13yo boy kills mother after failing to rape her

[Seapharris7]

I am just as guilty. I especially love Wiki & how everything is linked up. Plus I'm really into criminal psychology & crimes... ::Reads Wiki while the First 48 plays in the background::

[MohandasKGanja]

I am just as guilty. I especially love Wiki & how everything is linked up. Plus I'm really into criminal psychology & crimes... ::Reads Wiki while the First 48 plays in the background::

Same here. My wife and I spend an inordinate amount of time watching stuff like "The Justice Files" and other programs. I think that's TLC? Even on the weekends, when I'm driving around doing chores, I'll have HLN (Headline News) on my Sirius receiver, and listen to Dominick Dunne introduce "Power Privilege and Justice" -- which centers around wealthy people caught trying to get away with murder.

ETA: I know how terrible this fixation sounds, but I swear the worst thing that I've ever done is get a speeding ticket, and I intend for it to stay that way.

[BITTER]

It's horrible, and it kind of reminded me of Edmund Kemper, who was satanic . His wiki entry his here for people who have a strong stomach.

Holy Mother of God.

[Seapharris7]

ETA: I know how terrible this fixation sounds, but I swear the worst thing that I've ever done is get a speeding ticket, and I intend for it to stay that way.

Same here. I just think the things some people are capable of doing is fascinating... even if in an astonishing horrifying way. Like when I watch Snapped & lovers would rather KILL their significant others than just breakup

[SHELLEE]

Same here. I just think the things some people are capable of doing is fascinating... even if in an astonishing horrifying way. Like when I watch Snapped & lovers would rather KILL their significant others than just breakup

Yep, we just got a case down here where a woman killed her husband in 2007 and stuffed his body in their boat. She left the Keys and they just now arrested her. His decomposing body and smell alerted the people of his death. She killed him for money.

[Seapharris7]

You see it all the time... I guess Chris Rock was right, "If you aint contemplated MURDER, you aint ever been in love"

[Kathie_Moffett]

It's horrible, and it kind of reminded me of Edmund Kemper, who was satanic . His wiki entry his here for people who have a strong stomach.

I was thinking Kemper as well. Now I don't mean to write a novel, but last year I took a bunch of criminal justice classes and I researched a term paper on Kemper for one of them. I ended up getting into it because honestly, his story is WAY more interesting--and sad, and horrible--than the sensationalized accounts you find online indicate. There're also a lot of inaccuracies about him online; he wasn't a Satanist at all, for example.

Plus, he was and is quite local to me--he's confined 20 miles away--and I ended up working some connections to talk with a couple of people who had worked at Atascadero (where he was locked up as a teen after killing his grandparents) and a woman who lived near him and his mother's apt. during his co-ed murders, and a couple of people who work/ed at the prison where he's been for nearly forty years and who know him--among others.

John Douglas said that he felt Kemper was "made a serial killer, not born one" and I came to agree, though I also think that what Sarzy said upthread--"...if you have the potential in you to commit crimes like that then being abused could set that off inside of you" totally applies here.

Kemper's mother was an absolutely awful person--this has been well-confirmed. I would call her the worst kind of abusive alcoholic and borderline personality. But I think nature played an equal role with nurture here; Kemper probably inherited her instability and propensity for violence and rage. His core personality appears to be very different from hers, though--she was ambitious and hard-driving, and thought her son was a "pansy" and too sensitive/intellectual/wimpy. He was absolutely terrified of her, even as an adult, even with his size (she WAS six feet tall and a big woman, but still.)

