Serial killers aren’t the main topic in your day to day conversations, but they are very common in our day to day lives. Edmund Kemper was born on December 18, 1948 in Burbank, California. He was the middle child and had two sister. His parents divorced in 1957 when he was 9 years old. After his parents divorced, he lived with his mother: whom he had a difficult relationship with. She was very critical and judgmental in him, if you tell your child they are bad kids they will grow up believing and acting upon it as they are bad kids. When he was young he would dream of killing his mother, and would decapitate and perform sexual rituals with his sister's’ dolls. And when he played with his sisters it wasn't an average game of house he wanted
The serial killer that I have chosen to research is Mark goudeau, also known as the “Baseline Killer”. Mark was born on September 6th 1964, he was an american serial killer and rapist. He was involved in one of the two simultaneously occurring serial killer cases going on in South Phoenix, Arizona at that time. Mark’s was born in Phoenix, and was the second youngest of 13 siblings in which six were felons, and four have done prison time. Mark’s mother was a maid working at all different hours of the day, while his father Willie was a lot attendant for different car dealers. They were lower working class which didn’t help with thirteen children to take care of. His father had a drug and alcohol problem, which ran in the family. He later cheated
Kemper felt that his grandmother treated him the same as his mother did, therefore making it easy for him to displace his anger onto her. On one August afternoon in 1963, Kemper shot his grandmother in the back of the head with a .22 caliber rifle and stabbed her repeatedly about the body. When his grandfather returned home, he also used the gun on him shooting him as he exited his vehicle (Fisher, 2003b). This was the first murders of the future serial killer known as the “Co-ed Killer”.
As if molded directly from the depths of nightmares, both fascinating and terrifying. Serial killers hide behind bland and normal existences. They are often able to escape being caught for years, decades and sometimes an eternity. These are America’s Serial Killers (America’s Serial Killers). “Even when some of them do get caught, we may not recognize what they are because they don’t [sic] match the distorted image we have of serial killers” (Brown). What is that distorted image? That killers live among everyday life, they are the ones who creep into someone’s life unknowingly to torture and kill them. The serial killers that are in the movies, Norman Bates, Michael Myers, and the evil master mind of SAW, these characters are just that characters. They have been made up as exaggerated fictional characters from the Hollywood imagination.
...dent because he was known to hang out in a bar in Santa Cruz where off duty police officers could be found, asking questions about the murders he had committed. He had even applied to become a police officer (Martingale 222). Kemper, by calling the police and describing details of the murders to get them to believe he was the “coed killer,” was finally getting the notoriety and recognition he felt he deserved for the first time in his life. The label of antisocial personality disorder can be applied to Kemper. He paid no attention to the pain and suffering he caused others and completely ignored their individual rights. This behavior started early in his childhood and continued until he became incarcerated. Edmund Kemper III is a sociopath, a psychopath, the “coed killer,” a serial killer, one of the most horrifying and most serious offenders living in prison today.
Scott, S. L. “What Makes Serial Killers Tick?”. Crime Library. Retrieved April 3, 2014, http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/tick/victims_1.html
Common psychological disturbances in the stages of making a serial killer are seen in childhood and are usually based upon mental and psychological abuse endured by a child.
A serial killer is traditionally defined as the separate killings of three or more people by an individual over a certain period of time, usually with breaks between the murders. (Angela Pilson, p. 2, 2011) This definition has been accepted by both the police and academics and therefore provides a useful frame of reference (Kevin Haggerty, p.1, 2009). The paper will seek to provide the readers with an explanation of how serial killers came to be and how they are portrayed in the media. Several serial killers have a definitive and common personality profile.
