(tense music) (dramatic music) - [Narrator] In the early 1970s, the idyllic Californian
seaside town of Santa Cruz would be plunged into panic. - One day there would be a
body part found somewhere, or washing in from the ocean. - [Narrator] Innocent young women were being raped,
murdered and dismembered. - He picked up a sack with the remains and then heaved it over. - [Narrator] And all the while, the elusive killer was right
under the noses of the cops that pursued him. - He had a great personality. He was a likable guy. - [Narrator] What kind of man could commit such heinous crimes? - He would have oral sex
with the decapitated head. - [Narrator] Was he a terrible
product of his environment? - His mother would lock him
in the basement room at night because she had this idea that he could possibly
sexually assault his sisters. - [Narrator] Or was the
Co-ed Butcher born to kill? - He just erupted. Ah! (gentle music) - Santa Cruz up through the 60s was a small beach town. It was a surf town and
it was a retirement town. Then the university popped
onto the scene in 1965. It was the dawn of the hippies,
of the Age of Aquarius. So there was a very free
and easy feel to life here. - A lot of the counterculture
that essentially bled over from San Francisco area came down here. A lot of the so-called, the hippie types, ended up forming communes
here in Santa Cruz County. And that was attractive
to a lot of young people, and including young girls. And people were coming
from all over the country just to live that free
and liberating lifestyle. - [Narrator] But in 1972, the peace in Santa Cruz
would be shattered. - All of a sudden there
were bodies being washed in on the ocean. There were grisly discoveries, and the thought was from
a lot of people in town, what the hell is happening
to our little paradise? - We were dealing with a lot
of missing person reports. - It became clear that
somebody was killing young co-ed hitchhikers. - [Narrator] 18-year-old
Fresno college student Anita Luchessa vanishes. - A severed head found in the mountain. - It was just the skull, we had no body. - [Narrator] Mary Anne Pesce, an 18-year-old co-ed and
talented skier disappears. - It became a very confusing time for homicide investigators. - [Narrator] 15-year-old ballet
dancer Aiko Koo abducted. - It would just seem
like a world gone crazy. - [Narrator] Cindy Schall,
18-years-old, and babysitting to earn her way through
college, goes missing. - I remember at the time
very much wanting to get him, I mean get him off the streets,
catch him, put him away. - [Narrator] The media
christened the mystery killer the Co-ed Butcher. - Whenever we see somebody
under the age of 18 who was hitchhiking, we would pick them up and
take them to juvenile hall. And there became a big outcry of that, that we were violating
their right to hitchhike. But the reality is that we were just trying
to save their lives. - [Narrator] And it went on. 23-year-old Rosalind Thorpe vanishes from the Santa Cruz campus. - Every time we have a
missing person report we're just fearful that
this was going to be another homicide victim. - [Narrator] And 21-year-old
student Alison Liu disappears forever. - We had no clue as to who was doing this. - They didn't know what
the hell was going on, and indiscriminate murder cases
are extremely hard to solve because there's no rhyme nor reason. - Because the culture at the time was, there was a lot of drugs going on here and a lot of the
so-called hippie movement. I suppose, individually,
we may have thought it may have had something to do with that. - [Narrator] In April 1973, as part of a routine firearms inquiry, Detective Michael Aluffi
would come face-to-face, not with a drug crazed hippie, but with a short haired,
conservative young man, popular with local police. - The sheriff's office that
I worked for at the time received a, what we call
a dealer's record of sale. - One of our records clerks
brought back to us a file card and said, you know, this
guy just tried to buy a gun and his record was expunged, but I could see through the blackout that he was involved in
a murder in Madera County some years ago. - [Narrator] Affectionately
known as Big Ed, the 25-year-old, six foot nine inch, 280 pound Edmund Kemper, was a regular fixture at
cops' bar, The Jury Room. - He would come down to
a local watering hole that us police officers,
we go to after work, and hang out and talk with us. (voices chatting) He was, had a great personality. He was very friendly, very outgoing, and he was a likable guy. - The discussion became well who's gonna go take
the gun away from this guy because when you look at
his dealer's record of sale, he's six feet eight and
a half and 285 pounds. So he's a pretty big guy. So being the junior
detective, I drew the straw. (tense music) There was some apprehension involved, just due to the guy's size. Big man, big gun, and little old me. - [Narrator] Although
unfamiliar to Aluffi, the gun owner was definitely
