The Easter weekend of 1973 marks the end of Ed Kemper’s crime spree with the murder of his mother, Clarnell Strandberg, and her good friend, Sally Hallett.
Neighbors said Kemper, who had been collecting workmen’s compensation since an injury in 1972 on a highway construction job, went to his mother’s Aptos apartment on that Saturday carrying an Easter lily.
The lily was still blooming on a table when sheriff’s deputies entered the apartment the next Tuesday and found the nude bodies of the two women stuffed into a closet. Mrs. Strandberg had been decapitated and her left hand chopped off.
Neighbors said Kemper quarrelled frequently with his mother about whether she loved him. “You’re embarrassing me in front of my friends,” they quoted him as saying after she upbraided him for “laying around and drinking beer.”
After the murders, a wave of panic seized him. The events of the last hours were jostling in his head. He thought of his mother. The fact of having cut off her head did not disturb him more than that; after all, she was not the first to whom it happened! And, besides, she was already dead. He who read the Bible so much during his imprisonment [at Atascadero], to the point of identifying himself very much with the character of Job, he saw in the destiny of his mother, the hand of God. It is even more than a symbol when he thought about it: “This hand is the left hand of the Lord, I have always considered my mother as a great being, someone very fierce and sinister. She has always had a great influence on my life, and when she died, I was very surprised to find that her death was like all my other victims, how vulnerable and human she was, which has left a mark on me and still shocks me today. The left hand of the Lord is the one he uses to punish, and I, that guilty and left-handed son, cut off my mother’s left hand. That’s enough to make me flip, right?”
*Contains previously published content.
Sources: L’Ogre de Santa Cruz de Stéphane Bourgoin / Why: The Serial Killer In America by Margaret Cheney (1992, update of The Co-Ed Killer, 1976)
This photograph shows Ed Kemper’s car in the parking lot of the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office after his arrest in April 1973.
Ed Kemper’s car was a used yellow 1969 Ford Galaxie 500 with a black hardtop. The inside of the car was also black. He bought it with the money he received after suing another driver, a female, in the last of his motorcycle accidents, in which he broke his left arm.
Not long after he got the Ford Galaxie, he crashed the left rear fender in an accident. Kemper roughly patched the rear bumper and light himself. The car was still like that when Kemper was arrested, as seen in this picture.
These photographs show Ed Kemper’s mother’s car as he left it after killing her. He parked it on a different street in their neighbourhood so that people would think that she wasn’t home.
Sources: Murder Capital of the World, by Emerson Murray, 2021 / The Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office
This recent photo of Ed Kemper, 75, was taken in June of 2024 in front of a backdrop at the California Medical Facility where he is imprisoned. He seems to be sitting in his wheelchair. This was taken a few weeks before his early July hearing where he was denied parole for another 7 years.
From Manhunt Live! – Search for the Green River Killer – Hosted by Patrick Duffy (1988)
Convicted serial killer Edmund Emil Kemper III was denied parole by a state panel on July 9, 2024, the 14th time he has qualified for parole since his conviction on eight counts of first-degree murder in 1973.
Kemper, one of three notorious murderers who terrorized Santa Cruz County in the early 1970s, was not present at the hearing at California Medical Facility state prison at Vacaville, where 75-year-old Kemper has been imprisoned since 1973.
Kemper’s attorney, Nicholas Ageo, attempted to get the hearing postponed, but was denied. He told the board that he had met with Kemper only once. Kemper refused to speak to him further, and refused to attend the hearing.
Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell, who attended the July 9 hearing via a remote Zoom connection, said: “He [Kemper] is essentially blowing this off because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t respect it.”
Rosell said he wrote and submitted a letter urging the board to keep Kemper imprisoned. “We made the argument that he is essentially untreated for all these years,” Rosell said. “That in terms of serial killers, he is one of the most depraved in the country.”
Rosell testified to the three-member parole board that “Ed Kemper is still dangerous. He is essentially the same as when he went in for this. I would submit to you that he is more dangerous now than he was then (his last parole hearing in 2017).”
Rosell also alluded to a battery case rule violation that Kemper allegedly committed in 2022. Per the parole hearing reporter, Kemper grabbed a female staff member’s buttocks as he was being moved to his wheelchair, and when asked why he did it, Kemper said, “I just wanted to change the mood. … What privilege can they take away from me? I’m already here.” Kemper was written up for a rules’ violation.
