMPER: And I said -- I jumped up out of me seat, ran around the steel table looking for a weapon and I found a big steel hot teapot and I was heading for it and yelled as loudly and as lowly as I could with a low voice, hey, you know, and it caught his attention, and he backed up off of this kid and started almost babbling, he was talking very quickly. He had snapped and he was killing the kid. He was strangling him. The kid wasn’t making a peep of a noise. There was no staff around to stop it.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, what does this story have to do with anything?
INMATE KEMPER: I save the kid’s life.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: That’s an accomplishment. I didn’t think a lot about it. But, there were times that I reminded myself that there were some good things that I had done.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, I thought we were talking about other people’s good accomplishments, not yours, but okay. Let’s move on. Um, on page 5 you go into this whole thing about this relationship with the woman from France, you think that -- you also -- there’s a man in Australia expressed interest in you, um, the man looks a lot better as a woman, could have been interested in her before, so you’re getting into these more recent relationships. You say you absolutely have a sexual interest toward the woman in France. That’s the one that’s giving -- bring -- giving you money, right; sending you money or something?
INMATE KEMPER: Occasionally.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And you got emotionally caught up with a woman in Maryland, um, but she was married at the time, and to a federal parole agent; this could be fatal depending on what kind of man he was. That’s a little disturbing.
INMATE KEMPER: He ended up in prison.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Um, that -- so my thing with this is, all right, well you know, you can talk to whoever you want to, but, to me a lot of your issues before this stem from having problems with relationships.
INMATE KEMPER: Yep.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I don’t know if you recognize that or not.
INMATE KEMPER: I certainly do.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Um, so you’re involved in these relationships now, but what have you done as far as trying how to figure out how would you deal with them in a prosocial way?
INMATE KEMPER: Prosocial way?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well -- well, uh, let me just scratch that. Let’s just say non-violent way.
INMATE KEMPER: In a strictly social -- social setting?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Any setting, sir. I mean.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, that would have to be a, uh, non-alcoholic, non, uh, drug related relationship.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right, thank you. Um, all right. In part of this, um, discussion with the psychologist, you went into things about when you were younger how you were a voting member of the Board of Directors, and the youngest Jaycee in America, but this was all at point where you were actually at Atascadero --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- so it couldn’t have happened. So what was that all about?
INMATE KEMPER: It couldn’t have happened?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well it couldn’t have happened during that time period that you described.
INMATE KEMPER: Why not?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Cause you were --
INMATE KEMPER: They have a Jaycee local there.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I’m sorry?
INMATE KEMPER: We had a Jaycee local there.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Oh, okay. So that’s what you’re saying.
INMATE KEMPER: And I was, uh, at one point I was allowed to be an associate member, non-voting member --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- when I first got involved with them. By a year later, I not only had a vote, I was external director.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Got it, okay. Um, so it goes into, um, the discussion, very lengthy about all of the crimes. I’m, um, a lot of it’s you know, um, in quotes and things like that about what you stated recently about what happened, uh, so I’m not gonna read through it again cause we’ve been talking about it for a lengthy period of time. I -- I do have to say, um, I was a bit surprised at your verbiage that you use when describing the victims. Um, especially many of the female victims which I thought was very derogatory and demeaning toward women, and I just thought it was surprising that at this point in your life, in 2017, that you still would describe, um, the murders and the way things happened in such a derogatory and demeaning way towards your victims. Do you have an explanation for that?
INMATE KEMPER: From memory.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: From memory?
INMATE KEMPER: Okay.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Right, I get that. But -- so everybody has a memory of what they did in the past, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And they may have described it at the time in a certain way, but presumably after so much therapy and things like that --
INMATE KEMPER: I’m gonna change the value of what I thought?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well you’re not gonna describe the victims in such a demeaning and derogatory way. You’re gonna describe it --
INMATE KEMPER: Can you make some examples?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Yeah, talking about, uh, their tits, how you wanted to fuck them, I mean, those -- those are the words that you used --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: -- today in 2017. Um, and so I find that -- I -- I just wanted an explanation for it.
INMATE KEMPER: That was being blunt.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I didn’t appreciate talking about it, let alone thinking along those lines.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so that --
INMATE KEMPER: But that the terms that I had used when I was a young man.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Those are the terms you use as an older man too cause you used them this year when you were describing the crimes. That’s why I was so surprised.
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Cause like I said, people that have gone through therapy and programming, and all that -- everything you have gone through this process of rehabilitation especially when they have issues with women wouldn’t describe them in that way if they had gone through the process.
INMATE KEMPER: More habilitation than rehabilitation because when have I ever been normal?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, um, any -- any further thought on that before I move on?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, not really.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. All right, so your PCLR score when it goes through the, um -- well wait, let me go back a little bit. The mental status examination starts on page 11, the substance abuse information is on page 12, its alcohol use disorder in sustained remission. Where you ever under the influence when you committed crimes?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Your diagnosis is antisocial, narcissistic, and schizotypal personality disorder that’s on page 13. You continue to maintain a rather, um, egocentric stance, appears focused on touting, domination, or manipulation of others. Interpersonally explosive, lacks empathy, tendency to over-personalize situations, has odd beliefs and fantasies, and on thought -- has on thoughts in speech, ongoing suspiciousness, has an appropriate affect related to content, and lacks close friends. That’s page 13. Historic factors; your PCLR is above the mean of North American male inmates, but below the cutoff for psychopathic personality; that’s page 16. Gives it -- gets into the clinical that’s quite lengthy so I’m not gonna put it on the record, but it is in -- in the record, um, that goes through, um, 20 -- page 21. Um, and then there’s other risk considerations, the medical and elderly parole starts on page 22, says your 68 years old, um, talks about your advancing age and medical problems, um, it says you are -- you do appear significantly, physically restricted, but you are able to move about temporarily without a wheelchair. Um, and some parts crimes are without the need for physical agility or prowess; there is some. Um, there -- uh, a Static-99 was administered. Um, low moderate risk range, page 23. Uh, risk for future violence in the high risk for violence. Um, the psychologist said that you have spent many years in prison, participated in therapy years ago, um, continue to discuss women rather disrespectfully and with objectification with little evidence of understanding mature relationships, your guided by rather superficial grain -- grandiose delusions of women’s interest in you. Misread cues, if the cues are even there. Uh, ascribe motivations and sentiments to women beyond the information presented. Describe the crimes radder -- rather matter-of-factly with little emotion. Um, and it goes into more lengthy discussions. Um, I’m -- I’m not gonna put them all on the record, but, uh, that’s, wh -- he came to the conclusions for high risk; it’s Charles Taylor (phonetic). Um, there was some information about how you turned yourself in and I wanted to ask you, why did you turn yourself in?
INMATE KEMPER: To stop what I was doing.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: To stop what you were doing?
INMATE KEMPER: What I had done to that point -- yeah.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve since thought better about that whole process rather than just calling Santa Cruz from long distance, and, uh, insisting that they arrest me. I could have gone to an attorney’s office, and, uh, surrendered myself to him or her.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And had them call the authorities. It probably would’ve, uh, taken the drawn guns out of the picture. It certainly would have reduced the possibility that I was gonna get blasted during the process of surrendering.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Well let me ask you a question, uh, so it seems to me like you were killing strangers and you weren’t getting caught for it.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And when I look at your profile, your character traits and stuff, I have to ask you the question of whether you wanted to get caught because you wanted to be known.
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Because it seems as if there’s a -- bit of a -- that there’s some pleasure in telling the story about what happened. That’s the impression --
INMATE KEMPER: No communication with the authorities while I was out there at all.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you like that you are, um, known?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No? You -- You’ve never bragged about it or -- I mean, I feel like I’ve read that places that you have been -- you like to brag about it and you take, uh, pleasure in being kind of known as a --
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: That sounds like some of that stuff from, uh, yellow journalism that always parallels the, uh, legitimate media.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you read all of that stuff?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No? Mm. All right --
INMATE KEMPER: Some of it.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: You’ve read some it? Yeah, okay. Any questions?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Oh, well, uh, so you’re really being cooperative today, but I -- I know you mentioned to Dr. Taylor that you probably wouldn’t be interested in participating in the hearing, but it -- things are going fine, so, um, what -- did you change your mind or where you feeling at the time that you were talking to Dr. Taylor that this wasn’t something you wanted to participate in? Or do you remember? You said you were gonna drop your drawers or something like that.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, years ago I had a young attorney and I explained to him my feeling about --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Whoa -- whoa -- wait -- wait -- you see you keep getting unfocused. We’re talking about the psychologist, Taylor, the recent one from 2017.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Right? So let’s focus on the question. We want you to answer our questions.
