Documenting the Co-Ed Killer case
Ed Kemper speaking in 1981 of his current glasses: “The State has made me much more credible as a human being.”
This post was inspired by this article in The Guardian: “Why does it seem like serial killers all wear the same glasses?”
Source: Excerpt from The Killing of America (Leonard Schrader, 1981)
“I didn’t go hog-wild and totally limp. What I’m saying is, I found myself doing things in an attempt to make things fit together inside. I was doing sexual probings and things, I mean, in a sense of striking out, or reaching out and grabbing, and pulling to me. But appalled at the sense that it wasn’t working, that isn’t the way it’s supposed to be, that isn’t the way I want it. You see what I’m saying? And yet I get, during that time, I become engaged to someone who is young, and is beautiful, and very much the same advantages, and very much the same upbringing, and Disneyland values. And, uh, she’s very much the reason I surrendered.”
ed kemper about getting engaged during his crime spree
Not much is known about Kemper’s fiancee, as she has never gone public with her story. After Kemper’s arrest, she was apparently very much in shock, and went into seclusion. Her parents sent her away from Turlock. Officials at her high school, where she was in her senior year, consented to excuse her from classes until the emotional pressure on her let up, and allowed her to graduate with her class.
Police said a newspaper clipping reporting the engagement was found with Kemper’s belongings in the Aptos apartment where he lived with his mother. In his bedroom, they also found the picture of a beautiful blonde said to be a fiancee of Kemper.
We know that she had met Kemper at a Santa Cruz beach in the summer of 1972. Her age varies according to reports between 16, 17 or 18 years old. Her first name might have been Martha, but this is unverified information from a social media source.
Source: Redlands Daily Facts, May 9, 1973 / Greeley Daily Tribune, May 5, 1973 / Register-Pajaronian, April 25, 1973
Ed Kemper: “Well, I’m not an expert. I’m not an authority. I’m someone who has been a murderer for almost 20 years.”
Interviewer: “Can you say how many people might be doing crimes like you were doing?”
Kemper: “It would be a guess, but it’s far more than 35. It isn’t that impossible in this society. It happens.”
Interviewer: “Are there more people?”
Kemper: “They didn’t give up. He, she, didn’t give up. I did. I came in out of the cold. And what I’m saying is there are some people who prefer it in the cold.”
Interviewer: “What people see?”
Kemper: “A nice guy.”
Interviewer: “You were able to appear like an ordinary person, non-threatening, to…”
Kemper: “I lived as an ordinary person most of my life. Even though I was living a parallel and increasingly sick life. Other life.”
Source: Excerpt from documentary Murder: No Apparent Motive (1984)
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