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5.0 out of 5 stars
The Butcher Of Santa Cruz "Son Knows Best!", October 14, 2006
This review is from: The coed killer (Hardcover)
Edmund Emil Kemper III, 6 foot 9" giant, sadistic necrophile, convicted in a string of brutal mutilation murders around California's Santa Cruz area in the 1970's.
Typical child disturbed behaviours such as, hurting and killing animals, the mutilation of his sister's dolls and finally progressing to murder.
He murdered his maternal grandparents when he was only 14.
Remanded to a state hospital for treatment, Kemper was paroled in 1969 to the one person his psychiatrists recommended him never see. His mother.
Between May 1972 and February 1973, he murdered five co-eds from the local university. He mutilated their bodies, decapitated their heads and had sex with their headless bodies. He took the heads with him and buried them up in the mountains where he resided with his mother.
In April 1973, he killed his mother and one of her friends that were visiting.
He killed her with such fury, he cut off her head and hands, raped her lifeless corpse and placed her head on a mantle piece and threw darts at her severed head.
He tore her larynx out placing it down the garbage disposal. He stated that even then she never stopped bitching at him due to the fact that the garbage disposal unit jammed and spat her larynx back out.
He finally decided to give himself up and voluntarily surrendered to police and subsequently received a life sentence, which he is still currently serving.
Margaret Cheney's book is the best and most detailed account of Kemper's case.
Chasing up the first printing is a very expensive and difficult experience but a must for the true-crime collector. Chasing up a near fine copy with a clean dust-jacket is an even harder one.
A cheaper alternative is a revised, updated and re-titled edition from the original 1976 Walker Publishing book `The Co-Ed Killer' titled: `WHY- The Serial Killer In America'
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