Imagine seeing someone who is a staggering six foot nine and 300 pounds (Edmund Emil). This person turns out to be the nicest, most polite person anyone has ever met (Murder). This person is even friends with many cops (Murder). Then they’re charged for 10 accounts of murder and no one could believe this person actually did this (Murder). This was basically what happened with a serial killer named Edmund Emil Kemper III, also known as The Co-Ed Killer (MacLeod). Robert K. Ressler actually said, “One individual who I can think of was described by the prosecutor as the nice serial killer he ever encountered… Edmund Kemper” (Murder). Kemper’s murderous acts started when he was at a young age (MacLeod). At age 15, he killed his grandparents and
Edmund Kemper was born in Burbank, California on December 18, 1948. His parents divorced in 1957, and he moved with his mother and two sisters to Montana. His mother was alcoholic and known to have a borderline personality disorder, and Edmund Kemper claims that she favored his two sisters above him. His mother forced Edmund Kemper to live in the basement when he was ten years old, so that his sisters could be “safe” away from him. Later when he was caught, he blamed his mother for all of his problems. Edmund Kemper lived with a chaotic and cruel parents who once made him kill his pet chicken and eat it as a punishment. Living in this dark fantasy life, he confessed of sometimes dreaming about killing his mother. As a “habit”, Edmund cut off his sisters’ dolls and went onto do the same cruel things to his cat and neighbors’ dogs. Outrageous of his acts, his mother sends him away to live with his paternal grandparents in North Fork, California (1). Edmund killed his grandmother at age 15, because he “wanted to know how it would feel like”, then killed his grandfather because he knew that his grandfather would be “angry at him” for killing grandmother. He started hitchhiking college women and kidnapped them, but let them go after wards (3). However, he started to stop letting his victims go and started to kill the kidnapped women. He killed six female college students, including two from UC Santa Cruz where his mother worked at, by picking them up from hitchhiking. With this, Edmund Kemper earned the nickname of “The Co-ed Killer). Edmund Kemper was also identified as being smart, with an IQ of 136, and appeared professional (1). Then, he went on to kill his mother, and later invited one of her friends to the house to also murder he...
Krafft-Ebing (1886) found that the serial killer had been through cruelty of animal; enjoy the torture and the pain of their victim during his or her childhood period. Moreover, the mothers of these serial killers were most of time working or doing other things and usually the father were absent. These children experience rejection and lack of attention, therefore, this child grows up having low self-esteem. Research show that adults that gone through abuse and violent behavior during their childhood were three times more likely to become violent as adult more than the non abused adults (Dutton & Hart, 1992).
Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California on 18 December 1948. He is more commonly known by the title of “The co-ed killer” because of the numerous murders of girls attending co-education schools and acts of necrophilia he committed on them during the 1970’s (Greig, 2012). No one is suddenly made into a killer overnight, so there must be a source that the motivation to kill comes from. In Kemper’s case there were multiple sources. The toxic relationship he had with his mother as well as the internal feelings of inadequacy and a desire to have power were large factors in his compulsion to kill. Of course there could be many more contributing factors to add to the equation, but the aforementioned three had the most weight in Kemper’s life.
Mitchell, Heather, and Michael G. Aamodt. "The incidence of child abuse in serial killers." Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology 20.1 (2005): 40-47.
Edmund “The Co-Ed Killer” Kemper Edmund Kemper Born on December 18, 1948, Ed Kemper is best known for his enormous size, intelligence, dark fantasies, and his ten serial murders and necrophilic acts (World of Criminal Justice, 2002). During the 1970’s, Kemper sent the Santa Cruz college area in a panic, which unfortunately ended six of young female lives. Kemper had ten victims in total which included such acts from shooting his victims to acts of necrophilia and dismemberment. Kemper’s main targets were young college hitchhikers. A towering man standing just shy of 7’ tall (most reports state about 6’9”) who was close, if not considered a friend and nice guy, with many of the local police officers.
So what makes a serial killer? Levin points out that contrary to popular belief, serial killers don't just 'snap'; or 'go crazy'; (Douglas, p. 137). Many of the serial killers have been the victims of childhood abuse. Jack Levin stated 'Research shows many serial killers suffered abuse, incest or neglect as children and develop poor self images'; (Douglas, p. 137). Serial killers often have a childhood marked by the absence of any nurturing relationship. 'They often come from families where the parents were absent or ineffective, where authority was not defined, and where they could engage in destructive behavior undeterred-violent play, cruelty to animals, and incidents of arson being some of the childhood behavior patterns noted among many serial killers'; (Clark, p. 206).
It is no wonder that John Voss had mental issues after the abuse that he suffers through as a child by the hands of his parents and peers. His parents, drug dealers and users were often annoyed at their children and decided to remove the nuisance in unethical and horrific ways: “... it had been their havit to stuff him into a laundry bag and pull the string tight and hang him on the back of the closet door, where he could kick and scream to his heart’s content … sometimes they’d forget all about him, fall asleep, and leave him hanging there all night” (403). Of course, a child whom is subjected to this kind of treatment on a regular basis while growing up typically has quite a few mental health issues because of it. In fact, results of a 2005 study at Radford University found that “childhood abuse among the serial killer population is higher than the general population across all types of abuse … 36% suffered physical abuse, 26% sexual abuse, 50% psychological abuse, 18% neglect” (Guy). After reading of John Voss’s abuse the high school principal, Otto Meyer Jr., heads to the boy’s house to talk to his grandmother. Otto discovers that the grandmother no longer lives there and calls the police, who later find the old woman’s body amongst dog corpses, decaying in the landfill. The townspeople are shocked and rumors quickly spread; more shocking to the