Documenting the Co-Ed Killer case

Category: Alameda

Ed Kemper’s greatest contribution to society

Edward George, former administrator at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, recalled his many interactions with Ed Kemper:

“Big Ed and I used to chat occasionally about his life on the street. I discovered that he actually lived in Alameda in an apartment two blocks from where I lived. Scary. He worked at a gas station where I used to buy gas. Very scary. One day I asked him, tongue in cheek, what did he consider his greatest contribution to society. He didn’t miss a beat. With a gleeful smile, he cracked ‘I taught women not to hitchhike.’”

Source: Ed Kemper – Conversations with a killer, by Dary Matera, Sterling Publishing, 2021 / Photo: Pete Amos, Murder Capital of the World, by Emerson Murray, 2021

Kemper’s hangout in Alameda

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 Chronicles Facebook page