Kemper is one strange case. The most startling thing the former Atascadero employees told me would, I am sure, be a HIPAA violation in a contemporary situation, but oh well. They'd read his medical file--many did, of course. Something which has never been publicly revealed about him, which he has not ever admitted to and I'm sure never will, is that his grandfather sexually abused him from a very young age (and his elder sister before him, who then acted out by molesting the 6-7 year old Kemper herself.) This is the same grandfather whom he shot to death at 15. Tellingly, he transferred much of his rage to his grandmother, and tried to sexually assault her after he shot and stabbed her; yet, he felt guilty and sad for killing his grandfather. That sort of abuse relationship has twisted facets I could never have imagined--a friend of mine still thinks of the stepfather who serially raped her from age 8 to age 15 as her only real daddy. She still loves him in some sense. It freaks me out...

Kemper also raped his mother after he killed and decapitated her, which is why this news story reminded me of him.

Anyway. He wasn't sent to San Q because basically those who took part in his trial recognized that he was severely mentally ill (whether he qualified in the strictly legal sense or not, which of course he didn't) and sent him to the criminal Medical Facility at Vacaville instead because of the then-extensive psychiatric options available there to inmates. I think they also went that route with Kemper because he consistently demonstrated a wish to let himself be studied and therapized at great length and they felt maybe he could be useful in that capacity. Douglas and Ressler certainly stated that they learned a great deal from Kemper.

His prison record is bizarre in light of the horrible nature of his crimes, though I guess it makes sense in light of certain facts, some of which are also not well known. He wasn't captured; he voluntarily turned himself in--one of a tiny percentage of serial murderers who have surrendered to authorities of their own free will. (Some believe he did actually wish to be stopped; others, that he knew his goose was cooked after he killed his mother and her best friend, and wanted attention asap--could be either, neither, both...) After his arrest he was interviewed extensively by a psychiatrist while under the influence of sodium pentothal. Then, the shrink gave him a shot of medical methamphetamine to help him wake up, but the results were disastrous. Kemper became hysterical and tried repeatedly to kill himself for days. He told his jailers that he deserved to be tortured to death for what he had done. Eventually they had to hospitalize him and iirc it delayed his trial.

Once he arrived in prison, he became an extraordinarily model inmate. Apparently, he has not broken even ONE rule in nearly forty years. He literally has the run of the facility at Vacaville and is described as their most trusted inmate--again, despite his crimes. He worked full-time, nonstop, for many years, generally at charitable pursuits. He actually ran a program at Vacaville for years recording books for the blind and won public service awards for it--I kid you not.

(So, there are blind people out there listening to, like, Edgar Rice Burroughs, or...perhaps...."The Silence Of The Lambs", as read by Ed Kemper. So much WTF.)

Before he retired for health reasons he took a course in hospice training from UC Davis and became part of the staff of the prison's pioneering hospice center for dying lifer inmates. (Imagine yourself in a prison infirmary, dying of cancer, and who comes to change your bedpan and mop your brow but Ed Kemper. Again, this is a truly wild level of cosmic WTF.)

I am writing all this not to convince you that Kemper's a "good person", "reformed" or even that he feels remorse; I don't know if he does or not. I also heard and read in my research details about the murders which aren't well-known or in the Wiki article, and they were worse, yeah. Reading transcripts of those jailhouse confessions is basically unbearable. He was very frank, complete and detailed. Dutifully so. I was depressed for weeks. I say this so you won't think I'm whitewashing him OR what he did--no way.

But Kemper does seem to have some concept of atonement, which is interesting to me. I saw raw video footage of a leaked interview from the early 90s. Some parts of the interview WERE included in a documentary, but only the sensationalistic portions where the interviewer asked Kemper again and again to speak about his crimes. It was odd watching the unedited footage because you could see how Kemper tried again and again to change the subject, make eye contact and talk about work, friends, therapy and other very different things, but the interviewer was not interested.

One thing Kemper said that struck me was that the person he was when he committed his murders effectively had no soul, no personality, just a vast inner emptiness where those things should have been, should have developed, but never did. The outer shell knew how to pretend to have feelings and friendships but it was all hollow and unreal. He said that he spent twenty plus years in therapy trying to simply build a person inside himself from scratch--someone who have a friend, who could care about someone, who could cry when they died. His words did ring true to me.

