Quick Take
Serial killer Edmund Kemper was denied parole at a hearing Tuesday at California Medical Facility state prison at Vacaville. The 75-year-old Kemper was convicted of murdering eight women and girls while living in Santa Cruz County in the 1970s.
Convicted serial killer Edmund Kemper was denied parole on Tuesday, the 12th time he has qualified for parole since his conviction on eight counts of first degree murder in 1973.
Kemper, one of three murderers who terrorized Santa Cruz County in the early 1970s, was not present at the hearing at California Medical Facility state prison at Vacaville, where the 75-year-old Kemper is imprisoned.
Kemper’s attorney, Nicholas Ageo, attempted to get the hearing postponed, but was denied. He told the board that he had met with Kemper only once. Kemper refused to speak to him further, and refused to attend the hearing.
Santa Cruz district attorney Jeff Rosell was present at the hearing and testified to the three-member parole board that “Ed Kemper is still dangerous. He remains a high risk,” and “he is untreated. He is essentially the same as when he went in for this.”
Also present at the hearing was Patricia Kemper, Edmund Kemper’s cousin and the niece of his mother, Clarnell Strandberg, who was his last murder victim. Patricia Kemper was present to represent the victims of Kemper’s murder spree.
At 75, Kemper has diabetes and suffered a stroke years ago. He also has coronary heart disease and a pacemaker. He is confined to a wheelchair. A psychiatric evaluation in April ranked him as “high risk” to reoffend.
In denying parole, the board cited an incident in 2022 when Kemper grabbed a prison staffer on the buttocks as he was being moved to his wheelchair.
Between May 1972 and April 1973, Kemper murdered seven women and a 15-year-old girl while living in Santa Cruz County with his mother. Most of his victims were hitchhiking college students, which earned him the nickname “The Co-ed Killer.” Most of his murders involved corpse mutilation, decapitation and necrophilia. In 1964, when Kemper was 15, he shot and killed both his paternal grandparents. He was sent to a maximum-security psychiatric facility in San Luis Obispo County, but was released in the care of his mother on his 21st birthday.
He was last denied parole in 2017. His next parole hearing will be in seven years.
Writer Emerson Murray contributed to this report. Murray is the author of “Murder Capital of the World,” an oral history of the three serial killers in Santa Cruz County during the early 1970s.