Speaker A
wee foreign junor the who stft [Music] [Music] [Music] here hi I I guess I didn't even ask him that he just proper the information that he wouldn't hesitate a second to pull the pull the lever on any serial killer
Excerpt from a 1991 extended interview with serial killer Ed Kemper, discussing his 18 years in prison, his sentencing, and reflections on serial killers and society.
Key Takeaways
- Kemper argues that the definition of serial killers should be broadened beyond conventional stereotypes.
- His prison experience reflects a shift from defensive hostility toward more reflective engagement over time.
- The interview offers a firsthand, self-serving perspective from a convicted serial killer and should be treated critically.
What the video covers
- Kemper, imprisoned for 18 years, discusses his sentence of seven years to life, served concurrently, for eight counts of first-degree murder.
- He reflects on whether serial killers differ from other offenders, arguing society should recognize a broader range of killers, including prison jailers and 19th-century poisoners.
- He describes his prison experience, including high-security conditions, constant video surveillance, and a defensive attitude adopted to cope with hostility from other inmates.
- He recounts giving a media interview to a reporter the day of his sentencing, staged partly as a prank to frustrate his attorney.
- He describes smuggling a pen into his cell, sharpening it, and cutting his wrist during his trial, followed by hospital treatment and pepper-spray intervention.
- He recalls his childhood, including running away from his mother, living with his father and grandmother, and early experiences with fantasy and frustration.
- He discusses his relationships with women and his hostility toward perceived belittlement, which the transcript connects to his later crimes.
- The interview includes technical interruptions, such as audio recorder problems requiring a redo, and digressions into anecdotes about other inmates.
- The transcript is partially garbled and fragmentary in places, with some passages lacking clear context.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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right and I'm thinking and gee he just killed me you know if you stop and think about it if I were to uh if I were to have been uh executed in a timely fashion they would have had
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absolutely no input and it'd be scratching their heads about what makes a Serial murder a tick other than the experts all jumping up to give their opinions which you've been doing for a lot of years and unfortunately they don't hit too well
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they don't have too good of a track record I'm not sure whose name we need to put one specific name down here who should be uh you feel me would include serial killer obviously yeah but obviously very few of them
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could if there was only 35 serial killers no now they're talking about close to 100 uh right now I was saying that 10 years ago that's uh that wasn't done but you also have you also have to include no no
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I'm saying and his cohorts they were saying as a unit MH the BSU was saying and uh having come from that genre in the uh having been locked up and through the drgs and knowing some of those characters and watching how easy
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it was for me to stumble into what I did uh I didn't go into it pre-planned or anything but uh I couldn't believe that that was a unique act you know that no one else could find that out and
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that's just one Avenue into it because you know while a lot of people can stereotype the type of uh criminal that a serial killer would be Society has to loosen up its belt a bit and admit that jailers like at the uh Tucker Farm down
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in Arkansas who get tired of recalcitrant Troublemaker inmates take them out back and kill them and bury them are serial killers different motive but uh so you know it's a wide range of activities that get included in something like that they've had that a
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100 years ago in the old west where someone would set up a boarding house and people who came by never left you know whole families individual Travelers would go on for years before they get discovered but uh it's things I've read
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about yeah and you had HHS also in the 18 90s stuff yeah poisoners people like that um are we starting our interview or no would say oh yes I'm doing my time and I'm miserable and they say good you
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know that's not what it's about uhoh we're getting serious now I can tell the tape is rolling could you tell us how long you've been in prisoned excuse me uh this month is 18 years that I've actually been in prison
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what were you convicted of8 counts of first-degree murder and what was your sentence 7 years to life um CC that's called concurrent it means all the sentences run at the same time that means they run consecutively oh no
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that's the opposite of consecutive consecutive would be one at a time and of course you can't serve multiple life sentences but uh there was some question before my case that uh whe on the legality of that so when my case went
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through uh the judge sentenced me to one term of seven to life which at that time was the uh was the maximum non death penalty and uh all to run concurrent at the same time and considering your crimes uh and
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crimes done by other serial killers what do you think uh Society should do in generally with serial killers do with them yes uh it's a difficult question to answer from my point of view because I'm obviously an involved subject so it
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would any answer I would give that would be other than the death penalty would sound very uh self-serving I look at people who on the surface don't have any redeeming qualities whatsoever they don't do anything or say anything or
