“I felt that I was going to be caught pretty soon for the killing of these girls, or I was going to blow up and do something very open and get myself caught, and so I did not want my mother—. A long time ago, I had thought about what I was going to do in the event of being caught for the other crimes, and the only choices I saw were just accept it and go to jail, and let my mother carry the load and let the whole thing fall in her hands, like it happened the last time with my grandparents, or I could take her life.”

Ed Kemper explaining one of the reasons he murdered his mother

Photo ©Joey Tranchina