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I know that you are interested in saying what you want to say, but you’ll have the opportunity to do that in your closing statement, so please answer our questions.
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And if you don’t want to answer it, you don’t have, but then we gotta move on, okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes, ma’am.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: But you -- you changed your mind obviously, things were -- I mean were you seriously didn’t want to participate because you’re here and we’re -- we’re doing the hearing, so, um, is there a reason why you told Dr. Taylor that you -- that you weren’t interested really in participating.
INMATE KEMPER: I didn’t believe there was any realistic chance for me to get out and years ago, um, there was some indication that the Board members, the -- the media was present --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- at the hearings, and, uh, it’s as if I were a form of entertainment, and that’s not air -- ever, uh, ego inductive. That’s pretty much what that’s related to, what I said to Dr. Taylor.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I understand.
INMATE KEMPER: And as far as -- I was talking about twirling and dropping my drawers to say basically kiss my ass --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah.
INMATE KEMPER: -- in front of the media. It wasn’t gonna happen, but
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I know.
INMATE KEMPER: -- the Board wouldn’t want it to happen either, so, when there were times that -- that, uh, they could accept or not accept my attempt at passing on a hearing --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see. It’s true.
INMATE KEMPER: -- they tend to do encourage them. Who wants to be the first guy to drop his drawers an say, hey kiss my ass, you know?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: That’s not a good way to get out.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: No.
INMATE KEMPER: For anybody.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, well thank you.
INMATE KEMPER: But I was making an effort back then at that time, not to get out, but to impress upon the Board members that I was working as hard as I could to be who -- realistic and to be righteous about this whole thing. And suddenly I got the -- the district attorney from the county, damn near flipping the table over, he’s talking such trash. They took it out of the hearing minutes. The lady taking the notes, it suddenly -- his stuff stopped appearing and my attorney was still saying, you can’t talk like that, you can’t say that, right? He’s allowed to say that, but the -- it’s to nothing, you know.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay but, I -- you keep bringing this up cause you brought it up here, we - - we see it, but again we’re not getting focused on the questions that --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay I -- I -- I asked you sort of an open-end question and I -- I think you’re -- you’re doing the best. I -- I think I -- I’m satisfied with the answer that you gave. And it wasn’t -- I was just curious about it because, uh, I was concerned maybe when I read that that things wouldn’t -- weren’t go that well, but that’s obviously not in the case today, so.
INMATE KEMPER: No.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, uh, we’re gonna move on to post-conviction. Does anybody need a break or anything? Okay, all right.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So, Mr. Kemper, it’s the portion of the hearing where we discuss you life in prison and it’s been -- it’s been a long time, it’s been most of your life.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Probably about two- thirds or so, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: You’ve, uh, you’ve never been in trouble. You only got, uh, -- you’ve only had one 115 issued and that was about a year ago --
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- uh, or, uh, it was deemed, uh, fitter -- for refusal to provide a urine sample for a test.
INMATE KEMPER: Which I found out at the time is the only way they write it up.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: For -- well --
INMATE KEMPER: I didn’t refuse. I was attempting at trying for three solid hours and that’s all you have is three hours to do it in and all I did was fill up with water and I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pee.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, do you have --
INMATE KEMPER: In private or in public.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you have medical issues that would effect that?
INMATE KEMPER: A few years ago I had a operation on the central part of my, uh, anatomy down there where you have a type of hernia.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Not -- not a hernia over the leg, but a hernia over the groin and it gotten really bad. It was about 20 years old and it got to the point where I was forcing myself back in --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- so I can, uh, defecate.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So, uh, let me ask you this. Do you -- is common for you to have, uh, some issues urinating?
INMATE KEMPER: For a while I was urinating all over myself at the turn of a hat. I mean, I was in a diaper for a long time. Uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: But since the surgery -- uh, this was in --
INMATE KEMPER: Since the surgery.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- 2016, is it something that’s happening today? Because it’s --
INMATE KEMPER: It’s declining. That kind of -- that kind of problem is going away slowly. My doctor doesn’t want to put me on a, uh, a bag, you know on the leg where you, uh, catheter.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well how’s your -- how’s your ability to urinate on command? Is it okay or is it, uh -- does it still cause problems?
INMATE KEMPER: It still causes problems, but I haven’t been asked recently.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right. For a urine sample?
INMATE KEMPER: To do it. In fact, it’s not asked, it’s told. Today you’re going to do that --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: Between this time and that time.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So do you understand the suspicion behind the failure to provide a sample?
INMATE KEMPER: Please be aware that every result of a test that I’ve taken has been negative --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- every time. I’ve asked to take blood tests, I’ve asked to take catheterizations; they won’t do it. They just want to do it their way and that’s it. You do it their way or you’re beefed.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh, for your hearing that you had of the -- for your 115, was there any information provided by health care that would sort of help solve this problem because you were found guilty of it, and, uh --
INMATE KEMPER: And punished.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right, so --
INMATE KEMPER: It was the first time in four -- 42-43 years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Is there any way that you get this information, um, in writing in the file because apparently, I mean, you know, they conduct them --
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve asked my doctor to -- if he would do a chrono pointing out that I have problems in this area, but he refuses to that reluctantly because the doctors don’t want to get involved in that custodial part of my treatment. And -- and why he doesn’t want to put something on paper, I think is more of a personal issue with him rather than, uh, all of the doctors.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: How do you mean?
INMATE KEMPER: And more of a personal, uh -- he understands I have a problem --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh-huh.
INMATE KEMPER: -- urinating, and my body just does it when it wants to do it and if I’ve sitting in a wheelchair, I do it in the wheelchair, which are not waterproof by the way. Uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So I -- you --
INMATE KEMPER: It’s embarrassing. It’s --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Don’t you think this is gonna happen again if you’re subjected to a random urine test that, uh, -- I mean, it’s gonna keep happening, and --
INMATE KEMPER: Hopefully they’ll give me a little more time to work it out rather than the -- the hard and fast three hour limit.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well if -- if you have a legitimate, uh, medical concern regarding your ability to urinate that should be in, uh, available to the -- to custodial staff in your file. Is there anything that you can do? Uh, I mean what -- what steps should you take to make sure this doesn’t happen again of you? Have you filed, uh -- uh, a health care appeal or grievance?
INMATE KEMPER: No, I haven’t. I -- I didn’t appeal the conviction either.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why not?
INMATE KEMPER: Just the way I am. It’s, uh, it’s something that happened, and, uh, it cost me six months of visits because they would put me behind the glass for an hour at a time instead of all day visiting, contact visiting.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: My sister was coming up to see me pretty regular, my onl -- younger sister, and all of a sudden I gotta tell her don’t come up for a while because --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So then --
INMATE KEMPER: -- you know.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It would seem that you -- you really want this to not happen again, right? It causes problems for you and --
INMATE KEMPER: Right.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: There’s no evidence that you were using -- I am not aware of any evidence that you were using --
INMATE KEMPER: No.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- drugs or alcohol. Um, the question is --
INMATE KEMPER: I have up pruno many years ago, over 30 years ago.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I know you were drinking heavily when you were -- prior to prison, right? I mean --
INMATE KEMPER: And ironically, my lawyer at the trial said, were you intoxicated when you committed any of these crimes? And I thought about it and thought about it and I said, no I was sober every time. And he just looked at me like he could not believe it. He said, do you realize, he said you must be a pathological truth teller. He says, you -- you got a case where the DA has to show you weren’t drunk, you know, when you did it. You just saw you were drunk and that’s it, that’s a fact.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. I -- you know what, I have no reason to doubt that.
INMATE KEMPER: But I never was.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, and I -- I -- what I’m trying to say here, Mr. Kemper, is that I don’t -- I’m not aware of you, um, there’s no evidence that you would be avoiding, uh, detection of drugs or alcohol other than the fact that you -- according to the 115 you refused to provide a sample. My question that is, you know, if it’s causing a problem for you why -- why don’t you just proceed to --
INMATE KEMPER: You didn’t say all through the write up. If you looked at the actual write up, I said all through that thing and they wrote it down that way.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I -- I know, you denied your -- that --
INMATE KEMPER: I -- I say hey I’m trying, I’m trying, I just can’t pee. And for that whole three hour period, I didn’t.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right. I -- I will admit --
INMATE KEMPER: I was bloated and I was going for two hours after that, but by then I was already written up.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, it was over a year ago, um --
INMATE KEMPER: And it was a young cop just starting out and, uh, the cop -- the other cops on the wing have told me that’s a fresh cop that did that -- wrote you up. The rest of us know you better --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- we’re gonna give you more time. If we have to give you until the next day, we’re gonna do that because your -- your gonna come up with a sample --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- eventually.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So it sounds like maybe you’re not too worried about this situation occurring again. It’s probably gonna be okay?