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behave in any way that would make your average person want to save their life want to keep them alive and feed them and house them and clothed them for decades but when I first came to prison I had much the same attitude um it was a
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very defensive attitude very self-preservative attitude because those those immediately about me were very much set on destructive attitudes toward me so I put up scream so to speak to screen out those feelings um excuse me and those reactions to
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me I'm driving your sound lady crazy here also when you feel you need to read do an answer you can do it you know it's problem I don't have any problem with that now I understand yeah the problems
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involved I had to do a whole interview over once because the lady wouldn't check her audio tape recorder I kept saying you better check it and make sure it works first oh I'm sure it works it works two hours later we're doing it all
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over again she was ready to cry I'm telling you I guess I could have but that was the where I though the pen was mightier than the sword right the only interview I did back back at the time of my case this is just a
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little anecdote for you here but uh I went through the whole investigation the whole trial no interviews with the media right and then this one woman who had treated me pretty fairly in the media she was in this uh drove or driven
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toward uh beating me with the newspapers um she tried to do a more in-depth piece around it and so I did an interview with her before I went to prison it was the day I was sentenced and I was waiting for the bus or the the
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car to prison here and uh actually wait a minute excuse me that was the that was where I gave her the interview okay I talked to her just briefly she came she was hovering around I was at the the the Jury Room
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the courthouse talking to my lawyer he hadn't shown up yet she was up there talking to the officer that was with me and we all just had a I said my officer or my lawyer does not want me talking to
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the media at all so quick I see him com way down the hall I said let's set up a little scenario and act like I'm giving this really incriminating interview that screws everything up right and she kind of laughed because it was breaking the
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the attenion in in the room you know so we set up this little scenario and she's busily acting like she's writing and I'm talking about all of this hairbrain stuff that relates to the case and feelings and he just he just starts
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turning bright red as he gets within hearing range he like a big clown got this huge forehead had hair standing out all over and now he turns bright red and he says mattered in a wet hand and he
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Stomps into the room and slams his briefcase on the desk and and uh we all start laughing and he gets really mad I said what are you laughing about I said this is a setup just for you I'm not
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doing any interview but later on I gave her an interview because uh she treated me so fairly up to that point and U and also had uh she gave me a pen that day it was a cast aluminum uh ballpoint pen in and
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I took it back to my high security jail cell up in Redwood City I was really slammed down tight I'm in a two-man cell by myself they have a camera on me 24 hours a day a monitor videotape monitor
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lights are on it's uh two sets of these four-footers here and it's as bright as day all day long all night long you know 24 hours a day and I was there for 5 months and uh I brought this pen back in
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I smuggled it in with me and I get strip shook leaving the cell I get strip shook coming back in and I brought this pen in and it got in with my legal papers and a few months later in the
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middle of the trial I smashed the pen on the floor with my boot sharpened it got a sharp edge on the on the metal and slashed my wrist and was bleeding all over the place and uh it was very messy and very exciting
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and everybody was dragging me off to the hospital get sewed up and all of that and I got ma shot up with industrial strength bottle of Mace they have about a quart of it and they just gassed me
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with that whole thing and uh dragged me off to the hospital and I made a quippy comment I don't think the police translated it properly for the media because they missed it they love you know how they love to get into puns on
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on broadcast television they love these little verbal puns and plays with words and the pen is mightier than the sword I turned the pen into a sword and and cut myself both times I attempted suicide I did it with a pen or parts of a pen and
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I thought that was kind of uh interesting but uh the media never picked up on that they were too busy being serious at any rate um at what point once in my life I could see every aspect of my life my
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crimes um who I was how I really felt about things without any defensive or protective accouterments was all gone and uh it was fascinating to me I was uh semiconscious uh actually I was conscious I just you know couldn't get up and move around a
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lot and uh at the end of the two hours I didn't want to stop I wanted to keep on with this I hadn't gotten to the crimes themselves the current set of crimes but uh I was kind of oriented around other
