Blueprint for a Monster - Edmund Kempers Genius Level IQ and Ten Murders

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A teenager sits alone in the basement of his mother's house in Montana holding a severed

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cat's head in his hands.

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He's already killed his grandparents.

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He's 6'4" and 13" old.

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Decades later, the FBI will call him one of the most important interviews they've ever

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conducted.

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This is True Crime Blueprint.

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So let me tell you about Edmund Kemper because his story is probably one of the most important

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cases in the entire history of criminal investigation.

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And I know that sounds like a bold statement.

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But stick with me here because this is genuinely the case that helped build the foundation for

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everything we understand about serial killers today.

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Edmund Kemper, the third, was born in Burbank, California on December 18, 1948 and from the

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very beginning he was different.

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He weighed 13 pounds at birth, which is already pretty unusual.

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That's a big-ass baby and by the time he was 4 years old, he was significantly taller than

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every other kid his age.

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By adolescence, he'd reach 6'9".

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That kind of physical difference matters when you're a kid.

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It isolates you, makes you stand out in ways that you don't necessarily want to stand out.

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But the size thing was only part of the problem.

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The real damage was happening at home and it was relentless.

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After his parents divorced, Ed ended up living with his mother, Clare Nell, and his two younger

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sisters.

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They moved to Montana for a while before coming back to California.

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And Clare Nell was, by every account we have, an absolute nightmare of a parent.

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She was an alcoholic.

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She was verbally abusive and she seemed to genuinely believe that her son was some kind

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of dangerous creature that needed to be contained.

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She was afraid of him, or at least that's what she told herself.

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Maybe it was his size.

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Maybe it was his temperament.

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Whatever the reason, she made him sleep in the basement.

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Locked down there at night because she was worried that he might hurt his sisters.

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So here's this kid, already dealing with being physically different from everyone else.

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I'm sure being picked on and teased, already dealing with his parents' divorce, and now

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his own mother is treating him like he's a troll, keeping him locked up downstairs like a monster,

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telling him essentially that there's something fundamentally wrong with him.

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The psychological impact of that kind of treatment is hard to overstate.

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When a parent tells you that you're dangerous, that you're wrong, that you need to be isolated

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from normal people, you start to believe it, and for Edmund, that belief took root early

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and deep.

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Now if you know anything about the psychology of violent offenders, you've probably heard

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something called the McDonald Triad.

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It's a set of three behaviors that researchers identified as potential early warning signs

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for future violent behavior.

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Those three things are bed-wedding, beyond the normal age, fire-setting, and cruelty to animals.

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Edmund Kemper, how many do you think he had?

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Bingo.

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He had all three.

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He was killing animals as a child.

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Cats specifically.

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He would capture them, torture them, kill them, and then mutilate their bodies.

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At one point, he buried a family cat alive in the backyard.

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Then he later dug it up, cut its head off, and mounted the head on a stick.

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He kept that in his room.

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When his mother eventually found it, she got rid of it.

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He killed another cat, cut it into pieces with a machete.

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This is a kid who is already deeply disturbed.

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The really chilling part is that he wasn't hiding it particularly well.

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He was playing these bizarre games with his sisters where he'd pretend to be executed in

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a gas chamber, asking them to pull an imaginary lever and then acting out his own death.

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He'd later take their dolls and tear off the heads in the hands, which is disturbingly

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specific and extremely telling when you look at what he does later on.

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But nobody intervened in a meaningful way.

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His mother was too busy being angry and drunk, and thinking he was a troll, keeping him downstairs,

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his father had basically disappeared, so Ed kept marinating in this toxic environment,

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and the violent fantasies kept building.

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By the time he was a teenager, those fantasies had a very specific focus.

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He'd stand on the side of the road and imagine picking up female hitchhikers.

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He'd think about what he would do to them.

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Now, me as someone who formerly participated in a lot of sports, the coach would always

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tell you to, before the games, visualize what you want to do, visualize doing it perfectly,

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visualize that was the key word and all of that.

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And this is what Ed was doing.

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He would visualize picking up female hitchhikers and then doing whatever he wanted to do to them,

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where he would take them, how he would kill them.

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The fact that he was already rehearsing these scenarios in his mind over and over meant

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that when he finally acted on him, he'd already have worked through the logistics.

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He'd already made peace with what he was planning to do.

