Edmund Kemper

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer convicted of murdering seven women, including his own mother, and one girl between May 1972 and April 1973. Years earlier, at the age of 15, Kemper had murdered his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer", as most of his non-familial victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. Most of his murders included necrophilia, decapitation, dismemberment and possibly cannibalism.

Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight concurrent life sentences. Since then, he has been incarcerated at California Medical Facility in Vacaville.

Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California, on December 18, 1948. He was the middle child of three children and the only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper (née Stage, 1921–1973), a native of Montana, and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. (1919–1985). Edmund Jr. was a World War II veteran who, after the war, tested nuclear weapons at the Pacific Proving Grounds before returning to California, where he worked as an electrician. Weighing 13 pounds (5.9 kg) as a newborn, Kemper was a head taller than his peers by the age of four.