Edmiund Emil Kemper Iii: A Case Study

Edmund Emil Kemper III: A Case Study

A Killer Walked Among Us

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born on December 18, 1948, in Burbank, California to Clarnell and Ed Kemper Jr. He was the only son of the family.

Edmund's childhood was anything but normal. While most other little boys were playing games pretending they were super heroes, Edmund was pretending he was in a gas chamber and his sister was throwing the switch. Once the switch was thrown he would wiggle around on the floor as if he were dying of asphyxiation. Edmund also enjoyed cutting the heads and hands off of his sisters' new dolls. He had trouble relating to his peers because he was afraid of them, afraid of any intimate contact between himself and another. During his childhood years, Edmund also found it amusing to torture the family cats. He buried the first cat up to its neck then kept the severed head as a trophy. His mother replaced the cat. With the new cat Edmund decided to continue his torturing spree by cutting it with a machete, exposing its brains and dissecting the body. These ants resulted in numerous pieces of trophies for him to keep. Until his mother discovered them in his closet. From this point on is when his mother truly began to express her opinions of him as having a "weirdo" personality.

lf his home life was not weird enough, Edmund had a crush on his second grade teacher, Whom his sisters teased him about relentlessly. With this crush developed fantasies of killing his second grade teacher. Edmund's reply to his sister's teasing was, "If I kiss her, l'd have to kill her first." On numerous occasions Edmund visited her house with his father's bayonet and his fantasies.

With Edmund's home life already a rough one and the fantasies of killing already in his head, the news of his parents divorce did not sit well. His parents fought constantly leaving Edmund, now age 9, to bounce back and forth between them. After his mother became fed up with him she sent him to live with his father, Ed Jr., and his stepmother. However, this did not

last long before he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents at the age of thirteen in rural North Folk, Ca.

Edmund did not get along with his grandparents any better than he did with his mother or father. In fact, Edmund lasted with them until August 27, 1964, at age fourteen, when he shot his grandmother in the back of the head with a .22 caliber rifle after an argument. He later stabbed her lifeless body numerous times with a kitchen knife, and then he shot his grandfather as he returned home. He called his mother and told her what had happened and waited patiently for her and the police to arrive. Once the police arrived and they questioned him about what had happened, Edmund's only response was, "I just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma."

Edmund later explained that grandpa was shot out of mercy, a way to spare him from the discovery of his wife.

As a punishment for the murder of his grandparents, the courts sentenced Edmund to Atascadero State Hospital where he was placed in the criminally insane unit. Atascadero State Hospital is an all-male, maximum security, forensic facility serving the entire state of California.

Upon entering the facility the psychiatrists there examined and tested Edmund's level of intelligence and came up with the findings that he had an IQ of about 145 and possessed the personality disordered titled personality trait disturbance, passive-aggressive type. While in ASH Edmund became such a model inmate that the doctors trained Edmund in how to administer the tests. Knowing how the tests worked allowed Edmund to learn ways in which to provide the doctors with appropriate responses that would pave the way for him to be later deemed no longer a danger to society. Once Edmund passed the tests, he was released back into the world under his mother's care.

Now age twenty-one, Edmund returned to his mother's house and fell right back into the tormented ways. Edmund's mother blamed him for everything. She would repeatedly yell at him that it was his fault she had not been with a man for a number of years. With Edmund's new found way of life, he decided he would try to find work. His mother saw how intent he was on getting a job so she tried to have his juvenile records sealed. He first worked at a Green Giant canning plant as a laborer before he applied with the State Division of Highways in 1971; a job that would allow Edmund to hang out with law enforcement. He tried hard to get a job in law enforcement but was rejected due to