INMATE KEMPER: Well now that it’s back to random instead of mandatory --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh-huh.
INMATE KEMPER: -- for a year it was mandatory so I had to do mandatory and random at the same time, and they got frequent, but it -- it’s such a nightmare when that happens.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: Because for me it’s -- it’s, uh - - it’s a nightmare, it just I -- I couldn’t perform. I start drinking coffee which encourages urination.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I drank water. Anything I could think of.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Here’s the thing. I just -- it’d be helpful for the, um, for you to not get anymore of these 115s. Obviously we -- we spent some time talking about this, so, um, try to do what you can to not get written up for this again. And when I say that, I mean, if -- if you’re gonna lose, uh, you know, things that are important to you like visitation time, then there are procedures that you can follow, and I -- I just want to make sure that there’s no -- there isn’t a reason why -- there’s no reason why you haven’t pursued that.
INMATE KEMPER: I was told that I couldn’t do a catheterization, right, cause that’s too complicated. But one time during this year period that I was penalized. I had to take a mandatory test while I was in the hospital, I’m physically in the hospital. Then it’s no problem doing a urination and when the guy -- when the, uh, MTA -- the nurse -- the nurse couldn’t get a sample for me, he broke out, uh, a catheterization kit and catheterized me.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: I think we’ve heard enough.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, all right. Let -- that’s fine. I just want to -- just make sure that you -- if there’s -- if there’s paperwork that you can do or -- or procedures you can follow so we don’t have to go -- have this discussion again because obviously you don’t want to be -- you don’t want to be catheterized just for a urine sample.
INMATE KEMPER: It’s painful.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah. Okay. Uh,
INMATE KEMPER: It’s the only time I was catheterized my whole life.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, it’s -- I imagine it’s -- it’s not pleasant. Um, so what -- what else have you done here? You -- you stayed out of trouble, uh, and you’ve -- you’ve worked but it’s a while, right? You used to be -- you’ve had -- held jobs as clerks, you’ve had clerk positions?
INMATE KEMPER: Forty-two years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay so generally you did, uh --
INMATE KEMPER: I got retired.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Isn’t that something? I had a special committee, right? They usually brought me to a special time instead of annually and I said, why am I here, and they said thank you for your 42 or 40 years of clerking. And I said, where -- where’s that going? And they said, well we’re retiring you.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well you --
INMATE KEMPER: They made totally medically disabled.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Because of my stroke.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And I was working with computers and that scared them into thinking, you know, he’s gonna force something to happen because he’s --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: You did -- you were - - you generally were, um -- did a good job in your positions.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Supervisors were okay with your performance, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Absolutely.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. When was the last time you, uh, actually had a clerk job?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, the one I just talked about being retired.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah.
INMATE KEMPER: It was probably --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: A while ago.
INMATE KEMPER: Late last year.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right. So, um, all right, 42 years. Did you learn any job skills, uh, that would be useful to you, um, if you were, uh, living outside of prison? Cause you worked in gas stations a couple times, and I mean you worked for Caltrans for the Department of Transportation, uh, any way that you can support yourself if that -- that were the case? I mean --
INMATE KEMPER: At 68 years old --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and probably going on 69 and 70, I don’t think I’d have to.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I’d be stuck in a retirement home somewhere.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: But not because of my, uh -- what do you call it, um -- uh -- uh, can’t even -- well that’s one of my problems now with that stroke it scatters my thoughts around --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and it’s hard to think of specific issues.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I was just -- I was just thinking of if you -- if you -- if you --
INMATE KEMPER: Medicaid, Medicare, that kind of stuff.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right.
INMATE KEMPER: What -- it doesn’t even exist for me. I haven’t had -- I haven’t been employed long enough --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: -- to qualify --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- for those things.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um, so you -- you -- we can talk about parole plans later. I was just talking about things that you -- the kind of work you did here in prison. It sounds like you were a clerk which involves providing, uh, assistance to the staff when they run their programs, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, I was the, uh -- the clerk in therapy --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- for seven years and I was a clerk in the library in, uh, reference area.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And those guys were wishing to get me back when I got busted out of there cause I’d been there so long --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and they -- they made me swap out with another guy who was a captain’s clerk in central services.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh, they were wishing I can come back. They were putting up a petition; I’m serious.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you -- did you have other jobs? You got some hospice care training, right?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you ever, uh -- um, have --
INMATE KEMPER: That was voluntary.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: But I did that for 10 years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: You worked, uh -- was that here at CMF?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: And you -- you provide -- helped provide hospice care to the -- some of the dying inmates?
INMATE KEMPER: And unfortunately, uh, I was exposed to every kind of cancer you can get.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh-huh.
INMATE KEMPER: And it was becoming a real nightmare to me.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why?
INMATE KEMPER: I was dreaming about it. I mean I -- I could, uh, sit there and eat my dinner, a hot dinner in front of a guy -- a dying patient with hospice with cancer.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: He appreciated the fact that I’d stay in the room and visit with him while I was eating. Other guys would throw up instead; they couldn’t deal with it. It was horrible. You know -- do you know the smell of cancer?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I’m -- I’m not with the smell of cancer.
INMATE KEMPER: It -- it has a very diff -- a very definite odor, different kinds of cancer, very definite odor, and it’s not pleasant.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And the worse you are with it when you, you know getting terminal, uh, it’s just a really eva, uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you, uh, pick up some health care skills and medical skills while you were working in hospice? What kinds of things did you do?
INMATE KEMPER: Mostly weightlifting. Uh, I was, you know, I’d go to G1 hospital --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and they’d say they need you down in hospice. I thought that’s odd; talk to a volunteer that way so I turned right around and go down to hospice and it turns out there’s, uh -- a dope addict that was dying in bed literally tied down and he kept turning off his oxygen mask and they couldn’t deal with that so they needed me.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. Did you provide -- did you do --
INMATE KEMPER: I held it an inch away from his face.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: -- myself for four or five minutes and he totally relaxed. He’s getting the oxygen finally and instead of thinking it’s a poison, uh -- uh, a poison thing, uh, he’s getting oxygen and, uh, that’s when he passed.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: He totally relaxed and he just, shu, he went out. But things like that, I get called in, uh, to help others. A guy 400 and some pounds needs a bath but he can’t take a regular shower so he has to get in a bed bath.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right, would you help with that type of work?
INMATE KEMPER: I had to lift him into it, yeah, because I was big and strong, and, uh-huh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you think you’d be able to continue with that type of, uh, work?
INMATE KEMPER: In a -- on a -- on a limited basis, yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So, uh, I -- I know you’re kind of a heavy drinker, um, before you came to prison, um, I don’t really see any issues with it while you’re here, but I really don’t see much evidence that you’ve -- can you hear okay? We’ve got the machinery working down -- outside.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, the backup -- the backup horn.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um, but I don’t -- I don’t see, uh, any evidence that you’ve, um, engaged in what we call self-help or rehabilitative programs, and - -
INMATE KEMPER: You don’t see AA in there? That’s the first thing I did when I got out of the hole is join AA.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: No, okay, you --
INMATE KEMPER: I got the oldest AA card back when it was Fred C. Marsh, uh, Memorial. They don’t even call it that anymore.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Honestly, some of the things from the -- the 70s are little harder to find.
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: The files that I have. But why don’t you tell us about AA. How did -- how did you -- what did you get out of it?
INMATE KEMPER: They got so tired of hearing me up there at that podium sharing my problems in the past. I think I drove some of those people back into drinking. Not to be too humorous about, but I’d finally just gave up on it because, uh, I think I had a six month pin and was working on three-quarters of the year.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh, I just said, I mean I was there about five years, and it just got really old to me so I -- I never did join NA --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- cause I never was a narcotics abuser on the streets. But --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Did you --
INMATE KEMPER: -- I’ve known people in both groups, AA and NA.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So you did it for awhile. You did -- you attended AA for a while --
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- and it sounds as though you, uh, you freely participated --
INMATE KEMPER: Mm-hmm.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- and you weren’t just sitting there. Um -- uh, do you think that it -- it helped you in any way? Did you get any -- learn anything about yourself or get any insight into anything about yourself?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you recall, um, what -- what do you recall from those days? What kind of insight do you think you gained? I mean I know it focuses on alcohol abuse and dependence, but I know there’s more to it.
