RARE INTERVIEW WITH SERIAL KILLER EDMUND KEMPER

Edmund Kemper: “I’m an American, and I went off the deep-end.”

Presenter: “Ed Kemper has been serving a life sentence in this California prison since 1973 when, at the age of twenty-four, he murdered his mother, then called police and confessed to having dismembered college co-eds for two years, as well as cannibalizing, and raping their headless bodies.

Kemper: “When someone abandons himself to bein’ a victim, he’s gonna have to be one.”

Presenter: “With an IQ of one hundred thirty-six, Kemper is now the prison’s best reader of books for the blind.”

Kemper: “I’m saying I’ve wanted to kill my mother since I was eight years old and I’m not proud of that.“

Kemper: “It started with surrogates at that, uh, non-human level. Physical objects: my possessions, other peoples’; destruction of things that are cared about. And then to destruction of things that are living, on a lower level: small animals, uh, insects, animals, and then finally people.”

Kemper: “It started comin’ to a head again, so I went back down thran away back down there, and then a month later I’m up livin’ with my grandparents in the mountains, and ten months later I murdered them.”

Kemper: “And it made it worse to be on top of a mountain. I was literally on top of a mountain when it happened, and I could senseI sensedeverybody in the world just stoppin’ what they were doin’, turnin’ around, saw what I did, and are comin’ to get me. And I knew I was paranoid at that moment. I knew anybody that came up there and gave me a funny look or a fishy eye or a quizzical look, I’d have blown their brains out, thinkin’ they were comin’ to get me.”

Kemper: “And if it’d been in a city, I’d have been a mass-murderer at age fifteen. I would’ve killed until they gunned me down. I wouldn’t have been able to reason my way out of it. I was scared to death, and I was violent. I felt my wback hit that wall. I was the rabbit that always ran, that always backed away; always burned his bridges. Suddenly there weren’t any more, and Imy back hit that wall and I came out screamin’ and kickin’ and shootin’.”

Presenter: “He was released to the one person that authorities of the State mental hospital recommended he never see again.”

Kemper: “I got paroled to my mother. Atascadero [State Hospital] decided that I didn’tnever need to talk to her again, at all. ‘Don’t give her a Christmas present, leave her alone. She got a pound of flesh outta ya.’ I wasn’t snivelin’ about my mother to them; I didn’t like to hear what they had to say about her.

Kemper: “She went through three husbands like a hot knife through butter.”

Kemper: “Four months after I was out I was back into the fantasy bag. My first date was an absolute disasterwasn’t her fault… you know, and I didn’t blame her even then. I’m sayin’ it was a terrible tragedy. But, boy was it a trboy she didn’t ever talk to be again. It was awful. It wasn’t sexual, or grabbin’ at her at that, I was just such a dork, takin’ her to a John Wayne movie and, uh, Denny’s. It was terrible. I’d never been on a date; at sixteen it was cool! You know. I’d never been on a date, you know. I was locked up since I was fifteen. But I can’t tell her that. ‘Oh gee,’ you know, ’don’t mind me,’ you know. She kinda got hung up on my looks or whatever, you know. She was a gorgeous young lady. Pure class, and she saw somethin’ there that I guess wasn’t there, and boy she found out quick.”

Presenter: “Taking elaborate precautions, he drove around universities and picked up hitchhiking co-eds while wearing these glasses.”

Kemper: “Yep. These are the ones. Now would you get in a car with this man? Huh? [dons his old glasses] Hmm?” [puts current pair back on] “The State has made me much more credible as a human being.”

Presenter: “While his mother worked at the university, Kemper buried the mutilated bodies in the mountains, and took the severed heads home, then he slept with their heads for days, and finally went looking for more.”

Kemper: “But I was losing a grasp on something that was too violent to keep inside forever. As I’m sitting their with a severed head in my hand, talking to it, or looking at it, and I’m about to go crazy, literally. I’m about to go completely ffly-wheel loose, and just fall apart. I say ‘wow! This is insane,’ and then I told myself ‘no it isn’t. You’re saying that, and that makes it not insane.’ I said ‘I’m sane, and I’m looking at a severe’ And I said ‘well, wait a minute, wait a minute,’ I’d see old inpaintspaintings and drawings of Viking heroes talking to severed heads and takin’ them to parties; old enemies in leather bags. Part of our heritage. This is me back then in 1972 and ‘73. I’m able to live with the fact that I just stabbed to death and cut the throat of an innocent young woman. Innocent in the sense that she did not plan on that happening, she didn’t do anything specifically for that to happen to her, yet she was a very active participant in her own death, and in my memory of that. She was nineteen years old, and her roommate in the trunk who died right after that was eighteen.”

Kemper: “I didn’t go hog-wild and totally limp. What I’m saying is I found myself doing things in an attempt to make things fit together inside. I was doing sexual probings and thingsI mean, in a sense of striking out, or reaching out and grabbing, and pulling to me. I’d be appalled at the sense that it wasn’t working, that isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, that isn’t the way I want it. You see what I’m saying? And yet I getduring that time I become engaged to someone who is young, and is beautiful, and very much the same advantages, and mvery much the same upbringing, and Disneyland values. And, uh, she’s very much the reason I surrendered.”

Kemper: “Well, I picked up two girls who were so much like the first two it was unbelievable. Almost identical circumstances… and I let ‘em go. Everything went towards killin’ ’em, and I didn’t. But I’m sayin’ ’wow, it’s uncanny.’ It was almost like it was meant to be that way, and I said ‘wow! I’ve gotthis has gotta stop.’ And I let them out. They never even knew what was goin’ on; I let them out. I would’ve gotten away with those two being murdered. Said ‘no, it’s gotta stop,’ and a week later I murdered my mother. Went back to Santa Cruz and killed her.”

Presenter: “He killed her with a hammer in her sleep, cut off her head and hands, but then put her vocal cords in a garbage disposal and threw darts at her severed head.”

Kemper: “I am an American and I killed Americans, I am a human being and I killed human beings, and I did it in my society.”