"Almost Like a Chess Game": Edmund Kemper on His Hitchhiker Victims

Name: "Almost Like a Chess Game": Edmund Kemper on His Hitchhiker Victims
Uploaded: 2022-02-12
Duration: 5 min 33 s
Description: In a prison interview, Edmund Kemper explained how he talked his captives into trusting him, how he made himself look harmless to hitchhikers, and how he shot Cindy Schall.

In a prison interview, Edmund Kemper explained how he talked his captives into trusting him, how he made himself look harmless to hitchhikers, and how he shot Cindy Schall.

Subject: Edmund Kemper
Runtime: 5:33

Content warning: Kemper describes abducting young women, his intention to rape them, and shooting a young woman in the trunk of his car.

The Interview

In this excerpt from a filmed prison interview, Edmund Kemper speaks without interruption for more than five minutes about how he dealt with the young women he picked up in 1972 and 1973. He describes his original plan to suffocate his victims, an argument of about twenty minutes with Mary Ann Pesce, the shooting of Cindy Schall, and the "chess game" he says he played with wary hitchhikers. An interviewer, who is not seen or named, speaks only at the end.

Historical Context

Kemper killed his paternal grandparents in 1964, at the age of 15, and was committed to Atascadero State Hospital. Released in 1969, he lived in the Santa Cruz area. Between May 1972 and February 1973 he picked up and killed six young women who were hitchhiking: Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, Aiko Koo, Cindy Schall, Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. In April 1973 he killed his mother and her friend Sally Hallett, then gave himself up. He was convicted of eight murders in November 1973 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Circumstances of the Interview

Who filmed this interview, and when, is not known. The upload is labelled "for the FBI, 1989", but no source documents an FBI interview filmed that year; Kemper's best-known FBI interviews, by Robert Ressler and John Douglas, took place in the late 1970s and are not known to have been filmed for release. The interviewer's closing remark about Kemper being "a psychologist in your own right" suggests a long research or documentary interview.

What the Interview Covers

Kemper says he altered his approach "from the point of capture", and that he first meant to suffocate his victims with plastic bags. He describes arguing with Mary Ann Pesce in the back seat, then "letting them help me", playing up his own distress so that his captives would calm down "until we got to a place where they could be killed". He says Cindy Schall, his "fourth victim", climbed into the trunk of his car, believing he would take her home to talk, and that he shot her there. He speaks of "possessing their bodies afterwards", of about 1,000 people who rode in his car over three years, and of glancing at his watch to seem like a businessman in a hurry.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The excerpt is a sustained first-person account of method rather than of motive: Kemper sets out how he gained the trust of people he intended to kill, and says that this is what he has "the biggest problem" with "on a guilt basis". It is a different interview from the 1981 *The Killing of America* segment whose transcript is published here.

Archival Importance

Kemper remains in prison in California and has been repeatedly denied parole. This interview adds his own description of the Schall killing and of his approach to hitchhikers.

Important Caveats

Everything Kemper says here is his own account. His version of Cindy Schall's death (that she got into the trunk and he shot her there) differs from published accounts, which say he shot her in a wooded area and then put her body in the trunk. The figure of about 1,000 riders is his. The source and date of the interview are unknown, and the clip is an excerpt.

Edmund Kemper: I altered, well, they weren't really spontaneous. I altered how I approached these young ladies from the point of capture. From the first time, what I had wanted to do was to secure them and to suffocate them with plastic bags over their heads. I had some completely unrealistic perspective that that was quick, that they would lose consciousness rapidly.

Edmund Kemper: But the first young lady that was in the back seat, it was Mary Ann Pesce. I finally secured her. She argued a lot. She was dialoguing, trying to change up control of the situation. She had already decided I was in control. I was trying to gain control. I was convinced she was in control of it. So for about 20 minutes we were arguing back and forth over what was going to happen, and I was trying to keep it away from what was intended, which was murder.

Edmund Kemper: And I decided at that time I wasn't going to tell anyone I was going to rape them. I didn't say that at the time, but I left that wide open as the avenue that I was, [unclear: "it's going to be a sexual release" / "this when it is sexual release"]. And that got them very distressed, and it was obvious to me that if I was going to pursue what I was doing, that distress had to stop.

Edmund Kemper: So I went into a, unfortunately, more effective behavior of letting them help me. I let more of my personality come out, and I was suicidal, very disturbed, grasping out of someone. I had abducted them and I wasn't going to let them out of the car because I was tired of people walking away from me. So some of that was very true, but I manipulated that to allow them to help me, to the point of resolving their behavior, until we got to a place where they could be killed.

Edmund Kemper: And that [unclear: "is, I have" / "has"] the biggest problem with that on a guilt basis, because obviously that entailed unusual trust between the captor, the perpetrator, and the victim of the crime.

Edmund Kemper: At one point, in fact, on the fourth victim of the crime, Ms. Schall, she actually got back into the trunk under her own power. I had a cast on my left arm; it was broken. And I walked her back to the trunk of the car, where I told her I was going to keep her under cover so that I could get her to my home where we could talk, but I didn't want neighbors seeing her coming to the house or leaving the house. And I made that sound realistic to her. So she didn't want to get in the trunk, but was willing to. When she got in the trunk, I shot her.

Edmund Kemper: So, I'm trying to remember this from a long time ago, but another round had entered and exited that padding area. So there were three holes in that padding area that was head level with her. It was off to her right, to my left. She was moving about in the back quadrant there, trying to avoid the shots.

Edmund Kemper: That wouldn't have happened. I realize if I'd never done it, it wouldn't have happened. But if, well, my original intention was to make it very quick, and neither one of them to be aware of what was happening. And it was not to keep them from stopping the crime; it was to keep them from suffering. I had a real bad problem depriving people of their lives. It wasn't the aspect of killing them; it was the aspect of possessing their bodies afterwards. So it was almost, in effect, evicting someone from their human body. And I'm sorry it sounds so cold, but that's about what it analogizes to.

Edmund Kemper: At the time, I wanted my case to look like random killings, unrelated. As you know, there was no real understanding of serial killing at the time. And when I told the police, they asked me how many people I thought I could have killed in the fashion that I did, out of the approximately 1,000 individuals that got in my car over a three-year period that I was out there.

Edmund Kemper: This being a hobby, a side hobby of mine, [unclear: "I'm just driving around, I love to drive" / "I was driving around, I loved to drive"] and picking up anybody who wanted a ride. And then later on, focusing on more difficult cases, people I was convinced wouldn't want to get in, because I'm a single male, young adult, two-car, two, excuse me, two-door car. They're not going to want to get in and ride with me. I made that a challenge, almost like a chess game. And the more clever they got about checking me out ahead of time, the more clever I got about appearing innocuous, and in a hurry, and a businessman.

Edmund Kemper: And the best one for assuaging that last check of me was just a glance at my watch, and looked slightly irritated, and, oh well, I guess I can stop and give this person a ride. It seemed to have a very positive effect, even with the most sophisticated hitchers, which included the Pesce and Luchessa girls, first two victims.

Interviewer: [unclear: "So Rudy" / "So, truly"], you're a psychologist in your own right, from the standpoint of how to size up people, how they'll respond to you.

Edmund Kemper: [unclear: "I'm a sociologist" / "What about sociologists"], and at a very lay level, well, a psychiatrist is looking for pathology. I was looking for ways to influence people.

Interviewer: Okay. ---