Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973.

Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California.

[7] Edmund Jr. later stated that "suicide missions in wartime and the atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with [Clarnell]" and that she affected him "more than three hundred and ninety-six days and nights of fighting on the front did.

[9] Early on, he exhibited antisocial behavior such as cruelty to animals; at the age of 10, he buried a pet cat alive, then dug it up, decapitated it, and mounted its head on a spike.

Kemper had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who frequently belittled, humiliated, and beat him with a belt.

He was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility in San Luis Obispo County that houses mentally ill convicts.

Their reports stated that Kemper showed "no flight of ideas, no interference with thought, no expression of delusions or hallucinations, and no evidence of bizarre thinking.

"[31] Kemper maintained relationships with Santa Cruz police officers despite his rejection from joining the force and became a self-described "friendly nuisance"[34] at a bar called the Jury Room, a popular hangout for local cops.

[31] Kemper, who was then in his early twenties, met a female student from Turlock High School at a Santa Cruz beach, and the two became engaged in March 1973.

As he was driving around in the 1969 Ford Galaxie he bought with part of his settlement money, he noticed a large number of young women hitchhiking, and began storing plastic bags, knives, blankets and handcuffs in his car.

[31] At times, he blamed the women he killed for hitchhiking, which he said was "flaunting in my face the fact that they could do any damn thing they wanted, and that society is as screwed up as it is.

He would then take their bodies back to his home, where he decapitated them, performed irrumatio on their severed heads, had sexual intercourse with their corpses, and then dismembered them.

Kemper has stated in interviews that he often searched for victims after having arguments with his mother and that she refused to introduce him to women attending the university where she worked.

[43] After driving for an hour, he managed to reach a secluded wooded area near Alameda, with which he was familiar from his work at the Highway Department, without alerting his passengers that he had changed directions from where they wanted to go.

[32] Kemper subsequently packed Koo's body into the trunk of his car and went to a nearby bar to have a few drinks, then returned to his apartment.

"[33][46] Back at his apartment, he had sexual intercourse with the corpse, then dismembered and disposed of the remains in a similar manner as his previous two victims.

[43] On January 7, 1973, Kemper, who had moved back in with his mother, was driving around the Cabrillo College campus when he picked up 18-year-old student Cynthia Anne "Cindy" Schall.

[49] With heightened suspicion of a serial killer preying on hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area, students had been advised to accept rides only from cars with university stickers on them.

Thorpe entered the front passenger seat and, believing Kemper to be a fellow student, began chatting amiably as he drove.

[43] Shortly thereafter, Kemper slowed his vehicle, then shot Thorpe in the head with a .22 pistol; he then turned toward Liu as she cowered and squirmed in the back seat of his car.

[57] After not hearing any news on the radio about the murders of his mother and Hallett when he arrived in Pueblo, he found a phone booth and called the police.

He testified that he killed the victims because he wanted them "for myself, like possessions",[1] and attempted to convince the jury that he was insane based on the reasoning that his actions could have been committed only by someone with an aberrant mind.

[65] In the California Medical Facility, Kemper was incarcerated in the same prison block as other notorious criminals such as Herbert Mullin and Charles Manson.

Kemper stated that "[Mullin] had a habit of singing and bothering people when somebody tried to watch TV, so I threw water on him to shut him up.

FBI profiler John E. Douglas described Kemper as "among the brightest" prison inmates he interviewed[68][69] and capable of "rare insight for a violent criminal."

According to Ann Burgess, Kemper told Ressler at the end of one of their interviews, "The guard isn't coming back.

He and fellow serial killers Ted Bundy, Gary M. Heidnik, Jerry Brudos, and Ed Gein were used as an inspiration for the character of Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs.

Britton received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for this role.

Extracts from Kemper's interviews have been used in numerous songs, including "Love // Hate" by Dystopia, "Abomination Unseen" by Devourment, "Forever" by The Berzerker, "Severed Head" by Suicide Commando, "New Flesh" by Pitchshifter, and "Crave" by Optimum Wound Profile.

The whole musical album Vile Postmortem Irrumatio by Austrian death metal band Monument of Misanthropy is a concept record about Ed Kemper.