During his most recent risk assessment, Kemper was listed as “high risk” to reoffend, per a parole hearing reporter. A psychiatric evaluation held in April 2024 stated that Kemper felt he had been abused as a child, was subject to being hit in the face by his father and whipped with a belt by his mother. Kemper noted during the psychiatric evaluation that his older sister made him suck her breast and that his cousin had molested him. Kemper also again admitted to acts of necrophilia when committing his crimes. He has also been diagnosed with an antisocial disorder, narcissistic disorder and schizotypal disorder. No new details were shared during the review of his murders.
During the medical review, it was stated that Kemper is diabetic, has had his left second toe amputated, has had a stroke, and has a pacemaker due to coronary artery disease. He is confined to a wheelchair.
Also present at the hearing was Patricia Kemper, Edmund Kemper’s cousin and the niece of his mother, Clarnell Strandberg. Patricia Kemper was present to represent the victims of Kemper’s murder spree. A statement prepared by Patricia reads, “The killings tore up our extended family.” It also states that “He loves murder. He loves killing people. Particularly women.”
Kemper will next be eligible for his next parole suitability hearing in 2031 at the age of 82. His last unsuccessful bid for parole before the Board of Parole Hearings took place on July 25, 2017. Kemper first became eligible for parole in 1979, but he was denied. He was also denied in 1980, 1981, 1982, 1988, 1991, 1994, 2007 and 2017. He waived his right to a hearing in 1985, 1997, 2002 and 2012.
Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper murdered seven women and a 15-year-old girl while living in Santa Cruz County with his mother. Most of his victims were hitchhiking college students, which earned him the nickname “The Co-ed Killer.” Most of his murders involved corpse mutilation, decapitation and necrophilia. In 1964, when Kemper was 15, he shot and killed both his paternal grandparents. He was sent to a maximum-security psychiatric facility in San Luis Obispo County, the Atascadero State Hospital, but was released in the care of his mother on his 21st birthday.
During his 2007 parole hearing, prosecutor Ariadne Symons said, “We don’t care how much of a model prisoner he is because of the enormity of his crimes.” At that same hearing, attorney Scott Currey said his client was fine with staying in jail. “His feeling is that he — and this is his belief — no one’s ever going to let him out and he’s just happy, he’s just as happy going about his life in prison,” Currey said.
Edmund Kemper was denied parole yesterday on July 9, 2024 for another seven years. Kemper was not present for the hearing. His next parole suitability hearing is scheduled tentatively in July 2031. Kemper will be 82 years old by then. More details soon.
2024 will be an important year in the Ed Kemper case as a parole suitability hearing is tentatively scheduled for July 9. We don’t know yet if Kemper will be attending.
In other news, according to an unverified source on Reddit who works at the California Medical Facility (CMF) and who has direct contact with Kemper, Kemper has been having health issues in the last year, severe enough for him to be taken out of prison on a code 3 emergency transport to an outside hospital. It happened in July 2023 and February 2024. When Kemper does go out to hospital, he’s always back after a few days and it’s always because of complications from his diabetes. Other than that, he is apparently doing fine. He doesn’t get around much but he spends many hours on his tablet to pass time. He is still part of the general population of the prison.
Kemper isn’t bed ridden and as frail as people think. He is in a medical unit at the CMF for his severe diabetes, and has never been in the hospice. Kemper regularly uses a wheelchair but he can still walk. It is just more difficult due to neuropathy and other issues. The stroke he suffered in late 2015 early 2016 didn’t leave him paralyzed or cognitively disabled.
According to the same source, Kemper spent over a year telling his life story and crimes to a journalist over phone calls and in person visits, for a new book and possible documentary (maybe the “This is Ed Kemper” project?). Kemper still likes to discuss his crimes but the staff at CMF doesn’t really engage him in those conversations. The source goes on to say that Kemper has no remorse or shame about what he did. After being imprisoned over 50 years, Kemper told the source’s coworker that there is nothing better than having intercourse with the neck of a decapitated girl because the trachea and vocal cords pull you in and that he recommends he try it one day. Kemper is very personable and can start and carry on a conversation with anybody, and everybody that interacts with him seems to feel totally safe around him and people often say that he’s harmless, which is obviously not true.