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things related to my life and I asked to continue on the doctor didn't want to so I insisted so they were using an IV and they shot me up with another 2hour batch of this stuff and and uh as soon as he
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was done with what he wanted to do uh he got up and left he had an appointment it had gone longer than he planned on it he had to leave my lawyer had to go so I'm stuck with these two deputies and and a
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u a registered nurse watching me until I come down off of this stuff well when the doctor left he decided to give me a shot of medicine to snap me out of this is the way he put it and I asked him
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what it was and he said it was methine Hospital grade method speed and I've asked doctors since then both medical doctors and psychiatrists if that was an appropriate action and they said absolutely not they should have let me sleep it off just let it course
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through my body and let it go away by amplifying with the methoden it is suggested that the doctor knew full well it would put me through hell it Amplified everything I was feeling it got me really drove and for
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two days after that they were trying to scrape me off the ceiling they couldn't even talk to me I was raving I was ranting I was they had to put me in a strip cell I wouldn't go back to my
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regular cell I refused because there was television available there I had a canteen I had some food items in my house I wouldn't accept it and I went to a strip cell two cells down where all I had was a mattress over a hole in the
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floor and uh I was just on and on 24 hours a day the uh convicts and the criminals in the back that were locked up with me they were in the tank I mean we were talking very casually about
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different things had Fairly good relationships and I put them all on what we call Front Street I exposed all of them to all of the negative sides of our relationships and called them all kinds of uh cowards and punks and this and
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that and the other because they were even talking to me and that was when I made the statement that I should be hung upside down on the bars and beaten daily right for what I did because under the
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influence of those drugs I was seeing what I did through other people's eyes not through mine I won't say through other specific person's eyes but as someone else would view it pure horror someone that had nothing to do with
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violence in their life um would see it I was completely unprotected and it was an awful experience and within U hours of coming down off of that stuff uh two days later um you know I wasn't making comments
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like that the defenses were back in place they were a bit ruffled uh it had been an um an eye openening experience cuz it gave me something I'll never forget you know some perspectives on my case that I'll never forget some
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anxieties on my case I'll never forget and all I can give you to gauge it by is that when I went into that hospital the nurse came out and she was the typical battle axe professional nurse been on
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the job 20 years great woman with the wheelchair severe Stern face and she's looking at me with razor blades she could just dice me up in a second without thinking about it she's really have fits you know I'm in the chair she
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Wheels me inside 5 hours later when I come out of there you know she's Wheeling me out and as I'm getting into the car I got this tortured look on my face I've been crying I've been tearing at myself and she looks at me with this
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very compassionate look and she says good luck cuz she got a good look at what was really inside that she couldn't she she was already aware of the evil I was capable of and the and the horror that had happened in the case and now
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she saw a lot of my real feelings feelings and her knowledge of chemicals and medicine and treatments and all of that she knew I wasn't faking and from her I got a good luck you know and she was serious never seen
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her since but then the the ironically the deputies that were stuck with me that day trying to wait out this this fit I was having this rage um because they hadn't anticipated that but they just tried to figure well
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we we he's so outraged right now he's so drove uh let's just keep him here until he calms down a bit then we'll take him back to jail but I didn't calm down it just kept going on and on and on and on
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and uh at one point I asked the deputies to handcuff me to the rails of the bed because I was afraid I would rip my eyes out I was really acting up and uh he was he had known me well
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enough for a few months he didn't want to do that he says oh come on Ed that's call him by my first name he says that's not really necessary is it and I said man you better put him on I'm going to
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tear that goddamn gun belt off of you and blast you I might beat you to death with it so he comes over with a cuff a little offended by that so he comes over the Cuffs he starts to put him on my
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wrist and I just went through some kind of incredible convulsion I just yanked him clear across the bed you know cuz I was in and out and yanking like this and he had the other hand cuffed already he's putting cuff on here and I just and