not considered a suspect in the Co-ed Killings. Big Ed lived with his mother on a pleasant, peaceful suburban street. But the address was unclear. - We parked right there
and we looked around. Couldn't find much of anything. There were several places that had basically the same address, so we weren't sure which one was his. We were, I'm just guessing at this point, right around this point right here, when a car came around the
curve and pulled up right there where that car is. I told Don, I said "Let me go ask this guy if he knows where Kemper is." So as I approached the car,
there was a gentleman in the car lying across the front
seat with the door open, and he was fiddling
underneath the dashboard. And I was just about to this
point when I said "Excuse me, I'd like to speak with you for a second." When he got out of the
car, he got out of the car, and he got out of the car
and he got out of the car. And immediately I knew
that this was Mr. Kemper, the man I was looking for,
'cause he towered over me and I'm six feet tall. So from here I explained that, you know, what we needed to do. We needed to take his weapon, to make sure that he was
authorized to have that legally. We came to the trunk and he
had his keys in his pocket, and he went to put the key in there. And so my partner and I instinctively, whether it be instinct
or training, separated. And I came around to this
side of the car, on the trunk, and my partner was on the other side, and we had our hands on the guns. The only thing that was
in the trunk was a bundle, like in a blanket of some sort, a towel. He started to reach in for it
and I said no, wait a minute, let me get it. I reached in the trunk, got the bundle, and inside of that was the
weapon we were looking for. And I noticed there was
nothing in the truck, no liner in the trunk or anything. I thought that was a little strange. But we took the handgun and we left. - [Narrator] Aluffi handed
the gun in at the station and thought no more about it. Two weeks later, five
o'clock in the morning, Officer Jim Conner is on the night shift when he overhears a colleague taking a call from the gun owner. - Knowing Ed, I got on the
phone and we started talking. I could tell that something wasn't right. He was in Pueblo, Colorado. He was in a phone booth and he hadn't had any
sleep for several days. And he said he had done
something really bad. He said that he had killed his
mother and a friend of hers. He said that they were at his house. And he asked me if I knew
Mickey Aluffi and I said yes. And he says, well, my
house is hard to find. Mickey knows how to find it very easily because he had been out there
and had confiscated a gun. - [Narrator] Officers
contacted Detective Aluffi at his home. - I'm standing there
getting all this information and giving all this information, and I have this tremendous feeling of all of the blood just
rushing out of my body. It was just oh my God, this is unreal. One of the deputies broke the back window, which is on the other side
of the sliding glass door. And then we started looking to see if we could locate the bodies. In the closet we pulled back a sheet and we saw some hair and some blood. (downbeat music) - [Narrator] Then Big Ed Kemper
made a startling confession. - He made comments to Jim
Conner on the telephone that he had killed all of the co-eds too. - [Narrator] Taken into custody,
24-year-old Edmund Kemper would then reveal an
extraordinary and sickening tale. (tense music) In the early 1970s, the Californian beach resort of Santa Cruz had been stunned by the
mysterious disappearance of a series of young college girls, and a catalog of gruesome discoveries. Then in April 1973, 24-year-old, six foot nine inch Edmund
Kemper unexpectedly confessed that he was the infamous Co-ed Butcher, and that he now had a
tally of 10 murder victims to his name. Taken into custody, he would now reveal his
extraordinary story. - The Co-ed Killer had
such a fascinating life. - [Narrator] Born in 1948, Edmund Kemper was the
middle child of three. - His mother and his father were very strict disciplinarians. There was no leeway, one way or the other. - [Narrator] Growing up
in Burbank, California, Kemper looked up to his father, but had difficulties with
his mother, Clarnell. - She was a punitive person
that he resented greatly. - She was harsh, aggressive. Putting him down, I think,
when he was younger. Call it verbally abusive, I don't know. But very aggressive verbally. - [Narrator] In 1957, after
years of unhappy marriage, the nine-year-old
Edmund's parents divorced. Clarnell, Edmund and his
two sisters moved away. Kemper was already behaving oddly. - He showed a lot of pathology as a child. He would cut off the heads
of his sisters' dolls. In other ways deform the dolls. - At 10, he had made a comment that if he ever had to kiss his teacher he would have to kill her. And when you think about
a nine and 10-year-old, at that point, having that
kind of a thought process, you begin to wonder, you
know, what is it about him? - [Narrator] The young
Kemper was developing a violent fantasy life. He moved from dismembering
