‘Harmless’ Killer

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33215, 3 May 1973, Page 16

‘Harmless’ Killer

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) SANTA CRUZ. A 6ft 9in-tall man who has admitted killing his mother and seven other females was declared harmless by two psychiatrists two days after he had killed and dismembered a girl, aged 15, a Court in Santa Cruz was told. Edmund Kemper, aged 24, is accused of killing his mother, her friend, and six girl hitch-hikers in the Santa Cruz area over the last few months.

The District Attorney (Mr Peter Change) said at the Court hearing that Kemper, who spent five years in a state mental hospital

after slaying his grandparents at the age of 15, was examined by the two psychiatrists on September 17, and both concluded that he was no longer a threat to society. “One stated that Kemper’s motor-cycle was more of a threat to his life and health than any threat he was then to anyone else,” Mr Change said.

The Court was also told that Kemper has since admitted killing and cutting up the body of one of his eight victims only two days before the psychiatrists’ examination.

During the week-end, Kemper, who towered over everyone else in the courtroom, and was chained round the waist and ankles, took the police on a tour of the sites in the wooded hills behind Santa Cruz to show them where he had dismembered and buried his victims.