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I yanked him across the bed Zing off he goes he's hanging onto this handcuff and at that point he cuffed me up real quick finished I already had leg irons down at the foot of the bed and I just was
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yanking those rails up and down with my wrists and that's very painful with handcuffs on you know these stainless steel rails I just up and down and up and down yanking them and trying to pull them in and we went like that for a few
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hours and finally they said we got to get him back to jail he's not going to change in the near future in general people see serial killers as one category but they're actually seven different types of serial killers would
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you care several or seven no several several types would you care to explain us what types of different serial killers I to be honest with you I couldn't really tell you uh um because the categorization process as you know is Back East uh with the
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behavioral sciences unit uh when I was locked up originally they called it mass murderer anybody who killed more than two or three people was a mass murderer and whether it was all at one place or over an extended period
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of time and then uh in the early 80s they came up with this differentiation called serial killing which was living two lives basically um if one orients to the negative side of that living he would say um this person was living a
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cover life that was wrapped around doing those crimes and which couldn't be very realistic someone doesn't live their life to murder people their life was not set for that from birth um from my point of view what I
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saw was there was a great hole in my life there was a lot Miss missing from my life and it didn't necessarily mean feelings it meant I had walled off this this emptiness of my life okay I had
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uh an upbringing that was uh some of called um dysfunctional okay parents divorced when I was young my mother started drinking heavily uh she was working to raise three kids we were not being cooperative about it um she drank more she punished us harder
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uh probably out of desperation uh so character sets were being developed at that point rather than me going to Boy Scouts and getting achievement badges I was not going to Boy Scouts and not getting achievement badges I was Finding devious ways to get
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around the rules of the home because the whole home life just I watched it deteriorate from what typical Kids on the Block were doing to coming home from school that I didn't like anyway um and ironically I have a I IQ I
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didn't know that till I was locked up the first time for murder I always thought I was a little missing up here a little short uh because I was always called stupid I called slow don't you think when you do things that was the
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problem I wasn't thinking when I did things I just did by wrote I did by memory I did by example and I had absolutely no faith in myself at all I had no interaction going on in my own
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mind I was not a thinker I was not an individual I had a teacher in the ninth grade who changed all that he made me think he would not tolerate my not thinking he was an art teacher and it
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was a devastating experience for me because there were gears in my head that were just rusty and they were barely moving or not at all and that's when I found out that's what the state of my mind's functioning was I didn't think to
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the point of he points at a stapler on his desk and says what does that say and I looked at I said silver line he says look again and he's he's raving at me and I look and it said swing line all I
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had to do was look at it and read it but I glan at it and threw it back at him out of panic so he made me think and he gave me puzzles to work out in school in
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my class where I had to resolve these to continue on with a class I had to think I had to use abstracts and after that started that became fascinating to me so I got more and more involved in thinking and about
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my surroundings and things like that but by then I was locked up but what was your relationship with your sister which one I have two yes the one you you was playing strange games of death with her with one of my younger sister yeah my
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older sister was 5 years older than me so she was off with her friends and in a distant relationship my younger sister's two years younger and I developed some morbid games um my life had started going that way at about
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8 uh we lived in a house where there was a basement uh some people think there was a trap door on that basement that's not so that was a different house it was a walk-in basement but it was in
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Montana it was a full basement had Granite walls uh hun wood floorboards and it looked like some old dungeon out of a castle or something I was 8 years old 7 and a half eight years old and then I was very susceptible my
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imagination was very livid and there was an old furnace in the basement that had been converted from burning coal to burning and coal and wood to burning gas and that was it had a central feeding system with u uh your typical radiators
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and if you've ever lived in a home like that you know the binging the clang the pop the the rattles the weird sounds in the night that can be spooky to a kid well at a certain time of the
