'FANTASY' SLAYER GETS LIFE TERM: OGDEN STANDARD-EXAMINER, NOVEMBER 9, 1973

California had no gas chamber to offer Santa Cruz in the fall of 1973. Every one of Edmund Kemper's killings fell between May 1972 and April 1973, before the state brought the death penalty back, and so on November 9, Superior Court Judge Harry Brauer did the most the law allowed and ordered him to serve eight concurrent life sentences. The jury of six men and six women had needed five hours the day before to find him sane and guilty of first-degree murder. Kemper, twenty-five and six foot nine, had tried four times to kill himself in jail and said he thought he ought to be "tortured" as punishment.

The Associated Press story the Ogden Standard-Examiner ran that day names only one of the eight dead: his mother, Clarnell Strandberg, fifty-three. The others were Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, eighteen-year-old Fresno State students hitchhiking to Stanford; Aiko Koo, a fifteen-year-old dancer who had missed her bus to class; Cindy Schall of Cabrillo College; Rosalind Thorpe, twenty-three, picked up on the university campus, and Alice Liu; and Sally Hallett, his mother's friend, whom he telephoned and invited to the house after killing his mother. Three days after his mother's death, he was arrested in a phone booth in Pueblo, Colorado, while he was still describing the killings to Santa Cruz police, who had traced the call.

On the witness stand he had tried to explain. He killed the women, he said, because "that was the only way they could be mine. I had their spirits. I still have them." He described living among fantasies from early childhood and said his daydreams grew more violent during the five years he spent in mental hospitals for killing his paternal grandparents. The paper gives that confinement a single clause. The release that ended it, granted because he was judged no longer dangerous, put him back on the roads around Santa Cruz.

This is a short AP report from the day of sentencing, not a court record, and what it quotes from Kemper's testimony is his own account. Its "six coed hitchhikers" is not quite right, since Aiko Koo was fifteen. The statement that seven of the eight victims were beheaded is the paper's and is not tested here. The jury found Kemper sane and guilty on eight counts of first-degree murder on November 8, 1973, for the six young women, his mother and Sally Hallett. The 1964 killings of his grandparents were handled as a juvenile matter and never became a murder charge, although the paper calls them murders.

The Ogden Standard-Examiner printed this AP wire story, unbylined, at the top of page 3A on November 9, 1973. The scan is from Utah Digital Newspapers, held by the J. Willard Marriott Library at the University of Utah, which rates the issue "No Copyright - United States" in its item-level rights field. Published works of 1973 needed a copyright notice to stay protected, and there is none on the masthead or on this story; the only notices in the issue belong to a Field Enterprises opinion poll and the AP stock tables. The citation and the library's rights statement appear under the scan.

The story is complete on the page and every word was readable, so the transcription needed no illegible marks. It keeps the paper's text as set: the stray comma in "May 1972, and last April," "coed" with no hyphen, "first degree murder" unhyphenated, and the two subheads, "REASONABLE FINDING" and "THE ONLY WAY," in their places. The full-page advertisement below the story is not transcribed.

Transcription

Transcribed word for word from the page scan. Original spelling, punctuation, capitalisation and typographical errors have been kept exactly as printed. Unreadable words are marked [illegible]. Nothing has been modernised or corrected.

'Fantasy' Slayer Gets Life Term

SANTA CRUZ, Calif. (AP) — Edmund Emil Kemper III was sentenced today to life imprisonment for the slayings of his mother, her best friend and six coed hitchhikers.

The 6-foot-9 Kemper, who said he acted out homicidal, cannibalistic and sexual fantasies in the killings, was ordered to serve eight concurrent life sentences.

Kemper, 25, had pleaded innocent and innocent by reason of insanity. A six-man, six-woman jury had found him sane and guilty of first degree murder Thursday after five hours of deliberation.

Santa Cruz Superior Court Judge Harry Brauer, who handed down the sentence, told jurors on Thursday: "I agree entirely with your verdict."

REASONABLE FINDING

Public defender James Jackson said Kemper expected the verdict and the attorney called it "reasonable enough."

Kemper, who tried four times to kill himself in jail and said he thought he should be "tortured" as punishment, cannot be sent to the gas chamber because the slayings occurred between May 1972, and last April, before California reinstituted the death penalty.

Seven of the eight victims, including Kemper's mother, Clarnell Strandberg, 53, were beheaded. Six of the victims were young women student hitchhikers.

THE ONLY WAY

Three days after the killing of his mother Kemper was arrested in a Pueblo, Colo., telephone booth while he was giving details of the slayings to Santa Cruz authorities who had the call traced.

The defendant said on the witness stand he killed the women because "that was the only way they could be mine. I had their spirits. I still have them."

In his testimony Kemper told of living in a world of fantasies from early childhood. He said his daydreams became increasingly violent during the five years he was confined to mental hospitals for the murders of his paternal grandparents nearly ten years ago.

Notes: "May 1972, and last April" has a comma as printed. "coed" is printed without a hyphen. The article sits across the top of page 3A above a full-page advertisement. No words were illegible.