The Story of Ed Kemper

1. Ep. 1: The Boy in the Basement
1 min. 7 sec.
Burbank, 1948: born to a war-haunted father and a mother who decides he is something to be contained. After the divorce she moves him to Montana and makes him sleep in a locked, rat-infested basement while his sisters sleep upstairs. By ten he has buried the family cat alive, dug it up, and mounted its head on a spike — and his mother keeps telling him no woman will ever love him.
1. Ep. 1: The Boy in the Basement
2. Ep. 2: Gas Chamber Games
56 sec.
His childhood games are 'Gas Chamber' and 'Electric Chair' — he has his sisters tie him to a chair and flip the switch so he can convulse and 'die.' He decapitates their dolls, admits a 'sexual thrill' when the heads pop off, and at seven stalks his teacher with his father's bayonet. When teased about a girl, he says calmly that he'd have to kill her first — and the adults keep calling him just a quiet, strange boy.
2. Ep. 2: Gas Chamber Games
3. Ep. 3: Sent to the Grandparents
56 sec.
At fourteen Kemper hitchhikes a thousand miles to Los Angeles to find his father — who has a new wife, a new stepson, and no room for him. He's shipped off again to his grandparents' remote ranch in North Fork, California. His grandmother Maude is strict, religious, and controlling, reminding him of the one woman he's ever wanted to hurt. He stews on that isolated ranch for almost a year.
3. Ep. 3: Sent to the Grandparents
4. Ep. 4: First Blood
1 min. 7 sec.
August 27, 1964: fifteen-year-old Kemper shoots his grandmother Maude in the back of the head as she reads, then stabs her to be sure. When his grandfather returns from the store, he shoots him in the driveway — later saying he wanted to spare the old man the shock. Then he calmly phones his mother and waits on the porch, completely composed, for the police to arrive.
4. Ep. 4: First Blood
5. Ep. 5: The Education
1 min. 10 sec.
Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane, becomes his classroom. The youngest inmate, he tests at a 145 IQ and is put to work in the prison psychology lab, learning exactly how psychiatrists write up offenders. The sex offenders and rapists around him talk about what they'd do differently next time — and he takes notes. On his 21st birthday, against every recommendation, they let him out.
5. Ep. 5: The Education
6. Ep. 6: Back to Mother
54 sec.
Released into the custody of the one person every psychiatrist warned against, Kemper moves back in with his mother Clarnell in Aptos. The daily belittlement resumes — she still speaks to her 6'9" son like the boy in the basement. Rejected by the Highway Patrol for being too tall, he takes a flagman job with CalTrans, crashes a motorcycle, and walks away with a $15,000 settlement.
6. Ep. 6: Back to Mother
7. Ep. 7: The Car
1 min. 9 sec.
He spends the settlement on a two-tone 1969 Ford Galaxie that could pass for an unmarked police car, and bolts the passenger door so it can't be opened from inside. The trunk fills with handcuffs, plastic bags, a knife, a blanket, and eventually a .22. His mother's UC Santa Cruz parking sticker gives him campus access, and two years at CalTrans have mapped every back road in his head.
7. Ep. 7: The Car
8. Ep. 8: The Dry Runs
1 min. 4 sec.
Before he kills anyone, Kemper picks up more than 150 female hitchhikers around Berkeley and Santa Cruz — and lets every one of them go. He's practicing: learning to win trust, control the conversation, and gauge how long he can hold someone without alarming them. He's waiting, he later says, for 'the little zapples.' Then in May 1972, after another fight with his mother, the wiring finally snaps.
8. Ep. 8: The Dry Runs
9. Ep. 9: The First Two
1 min. 5 sec.
Mother's Day weekend, 1972: Kemper picks up Fresno State students Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa, both 18, hitchhiking toward Stanford. He drives them the wrong way for an hour on a route he knows from CalTrans, then handcuffs one and locks the other in the trunk before killing both. He takes the bodies home to decapitate and dismember them — and on the drive, a cop pulls him over for a broken tail light and never checks the trunk.
9. Ep. 9: The First Two
10. Ep. 10: Big Ed at the Bar
54 sec.
Kemper drinks constantly at the Jury Room, the cop bar across from the Santa Cruz courthouse, where the officers nickname him 'Big Ed' and tell him about their missing-girls cases. He listens to every theory and dead-end lead, knowing exactly what they don't. At least once he drives home from the bar with a body in his trunk. The police aren't incompetent — he's simply too close to imagine.
10. Ep. 10: Big Ed at the Bar

1. Ep. 1: The Boy in the Basement

2. Ep. 2: Gas Chamber Games

3. Ep. 3: Sent to the Grandparents

4. Ep. 4: First Blood

5. Ep. 5: The Education

6. Ep. 6: Back to Mother

7. Ep. 7: The Car

8. Ep. 8: The Dry Runs

9. Ep. 9: The First Two

10. Ep. 10: Big Ed at the Bar