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evening the family left the center room the the living room of the house my mother and my sisters or my sisters themselves would go up to bed upstairs where I used to go to bed upstairs I had to go down to the
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basement and an 8-year-old child had a tough time differentiating the reason in that why am I going to the basement I'm going to hell they're going to heaven uh Earth is the living room I'm going down to deal with demons and monsters and
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ghosts and all the things that scare me they don't have to there's a house with three women and one male one boy me and uh I got a little defensive I'm saying gee this is kind of ganging up my older
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sister had had a baby basement bedroom okay and it was a storage room that was uh about 18 ft wide and 35 ft long okay it was a concrete room no windows and it had a light bulb over a big industrial
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iron sink you know like a laundry sink and had a pull string on the light the bed was in the opposite corner of the room was a double bed a single bed and um I had a dresser halfway I had a couple of carpets thrown
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on the floor old carpets and there's a lot of storage stuff along the wall and uh I was there about 6 months in that room and I developed some very very uh particular and articulate um rituals that I felt I had to go through to
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protect myself I was again it's embarrassing I was a Youngster and if you can imagine me going down a staircase of rough Hune wood there's no guard rail so one step wrong and you're off into this black pit I turn on the
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light it's a little circular light switch and a single naked bulb goes on down at the bottom of these stairs okay so I turn that light on I open the door I close the door cuz my mother complains
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of the cold coming in from the basement I go down the stairs I get to the bottom I do a 180° turn and I walk the full length of the house on this floor with these pipes rattling and wheezing and
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banging over my head it's pitch black ahead of me and the only light is behind me hanging down from the ceiling I'm now cut off from the house cut off from them I walk this full length into the
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darkness from this gradients of light into complete darkness groping around in the dark I I do about a 45 degree angle when I get to the end and I pull the string and lights up this end and then
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I'm supposed to walk all the way back to the other end turn that light off and now walk toward the light from the dark and I've got this horrible Terror going on inside of me and this is every night
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this is every day cuz it's pitch blacked down there no windows um she didn't intend all of this and when I sniveled about it when I complained and I cried about it I got smacked in the head you know what's the
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matter with you quit being such a whim and she you know she was trying to solve a problem she had uh not enough room upstairs to where I didn't have to share a bedroom with a sister I'm 8
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years old I need to go to the basement and what were the those morbid games that you played with your sister okay well the one I remember uh someone talking about in a in a book was one it was playing gas
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chamber or electric chair or something and we had this big old over stuffed chair up in my room and we we'd uh it was not just my sister and I it was my sister and I and a friend close friend
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we got into all these games we got into one game where we'd roll up in a rug and a person that would try to get out of it it's just like a large throw run and it was uh I guess what fascinated us
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individually about it is it was a completely uh it broke up the monotony I guess of what we were doing didn't have a lot of toys to play with uh we got bored with those pretty quickly so we
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looked for things to do you roll up in the rug and and you try to get out the other two would leave the room and we see who could get out fastest you know you try to work your way out sideways or
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scoot out the end of it or whatever and uh went from that to being tiedy in this overstuffed chair with a cord or something or or pieces of sheet or sash or something and uh went through this process I guess that's back when in 1960
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when uh Carol chesman was executed down in California we're up in Montana and so I got uh there's a lot of media coverage on that because he was an author he'd written books they're trying to save his life he'd not killed anybody
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why are they executing him and um so that's I think where the fascination that came in that gas chamber effect but and I think it overly fascinated some people in relation to this case because it me seem so obvious a piece you know
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I'm preparing my mindset for doing deathly kind of things another obvious piece would actually be uh I don't know if the story is true that you beheaded uh one of the your sisters doll and cut out the hands of the doll it's
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interesting you bring that up um I had a cap gun it was uh by Mattel right fanner 50 was a very fancy cap gun I got it in New York City I went there for one summer with a cousin and when I
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came back my sister was kind of jealous my little sister for years I never really put any value on what happened tried to you know figure out beyond the obvious what happened in this scenario but she I've since found found