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Edmund was 15 years old.

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He was living with his paternal grandparents at this point, Edmund and Maud Kemper, on their

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ranch in North Fork, California.

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His mother had basically shipped him off because she couldn't handle him anymore, and honestly,

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he was probably relieved to have him out of the house.

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On August 27, 1964, Edmund got into an argument with his grandmother.

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The details of what started the fight aren't entirely clear, and Ed's own explanations

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have varied over the years.

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But what we know for certain is that at some point during that argument, he picked up a

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22 caliber rifle and shot her in the head and then shot her twice more in the back.

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His grandmother was dead in the kitchen, and Edmund's first thought, reportedly, was that his

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grandfather was going to be really upset when he got home.

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So Ed decided the best solution was to kill his grandfather too.

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When the older man pulled up to the house, Ed met him outside and shot him before he even

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made it to the front door.

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Then he called his mother.

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Not to police.

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His mother.

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He told her what he had done, and she told him to call the authorities, which he did.

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When the police arrived, Ed's explanation for why he killed his grandparents was chilling

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in its simplicity.

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He said he wanted to see what it felt like to kill grandma.

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The murder of his grandfather was purely practical.

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He thought his grandfather would be upset, so he eliminated that problem.

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The courts didn't know what to do with the 15-year-old who'd committed double homicide.

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He was too young to be tried as an adult under California law at the time, so he was sent

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to a Tess Cidero State Hospital, a maximum security psychiatric facility.

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He would spend the next five years there, and during that time he was extensively evaluated

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by psychiatrists and psychologists.

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Here's the thing that's important to understand.

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Edmund Kemper was terrifyingly intelligent.

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His IQ tested somewhere in the 140s, which puts him near the genius range, and he was articulate,

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charismatic even when he wanted to be.

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So the people evaluating him were impressed with how much insight he seemed to have into

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his own behavior.

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He participated in therapy.

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He answered questions thoughtfully.

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He seemed to be making progress.

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And in 1969, the state decided he was no longer a danger to society.

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The California Youth Authority recommended he'd be released back into the custody of his

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mother.

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Yes, the same mother who had spent his entire childhood telling him he was a monster,

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unlocking him in the basement.

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The same mother who represented virtually every source of psychological trauma in his

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developmental years.

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That's who they released him to.

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Multiple psychiatrists objected to this decision.

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They said explicitly that Ed should not be released to his mother's care, that it's

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a very dangerous situation that he needed continued supervision.

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But the Youth Authority overruled them.

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And in 1969, Edmund Kemper moved back in with his mother in Santa Cruz, California.

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For about three years, Edmund seemed to be living a relatively normal life.

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He was working various jobs, trying to figure out what he wanted to do.

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He was obsessed with law enforcement.

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He wanted to be a cop, actually applied to be a state trooper, but Ed was too big.

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He was too tall.

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The height restrictions at the time wouldn't allow for someone six foot nine.

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The damn uniforms didn't even fit.

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So instead, he started hanging around the bars where the local cops would hang out, where

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the local officers would come to drink.

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He became friendly with them, learned how they talked, how they thought, what kind of evidence

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they look for at crime scenes.

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He was also heavily involved with his motorcycle.

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He'd been in a serious accident in 1970 that left him with lingering injuries.

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And he'd received a decent settlement from that.

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So he had money, he had independence, and he had a lot of time to think.

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In this period, he was still living with his mother, and their relationship was as toxic

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as ever.

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She berated him constantly, criticized everything about him, made him feel small, despite his

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enormous physical size.

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And those old fantasies about picking up hitchhikers started coming back.

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Except now, they were getting more detailed, or specific, and he had the means to act on

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them.

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In 1972, he started what he called his "practice runs".

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He'd pick up female hitchhikers, usually college students from UC Santa Cruz or Cabrillo College,

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and he'd drive them to their destination.

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He wasn't hurting them.

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He was testing whether he could do it, whether they would get into the car with him, how comfortable

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they seemed in the car with him, but they talked about.

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He was gathering data, essentially, learning the rhythms of how these interactions worked.

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Remember Ed is crazy smart, with an analytical brain, and because he was this big, friendly-looking

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guy who drove a decent car and seemed harmless, women got in.

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They trusted him.

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Some of them even accepted rides from him multiple times.

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He became a familiar face around the campus.