dolls to harming animals. He admitted once burying a cat alive, later digging its body up to play with. - There's many many
serial sexual murderers that have a background of killing cats, torturing cats, tormenting cats. Why cats? Because cats are a female symbol. - [Narrator] Kemper was
showing warning signs that the FBI have since identified as common amongst a
number of serial killers. - Basically, you're
dealing with a young male that is engaged in
fantasies that are abhorrent and destructive and
violent, before adolescence. You're looking at an individual
that has a broken home, a cold and distant mother. An absent father, through
divorce or just abandonment. They get into animal torturing. There are patterns that are identifiable. - [Narrator] Kemper grew
taller, stronger and stranger. - His mother put him in the basement room and would lock him in at night,
because she had this idea that he could possibly
sexually assault his sisters. - He described it as having
a cot and a sleeping bag and a light hanging down from the ceiling, with just a bare bulb on a string. Talked about it as being a very
difficult time in his life. Very scary. He could hear rats
running around at night. That kind of thing. - [Narrator] As a teenager,
Kemper left his mother, heading to Los Angeles to
seek out the dad he idolized. - He had hoped to go and
live with his father. He described to me that
when he went there, he was rejected by his father. - [Narrator] Edmund Kemper
was sent to live with his paternal grandparents
on their remote farm. Here, the troubled
teenager's violent fantasies would be realized for the first time. - He found his grandmother
to be an authoritarian and a disciplinarian, like his mother. - His grandfather was
out shopping or whatever and he took a 22 and shot
and killed his grandmother. (tense music) When he realized his
grandfather would be coming home and finding his wife
dead, they were elderly, he decided he couldn't
allow his grandfather to go through that trauma. So when his grandfather came
in he shot and killed him. - He said he didn't want
the grandfather to suffer, knowing that his wife was dead. It's the most bizarre statement. I mean, you don't go out
and just shoot somebody to keep them from finding
out that their wife is dead. (waves crashing) - [Narrator] Kemper was diagnosed
a paranoid schizophrenic, and sent to the secure
Atascadero State Hospital. - That was a very harmful place for him to be institutionalized. He certainly learned a lot of bad things. - [Narrator] Dr. William Schanberger was one of the facility's staff. - In those days we had 1600
patients in the hospital. There were probably several dozen people who had committed murder. 800 mentally disordered sex offenders. We had psychology staff
of only 10 people or so. - [Narrator] Although
not Kemper's therapist, Schanberger would have regular
contact with the inmate. - Ed is a bright fellow, and that was obvious when
you were talking with him. He was kind of a model patient. - [Narrator] The likable Kemper soon became a trusted assistant
to the psychology staff that dealt with the
hundreds of sex offenders. - He had so much access to the records and there would be detailed
descriptions of the methods used in carrying out the crimes,
techniques of deception. - Remember he was 15 when he
went into the mental hospital, and he really had never had
any sexual experience at all. (gentle music) - Generally, what you'll find is that the child will pursue
these violent fantasies. And in adolescence, the sexual
element will come on board and they will have sexual fantasies that develop along the lines
of using people as an object rather than a partner. They want to do something to
somebody, not with somebody. - He had a fantasy life. He described himself as masturbating numerous times during the day when he was in the mental hospital. - [Narrator] As part of his duties, Kemper had access to the hospital's psychological test papers. - Kemper was very smart. He knew what psychiatrists and
psychologist wanted to hear. He knew all the criteria
for different diagnoses. They treated him, and I think
they thought they cured him. (tense music) - [Narrator] After five
years in the secure hospital, Edmund Kemper, now 20-years-old and six feet nine inches
tall, was released. (downbeat music) - He was discharged, by the
way, to the youth authority, with the recommendation not for
him to live with his mother. Unfortunately the youth authority
didn't follow that advice and he wound up living with his mother. - His social life, I'd
say, was very inadequate, as he described it. He felt particularly
inadequate around women. So I think he was lonely. - Here is a young man, he's 21, 22, and he probably never
had a date in his life. Probably have the usual interest and needs to connect with women. What can you tell someone about yourself? That I murdered my grandparents and I was in a mental hospital for the last five years of my life. I can't imagine how difficult