INMATE KEMPER: Why was I an alcohol abuser on the street?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Everybody in the family was. Seriously. I mean my mom was, my dad was, and then he started cutting back on it. In fact, I told her later that, uh, he only drank not even socially. He had a bottle of brandy that was three-quarters full and a bottle of port wine that was untapped.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right. Never went --
INMATE KEMPER: And it sat in there the whole time I was there visiting -- or living with him.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well then so you think you got a handle on your drinking now? I mean when was the last -- you said you had some pruno many years ago?
INMATE KEMPER: Many years ago, yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I threw up just drinking it.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: It -- it -- I can’t keep it down. It’s un -- it’s what do you call it, un -- unfinished alcohol, uh, it’s still cooking and it would cook inside of me --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right, it’s --
INMATE KEMPER: -- to the point where I’d throw up.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Aff - after all this time and I know you haven’t been drinking lately or there’s no evidence that you have, you -- you attended AA, uh, many years ago and then you -- you said you just --
INMATE KEMPER: When I was a young man --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- in some way got tired of it. Um, what do you -- what connection can you make between your alcohol abuse and -- and all these crimes that you committed if you would -- if you hadn’t been --
INMATE KEMPER: I never hurt anybody when I had alcohol in me. That’s one thing I did notice. So I started drinking more and more cause I didn’t want to do it. I really didn’t want him killing people so I drank like a fish.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So you’re a --
INMATE KEMPER: The cops even knew I was a heavy alcohol drinker. They were aware of that when I was going to trial. Almost all of the cops knew that I was a heavy drinker. Not just cause I drank at their bar, I was -- I got stopped two or three times. I never got busted --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: -- but I got stopped two or three times and I was lit up.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you ever see, uh, I mean, you know, if you were to be released from prison, all -- you know, it’s available everywhere. I mean, when you went to prison, I think there was some laws about being able to purchase alcohol near a campus or something like that. I mean you can buy alcohol -- alcohol is available every -- everywhere and there’s a big, you know, a booming beer industry again in California and other places, so --
INMATE KEMPER: Brew is something I love.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay well what do you -- do you think you might be -- have an issue would be - -
INMATE KEMPER: I think I would be tempted to drink near beer or something to that effect.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why -- why do you say that?
INMATE KEMPER: It doesn’t effect as much --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- as the hard stuff.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. Do you -- you think, um, it would be a problem if you were to have alcohol?
INMATE KEMPER: I don’t think so, but anything’s possible.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Is there a reason why you haven’t --
INMATE KEMPER: That would tempt -- that would tempt me to go back to AA.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It would, okay. Well we’ll talk a little more too, um, we’re getting more into parole plans now, but I’m trying to cover whatever rehabilitative programming you might have been engaged in here. And I know, you finished -- you finished high school or your GED when you were in Atascadero, right? Did you ever --
INMATE KEMPER: I finished -- I took a GED --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- when I jus -- just was able to when I just turned 18 --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Right.
INMATE KEMPER: -- at Atascadero and passed it. And I got the second highest score of anybody that took it that week.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: And I know you were taking college classes too back then. Have you -- have you taken them --
INMATE KEMPER: Straight A’s.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Pardon me, sir?
INMATE KEMPER: Straight A’s.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What about, uh, your time in state prison as an adult, um, after 1973. Have you --
INMATE KEMPER: I did go to -- to, uh, night school to college where they’d have professors come in from, um -- um, Solano Community College.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, that’s here at CMF?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah and they’d hold courses one semester at a time, and I wish I’d gone to more of those and gotten, uh, my certificate.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh -- uh, like an Associates Degree?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why do you suppose you didn’t do that? You had a lot of time to do that.
INMATE KEMPER: I figured it’d be -- it would there for longer than it was.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. Are there other opportunities for, uh, someone in your situation to pursue education? Are you interested in doing them, I mean --
INMATE KEMPER: At one point, um, I was interested enough. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Leonard Wolf. He was a professor at San Francisco State.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: All right, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Full professor, and, uh, almost professor emeritus, and, uh, he was a visitor of mine back then. And at one point, I was gonna pursue education through San Francisco State with his backing - - his help in efforts of getting a PhD because I believed I could do and he did, too.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So, um, I -- when I’m asking about education and -- and upgrading your education -- that’s how they call it here. We call it upgrading, um, you had some desire to further your education; doesn’t seem like there’s been a lot of followthrough, but am I missing something? Its -- it sounds like you had -- you got close in some instances, um, maybe getting a PhD would be, uh, more difficult now, but --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, it would.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- an AA, what about an Associates Degree? Have you -- a lot of inmates --
INMATE KEMPER: If I get one more unit, I’d be a sophomore.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, great.
INMATE KEMPER: So I’m the world’s oldest freshman.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: Now of course that’s not true, but --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Probably not.
INMATE KEMPER: -- um, I’m sure there’s older people that me that are actually pursuing an education could make that claim, but if I got one more unit, I’d - - I’d have, uh, half my -- half my, um, credits necessary to get an AA.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, have you, um, are you gonna do that?
INMATE KEMPER: I could do that.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Cause now they have, uh, courses here, but it’s a different way than they did back then. Back then it was night school, uh, it was actual professors coming and teaching, and brining books in with them.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, now it’s an ongoing regular course thing through education and I used to work in education as a clerk, too.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Are you gonna do that then?
INMATE KEMPER: Huh?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Are you gonna do that? Is that what your -- I know it -- more a corres - - it’s a correspondence course.
INMATE KEMPER: No its, uh - it’s, uh, actual course work.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: But --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It’s all right. That’s fine.
INMATE KEMPER: It damaged my standing with my peer group a bit. I was a bit of a smart ass.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I’m the guy that can ask question after question after question, and the teacher would really get involved in answering it because it was a sensible question and he had never had that one before. Another guy would do it just because I was doing it and then the teacher would shut him off.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah.
INMATE KEMPER: Cause that’s all it was, was wasting his time.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It’s gets annoying for the other people in the class probably at times. Um, but I -- okay, well it sounds like you have some interest in, uh, continuing with your education, and, um, obviously, uh, you -- you probably do some reading here, but, um, how would say you spend most of your time in prison? What do you -- what do you?
INMATE KEMPER: Watching television.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: In your cell.
INMATE KEMPER: Catching up -- catching up on all the stuff I’ve missed out on for years and years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Catching up on? What -- what do you -- what do you mean you missed out?
INMATE KEMPER: The TV shows, the movies.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: How do you -- how do you catch up on -- did you -- did you --
INMATE KEMPER: Well they’re re-runs.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Oh, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Shows and movies are re-runs, but they’re -- I really enjoy them.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So you didn’t watch TV for a while. You were --
INMATE KEMPER: I was working and pulling in, uh -- uh, a good size pay number for a lot of years, and now I don’t have any pay number. If I’m gonna get money some -- people have to send it in to me from the streets.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. You -- you’ve also taken Anger Management. I think that was, uh -- uh, several years ago.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: There’s other programs available. You know, there’s, uh, Lifer Programs, there’s, uh, programs available for sort of victim awareness, things like that. And I know you’ve been engaged in therapy, right, so, uh, that’s -- that’s something that sounds like it’s been helpful for you, but is there a reason why you haven’t engaged in, you know, some of the -- the groups that are available to you or other -- other programs.
INMATE KEMPER: At one point, I wanted to be involved in the, uh, the victim’s awareness, uh, aspect of it.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: But, a couple of the guys cautioned me against that because currently, and I don’t even know if that’s still valid, but, uh, currently they were, um, the -- the, uh, victims groups that were doing that stuff were doing it more for ammo to keep us in, arguing, you know, arguable stuff.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, I -- I --
INMATE KEMPER: Reasons why they’d dislike us and reasons why they don’t want us getting out.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I can tell you that anything like that probably -- I -- would not come out. That -- I mean it’s -- I -- I -- yeah, I think you got some bad advice there. You got some bad advice.
INMATE KEMPER: Could be.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um, did you ever talk to a counselor about signing up for any of these programs.
INMATE KEMPER: It’s hard to see a counselor anymore.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Um --
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve had a number of counselors pass by. You know, had them for a period of time and then lost them, and -- and got somebody else without ever having asked them anything.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Have you ever, um, tried to write anything down. I mean, I -- you know, whether you wanted to write a -- uh, a remorse letter or not. It’s -- it’s kind of up to you, and I know your victim’s dead, but have you ever thought about --
INMATE KEMPER: Families -- families of the victims.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, have you thought about something like that.
INMATE KEMPER: Do you know that I was personally involved in locating my victim’s remains?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I -- I know --
INMATE KEMPER: To -- to work on that.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Excuse me, sir. I think we’re gonna take a break and we can come back to this topic. So we’re just gonna -- we’re just gonna take a five minute break.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: There’s some people that need, a -- a five minutes recess, so.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It’s 11:00 o’clock.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: We’ll go off the record. It’s 11:05 and we’ll -- we’ll get back to this topic.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, all right.
