Documenting the Co-Ed Killer case

Category: Bruce Colomy

Ed Kemper turns 74 today

Born on December 18, 1948, Edmund Emil Kemper III turns 74 today. He is still incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, CA.

We often receive messages from our dear followers asking news about Kemper’s health and current situation. We don’t have direct access to him. He apparently now lives in the G tower at Vacaville, which is where the hospice is located. This is from an unconfirmed source who knows someone who works there. As Kemper suffers from different medical conditions (diabetes, heart problems, etc.), it might not be surprising that he now lives in hospice.

Pictured above is Ed Kemper (center) during his 1973 trial. On his left is his lawyer, Jim Jackson, and to Kemper’s right is County sheriff’s deputy Bruce Colomy who accompanied Kemper during his trial and who Kemper considered as a father figure, although they were practically the same age.

Photo by Pete Amos / Source: Murder Capital of the World bay Emerson Murray, 2021 / Ed Kemper Chronicles Facebook page

Kemper on arraignment day

May 1, 1973. Accused slayer Edmund Emil Kemper towered over detectives Don Smythe (left) and Terry Madina (right) as he was taken into court for arraignment Monday. Kemper waived reading of the eight counts, which include charges of killing several young women and his mother, Clarnell Strandberg. Municipal Court Judge Donald O. May ordered the defendant to be held without bail. The uniformed guard to the right of Kemper is Bruce Colomy.

Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel / Photo by Sentinel Photographer Pete Amos

Kemper jury takes look at death car

Grim-faced jurors stare into trunk of Edmund Kemper’s car

Edmund Kemper’s car, in which six hitchhiking coeds were picked up and either stabbed, strangled or shot to death, was, in effect, “entered into evidence” today at his murder trial in Santa Cruz.

Just before the noon recess, Judge Harry F. Brauer, at the request of District Attorney Peter Chang, allowed Kemper jurors to leave the courtroom and examine the car, which was driven up and parked along the river levee walkway at the rear of the courthouse.

Kemper did not immediately join the group of persons from the trial, because he did not want to let his guard, sheriff deputy Bruce Colomy put handcuffs on him and a waist restraining chain before leaving the courthouse. Kemper has been allowed to appear in the courtroom, at Judge Brauer’s instruction, wearing only manacles around his ankles, with his hands left free. However, Colomy, as a security measure, insisted upon the additional restraint outside the courtroom, and Kemper finally relented.

As the jury was examining the car, Kemper, flanked by two guards, filed through the crowd of spectators.

Crowds of curious onlookers gathered on the courthouse steps in the morning sunshine as the young giant, dressed in his jail-provided orange jumpsuit, towered above the car in which he has admitted taking six human lives.

Earlier, expert witnesses for the prosecution had testified about the physical evidence found in the car, including a dried pool of human blood found in the back seat where one girl, Alice Liu, a UCSC coed, was shot to death and another, Mary Anne Pesce, a Fresno State coed was stabbed to death. Traces of blood were also found in the trunk where other coeds had been shot to death.

Source: Register-Pajaronian, October 26, 1973, by Marj Von B

“Here, I want you to have it.”

During the period when Kemper had been transported to and from the San Mateo County Jail for trial, he had become acquainted with a slightly built Santa Cruz County sheriff’s deputy named Bruce Colomy, a man not much older than himself. Colomy had been kind to the gigantic defendant. Although no one would ever have confused the deputy with John Wayne, he nevertheless represented another father figure to Kemper. “He’s more like a father to me than anyone I have ever known,” he said. “He’s like the father I wish I had had.”

While imprisoned at Atascadero in the late 1960s, Kemper became a member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce (Jaycees). During his trial, he wore his membership pin in his lapel, apparently with pride.

[Before being taken to state prison after his sentencing], slowly, Kemper removed the precious Junior Chamber of Commerce pin from the lapel of his buckskin jacket. Colomy described this episode, a scene that would have wrenched the heart of any B-grade movie fan. “Ed looked at it for a long time and tears came to his eyes. Then he handed it to me and said, ‘Here, I want you to have it.’”

From: Why: The Serial Killer In America by Margaret Cheney (1992, update of The Co-Ed Killer, 1976) / Pin is not the actual pin that belonged to Ed Kemper, but it is from the same time period.