it would've had to be. That doesn't excuse anything, but it in my mind describes the situation. So he started picking up co-eds and some of them he wound up murdering, and doing even worse things at times. - [Narrator] In custody, Edmund Kemper would
reveal to investigators the full horror of his
extraordinary crimes, in minute and graphic detail. - It's about as serious and complex series of sexual pathologies
as I've come across. - He said a lot of things, that
they're kind of disturbing. - [Narrator] In 1973, after
the disappearance and murder of half a dozen young college girls, detectives held Edmund Kemper in custody. And the six foot nine inch
killer was eager to talk. Leading detectives to
the scenes of his crimes, he would explain his
murders in chilling detail to anybody who'd listen. - He talked and talked and talked, and just gave every bit of information you could ever dream of. And he goes into great detail about the things that
he did to these girls. - Most of the serial
killers I've worked with fall into two distinct types. One group of serial killers
will never like to talk about their offending behavior at all. Whereas the second group of serial killers are desperate to talk about their killing. They're desperate to be
at the heart of the story. - He said a lot of things that
they're kind of disturbing. - [Narrator] Investigators learned how Kemper had taken months to develop his strategy for abduction. - [Michael] He spent a
lot of time traveling all over central California,
and even down into Los Angeles. And what he would do is
he would find hitchhikers and he would essentially
do a practice run. - As he would drive off
with the young women, he would look over at them, think about fondling their breasts, and have great sexual
curiosity about them. - [Narrator] Over numerous trips, Kemper honed his harmless
persona and perfected his plans. Only then did he feel confident enough to act out his fantasies. (gentle music) On the 7th of May 1972, Edmund Kemper picked up
two 18-year-old friends, Mary Anne Pesce and Anita Luchessa, near the university campus in Berkeley - They would get in the
car and he would drive off and immediately he would say oh, I don't think your car door is closed. And he's huge, he's a big man. He could reach all the way
across the car, open it, close it, and then he
would drop a chapstick behind that mechanism. So if they became afraid,
or they wanted to get out, it wouldn't allow the mechanism to work. - [Narrator] Kemper drove
them to a remote spot. He told detectives that
holding the girls at gunpoint, he had forced Anita to
climb into the trunk. He then returned to the car and stabbed Mary Anne until she was dead. (gentle music) - Just think about Anita
Luchessa in the trunk, listening to her best friend being stabbed and hearing her screaming. I mean, you know, it's pretty,
pretty heavy stuff actually. - [Narrator] Kemper then opened
the trunk and killed Anita. He took the dead girls to
an apartment he was renting. There he dismembered them, before dumping their
remains in the mountains. All the while the police
hunted the mysterious Co-ed Butcher, the seemingly
harmless Edmund Kemper was sitting next to them
in their favorite bar. - I remember Ed being
there on many occasions, especially during the
time of the homicides that were going on. He would come in and have
a few beers with the guys. He was a likable guy. - While he was with them
he was able to think about here I am, an ongoing murderer, and they don't know anything about it and they fully accept
me, I'm one of the boys. He was a police groupie actually, is the best way of describing it. - Many serial sexual murderers have a fascination with police. That's part of their psychology. And they do that for a
number of different reasons. To hang out with them was one, but they also sometimes can
follow the investigation and see if they're
talking about it at all. This is very stimulating for them. - It was just talk about,
you know, a girl found here, a girl found there, and body
parts washed up on shore. This kind of thing. It was a conversation among the guys, when we were at The Jury Room. - [Narrator] On the
14th of September 1972, Kemper spotted 15-year-old ballet student Aiko Koo hitchhiking. She'd missed her bus and was worried about being
late for a dance class. - She had made a sign
because she missed the bus. She needed to get to San Francisco. She was very young,
small, easy to overpower. Got in the car, he drove across
the Bay to San Francisco. But unfortunately for her just kept going. This little girl was terrified, obviously. - [Narrator] Kemper bound, gagged, and then suffocated his captive. But it was only when Kemper
took his victims' bodies home that he could fully act
out his twisted fantasies. - With most of them, he would
actually have intercourse with the dead women. He would have sex with her entire body, then sometimes also
with a decapitated body. And then sometimes he would have oral sex with the decapitated head. (downbeat music) - It's not unusual for a serial murderer to have sexual actions
