Content warning: This blog post discusses murder, violence, abuse, and disturbing criminal behavior.

I would love to tell you about one of the serial killers with the highest IQ. His name is Edmund Kemper also called the co-ed killer. A nickname given to him because many of his victims were female college students—“co-ed” meaning a student at a coeducational college or university where both men and women attend.

Edmund Kemper was born December 18, 1948. Growing up, he had a very difficult childhood. His parents got divorced when Kemper was 13 years old and after he stayed with his mother. Kemper and his mother did not have a great relationship. Kemper claims that his mother refused to show him affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay".

His first act of violence was at age 10, where he buried the family cat alive, dug up its body and decapitated it, where he mounted its head on a spike. He found great pleasure in lying to his family about the cat's death. At age 13, he killed another cat, because he thought that the cat favoured his sister over him and kept parts of the cat in his closet. 

Kemper was often locked in the basement at night because his mother feared that he would harm his sisters.

At the age of 14 Kemper ran away from home to his father, but found out his father had remarried and now had a stepson. Kemper stated that his father "cared more for his second family than he did for us." In other retellings Kemper's mother or father sent him to live with his grandparents.

When Edmund Kemper was 15 years old, he committed his first murders on his grandparents. After an argument with Kemper’s grandmother, he first shot her in the back of the head and two more shots in the back. Afterwards he took a butcher's knife from the kitchen and stabbed her three times. Kemper later said “I just wondered how it would feel to shoot grandma.” Kemper’s grandfather wasn’t home when this altercation happened, but when he did return home, Kemper killed him as well. When he got asked why he killed his grandparents, he said he wanted to know what it felt like to kill someone. He later explained that because he also killed his grandfather, so he didn’t have to come home to discover his wife’s dead body.

Because of Kemper’s age, he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, which is a maximum-security psychiatric facility for criminally insane juveniles. 

Kemper was released at the age of 21. While in the psychiatric facility Kemper was diagnosed with a personality disorder. He was a very well behaved patient and impressed psychiatrists with the progress he appeared to be making. His criminal record was expunged. 

Coming out to society, Kemper was released into his mother’s custody. He started to have fantasies on how to kill his own mother, but then decided he needed to practice first. 

Between May 1972 and April 1973, Edmund Kemper murdered six young women in Northern California. Most of Kemper’s victims were college students hitchhiking near the highway, which led to his nickname “The-Co-ed Killer”.

He would pick up victims in his car, gain their trust and then murder them. Many of his crimes involved extreme violence, dismemberment and post-mortem abuse.

Kemper’s final turning point came in April 1973. After many years of anger and resentment towards his mother, Kemper murdered her in her own home. According to Kemper himself, he attacked his mother with a hammer while she was sleeping, and decapitated her. Kemper later said that killing his mother was his main goal behind many of his crimes. After killing his mother, Kemper invited his mother's best friend to the house for dinner and killed her too when she showed up.

Unlike many serial killers, Kemper turned himself in. He used a payphone to call the police and confess to his crimes. At first they didn’t believe him, but eventually did. Kemper himself said that after killing his mother, he had no reason to continue killing. 

Edmund Kemper is now serving life in prison for eight counts of first degree murder.