R E C E S S --oOo--
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, we’re back on the record.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, time’s 11:18.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mr. Kemper, we were, uh, before we took a break we were discussing, um, your rehabilitative efforts, um, I -- I don’t see that you’ve, uh -- we discussed victim impact I think as I said, I --I think maybe you took, um, some bad advice from -- from some inmates regarding the purpose of that. Um, have you thought about printing down on paper, uh, putting your thoughts on paper regarding how you feel, uh, about what you’ve done, anything that you might want to say to the -- to the victims even though they’re not around any longer or their -- their loved ones. Have you -- have you put anything on paper that, um, would be available to the -- to the Panel?
INMATE KEMPER: I’m concerned that, uh, the news media who still hasn’t gotten their satisfaction from me, uh, as far as the whole story, the inside story, and, uh, they -- they still hound me for stuff like that. Or book writes, not necessarily news media, but book writers and people who do movies.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: And would be, um, I know, you don’t want to be the focus of that kind of spotlight, I -- I know, but you know the fact is that you -- you know, you were sentenced to life in prison, so what’s -- why is that such a big -- I mean it seems like being in prison would be bad enough, but if people are writing about you, why is that an issue cause they’re going to anyway? So wouldn’t you want to have your -- your thoughts out there? And it might not even make it into the hands of media anyway, probably not.
INMATE KEMPER: There’s a good possibility that my hand -- my writings would land in the hands of an editor --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: -- and he’d edit out things he decided weren’t interesting or not pertinent, and, uh, focus on different things that -- than I would.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: Um, I’ve had a lot of decades to wish that I could do things differently with my own family. Uh, rather than, uh, so much a stranger because a stranger is -- feels attacked, they feel you know vi - - totally violated and out of, you know out of nowhere this stuff comes and they -- they just don’t want to hear what the perpetrator has to say. Certainly not how sorry he is. But I did show, I demonstrated how sorry I was when as soon as I gave up the first thing I did was I told on the phone -- I told Santa Cruz contact Berkley and let them know that Aiko Koo is not a runaway like they were posing, that’s she’s a victim. And -- and first thing I did, was after I got back in Santa Cruz and -- and Berkley was to try and, uh, locate the remains as much as I could. I mean, I took them back to exact spots. But a lot of times, uh, animal activity undid, uh, the efforts I made later.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: If you were to, uh, be found suitable for parole and you were released from prison --
INMATE KEMPER: God, that sounds good.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: It does?
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah, I mean it’s so unlikely to even hear it cause you --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Sounds good?
INMATE KEMPER: -- you guys didn’t even want to say things like that decades ago because it might happen.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well I’m not asking you now because, um -- um, the question is what would you do?
INMATE KEMPER: What would I do? What would I be telling people in the hallway? Hide. Head for the hills.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Why, what do you mean?
INMATE KEMPER: God, the media would hound me. They’d camp on my doorstep.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What would you do? I don’t -- that’s -- not what would the media do --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- but what -- but what are your parole plans and I’m sure you talked about this with your -- with the -- the clinician and Dr. Taylor, and probably with your lawyer. And I mean, this is one of the questions we ask so what -- what are your plans? Have you had -- put any thought into that?
INMATE KEMPER: I would try to be a tax payer instead of a tax burden --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: How would you do that?
INMATE KEMPER: -- for the first time in 40 years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. How -- how would you do that?
INMATE KEMPER: Work in any way I could.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: If it was selling papers by hand I’d be doing it. Nothings too good for me.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you have anything specific in mind that -- where you might work or what you might do?
INMATE KEMPER: Work at a gas station, but I understand that more -- most often those are self-serve now.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, I mean realistically, Mr. Kemper, do you think that you’d be working? I mean, based on, you know, your health issues and -- and also your notoriety. I mean, I suppose it’s possible, but I -- I -- what the question is, does the inmate, has the inmate developed realistic parole plans, and you know, I -- have you -- sounds like you’re willing to work, but have you developed any plans whether -- you know, whether you’re found suitable or not have you gone down that road at all?
INMATE KEMPER: Actually that’s a form of torment; self-imposed torment --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: -- if I toy with that too much because there hasn’t been a real, uh -- uh, a realistic possibility for as long as I’ve been down.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. But now you’d -- you’d like to be --
INMATE KEMPER: I would love to be.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well what -- what would you do? Where would you live? Who would you associate with?
INMATE KEMPER: I don’t know if you believe it or not, but I’ve been invited to live in the house I lived in on the street in Aptos; 609-A Ord Street by a -- a group of youngsters; young men, uh, they’re in their 30’s -- 20’s and 30’s that, uh, have offered me an opportunity to live in that same address.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: That’s -- that’s strange, isn’t it?
INMATE KEMPER: Part of what I dreamt about last night. It’s -- it’s a bit scary, too. Uh, talk about bringing memories back.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Uh-huh.
INMATE KEMPER: And if you are at all a -- a believer in a -- in a the spiritual world -- the spiritual realm, I had a dream at Atascadero, and it was a -- a focus. I was focusing on absolutely nothing. Everything went away, no sounds. And so I wasn’t asleep, but I had a dream, a vision that I was at the neighbors property of my grandparents looking down on that house cause it was low -- at a lower altitude than, uh, the neighbors were. Bill Bleyer and his wife used to live up there. When I got out on parole, I went back there, and it -- and, uh, the Bleyer’s 60 foot, uh, trailer was gone. It was on a cement base with the electric and everything and it was gone permanently. And I, uh, I stood on that spot where I had been in that -- in that, uh, vision. I was looking down on the old Kemper residence.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What, uh -- what, um --
INMATE KEMPER: And they had disconnected the bedroom that I had, had.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: It was a breezeway bedroom. You know, they had 2x4’s up and -- and plastic, and -- and sheeting and stuff covering the walls.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: And oh -- okay, I understand that, what does this have to do with, um, your possible parole plans, or standing at the house?
INMATE KEMPER: Wow. Uh --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I know that sounds like it was a very vivid memory for you, but, uh, okay, have you -- have you considered transitional housing?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay what do you think about that? Have you contacted anybody or?
INMATE KEMPER: I couldn’t realistically, I mean at the present time.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I have no status to do that, but, uh, I -- I have no address -- I guess I could find out some addresses.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah -- yeah. You have -- have you talked to people about it about transitional housing, counselors or other needs, things like that?
INMATE KEMPER: I had done -- that’s a painful memory. I did that the first time down.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I tried doing that and you know what they told me? Do you want your parole or not? You know parole to your mother’s house and that’s it or you got no parole. I should have passed.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Yeah, well, uh, I would recommend that, you know --
INMATE KEMPER: I didn’t think we could have it that bad; her and I.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: So, uh, coming up ‘til now to present time, it’s important for inmates to develop realistic parole plans, uh, means of support, um, and, uh, things like that. It sounds like you haven’t had an opportunity to do that or you haven’t followed through, but, um, what about people? What would you --
INMATE KEMPER: Mm.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- uh, would you -- are you interested in pursuing relationships with people? I know you mentioned the -- this person in France and another that was in Australia, but what about, um, relationships?
INMATE KEMPER: They’d take me in a minute.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Excuse me?
INMATE KEMPER: They’d take me in a minute, but I don’t think Australia would be welcoming.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I -- I not asking you to live there, I mean, do you see yourself having relationships with people if you were to be living outside of prison?
INMATE KEMPER: Absolutely.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay, what -- which people? I mean, what -- what do you mean, neighbors or?
INMATE KEMPER: An expanded version of what I got now, uh, as far as, uh, penmanship friends.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Um, answer more letters than I do. Part of the reason I stopped doing that was the lady in Maryland that was mentioned earlier. She came out here for a whole week visiting me every day for a solid week --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm-hmm.
INMATE KEMPER: -- trying to convince me that I was the one -- I mean I should marry her.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Do you think that you would have relationships with women if you were released from prison, like have a romantic relationship? Is that something that’s entered your mind?
INMATE KEMPER: That’s a possibility, but I have to be careful with that because my feelings tend to run pretty loose. I don’t just, you know, keep a real tight grip on, uh, letters. I follow the flow of, uh, emotions.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: And why’s that a problem?
INMATE KEMPER: The young lady in France. She loves me. I got love from her 200 times if I got it once and it started out when she started writing me, she said this isn’t love, you know, this is this, this is that and other, but now she’s talking really emotionally.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What about, uh -- where -- you know, it’s been a while since you’ve been out of prison, but just think of a situation where you know you see a -- a young woman, you know around the age of your victims. Have you thought about that? What’s, uh --
INMATE KEMPER: It’s a scary thought, isn’t it?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I don’t know. I mean you’re 68 years old now --
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: What’s, uh -- is anything different? Or what? You said that’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Why -- why did you say that?