with a decapitated body. Because it's not a person to them. To them it's an object. - I have the power to do
anything I want with this woman. She's mine. And I can do anything
that I'm curious about. Do anything I've only dreamed about doing. And nobody can do anything about it. Power is a big part of it, but extreme sexual pathology's another. - [Narrator] In order to evade detection, Kemper would separate
his victim's body parts and dump them in different locations. One spot, just minutes from
Detective Terry Medina's home. - When I did find out that he was up here, that was, that made me reflect on my wife. We had two small kids up here and she would be home alone a lot. So that gave me kind of a funny feeling in the pit of your stomach. He was a predator. Well this is, would be
approximately the place that Kemper parked the car. Very remote. It was even more remote 30
years ago than it is today. There was nothing up here then, it was just in the mountains. Picked up a sack and then
carried it right to the edge. And remember, there was no fence here. Heaved it over, and that
was the remains of Aiko Koo. Of all of these murders, that's the one that I
think affects me the most, as I think about it. I mean they're all brutal, but that one just seemed to stick with me. There's some, those of
us that do murder cases, there was always some that
seem to get inside you. - [Narrator] Kemper would
go on to claim the lives of three more co-ed hitchhikers. 23-year-old Rosalind Thorpe. 21-year-old Alison Liu. And 18-year-old Cindy Schall, babysitter to police
officer Jim Conner's kids. - She was young. She needed money like anyone else. She was very pleasant. And knowing that she was a
student at the university, we felt very safe, that we could trust her with our children. He had shot her with a 22. - [Narrator] Kemper took
Cindy's body to his bedroom in his mother's apartment. - He had dismembered her, but in his mind there was
some relationship there. He had an attachment and he kept her head. - [Narrator] Kemper told
detectives he'd hidden Cindy's head in his mother's backyard,
beneath his bedroom window. - He buried it, it was about two feet down in the backyard, facing
his bedroom window, so that there was some
connection, in his mind. - It was unbelievable
because Ed seemed like, excuse the phrase, a gentle giant, with a very nice personality
and likable kind of guy. That he could be responsible
for something like that. (waves crashing) - [Narrator] In addition to
the murder of his grandparents, Edmund Kemper had taken the
lives of six young women. Next, he would commit a murder
he'd dreamed of all his life. By March of 1973, six feet
nine inch Edmund Kemper had kidnapped and murdered
six female co-eds, without attracting suspicion. But in April, Detective
Michael Aluffi's routine visit to confiscate a firearm had unwittingly sent the
suspicious Kemper into panic. - This whole process of me
taking the handgun away from him, he was under the impression that I was playing cat and mouse with him. - He thought we were playing a game, that we really knew he was the murderer. - [Narrator] Kemper worried
his mother, Clarnell, would now learn of his actions. - He did not want her to
suffer the embarrassment of what he did. - [Narrator] Edmund Kemper resolved to finally commit a crime
he had fantasized about since he was a child. - He got up at four o'clock
in the morning, took a hammer, went into his mother's bedroom. Just jammed that hammer
through her head several times. That was a very messy murder. - [Narrator] Kemper's mother
would suffer the same fate as the young co-eds, and more. - He cut off her head and then he inserted his
penis into her mouth. - Put it on the mantle above the fireplace and just yelled and screamed at it. And at times he threw darts at her face. He talked about all the
time she had screamed at him and yelled at him or belittled him. - He cut out her vocal cords
and tried to destroy them in the garbage disposal unit at the sink, because it was her chastising
him, using those vocal cords, that so bothered him. - [Narrator] Fearing his mother's death would soon be discovered
by her best friend, Kemper invited her to the house,
murdered her and then fled. It was only after driving
for three days without rest that he called the police
and gave himself up. Detective Medina was sent
to the mother's apartment to process the crime scene. - When we arrived, there
was nothing disturbed. It looked like somebody
had just left on vacation. We flipped over the mattress and of course it was soaked with blood. And there was a note there. He left a note that said
"Sorry gents for the mess but really had no time." That's the first time in my career, and I've been in this business 43 years, that the suspect left the cops a note. - [Narrator] The bodies of Kemper's mother and her best friend had been carefully hidden in two closets. In October 1973, Edmund Kemper would be
tried for multiple murder. Both prosecution and defense
searched for the answer to the question on everyone's lips. - Why would this large,
