UPI reports that Edmund Kemper served only one term in the California Youth Authority and a state mental hospital after murdering his own grandparents in cold blood. He was discharged to the care of his mother who, tragically, would become one of his victims before too long. The first in the string of the eight murders that would land him a lifetime sentence behind bars occurred in 1972 after he picked up Anita Mary Luchessa and Mary Ann Pesce, both 18 years old, on the side of the road. According to Investigation Discovery, the two Fresno State students were hitchhiking and accepted a ride from Kemper. He then drove to a wooded area and killed them both before returning home to photograph/dismember/violate their corpses, engaging sexually with their severed heads. This became his preferred system of killing throughout the remainder of his horrible blood saga.
Aiko Koo (15), Cindy Schall (18), Allison Liu (20), and Rosalind Heather Thorpe (23) would all meet similar fates (per Investigation Discovery). Then, on April 20 of 1973, Kemper turned his sights on his 52-year-old mother, Clarnell Kemper Strandberg. As UPI reports, he bludgeoned her to death with a hammer while she slept and stabbed her repeatedly with a pocket knife. He then removed her head and threw darts at it from across the room. The following day, he invited Sally Hallet (59), his mother’s friend, over to the house where he murdered and decapitated her (per Investigation Discovery).