INMATE KEMPER: I haven’t had an erection in two years.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I don’t think I can even do it anymore. Uh, platonic relationship it would have to be because I just haven’t got it.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: But assuming that you could -- that problem would be ameliorated, would you be interested in having a sexual relationship, would you find --
INMATE KEMPER: Who wouldn’t be?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: Who wouldn’t be?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well that’s kind of - - you know, you haven’t really done --
INMATE KEMPER: I haven’t put any effort in that area for quite some time now.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well you’ve been in prison.
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. Is that -- is it -- should we be concerned about being attracted to women and -- and your thoughts, and desires, and feelings that might arouse in you?
INMATE KEMPER: Well every letter I’ve written as long as I’ve been in prison has been monitored, and by my exp -- but by my, uh, thoughts in that area has been recorded, not just monitored.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I see.
INMATE KEMPER: Or what they have copies of.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. Are you concerned? Is that -- I mean I --
INMATE KEMPER: If for nothing else, professional interests people would do stuff like that. I have been cautious about relationships.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. I think we discussed your parole plans. Uh, it might be that some work that needs to be done there, but, um, you know you said you’re willing to work and you considered transitional housing although you haven’t really followed through. Uh, it’s possible that you probably would spend some time living in a sort of a medical facility, um, you’ll probably be required to register as a sex offender.
INMATE KEMPER: Believe it or not, no.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Interesting, really?
INMATE KEMPER: Uh, the -- the, uh, committees brought that up.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay it could be that you murdered, but not --
INMATE KEMPER: Right. I -- I, uh, there’s certain things that have to be met, uh, standards that have to met to -- after registering and they said specifically that I don’t fit that.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Mm, okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh, if I’ve committed one offense out of all the crimes I’ve had, it seems like I would have to register, but look at how many people have found ways to deceit that process.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay. But we’re -- we’re talking about you right now, um -
INMATE KEMPER: Yeah.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: -- any -- anything else that you’d like to tell us about parole plans. I know probably for along time you thought you would never have a chance, so.
INMATE KEMPER: Well I was a ceramist at one point and I developed a line of ceramics that people have expressed interest in me following professionally.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And, uh, like I would make a master cut with my patterns on it, and then issue it to a company that would copy that.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And make dozens of copies for sale. I know that sounds ludicrous to the casual listener, but I’ve actually had people offer me, uh, serious money when I was, uh -- I put one cup out front for a hobby craft -- hobby, uh -- hobby show where everything was judged, and, uh, that cup wasn’t even allowed to participate in that cause I wasn’t technically in hobby, so --
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Well you -- you’re going off on a tangent here --
INMATE KEMPER: Well I got the cup back.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: And I was angry about it and the people who did -- this was the first time in the California history --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Mr. Kemper, we gotta -- we gotta move on. You’re -- you’re not answering the questions that we’re asking you.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: I’m just asking if you had anything -- any thought about what work you might do. It sounds like it’s something you’d consider. But, uh, I appreciate it, um --
INMATE KEMPER: Would you believe a hundred dollars a cup?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: That’s, uh -- it maybe --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay so you’re still not listening to me when I say we’re moving on. So apparently you just are gonna do what you wanna do. Apparently you don’t take direction very well.
INMATE KEMPER: I finished that thought -- I finished that thought.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Done? Any questions from the District Attorney’s office?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Yes, thank you. Um, Commissioner Fritz, would you please ask the Inmate if he killed the cat because the cat was actually like a member of the family.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, first of all you need to look straight ahead and not at the district attorney like I’ve already admonished you once, okay? Now the question is, did you kill the cat because the cat was a family member?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
INMATE KEMPER: I was trying to avoid pursuing any further thoughts of killing people.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Would you ask the Inmate if he believes that when he said he took responsibility for his crimes that that is consistent with blaming his mother?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think that taking responsibility for your crimes is consistent with blaming your mother?
INMATE KEMPER: My mother played a big role of what I did.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: When he took the podium for lengthy periods of time when he participated in AA did he share his experience -- experiences, strength, and hope or did he just talk about his experiences?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you talk about your experiences or did you talk about your experiences, strength, hope and what was it?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Just experiences -- experience, strength and hope which is the purpose of share.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Strength and hope, or just experiences?
INMATE KEMPER: Just ex -- back then it was just experiences.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, thank you.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: And if the Inmate worked the steps, why didn’t he write a letter to make amends to the victims in these cases, although because it would hurt them to receive it would be inappropriate to send it to them?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: So -- so I think what she’s getting at is a lot of people send amends letter to get through that step but they just don’t actually mail, but that’s the part of getting through that.
INMATE KEMPER: It’s against the law.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay why didn’t you write the amends letter and not mail it.
INMATE KEMPER: I guess I didn’t get that far.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: The Inmate has indicated that he would live in a household with men in their 30’s and presumably they would have girlfriends who came to house. How would he handle his temptation to have sex with them?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: How would you handle -- well one, do you think you’d have a temptation to have sex with your roommate’s girlfriend’s?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: He indicated in his risk assessment that if he saw a lone woman he would look away essentially and try and think of something else. What would he do if in his living situation he came across women?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: How about if in your living situation you came across a lone woman, what would you do?
INMATE KEMPER: Go in the opposite direction rather than play with temptation.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: He indicated that the woman with whom he corresponds from France sought him out because of media attention. Did it occur to him that somebody who would seek him out because of his crimes was a disturbed individual?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Have you thought about that, that maybe she might have some issues for seeking you out for that reason?
INMATE KEMPER: I’ve given that some thought which has played a role in -- in, uh -- in my continued correspondence.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, what does that mean?
INMATE KEMPER: My concern -- my concern has played a role.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: He indicated that there was a time that his sister visited him including in 2016 but he was unable to have continued visits because of his 115. Did he ask her to write a letter in support of him for this hearing?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Did you ask her to write a support letter for you -- your sister?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: With regard to the anger management programming he has participated in, does he think that he -- there’s an issue about whether he benefited from that because he got so frustrated at one point when he was being questioned that he couldn’t think of a way to respond to the Commissioner’s question?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think you’ve benefited from the anger management course that you’ve taken?
INMATE KEMPER: Absolutely.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: He indicated when he was responding to a question that at one of his hearings the DA almost flipped the table over, and I would just like to quote from the transcript of the hearing from April 30th , 1980, wherein on page 48 he said, “I would like to state I appreciate the district attorney’s restraint in making these comments. It in fact laudable” and is that the district attorney he’s talking who almost threw the table over?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you recall -- hold on -- do you recall was it in the 1980 hearing, was that the district attorney you were talking about?
INMATE KEMPER: The district attorney -- the district attorney later became a judge.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, was that the district attorney you were taking about, yes or no?
INMATE KEMPER: No.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: No, okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: So in referring to the district attorney who later became a judge, that’s Arthur Danner --
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: -- who was present on May 1 s t of 1979. Would you ask the inmate if there’s some reason why he has hung on to that experience since it was almost 30 year -- what was -- yeah -- 40 years ago?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Was that the district attorney you were talking about?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: And that was -- that’s why I brought it up. This happened years ago. Why are you still holding on to this from 1979?
INMATE KEMPER: It was that shocking an event. He was looking for a rise. He was looking --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, we don’t need to go into that. All right, any other questions? I mean it was a shocking event, that’s what you’re saying to you. Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: And you, uh, he indicated when he was speaking that on that occasion when the DA almost flipped the table over that, that things that the DA said and did were taken out of the minutes. Is -- is that something that he believes happens, that somehow minutes of hearings are doctored?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Is that what -- what you’re saying? You felt that was taken -- I’m assuming not minutes, the transcript. Is that what you - that was what you’re referring to?
INMATE KEMPER: I destroyed my copy of the minutes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, but listen to the question. Did you think that the -- that it was taken out of the transcript?
INMATE KEMPER: Yes.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. He said yes.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Is there a reason why he has taken so few courses -- college level course if he’s of the opinion that he could get a PhD?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Is there a reason why you haven’t decided not to take any further college courses.
INMATE KEMPER: Leonard Wolf left.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, that doesn’t --
INMATE KEMPER: He went to New York.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: But what does that have to do with taking college courses or not?
INMATE KEMPER: He was my sponsor.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Got it. Okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Would you ask the inmate if he thinks that the community would be safe if he was released?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Do you think the community would be safe if you were released.
INMATE KEMPER: Absolutely. Would I be?
