“That wouldn’t have happened… I realize that if I’d never done it, it wouldn’t have happened, but if… What my original intention was to make it very quick and neither one of them to be aware of what was happening and it was not to keep them from stopping the crime. It was to keep them from suffering. I had a real bad problem depriving people of their lives. It wasn’t, huh, the aspect of killing them. It was the aspect of possessing their bodies afterwards. So, it was almost after, in effect, evicting someone from their human body. And, I’m sorry it sounds so cold, but that’s about what it analogizes to.”
ED kemper about the murders of Alice Liu and Rosalind Thorpe whom he both shot to death in his car
Source: 1989 closed-circuit interview for the FBI Academy
As an innovative teacher
for many years at Soquel High School, as a published novelist and poet, and as
a creative writing teacher at Soledad, San Quentin and Vacaville
maximum-security prisons, Steve Wiesinger seemed an unlikely candidate to be a
card-carrying law-and-order conservative, if that truly was his message. The
Prison Arts Program was and is a locally based, admirable attempt at bringing
light into darkness, life into places reeking of death and doom.
Wiesinger, who ended his long tenure with Prison Arts
last Spring, took pains to establish his still-a-liberal-after-all-these-years
credentials. “I really am a progressive. But what I’m interested in doing is
cutting down on violent crime. I didn’t develop these ideas over a short time,
I tested them out.”
Wiesinger said not being a penologist or criminologist stood him in good stead, that he had no stake in the prison system, no vested ax to grind.
“My qualifications (to address the problem of violent
criminals) are as an interested observer who’s been on the inside,” he said.
Wiesinger talked about the cause-and-effect of “permissive
social attitudes” upon violent criminals. “It’s like the hand-writing in the
wall, it’s that clear. As soon as you get people breaking lots of laws, moral boundaries
begin to fall.”
There was something else going on with
the men he’d met: The macho, I’m a bad
dude attitude, which cuts across racial and cultural barriers, infecting
its adherents with a warped sense of what it means to be a male in this world.
“There’s always been an
antiauthority, anti-establishment tradition in this country.” Wiesinger
said. “A false idea of masculinity permeates our culture. The cowboy-macho
idea comes from the taming of the West. It’s the simplest idea about violence,
this false ideal of masculinity, yet it’s the key point.” Prison programs,
he said, just don’t deal with this basic root of violent crime.
Wiesinger said he’s “not convinced
on either side” about capital punishment. “Part of me says, ‘Forget
it. Do him in.’ The other part says, ‘We want Justice.’ My mother taught me two
wrongs don’t make a right. But to allow these people (convicted violent criminals)
out under any circumstances is wrong. If someone steps that far outside the
human family, there has to be some severity.”
What about “model prisoners”? “Some
guys do great in prison – it’s a male world, isolated, structured. They act OK…
Society needs to be protected. These (crimes) are horrible, abysmal things to
do.”
Wiesinger worked at Vacaville with
sex-slayer Edmund Kemper who killed and mutilated eight
women in Santa Cruz County in the early 1970s. “Kemper is a model prisoner – a potter, he writes poetry, he
runs a prison program for the blind, a pretty nice guy – but how are you ever
going to say this guy is rehabilitated?,” said Wiesinger. “Do you
want him out there? I don’t.”
Edmund Kemper
Wiesinger looked pained. A logical,
methodical, intense man preaching a difficult message. “Other societies
just write people like that off. I’m far from advocating something like that,
but clear, decisive, harsh punishment is called for. Liberals have a hard time
with the word ‘punishment,’ but people are controlled by punishment. If we’re
clear about that, then we won’t get hundreds of criminals whining and
sniveling, ‘The system is ripping me off! I’m a political revolutionary!’
”
Wiesinger cited the pernicious roles
played by television and movies in perpetuating an attitude of violence in
already fragile psyches. “When I asked men why they had committed a
particular crime, a lot of them mentioned something they’d seen on TV or in the
movies.”
“The process of rationalization in prison is
absolutely fantastic. I used to think people who committed violent crimes had
to be insane. My moral standards would not admit murder or violent crime could
be a rational act. But it is. When I listened to what people said to me, I knew
for them it was a rational act. People don’t want to admit someone can be that
mean or heartless. Yet, in eight years working in prisons, I never heard a
convict express regret over hurting somebody,” Wiesinger concluded.
Source: Santa Cruz Sentinel – November 29, 1984, Excerpts from the article “Voice in the wilderness: Steve Wiesinger on violent crime” by Don Miller
It is widely known that Ed Kemper hung out regularly at the Jury Room bar in Santa Cruz, where policemen and lawyers came to relax after a day of work at the Santa Cruz courthouse, situated on the other side of the street.
But Kemper also had another hangout, the Fireside Lounge, situated at 1453 Webster Street in Alameda County. Kemper stayed in Alameda in an apartment he shared with a male roommate during the early 1970s. After a motorcycle accident which forced him to take time off of work, he eventually ran out of money and had to move back to his mother’s house in Aptos.
Sources: Sacrifice Unto Me (Don West, Pyramid Books, 1974)/ Photos: Ed Kemper ChroniclesFacebook page
On September 14, 1972, Kemper picked up fifteen-year-old Aiko Koo hitchhiking to a dance class in San Francisco. He took her to a remote area, choked her into unconsciousness, raped her, and then finished killing her. He placed her body in the trunk of his car and on his way home stopped off for a beer. He took the corpse back to his apartment, dissected it, had sex with it, and cut off the head.