friendly, cooperative guy, why would he kill all these people? - [Narrator] Defense
investigator Harold Cartwright spent over a hundred
hours interviewing Kemper. - I never at all felt
threatened at any time by 260 pounds or something. Six foot eight or whatever. He's an enormous man. But he was just sort
of like a gentle giant. - [Narrator] But it
seems Kemper's demeanor with the opposite sex may
have been very different. Cameron Jackson, a graduate
psychology student at the time, was asked to perform a standard
personality test on him. - I was the only person
in the room with him, and I read the questions to him
and he was very cooperative. And then suddenly, just
out of the blue, he simply, he both sort of started to
get up and he just erupted like a volcano, of ah, like that, and his hands and everything. And I just went like that, backwards. And in immediately came
one or two policemen who calmed everything down. It was just so fast. It was such an overwhelming rush of anger and emotion and fury. I don't really remember
the exact question now that I was asking, but I'm sure it had
something to do with women. And I was a woman asking him questions. (gentle music) - [Narrator] In the courtroom, Kemper's taped confessions
were played aloud. - I recall sitting in the trial, listening to the taped
confession of Kemper and looking around and seeing
the face on the parents of the murdered girls. Just the shock and agony and
what they had gone through. - In the coverage of
these terrible crimes, I think the most neglected
aspect are the victims. There's a brief mention
of their names usually. These were all young college girls. They were working towards a career. They might have chosen to have a family. All of that is lost when
a murderer comes along and takes them away. - What a tragedy in those families where a young woman was
murdered and taken away. The tragedy of that is as much alive today as it was back in 1972. - [Narrator] on the 8th of November, Edmund Kemper was found guilty of eight counts of first degree murder, and sentenced to life imprisonment. So what drove Kemper to take the lives of 10 innocent victims? Was it his broken family life, and the alleged emotional
abuse from his mother? Or was he simply born to kill? - He only once said something like it was the way I could control them. And that's the only thing he ever said, the entire time I dealt with him, that had anything to do
with why he did what he did. - Ed Kemper is the classic sociopath. - He feels no guilt. It's all about him. No compassion whatsoever. - It's very difficult to say how he looked at what he was doing. Would a person who walked into a butcher have remorse about cutting up a chicken? I don't know, I doubt it. And I think that's what he looked at. An object that he could dismember. - You know, you look at
him and you say okay, something happened,
his wiring was crossed. He had a chemical imbalance. He had something. And then you look at him and you say no, this is strictly environmental. You know, the way he grew up, all the life experiences that he had led him to the point that he becomes this serial mass murderer. Maybe he was killing his
mother all along, who knows? - I think when we're all
studying serial murderers, we wanna find something to blame. It's gotta be this
crazy mother that he had who locked him in the cellar, but she must have felt something. People who are around serial
killers for a period of time will pick up some type of a feeling, they can't describe it. But they know something. - There are genetic
and biological factors. There are sociological factors. And there are complex
psychological factors. All of which interact, and,
if we're gonna ever reduce and prevent these things, we have to attack it on all these levels. - I don't think anybody is born to kill. I think everybody is born with a series of pluses and
minuses in their makeup, both physically and
mentally and emotionally. I think that things happen to people. Most people are able to
cope with it, deal with it. Some people are not. - [Narrator] Several years after Kemper had been incarcerated, a parcel arrived at the
home of psychiatrist Dr. William Schanberger, who'd been friendly
with the teenage Edmund. - I received in the mail
this cup from Ed Kemper. Ed said that it took him
about a year to make. And it's a very, very complex, it's like a battered cup. And on the cup is written,
also, "I beg your pardon." And on the bottom, "I never
promised you a rose garden." Meaning to be, I think,
a very serious apology. - I think there is a side of him that would have given anything
to be a normal person. I could see that in him, I could see it while he was testifying. There's a part of Ed Kemper that is as horrified and as
disgusted with what he did as the rest of us are. - I'm sure that there's no
part of him that is happy with what he wound up doing. (tense music)
Nature and nurture. They almost ALWAYS have some messed up story with their upbringing, specifically with their mom.