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, any other questions?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: No. Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, any questions for your client?
ATTORNEY HALL: No questions, Commissioner.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right, closing statement, District Attorney’s office?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: Thank you, I wrote a letter --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Sir, I don’t know have -- how many times I have to tell you -- you have to look over here.
INMATE KEMPER: I’m looking at my attorney’s, uh --
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: It didn’t look like it, but, okay.
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: In his risk assessment conducted in the last several months he said to the doctor that denying him parole would be ultimately safe, which from the Peoples perspective means that he does have an understanding that he cannot control his temptation and would in fact hurt women whether that be in the form of rape, murder or both. When he was participating in that risk assessment, he was unable to identify even one trigger for why it is that he raped and murdered those women, which from, again from the Peoples perspective is incredibly dangerous is somebody isn’t at all aware or self- conscious of something that might trigger that very violent behavior. Um, I would note that during this hearing I have never in my 29 year career hear somebody speak of such despicable actions in the dispassionate way that he has which has included avoiding answering questions and in startling detail talking about things that it appears he doesn’t have any awareness of what it would be like to be a person hearing him talk about those things, which I find chilling. I won’t go through the details of his crimes in as much as with describing the victim’s experiences or the victim’s family’s experiences I -- as I indicated in my letter. One, I don’t think there are words that can describe those experiences. I don’t think our language permits a description of those experiences, but I would also say that for me to try and attempt to characterize those experiences would be arrogant and presumptuous in as much as I’ve never had any experience that in any way resembles the experiences of those women they knew he was gonna kill them and the families of those women some of whom thought their daughters, sisters, cousins, nieces we missing only to find that they weren’t missing at all in the traditional somewhat hopeful sense. They were missing because they would never see them again and would never see their bodies intact. Again, I will -- I’ll just iterate that as I was listening to him I was apoplectic because I never, ever in my life even in a movie heard somebody talk about what he did and they way he did and I frankly hope to never have that experience again because it was so disturbing. I don’t think that there’s any, not even reasonable possibility, but any possibility whatsoever that he would ever be suitable for release. He has unrealistic or nonexistent parole plans, he has a complete lack of insight and awareness into why he committed his crimes, and there isn’t really any reason to believe he wouldn’t continue to do it again. In all of the different parole hearings I have done, and I’m certainly not as experiences as the group of you three, I’m sure, but I’ve never had somebody who’s been in prison for this length of time and was characterized as high risk and I think that, that is something that’s very important to take in and honor, and I would ask, uh, the Board to permanently deny him any further hearings and I -- in that regard, uh, Patricia Kemper is going to speak about her experience, but I think it’s very important to take into consideration the anxiety and fear that the possibility that he would ever be released creates in people. And those are my remarks. Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you. Closing statement?
ATTORNEY HALL: Yes, Commissioner. Uh, you know, Mr. Kemper, I think has made a lot of very favorable strides, uh, over the last 10 years. I believe it’s been 10 years since his last full taken to a -- a completion hearing. Uh, during that time he has, um, self-reflected, uh, about the, uh -- the murders which he testified to this morning, uh, that he showed remorse. We discovered that he had been taking many years of therapy, uh, which led to much discovery. Uh, he’s, uh -- he’s, uh, shared his remorse with the Board today and we also know that, uh, an elderly parole, uh, of 68-year-old man. He’s been 42-43 years in, given his disabilities, the likelihood that he would, uh, behave the way he did when he was 22-23 is highly unlikely. However, I believe Mr. Kemper would agree with me that although he’s very close, there is just a few things that I think the Board would want to see. Um, develop parole plans, uh, Mr. Kemper and I, uh, we talked about that, uh, and he shared with me that he -- he hadn’t any parole plans, he hadn’t made any, uh, communication with, uh, transitional housing given the number of years he’s been down, that would be extremely helpful, uh, given his many disabilities, I don’t believe that, uh, an issue of working is necessary. Uh, he’s 68 so he would be eligible for SSI and Medi-Cal. Uh, he would not be eligible for Medicare nor Social Security cause he hasn’t paid in 40 quarters, but never the less he -- he would have some benefits out there should he ever parole. So he needs to parole plans I believe with people, I think maybe a little more insight, um, would be helpful, and if Mr. Kemper can complete those two items given all the other things that he’s shown very f -- very favorably here this morning that being the parole plans and some additional insight, I think he would then be a, um, a good candidate but right now he’s just a -- a little short of that and perhaps no more than three years, uh, he can return to the Board with those two items completed. Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you. Sir, closing statement? Do you have a closing statement that you’d like to make?
INMATE KEMPER: I don’t think so.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay. Did -- then we’ll hand it over to the district attorney’s office. Did the victim’s family member like to make statement?
ASSISTANT DISTRICT ATTORNEY WEST: I believe Patricia Kemper would like to make a statement in addition to the letter she submitted that was in the 10- day packet.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Sure, just come up to the microphone. Please put your name on the record again so that transcript can go ahead.
MS. KEMPER: My name’s Pat -- sorry. My name’s Pat Kemper, um, K-E-M-P-E-R. Um, it was my grandparents that he killed in addition to his own. We knew one another as children; we played together as children. He had a great sense of humor. Um, I want to say in honor of my grandparents that my grandmother was not aggressive. She was full of life and full of joy, and she loved him. She wanted to help him and that’s why she took him in, and she told me that Christmas of 1963 that people told her she should take the gun away, but she wanted him to know that she loved and trusted him, and she was not going to take the gun away. She thought love conquered all. My grandfather was not senile. He was hard of hearing. He helped my sister with her algebra. That Christmas, often before that, he was -- they were both very intelligent, very loving people so I wanted to say that in their honor. I hope when I think of -- when I think of what my family has gone through because grandma and dada’s deaths and the way they died and everyone blaming themselves, it’s just changed everything. No one has lived a normal life that was in the family because of what Guy did. My father hardly ever leaves the house. That was his parents. I mean literally, hardly leaves the house and cannot bear any kind of conflict, any kind of news, any kind of talk about violence. He had to take a medical disability at 57 because he was a wreck and he couldn’t cope anymore with ordinary life. I can’t even imagine what it’s like of the parents of those girls and their families. I know what it feels like to know grandma was -- was murdered and then dragged into another room and her body was disfigured, and for them to have a child or a sister who went through the fear they must have gone through before they died, and then to have their bodies dismembered and left for animals to get to. How can we take a risk of sending this man out again? What does it do to the families to come every five years and know that he can get out? And about -- I mean, I don’t care how old he gets. He’s safe here. People are safe from him here and I think he should stay and I don’t think there should anymore parole hearings ever because it -- it’s like sending the family members through a meat grinder. So thank you for listening.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Thank you.
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: Thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Time is
(inaudible). We’re gonna go into deliberations.
