If you are interested in knowing more about the Blind Project in which Ed Kemper participated for many years, this archive recently surfaced on YouTube.
The Volunteers of Vacaville was founded in 1960 to teach inmates at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville Braille transcription, Brailler repair, and reading for audio books. This 1983 clip from KCRA’s “Weeknight” show, produced by and featuring Steve LaRosa, features serial killer Ed Kemper being interviewed and reading “Star Wars.”
Thank you to the Center for Sacramento History for releasing this archive, and to Diana for her great find.
Category: Outside World

“I didn’t have the supervision I should have had once I got out [of Atascadero]… I was supposed to see my parole officer every other week and a social worker the other week.
“I never did. I think if I had, I would have made it.
“Two weeks after I was on the streets, I got scared because I hadn’t seen anyone.
“Finally, I called the district parole office and asked if I was doing something wrong… was I supposed to go to my parole officer, or would he come to see me, I asked.”
Kemper said the man on the phone asked him, “What’s the matter, you got a problem?” When Kemper told him, “no,” the man replied, “Well, we’re awfully busy with people who have; we’ll get to you.”
Source: Front Page Detective Magazine, March 1974, by Marj von Beroldingen / Photo: Murder Capital of the World by Emerson Murray, 2021 ©Pete Amos

This photo of Ed Kemper recently surfaced on Reddit and was first seen on the Facebook page The Edmund Kemper Discussion Group. The photo links to this website:
https://www.thisisedkemper.com
There isn’t much information on the site, but they say it will be the definitive account of the life and crimes of serial killer Edmund Emil Kemper III. To be released in 2021. It’s most probably a book. We’ll be on the lookout!
As for this rare photo, it looks like it was taken in the early 1980s at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville, in the cafeteria or in a visitors’ room. It might be that Kemper was having a meal with people from the American Foundation for the Blind in prison, an organization linked to the Vacaville Blind Project, in which Kemper was involved as a reader and a coordinator for many years.
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)
Ed Kemper has read onto tape cassettes more books for the blind than any other prisoner. He has spent more than 5,000 hours in a booth before a microphone in the last 10 years and has more than four million feet of tape and several hundred books to his credit. The full list of these books has not been found yet.
Women of Eden
By: Marilyn Harris
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 4/15/1995
Romance
This Other Eden
By: Marilyn Harris
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 3/28/1996
Romance
Sphinx
By: Robin Cook
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 11/28/1996
Spies and thrillers
Tangled Web
By: Giles A. Lutz
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 12/31/1996
Mystery and detectives
Trumpet of the Swan, The
By: E.B. White
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 7/8/1998
Children’s books
Ellis Island
By: F. Stewart
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 12/31/1998
Romance
Bowdrie’s Law
By: Louis L’Amour
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 11/2/1999
Western
Merlin’s Mirror
By: Andre Norton
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: ¼/2002
Fantasy
Ed Kemper has read onto tape cassettes more books for the blind than any other prisoner. He has spent more than 5,000 hours in a booth before a microphone in the last 10 years and has more than four million feet of tape and several hundred books to his credit. The full list of these books has not been found yet.
Star Wars
By: George Lucas
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 6/21/1979
Science-fiction
Rosary Murders, The
By: William Kienzle
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 1/1/1981
Mystery and detectives
Flowers in the Attic
By: V.C. Andrews
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 5/8/1984
Horror
https://soundcloud.com/alisa-shavrina/ed-kemper-reads-flowers-in-the-attic
Web Between the Worlds
By: Charles Sheffield
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 2/2/1987
Science-fiction
Windmills of the Gods
By: Sidney Sheldon
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 8/12/1987
Thriller
Dune, Book 4: God Emperor of Dune
By: Frank Herbert
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 5/2/1988
Science-fiction
If Tomorrow Comes
By: Sidney Sheldon
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 5/11/1989
Crime fiction
Petals on the Wind
By: V.C. Andrews
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 4/28/1993
Horror
Glass Key, The
By: Dashiell Hammett
Read by: Ed Kemper
Date Recorded/Cataloged: 2/6/1994
Mystery and detectives
Since 1960, prisoners at Vacaville have been recording books–best sellers, textbooks, mysteries, science fiction, Westerns, children’s books and cookbooks–on tape for blind men, women and children all over America. It is the oldest and largest projects of its kind in the nation.
“Their visit here is so special for us. We get letters of thanks from our blind patrons, but they never come inside the prison to meet us,” said Edmund E. Kemper III, 38, the inmate who runs the program.
Kemper, a confessed mass murderer, has read onto tape cassettes more books for the blind than any other prisoner. He has spent more than 5,000 hours in a booth before a microphone in the last 10 years and has more than four million feet of tape and several hundred books to his credit.
Two large trophies saluting Kemper for his dedication to the program, presented by supporters outside the prison, are on display in the Volunteers prison office, which has eight recording booths, two monitor booths and a battery of sophisticated tape duplication equipment.
“I can’t begin to tell you what this has meant to me, to be able to do something constructive for someone else, to be appreciated by so many people, the good feeling it gives me after what I have done,” said the 6-foot, 9-inch prisoner.
Source: Blind Couple See Only Good, Not the Guilt of the Helpers, Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1987 / Some of the photos courtesy of edmundekemper.tumblr.com
Ed Kemper blamed the court for counteracting the plan of Atascadero doctors to release him in stages geared to get him accustomed to the world outside again. He said they planned to send him to a “halfway house” environment where he would still have counselling, have a chance to get acquainted with girls at social functions and become aware of persons in his own age group.
“When I got out on the street (in 1969) it was like being on a strange planet. People my age were not talking the same language. I had been living with people older than I was for so long that I was an old fogey.”
Source: Front Page Detective Magazine, March 1974, by Marj von Beroldingen