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Some students started calling him "big-ed".

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Marianne Pesky was 18 years old.

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Anita Lucasa was also 18.

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They were both freshmen at Fresno State College, and they were hitchhiking back to campus

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after visiting friends at Stanford University.

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Edmund Kempere picked them up near Berkeley on the afternoon of May 7, 1972.

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He didn't take them where they wanted to go.

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He pulled off onto a rural road, produced a gun, and forced them into the trunk of his car.

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He then drove them to a secluded area in the mountains.

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He brought Marianne out first, tried to suffocate her with a plastic bag, and when that didn't

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work quickly enough, he stabbed her repeatedly.

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Then he brought out Anita and stabbed her to death as well.

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He put both bodies back into the trunk of his car and drove to his apartment.

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His mother wasn't home.

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He brought the bodies inside, photographed them, and sexually assaulted their corpses.

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Then he dismembered them.

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He kept some of the body parts for a while, and eventually disposed of them in different

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locations around the Santa Cruz Mountains.

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The police found some of these remains within weeks, but they had no suspects.

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No witnesses had seen the women get into Ed Kempere's car.

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There was no physical evidence connecting him to the scene.

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And because he'd scattered the remains, it was difficult for investigators to even establish

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a clear timeline or cause of death.

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15-year-old Ico Koo was hitchhiking to a dance class in San Francisco when Kempere picked

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her up.

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He drove her to a remote area, suffocated her, and then raped her corpse.

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He kept her body in his apartment overnight before dismembering it the next day.

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One of the most disturbing details of this case is what happened after this murder.

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Kempere had a psychiatric evaluation scheduled.

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This was part of his ongoing supervision from his time at a Tess Cidero.

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And he showed up for that evaluation with Ico Koo's severed head in the trunk of his

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car.

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He passed the evaluation.

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The psychiatrist noted that he seemed well-adjusted, and that he was making great progress,

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recommended that his juvenile record be sealed.

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Meanwhile, there was a human head decomposing in the trunk of his car right there in the parking

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lot.

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That tells you something about how good he was at presenting a false front.

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How well he understood what people wanted to see and to hear.

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19-year-old Cindy Shaw was a student at Cabrio College.

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She unfortunately accepted a ride from Ed Kempere, and he shot her in the head, killed her,

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brought her body back to his apartment.

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His mother was home that night, sleeping in the next room while he dismembered Cindy's

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body in his bedroom.

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He put the pieces in plastic bags and left them in his closet overnight.

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The next morning, after his mother went to work, he finished disposing of the remains.

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He threw most of them off cliffs into the ocean.

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The buried Cindy's head and his mother's garden, facing up toward her bedroom window.

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He later said that he did that because his mother had always wanted people to look up to

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her.

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Roslyn Thorpe was 23, a senior at UC Santa Cruz.

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Alice Lou was 21, also a student.

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They were hitchhiking together when Kempere picked them up.

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He shot them both, put their bodies in the trunk, and drove around with them for a while.

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He even stopped at a bar where his cop friends hung out, had a couple of beers, chatted with

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the officers inside while they were two dead women in his trunk.

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Then he went home, brought the bodies inside, and went through his usual ritual of sexual

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assaults, dismemberment, and disposal.

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On the night of April 20, 1973, Edmund Kempere finally did what he probably had been building

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toward his entire life.

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He walked into his mother's bedroom while she was sleeping and beat her to death with a

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claw hammer.

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Then he decapitated her and raped her severed head.

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He cut out her larynx and tried to put it down the garbage disposal, which he later said

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seemed appropriate given how much she verbally abused him over the years.

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But her body was in the house, and he knew he needed to buy some time for himself.

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So he called one of his mother's friends Sarah Hallett and invited her over for dinner.

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When she arrived, he killed her too.

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Then he took his mother's car and drove east.

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He made it all the way to Colorado before he stopped.

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And then, for reasons that still aren't entirely clear, he pulled over at a payphone in

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Pueblo and called the Santa Cruz police.

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He told him who he was and what he had done.

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They didn't believe him at first.

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He had to call back over and over, insisting that he was the co-ed killer they'd been looking

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for.

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Before they finally took him seriously and sent officers to arrest him.

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After his arrest, Edmund Kempere gave extensive confessions.