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it plausible to believe that when she was angry or jealous about something she would fuel her attitude toward resolving something she hated that cap gun because it came between us as brother and sister it was something I had that she didn't
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have uh that trip represented something she really wanted I she didn't get and I did uh but very soon after getting back from that trip she got in an argument with me it was over something really Petty she got really outraged she picked
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up that c pistol I said don't throw that and she threw it right at me Wham hard it hit the floor and my toe and it hurt bad uh but it broke the gun the inner mechanism it wouldn't work after that I
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picked it up I found that out it wouldn't [ __ ] and pull the trigger anymore and that really outraged me so I said so you want to play like that huh so I go running into her room she say
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what are you doing what are you doing she's shrieking and chasing me right so I run into her room and I grab up her Barbie doll it was the one fancy doll she had the Barbie doll everybody has
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one right uh she had a pair of sewing scissors sitting there and a sewing machine a sewing kit I grabbed the scissors out the head didn't decapitate it pops off so I popped that off I said well that's going to go right back on
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that's no damage so I took the scissors and I cut the hands off the doll I said here now you got a toy that doesn't work too good I got a toy doesn't work too good that was my attitude it wasn't
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quite just me going and you know uh dismembering her doll again that I think that's a little bit too quick an assignation it's not me to judge these professionals but when they look at me here on Monday morning after the
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football game and they say gee here's all these little parts of the puzzle oh this indicates what he was going to do and if that's the case I want to know about the teenage kid or the pre-teen kids and the puberty the pre- and post
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puberty kids they're going through these raging moods and attitudes that go out and kill Neighborhood Cats they hang them up from a telephone pole or hang them up from a tree shoot them full of arrows set fire to them I was reading
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about that in dear Abbey where are those children today are they serial killers or are they police Chiefs and Mayors and and aldermen and assemblymen but saying there are periods when kids go through very violent development into I mean potentially
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violent they break things they steal things they lie they go through these changes yet I've had these people uh one or two doctors in particular who I won't go into who very casually just slapped all these assignations on and say well of course
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if you run into a kid that's doing this kind of thing you got a developing serial killer you better put him in treatment real quick and save his life right to a point I agree with them that someone who's acting out and has a
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dysfunctional childhood or has just gone through a dysfunctional childhood and hasn't gotten violent yet or is heading toward that direction passive aggressive violence was the last thing I exhibited and then it was murderous violence okay so sure there there's a
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lot of value in getting youngsters like that help to where they can find themselves and they can find Value in themselves and they can find Value in interacting with others and they did they go in a different direction than
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what than what I did but to just sit there and casually lay these it it's uh I guess that bothers my ego I don't know that these people have not worked with me year after year uh the the
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psychiatrists and psychologists I deal with are in a prison setting they're there eight hours a day they have to deal with me every day if I am their patient and I screw up they they can kiss their job and goodbye I mean
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they're going to be a lot of Hell on them for not seeing this in advance and saying oh we should lock him up he might be violent right and any any psych out there any professional out there is
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going to tell you I think that um if they are going into my mind into my past into my feelings that there's a potential there for acting out or getting uncontrolled or being violent because they're stripping away the veneer of my
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civilization they're stripping away the veneer of the the protections of myself and there's a lot of things that can come jumping out of there and then to walk out of that therapy session into this kind of a setting prison where it's
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very violent it's very uh aggressive it's a it's a distilled kind of uh medium that uh you might encounter on a street corner somewhere the street Corner Thug or the street corner Punk or the alleyway where someone is going to
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take terrible advantage of you or put you in a terrible situation that you may have to be violent to get out of that's this Mainline I mean that that's where all these guys go and I'm going to walk
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out of a therapy session where this man has been peeling my mind so to speak and getting into my psyche and my soul and finding out what makes me tick or trying to help put me back together or help try
