Documenting the Co-Ed Killer case

Category: 1963

Kemper scared his father’s new wife

Elfriede Weber

In the Fall of 1963, Ed Kemper, now 14 years-old, was allowed to go to Los Angeles to the home which his father, Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. II, shared with his new wife, Elfriede Weber, and her son from a previous marriage, Gilbert Otto Brechtefeld, who was two years older than Kemper.

The second Mrs. Kemper quickly began to feel extremely ill-at-ease with her dour and hulking stepson, now more than six feet tall, hanging around the house and staring at her until she became upset. She began to get migraine headaches. Once the boy happened to catch a glimpse of her nude, in the bedroom. Later, Kemper recalled that he had felt sexually excited by this episode. And still later it would be reinterpreted, perhaps at his instigation, but at least by the journalists, as a sexual overture on the woman’s part: “…the woman had appeared naked before him, using her sexuality to take his father away from him.”

Kemper was in Los Angeles for only a few weeks when at his stepmother’s urging, his father sent him back to Montana to live with his mother and sisters. E. E. Kemper Jr. II told his son that he was financially unable to keep him.

A few months later, around Thanksgiving, Kemper ran away from home in Montana and returned to Los Angeles to see his father. Another incident had Kemper following his pregnant stepmother around the house, shutting all the drapes and blinds claiming it was too bright. Afraid, she opened them up again and told Kemper he needed to leave. Her son Gilbert happened to arrive home at that moment. He saw how scared his mother was and how creepy Kemper was acting. He grabbed a hammer and chased Kemper away. This incident was apparently the reason why Kemper was sent to live with his paternal grandparents in late 1963. His father brought him to North Fork in California for Christmas and left him there once the holidays were over.

Gilbert Otto Brechtefeld

Kemper’s father and Elfriede Weber had a son together. He is known as David Weber but it’s not his real name. He keeps his real name private for security reasons. He was born in 1963 or 1964. As for Elfriede’s first son Gilbert, he died in 1975 at the age of 28. We were unable to find the cause of death. Elfriede passed away in 2009 at the age of 89.

Sources: The Co-ed Killer by Margaret Cheney / Sacrifice Unto Me by Don West /  https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5168247/Brother-Edmund-Kempner-speaks-time.html

Ed Kemper’s Christmas in 1963

On Thanksgiving Day (the fourth Thursday in November) 1963, as Ed was not yet fifteen, he borrowed his mother’s car, without her permission, drove it to Butte, Montana. From there, he got on a bus and returned to Los Angeles and Dad. The father should understand, he felt, that it was his duty to support his natural son rather than his stepson. To Edmund’s joy, his father agreed to let him live with him. There followed a brief happy period which, in itself, was such a novelty that it scarcely surprised him when it came to a sudden ending.

During the Christmas holidays, Kemper Sr. took his son to visit his parents, who owned an isolated farm at North Fork, a small town in the foothills of the magnificent Sierra Mountain range. But the pastoral beauties of the place were lost on the teenage boy. For him, the farm came to seem like a prison or an old folks’ home and he felt bitterly betrayed when his father announced to him for the second time in less than three months that he was not going to return to Los Angeles at the end of the Christmas holidays.

Clarnell had spoken to her ex-husband on the phone to tell him about the Siamese cat episode (Kemper had killed the family cat and hid it in his closet). She warned him:

This Guy (Ed Kemper’s family nickname) is a really funny bird. And you’re taking a risk by leaving him with your parents. You may be surprised to wake up one morning to learn that they have been killed.

Eight months later, in August 1964, Ed Kemper would shoot both his grandparents to death.

When we examine Ed Kemper’s existence, it is interesting to note how crucial the holiday periods were: Thanksgiving & Christmas 1963, and Easter 1973. For someone like him, who felt rejected by his loved ones and by society, these moments of celebration could be extremely difficult and stressful times.

Sources: L’Ogre de Santa Cruz (Stéphane Bourgoin, 1998) / The Coed Killer (Margaret Cheney, 1976) / 1973 Ed Kemper mugshot