Human remains found

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33212, 30 April 1973, Page 13

Human remains found

(X.Z.P.. 4 -Reuter—Copy right> SANTA CRUZ (California), April 29. A headless body. a human arm and a possible human pelvis were found at separate locations in the Santa Cruz Mountains yesterday by deputies guided by a former mental patient who has told police he has killed nine women.

The Santa Cruz county sheriff, Mr Douglas James, [said that Edmund Kemper “led investigators to various locations where bodies, parts of bodies and clothing have been found.”

Kemper will be arraigned in Santa Cruz Municipal Court tomorrow on firstdegree murder charges in the slayings of his mother and another woman, the sheriff said.

He was brought to Santa Cruz under heavy guard yesterday, completing a trip from Pueblo, Colorado. I With the huge 24-year-old Kemper showing the way, investigators said that they first uncovered a decomposed, decapitated body near a highway in Santa Cruz. A bone, possibly a pelvis, and some items of clothing were recovered about three miles to the east, authorities said.

At a third location, an arm was found in a plastic bag in a steep mountain area on Rodeo Gulch Road, six to eight miles from the other sites, they said.

On Friday, authorities impounded a battered car they said belonged to Kemper, who was convicted of killing his grandparents nine years ago. Inside the car they said they found strands of human hair, a blood-streaked back seat, a shovel, a clip of .30calibre ammunition and a spent bullet. Kemper was arrested last Tuesday in Pueblo, after calling police in Santa Cruz and threatening a killing spree if not picked up. Police said then that Kemper told them that he would point out other murder sites

of undiscovered victims in the rural hills of Santa Cruz. Police said that the 6ft 9in, 2901 b Kemper told them in his telephone call that he had murdered his mother and one of her friends. He said that he stuffed their bodies in a closet in his mother’s Aotos, California, apartment. Police entering the apartment found the decapitated body of his mother, Mrs Clarnell Strandbert, aged 52. and Mrs Sara Hallett, aged 59. A human head, presumed by police to belong to one of the six university co-eds mentioned by Kemper in a Pueblo confession, was unearthed by authorities in the yard outside his mother’s apartment on Friday. Officials sent the head to pathologists for examination and identification through dental work.

Kemper also said that he killed a 15-year-old Berkeley girl, Sheriff James said. Deputies went to the yard and found the head buried [at a depth of 2ft to 3ft “because of information he (Kemper) gave in his statement to Colorado authorities.” said the Santa Cruz county sheriff, Lieutenant Kenneth Pittinger.

“He gave us a rough idea of where to dig,” Lieutenant Pittinger said. At 15, Kemper was con-1 victed of killing his grand-, parents. He was imprisoned at Atascadero State Mental Hospital and was released in his mother’s custody in 1971.