R E C E S S --oOo--
CALIFORNIA BOARD OF PAROLE HEARINGS
D E C I S I O N
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: We’re on the record.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, we’re on record. Time’s 12:21 p.m. All parties that were present prior to the recess are present now for the case of Kemper, K-E-M-P-E-R, CDC number B-52453. The Panel reviewed all information received from the public and all relevant information that was before us today in concluding that the prisoner is not suitable for parole and would pose an unreasonable risk of danger to society or a threat to public safety if released from prison. Finding of unsuitability is based on weighing the considerations provided in California Code of Regulations, Title 15. We also gave special consideration to Mr. Kemper’s age, the amount time that he’s been in prison and any medical conditions that he has. This is a seven year denial. In determining unsuitability there were a number of factors that we thought linked Mr. Kemper to current dangerousness. One, being past and present mental state, past and present attitude about the crime. Two, lack of remorse. Three, um, lack of skills and tools to be successful out on parole. Four, institutional behavior. Um, and so let’s go through some -- and five, parole plans. So let me go through these areas. Uh, so let’s first go through past and present mental state, past and present attitude about the crime. I mean, uh, you know, we -- we still don’t know to this day after so many years why you committed these crimes. Um, we spent a lot of time going back and forth over this. Um, it appears as if you just don’t want to discuss it. I mean, that was the -- the -- what I got to because we would go on these tangents throughout this entire hearing about things that you wanted to discuss that had very relevance or, um, but you felt like you needed to get them on the record mostly because they were derogatory against your mother, sister, judge, DA, other things, um, that made other people look bad, so, uh, and you were able to go into great detail about prior memories about things, your prior history, social history, family, things like that. You were able to get in great detail about that, uh, but you certainly weren’t able to do that when it came to the murders. Um, you know kept saying well it’s very complicated and over and over again about how it’s not a simple answer, but then you couldn’t answer it, and basically what you said, I’m frustrated now and I can’t answer it. So it brought up a lot of concerns because one, you aren’t able to explain to us why you did what you did, um, and then to say that you got frustrated over it is even more concerning because frustration, anger is one of your issues that led you to prison, and you’re still exhibiting that here at the hearing today. Um, so, you know, uh, in -- in order to get through this rehabilitation process you have to understand why you did what you did so you know what you can rehabilitate on so if you’re still on step one and why this happened then there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. You know your explanations of its painful and embarrassing, well that may be true, uh, I think it -- it gives really short shrift to what’s going on here. The fact is I think you just don’t want to, um -- you -- you don’t want to go through the process, you don’t want to accept it, you don’t want to have to think about it because this is difficult to think about; the things that you did in the past. So you just choose to ignore it and not go through the process and that certainly what it -- how it showed today is someone who has not gone through the process, has not gone through rehabilitation, and certainly would not be safe -- could not be safely re -- released out on parole given your testimony today, and -- and -- and given some of the other things that happened at this hearing today. Um, as far as the remorse is concerned, um, all I can say is extremely chilling. Um, you know, a -- a void of all types of emotions, but you know, not only did you kill strangers you killed family members, and you know, there’s just nothing there. You, uh, basically say you know you’re sad about it. When I asked about your grandparents cause I thought perhaps because they were family members it would have elicited some other type of emotion versus strangers, you -- you took on this intellectual stance well wait a second they can’t be here, and I -- it -- and they got killed fast so I guess they weren’t in any pain. Uh, very scary, uh, very disturbing of that’s how you would describe remorse and how you felt about things, um, and -- and have kind of this weird affect when you’re discussing these types of things like you’re actually enjoying telling the story and actually enjoying re -- reliving, um, the -- these murders and what happened to these people, which again is very disturbing and it’s not something that other people could really see that aren’t here at this hearing today. But, um, again, I did not see anything there that would suggest any type of remorse. We asked you a few times as far your grandparents, your mother, uh, the strangers that you in -- um, killed and basically it was, I feel badly and I wish I -- I wish I could take it back. Um, I haven’t written letters, you know, because it’s illegal, but then I’ve never written a letter cause I haven’t gotten through that process before. Uh, and then you go into the fact that you -- well you turned yourself in and you tried to show them where the body parts were as a form of remorse. Uh, but I -- I be -- I felt -- I -- I believed that was a bit self-serving. Um, so again, until you can really show remorse for the victims and -- and really if you can -- if you can’t really understand the pain and suffering that not only they went through at the time, but the -- they -- their families continue to go through, your own family continues to go through. But I -- I really saw it as a complete blank, um, that you really don’t have that capacity or don’t want to have that capacity to understand that then that is a very disturbing thing because upon release if you don’t have any empathy for other people and to not understand the pain and suffering that they could go through or they have been through then there’s no knowing what you would be capable of upon release, um, and so we do believe that - - that also is a connection to current dangerousness. Um, as far as your institutional behavior, you’ve had one rules violation. There’s no pattern there. It’s recent so it -- it’s a concern, but it -- it would have been a -- it’s a bigger concern if there were patterns of it and things like that. I didn’t see that, but you better not have anymore rules violations or it will show a pattern. I think the bigger pattern here is the real lack of, uh, work that you’ve done on yourself. Um, you have taken therapy, um, hopefully it’s helped; it did not come out in your testimony today. But I think, um, what was real telling today is it appears that some of your character defrects -- defects are still present; that arrogance, that being self-absorbed. This hearing was a lot about you. We had to continue to go back to stories that you wanted to tell that had really had nothing to do with what we were asking because apparently you just wanted to tell it. You know, you interrupted, you tried to dominate this hearing, um, and I really want you think about that because that’s exactly the type of person that you are. That’s exactly some of the reasons why these murders occurred is your intimidation, dominance, you know, it’s not necessarily about the sex, its about the control. We didn’t hear anything about that, but here you are in this hearing in 2017 doing same or similar types of behaviors in a very structured environment where I continually ask you not to do -- in fact, you know, you would continue to do it. You -- you know, you decided hey, I’m gonna do it anyway. So it really shows just the fact that you are unwilling, um, to see or -- or you just don’t want to because you just don’t want a woman to tell you what to do. I mean that’s basically what it comes down to. And I -- we saw it at this hearing and -- and that’s your issue. I mean you have big, deep-seeded issues with woman probably stemming from your mother, I don’t know, you need to tell us. Um, and, um, it -- it came out loud and clear today your frustration and anger not only with me but some of the other female participants at this hearing, and, um, I think you gotta take a look at that. That’s why you’re here. If you can’t control that even in a structured environment with two correctional officers, what are you gonna do when you get out of prison? It’s frightening. And we’re talking about a guy who’s 68 years old still acting like this. Um, as far as your no, uh, parole plans. I mean, you know they can get you transitional housing and things like that. We’re -- I -- I’m not so much worried about actually where you’re gonna go except for the fact that you think you’re gonna stay with people that you don’t know that apparently want to bring you in. You have, um, unrealistic relationships with other people and somehow you think that’s gonna be part of your parole plans. I -- you -- your understanding of these relationships is mind boggling. For you to act like an immature kind of kid voice say because she loves or she loves is just disturbing. I mean you have to -- have to have -- if -- if you want to go out there and be released your issues are about relationships and that’s how you’re acting at your age about this relationship or support system that you have, which I think is good that you have support out there, but to act, um, like that in those terms again just shows how, uh -- how little you know about this process, how little you know about rehabilitation, how little you know about how you’re gonna deal with things about the outside. You don’t think that you’re gonna have temptations. If you do, you say you’re gonna walk away. Again, very simplistic immature way of dealing with things and that those are - - that’s gonna be the answer to all your problems. You’re here for eight murders. You’re here because of relationship issues, issues with women, things that -- traumatic experiences that have happened to you. None of that was -- none of that came out of this hearing. We’re basically telling you and so for you to act like that is a solution to these problems on the outside is extremely disturbing because you haven’t thought about it. You don’t want to think about it. You want to think about other things. You want to tell us about other things. You don’t want to ta -- talk or think about your real issues. We know you’re capable of it, you know, because -- you know, we believe that you’re capable of doing it, you just don’t want to do it or -- or you haven’t thought about it which again after 40 years at your age is extremely disturbing that that’s where you’re at in this process because that just says that you have a long way to go. Um, the fact that you’re still blaming your mother for the murders, I mean, it’s mind boggling. She might have, uh -- she might have something to do with, um, how you were shaped in your childhood to the person that you are, but she certainly is not the blame for the -- the murders that you participated in, um, which I think shows that you really lack responsibility as far as your understanding and taking responsibility for your actions. Um, you have a lot of things that you need to work on. Um, have you made improvement in prison? Yes, of course. Um, you know, I mean, you haven’t gotten in a lot of trouble. I think that should be commended. Um, some of the issues that you have outside of prison with the woman and relationships you don’t have in prison so I -- I -- I would expect, but again, you could get in a lot more trouble than you have been so I think that that’s something that you should be commended on. Um, is there anything that you want to ad?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: No thank you, Commissioner.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: All right. Um, as far as the term calculations we put them in your paperwork. As far as Marsy’s Law is concerned we first looked at 15 years by clear and convincing evidence based on your record as far as behavior is concerned. You don’t require a more lengthy period of incarceration. Then the next threshold of 10 years, we even looked at 10 years for the reasons already sited. We also took into consideration you’ve taken some programming and therapy; you don’t require a more lengthy period of incarceration. Then the next threshold is seven years. We looked at three, five, or seven, determined that seven years is the appropriate denial period and to get through these issues that we’ve discussed. If you feel like you’re ready to come before then you can petition to advance and submit the paperwork to headquarters. They’ll review and see if you can come back at an earlier date. I wish you the best of luck. Um, time is 12:35. We’ll go off the record. Anything else you want to add?
DEPUTY COMMISSIONER BLAKE: No thank you.
PRESIDING COMMISSIONER FRITZ: Okay, all right.
A D J O U R N M E N T
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DECLARATION OF TRANSCRIBER I, KATHILYNN LIADIS, as the Official Transcriber, hereby certify that the attached proceedings: In the matter of the Life ) CDC Number: B-52453 Term Parole Consideration ) Hearing of: ) ) EDMUND EMIL KEMPER ) )
CALIFORNIA MEDICAL FACILITY VACAVILLE, CALIFORNIA JULY 25, 2017 9:00 A.M. were held as herein appears. Further, this transcript is a true, complete, and accurate record, to the best of my ability, of the recorded material provided for transcription. Kathilynn Liadis July 30, 2017 Copyright 2017/All Rights Reserved by BPH