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He walked investigators through every single murder in meticulous detail, where he'd picked

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the women up, what he'd said to them, how he killed them, what he'd done with the bodies.

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And he did all of this calmly, articulately, almost clinically.

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The trial was relatively straightforward given his confessions.

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He was found guilty on eight counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

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But the real significance of Edmund Kempere wasn't what happened in the courtroom.

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It was what happened afterward.

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In the late 1970s, two FBI agents, named John Douglas and Robert Ressler, started conducting

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interviews with incarcerated violent offenders as a part of an ambitious new project.

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They wanted to understand how serial killers thought, what motivated them.

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How they selected their victims, how they avoided detection.

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The goal was to develop a systematic way to profile unknown offenders based on behavioral

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evidence from crime scenes.

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This was revolutionary.

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Before this, criminal investigation was almost entirely focused on physical evidence.

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Fingerprints, blood spatter, witness statements.

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The idea that you could look at how a crime was committed and use that to infer psychological

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characteristics of the offender was brand new.

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And Edmund Kempere became one of their most valuable suspects.

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He was brilliant.

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He was articulate and he had absolutely no reason to hide anything anymore.

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He'd already been convicted.

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He was never getting out, so he talked to them for hours and hours, explaining his thought

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processes, his fantasies, his techniques.

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He told them all about the practice runs with hitchhikers.

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He explained how he'd selected victims based on vulnerability and opportunity.

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He described the importance of controlling the situation, of making sure the victim was

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isolated before revealing his true intentions.

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He talked about the sexual components of the crimes.

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How the violence and the sexual gratification were completely intertwined for him.

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And critically, he helped them understand the concept of the organized offender.

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Kempere planned his crimes.

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He thought them through.

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He took precautions to avoid leaving evidence.

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He was patient, methodical, and strategic.

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This was completely different from the disorganized offenders who acted impulsively, left chaotic

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crime scenes, and were usually caught quickly.

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The information that Douglas and wrestler gathered from Kempere and other serial killers became

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the foundation for the FBI's criminal profiling program.

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They developed a classification system for violent offenders.

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They created interview protocols.

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They built a database of behavioral patterns that could be cross-referenced with unsolved

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cases.

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This wasn't theoretical work.

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This was practical, applicable, knowledge that changed how law enforcement approached serial

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crime.

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Before this, if you had a series of murders with no physical evidence linking them, you

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were basically stuck.

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But if you could analyze the behavior at the crime scenes and develop a profile of the

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likely offender, you suddenly had a direction for the investigation.

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The interview data from Kempere specifically contributed to several key insights that are

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now standard and criminal profiling.

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The understanding that organized offenders often insert themselves into the investigations,

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sometimes even befriending law enforcement.

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The recognition that sexual homicide is often about power and control, rather than sexual

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gratification in the conventional sense.

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The awareness that many serial killers have extensive violent fantasies that predate their

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actual crimes by years or even decades.

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Kempere also helped researchers understand the role of childhood trauma and maternal relationships

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in the development of violent offenders.

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His case became a textbook example of how early psychological abuse can create a feedback

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loop of rage, sexual dysfunction, and violent acting out.

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The impact of Kempere's case on the American criminology world is hard to overstate.

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The FBI's behavioral science unit, which later became behavioral analysis unit, grew directly

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out of the research that included his interviews.

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The profiling techniques developed from this research have been used in countless investigations

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since then.

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We got better at recognizing patterns.

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We got better at understanding that serial killers aren't random.

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But they follow behavioral scripts that those scripts can be decoded and used to predict future

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actions.

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We started training law enforcement to look beyond physical evidence and consider the psychology

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of the offender.

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The case also influenced how we think about criminal justice and mental health intervention.

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Kempere had been flagged as a dangerous person multiple times.

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Psychiatrists had warned against releasing him to his mother, but the system ignored those

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warnings and ten people died as a result.

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The failure led to reforms in how we handle violent juvenile offenders and how we assess

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risk.

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There's also the broader cultural impact.

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Kempere has been featured in documentaries, books, true crime shows, and even fictionalized

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in series like "Minehunter," where his interviews with the FBI are dramatized.

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He's become, in a sense, the archetypal, intelligent serial killer, the monster who can

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explain himself, the case study that helped us understand all the other cases.

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Edmund Kempere is still alive.