Kemper has been a model prisoner for most of his incarceration but did receive a disciplinary RVR a few years ago for grabbing a nurse’ butt. Kemper showed no remorse for this and his defense was “I couldn’t help myself and what are they going to do to me, I’m already in prison.” The incident happened as the nurse was changing Kemper’s diaper. His actions were perhaps sexually motivated in a context where most self-aware people would feel embarrassed. This might show that Kemper still has no self-control over his impulses. He’s never done this before so why now? Perhaps he is getting older and the gesture wasn’t meant to be harmful, but maybe the real Kemper just made a brief appearance as his health further declines and he no longer wants to control his urges and is no longer satisfied by the memories. Especially after spending the prior year reliving all of his crimes and the graphic details of what he did to his victims for a biography.
Source: photo from “’Mind of a Monster: Ed Kemper “The Co-Ed Killer”, a podcast from Investigation Discovery / Reddit
Edmund Kemper murdered his sixth victim, Cynthia Ann “Cindy” Schall. She was is fourth co-ed victim. In the early evening of January 8, 1973, Cindy was walking down Mission Avenue in Santa Cruz, hitchhiking to go to class at Cabrillo College. Kemper picked her up and drove her to the hills near Watsonville, where he forced her into the trunk of his car and shot her in the head with his newly acquired gun. She died instantly.
Miss Schall was born on August 4, 1954 in San Mateo County in California. She was 18 when she died. She rests at the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, San Mateo County in California. She was the daughter of William Schall and Suzanne Ottinger Schall.
It is one of her friends, a young woman named Pamela, that reported Cindy missing to the police when she didn’t return home that night. She also alerted Cindy’s family in Marin County.
Source: “The Coed Killer” by Margaret Cheney / Photo from the book “Murder Capital of the World” by Emerson Murray, 2021, provided by Cindy Schall’s brother Forrest Schall
After Ed Kemper was imprisoned for life in 1973, some crime magazines published articles revisiting Kemper’s case in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These articles portrayed Kemper as a serial killer who used a power saw or a buzz saw to murder his victims, which is far from the truth. But a bit of research revealed that there is a link to the use of saws in Cindy Schall’s murder case: after finding the different parts of her body in different locations in and around Santa Cruz, police and a pathologist determined she had been sawed into pieces with a power saw.
Ed Kemper mainly used firearms, knives and strangulation as his murder weapons.
He shot to death both his paternal grandparents, Maude Matilda (Hughey) Kemper and Edmund Emil Kemper Sr. on their ranch on August 27, 1964 with a rifle given to him by his grandfather. Kemper also stabbed his grandmother post-mortem.
Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa were both murdered by Kemper on May 7, 1972. Pesce was stabbed with a knife and strangled to death in the backseat of Kemper’s car. Luchessa was killed in the trunk of the car in a similar manner.
Aiko Koo was choked to death by Kemper on the evening of September 14, 1972 right next to his car on a secluded road. He also raped her while she was unconscious.
Cindy Schall was fatally shot in the head by Kemper with a .22 caliber pistol in the trunk of his car on January 7, 1973.
On February 5, 1973, Kemper first fatally shot Rosalind Thorpe in the head and then Alice Liu with his pistol in his car while driving on the UCSC campus. Kemper shot Liu several times, including twice in the head.
In the early hours on April 20, 1973, Kemper snuck into his mother Clarnell Strandberg’s bedroom to bludgeon her with a claw hammer and slit her throat with a penknife.
On the evening of April 20, 1973, Kemper murdered his mother’s best friend, Sally Hallett, by strangling her to death with his arm in his mother’s apartment.
Source: article “I’ll Show You Where I Buried The Pieces of Their Bodies”, Inside Detective, by Hugh Stephens, August 1973
In Ed Kemper’s 1980 parole hearing, we learn that he suffers from an allergy to metals: “I have a medical order for a medical bed, for the extra length. I have an allergy to metals that’s been determined since last May to be an allergy to free nickel, which is a catalyst which, I understand, is used in a lot of alloys — almost all of the alloys in prison. In other, words, I’m allergic to being in prison, to slip it down to a very simple statement – handcuffs included.”
Source: Ed Kemper’s April 30,1980 parole hearing / Photo from the book Murder Capital of the World by Emerson Murray, 2021
