notably devastated when his parents divorced in 1957, causing him to be raised by Clarnell in Helena, Montana. He had a severely dysfunctional relationship with his mother, a neurotic, domineering alcoholic who frequently belittled, humiliated, and abused him. Clarnell often made her son sleep in a locked basement because she feared that he would harm his sisters, regularly mocked him for his large size — he stood by the age of 15 — and derided him as "a real weirdo" in a phone conversation to Kemper's father, unaware that her son had been eavesdropping. She also refused to show him affection out of fear that she would "turn him gay" and told the young Kemper that he reminded her of his father and that no woman would ever love him. Kemper later described her as a "sick angry woman," and it has been postulated that she had borderline personality disorder. At the age of 14, Kemper ran away from home in an attempt to reconcile with his father in Van Nuys, California. Once there, he learned that his father had remarried and had a stepson. Kemper stayed with his father for a short while until the elder Kemper sent him to live with his paternal grandparents, who lived on a ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada on Road 224, about two miles west of the town of North Fork. Kemper hated living in North Fork; he described his grandfather as "senile" and said that his grandmother "was constantly emasculating me and my grandfather." First murders On August 27, 1964, at the age of 15, Kemper was sitting at the kitchen table with his grandmother Maude Matilda (Hughey) Kemper (b. 1897) when they had an argument. Enraged, Kemper stormed off and retrieved a rifle that his grandfather had given him for hunting; the rifle had been confiscated because he used it to needlessly shoot animals. He then re-entered the kitchen and fatally shot his grandmother in the head before firing twice more into her back. His grandmother's last words reportedly were, "Oh, you'd better not be shooting the birds again." Some accounts mention that she also suffered multiple post-mortem stab wounds with a kitchen knife. When Kemper's grandfather, Edmund Emil Kemper Sr. (b. 1892), returned from grocery shopping, Kemper went outside and fatally shot him in the driveway next to his car. He was unsure of what to do