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He's incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

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The same place where those original FBI interviews took place.

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He's been denied parole multiple times and has actually stated that he doesn't think he

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should ever be released.

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He expressed genuine remorse for his crimes, though obviously that's difficult to verify

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with someone who has demonstrated such a capacity for manipulation.

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It's hard to believe him.

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In interviews over the years, he's been remarkably candid about his motivations.

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He said that he was driven by a combination of sexual frustration, rage toward his mother,

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and a desire for revenge against women who reminded him of his mother.

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He's acknowledged that he wants to possess his victims completely, which is why he kept

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parts of their bodies and why he engaged in necrophilia.

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He's explained that killing his mother was always the real goal and that the other murders

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were kind of a rehearsal for the final act.

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Whether you believe that level of self-awareness is genuine or whether you believe it's another

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form of manipulation is almost beside the point.

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The fact is that his willingness to articulate these thoughts and feelings gave researchers

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access to the internal logic of a serial killer in a way they'd never had before.

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So when we talk about Edmund Kemper as a blueprint, we're talking about multiple levels of influence.

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On one level, he's a blueprint for understanding a specific type of offender, the organized,

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intelligent, sexually motivated serial killer, with severe maternal trauma.

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On another level, he's a blueprint for how we conduct criminal research.

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The interviews with Kemper establish the methodology that's still used today when researchers and

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investigators talk to incarcerated offenders.

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On the broadest level, he's part of the blueprint for modern forensic psychology itself.

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The idea that we can systematically study violent behavior, identify patterns and use those

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patterns to solve crimes was still relatively new in the 1970s.

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The success of the FBI's profiling program built largely on cases like Kemper's validated

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that approach and turned it into standard practice.

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They're much better at catching serial killers now than we were in the 1970s.

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Now part of that, to be honest, is technology.

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DNA analysis, digital surveillance, better communication between law enforcement agencies.

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But part of it is understanding.

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We know what to look for.

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We know how these offenders think, how they operate, what mistakes they're likely to make.

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And we know these things in significant part because Ed Kemper sat down with two FBI

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agents and told them everything.

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That's the disturbing reality of this case.

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One of the worst serial killers in American history helped us be better at stopping serial

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killers.

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His crimes were horrific, unforgivable, and they devastated the families of his victims.

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But his willingness to explain himself afterward contributed to a body of knowledge that has

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likely saved lives since then.

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The case of Ed Kemper is a reminder that understanding evil doesn't mean excusing it.

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It means being clear-eyed about where it comes from, how it develops, and how it can be recognized

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before it escalates.

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It means learning from the absolute worst examples of human behavior so that we can prevent

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them from happening again.

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And that's why this case matters.

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That's why it belongs in any serious discussion of how modern criminal justice evolved.

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Ed Kemper didn't change because of what happened to him as a child.

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He didn't reform.

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He didn't become a better person.

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But the system changed because of him.

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Or understanding changed.

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Our methods changed.

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That's the blueprint.

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Not a template for creating monsters, but a framework for stopping them.

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Alright, what did you think?

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Do we like it or no?

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00:25:43,940 --> 00:25:46,660
It's a bit different than regular 10-minute murder episodes.

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00:25:46,660 --> 00:25:52,140
I didn't want to create a whole new podcast, then it simply be 10-minute murder, but longer.

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00:25:52,140 --> 00:25:55,420
So this one still is me with my same vibe.

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00:25:55,420 --> 00:25:59,780
Actually, it's probably much more me because I'm not limited by time constraints.

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I can talk about whatever I want to and not worry about.

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Oh crap, I'm going to have to cut this because it's going to be too long.

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So this is what that podcast is going to be.

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So please, right now, go and follow True Crime Blueprint, where ever you're listening

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00:26:13,780 --> 00:26:14,780
to this episode.

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00:26:14,780 --> 00:26:18,860
That super important for the show to grow like 10-minute murder has grown.

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00:26:18,860 --> 00:26:21,140
Hey Joe, question.

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Will you still be doing 10-minute murder?

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00:26:23,900 --> 00:26:24,900
Absolutely.

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10-minute murder has and will always be the main podcast for me for the foreseeable future.

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00:26:30,180 --> 00:26:33,420
So it's not slowing down and it's not going anywhere.

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Thank you for listening.

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Go subscribe.

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And I'll see you next time.