Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer who murdered a total of 10 people, including a 15-year-old girl, as well as his own mother and her best friend, from May 1972 to April 1973, following his parole for murdering his paternal grandparents. Kemper was nicknamed the Co-ed Killer, as most of his victims were female college students hitchhiking in the vicinity of Santa Cruz County, California. He stands at a height of . Most of his murders included necrophilia, with some incidents of rape. Born in Burbank, California, Kemper had a troubled upbringing. His parents divorced in early life; as a child, he moved to Montana with his mother Clarnell, who kept Kemper locked in their basement which had been frequented by rats. He ran away to reunite with his father, but he had remarried around Christmas of 1963 and sent Edmund to stay with his paternal grandparents in North Fork, California. It was there, in August 1964 at the age of 15, that he murdered them. Following the murders, Kemper was briefly diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia by court psychiatrists and sentenced to the Atascadero State Hospital as a criminally insane juvenile. Released at the age of 21 after convincing psychiatrists he was rehabilitated, the 6'9" Kemper was reportedly regarded as non-threatening by his future victims. He targeted young female hitchhikers during his killing spree, luring them into his vehicle and driving them to secluded areas where he would murder them before taking their corpses back to his home to be decapitated, dismembered, and violated. Kemper then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities. Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight concurrent life sentences. Since then, he has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Notably, Kemper and Herbert Mullin overlapped in their 1972 to 1973 murder sprees, adding confusion to the police investigations and ending with both being arrested, within a few weeks of each other, after the deaths of 21 people. Early life Edmund Emil Kemper III was born in Burbank, California, on December 18, 1948. He was the middle child and only son born to Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper (née Stage, 1921–1973) and Edmund Emil Kemper Jr. (1919–1985).