I would still never advocate for his release, if only because after having spent most of his life in prison I'm sure he would have no idea how to cope on the outside, and I think he'd still probably be dangerous. But I guess it pleases me that someone so horribly crazy, sick and murderous could, over a span of many years and much effort, create some kind of a rudimentary functional human being out of himself--however diminished, odd and obviously mentally "off" that person clearly is, he's still a big improvement over the smooth-talking, friendly monster who murdered six young girls. Again, I wouldn't say that I "like" him--though John Douglas did say that, actually--but his pathology and psychology are fascinating and compelling.

I cannot give the same opinion for any other sk I ever looked into. Most of them are vicious dullards, or at most clever, glib, narcissistic schemers and liars. I've always been intrigued by abnormal psych (took that too) so I have read widely on this subject.

Anyway, this was a novel after all--beg pardon. But since some folks in this thread seemed interested in his case, I thought y'all might like to read a bit more.

Yeah, I could not believe that he was sentenced in a way that would allow him to be up for parole. However, after he murdered his grandparents, and admitted to it, he not only spent less than 5 years in jail, he was also able to have his juvenile record expunged. WTF???

And he has a 136 IQ. He could have been a real-life Hannibal Lechter but his impulse control appears to be virtually non-existent.

He wasn't in jail, but a state psychiatric hospital (Atascadero) because he was a juvenile and deemed "hopelessly" mentally ill by a board of examining psychiatrists. He was allowed release because, likewise, they changed their opinion and deemed him fit. Obviously they fucked up. The thing is, initially he seemed to be okay. There's no evidence at all that he harmed anyone until he went back to live with his mother after a year or so working and living on his own. But then he broke his arm, couldn't work or pay his rent, and had to move back in with her. Bad move. Neighbors said they would hear her yelling at him and berating him night after night, and him crying. He deteriorated REALLY fast and you know the rest. Taking severed heads to bed and all that.

The sentence Kemper was given was due to the liberal nature of the CA justice system in the "rehabilitative" and "compassionate" 1970s. Right in my town we have a multiple rapist and murderer of young girls. His crimes were committed in the 1960s. He is now 71 and has been free for years. He was originally sentenced to death but his sentence was commuted in the 1970s to life w/possibility of parole. He got parole. The mind fucking boggles. I recommend everyone peruse the Megan's Law site, and bear in mind that probably half of your town's paroled offenders are not on that public site for various legal reasons.

I am sure Kemper will NEVER be paroled, though. He has stated that he is of the same opinion.

I agree he's smart, though not a genius. Just highly intelligent, observant and well-spoken. And back then, he was REALLY good at hiding his madness and getting along with people. He was friends with many cops in Santa Cruz. Nobody was more surprised than they were. I talked to an old retired dentist via email who told me, "my receptionist went out with him a couple of times. I thought he was a nice enough fellow. She thought he was too tall and she wasn't comfortable with that."

[Sarzy]

^ That was a very interesting read, Kathie!

[caramel]

Kathie thats really interesting thank you!

I know it might be weird but I find it a relieve that its possible to work on your mental health like that and the absence of feelings. Personally I find it frustrating to always hear that oh im like this and this because that happened to me, what happened can be a factor why you are behaving but as adults the last choice is yours. I have friends who have repeatedly asked for help and therapy after abusive childhood and chose to use their time and effort to fix the damage.

Human mind and its capability to adjust to situation is very fascinating to me too, especially how to deal with the change, most of the time the hardest thing is to adjust to normal and safe environment after gotten used to that the unstable and abusive situation is the norm.

Anyways im just babbling and probably just repeating everything

[stef]

kathie, that was such a great read. you should write a book about this. i sure as hell would buy it!

[Lalique]

kathie, that was such a great read. you should write a book about this. i sure as hell would buy it!

Vouch! You could be the next Ann Rule. Have you ever considered writing as a career?