The next day Ed
Kemper had a scheduled appointment with his probation psychiatrists. In the
morning before heading out to the appointment, Kemper buried Koo’s body at one
location and her hands at another, but kept her head. He then drove to the
psychiatrists’ office with the head locked in the trunk of his car. Leaving his
car in the parking lot, he went in for his interview.
The psychiatric
report resulting from that day’s visit reads:
“If I were seeing this patient without having any history available or without getting the history from him, I would think that we’re dealing with a very well adjusted young man who had initiative, intelligence and who was free of any psychiatric illness . . . In effect, we are dealing with two different people when we talk of the 15 year old boy who committed the murders and of the 23 year old man we see before us now . . . It is my opinion that he has made a very excellent response to the years of treatment and rehabilitation and I would see no psychiatric reason to consider him to be of any danger to himself or to any member of society.”
The second psychiatrist
cheerfully added:
“He appears
to have made a good recovery from such a tragic and violent split within
himself. He appears to be functioning in one piece now directing his feelings
towards verbalization, work, sports and not allowing neurotic buildup with
himself. Since it may allow him more freedom as an adult to develop his
potential, I would consider it reasonable to have a permanent expunction of his
juvenile records. I am glad he had recently “expunged” his motorcycle and I
would hope that he would do that (“seal it”) permanently since this seemed more
a threat to his life and health than any threat he is presently to anyone
else.”
One can only
wonder what the psychiatrists’ diagnoses would have been if either of them had
looked into the trunk of Kemper’s car that morning.
On November 29, 1972, Kemper’s juvenile record was permanently sealed so that he could go on with his life. In the meantime, he had moved back home with his domineering mother.
Excerpt from “Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters” by Peter Vronsky (2004, Berkley Books)
While he was in the Santa Cruz jail [during his 1973 trial], Kemper got along famously with the other prisoners. Jovial and fun-loving by nature, at least with male companions, he genuinely enjoyed the companionship of the communal cellblock. According to other inmates, the jail authorities were feeding him sedatives. The downs apparently had little effect on him, and he stopped taking them, preferring to trade them for extra food from the prisoners employed as “kitchen trustees.”
Source: Urge to Kill by Ward Damio (1974, Pinnacle Books)
New information unveiled in the Kemper case in the book The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime by authors Michael H. Stone MD and Gary Brucato PhD, published earlier in 2019.
According to a source close to the 1973 investigation, Kemper did not use his mother’s head as a dartboard, after he murdered and decapitated her. Instead, he apparently used her genitals.
The authors are currently writing a new book, which will feature a full chapter about the Kemper case. No release date announced yet.
Thanks to the authors who informed us about this finding.
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
Shortly after his arrest, upon his return to Santa Cruz, serial killer Ed Kemper lead police to the sites where he buried his victims. Kemper targeted young female hitchhikers, luring them off the road and into his vehicle. He would drive to a secluded spot to murder them, and then take their corpses home to dismember, desecrate, and decapitate them. Detectives said Kemper was extremely cooperative throughout the search.
Here’s another ceramic mug that Ed Kemper made at the CMF in Vacaville in 1978. It’s a half mug. Really pretty and nice to the touch.
As written on the face of the mug, “Tony” is Tony Palmiero (also Palmerio), a film writer and producer who was in charge of making a film about Kemper in the late 1970s. Kemper was very involved with Tony in making it as close to the real story and the truth, but funding was cut to the movie. Kemper was mad and decided to make two halves of a mug stating “Budget cuts are hell” in regards to the cancelling of the film.
I don’t know if Kemper made the two halves. On the certificate of authenticity prepared by Kemper, he says that the project was not completed and that he retained the half mug until 1991 when he gave it to a friend.
This ceramic mug is part of my collection of true crime collectibles.
“Imperfect criminal justice systems execute the innocent along with the guilty — Kemper’s case does not fit that rubric. However, Kemper’s execution would have done nothing to change the unpardonable acts of his past, while it would have precluded every decent, useful and beautiful that he has done in prison. Considering the lives of his victims, Kemper’s execution could not fairly have been called an injustice, but considering the life he has led in prison, it would have been a mistake. However, it is Kemper’s remarkable art work that, ultimately, confirmed my faith in the futility of the death penalty.
Because of powerful forces beyond his control, Edmund Kemper is too high-risk to be on the street, but in 41 years of incarceration, he has been a model prison-citizen, an effective functionary and a very interesting artist, whose ceramic designs have amazed me and astonished my friends for almost 35 years. The cup Kemp mailed to me, almost 35 years ago, continues to delight me every day.
NOTE: Above is my photograph of an amazingly intricately-glazed, slip cast cup. It was made on the dock near my home in the South of France. Below it is my photograph of Ed Kemper making that cup, in his house in California State Correctional Facility — Vacaville.“
Photographer Joey Tranchina who visited ed kemper at the cmf in vacaville in the fall of 1979
Source: Excerpt from My Life Tumbled – Photographer Joey Tranchina’s Blog on Tumblr – July 12, 2014