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to put me together for the first time and then I'm going to walk out of that into this medium that's not very uh conducive to good health I'm aware of that going into the situation so I'm twice as leery as the doctor is but
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unfortunately he's got all of these mindsets and these theories and these books he's read and that he's trained under and I guess what has happened in my life kind of jumps out of the book a few chapters ahead and the way I've
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experienced it the syes don't want to go that far they don't want to come out there and work the pages back into the book so that I fit in there too or my kind of CRI criminal fits into there too
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they kind of just stand on the edge of the book and they put on their feathers and they put on their paint and they get their rattles and then they hop around and they go into the witch doctor
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routine and that I resent and unfortunately so do they when they have to put on their rattles and put their crosses up and say ah he's evil get him away from us he'll take advantage of us and he'll he'll rape pillage and burn
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right so guess what that's where I'm on The Cutting Edge of Humanity I find out now and it doesn't matter that I find this out because I've already been cast out by Society so any any things I find
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out or discover or even beautiful little things I discover about the ability of the human Spirit to heal itself to to an extent enough where he can make friendships he can form bonds he can cry when someone dies of AIDS or he can feel
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bad when a friend gets injured or killed by someone else see what I'm saying or grows old and dies unable to go back out to the street because they won't let him out early and he's dying that kind of thing
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and the feeling that that develops it can develop hard Wicked feelings it can develop some very tender and some very sad feelings and then you're trying to deal with the Widow of that man through the male the very restrictive male
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procedures we have here see we're not supposed to co- correspond across these lates of relationship it's tough to deal with but you know what that's my world now that's what allows me to be sane let's call it quote unquote sane that's what allows me
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to function as a human being is is not doing time with these incredible constraints that I've caused to be on me right it's living my life right with the limitations that I've caused to happen living my life is different than doing
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time because then there's the ability to work into that picture um positive things giving things back like working in the blind project the volunteers of acaville where we books on the tape for the blind all over the United States and sometimes in foreign
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countries I participated in that program for the last 14 years I started out very very little involvement reading books uh working on beep baseballs for blind Sports um doing some clerk work working on their newsletter and uh different jobs in
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there become the reader supervisor teaching guys how to read the books on the tape and all the way up to the point where I became the inmate coordinator which is the lead man there it's the guy that's in charge of making sure
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everything works right all the time uh and when I first went into that activity they were saying there were things I could never do to ask you a question about your interview did you see a trophy case when you came
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in uh yes out in the foyer there's a trophy case take a look at it there's several trophies in there and a couple of them have my name on them okay and and um the reason is I'm asking you that
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there's a big 40in trophy in there it's triple tier trophy very impressive looking that's the volunteer of the Year award okay and and it has a little speech on the front of it on a brass plaque that says uh this award is given
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to the person who most epitomizes what they stand for you know the help the service of the handicap um visually impaired and this is a very uh time honored award okay they've been in existence now for 31 years I've
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been in that group for uh 14 of those years and when the first couple of years I was there I used to like the trophy case used to be in the blind project okay and I used to walk up and I'd look
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at that Trophy and I'd never had a trophy in my life I'd never had a ribbon I'd never had a plaque none of that stuff I'd never tried for it well you had to Junior Chamber of Commerce okay yeah uh
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uh I forgot they don't call that that though they had to get rid of that name because the Chamber of Commerce took offense to that uh JC's yeah United States JC's uh and at one point was the youngest JC in America because I was 19
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when I was put in as a associate member who couldn't vote and by the time I was 20 I was on the board of directors um yeah okay no trophies no plaques anything like that um I got some
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certificates um but that was again that was in the institution that's where I'm learning to achieve I developed a better uh image of self and those around me and uh I really started cooking I started doing things real positive I felt good about it and
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that continued on to the streets I went to the JC's on the streets but as my relationship I was paroled to my mother okay what the these experts don't notice in the in the in the picture I haven't
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seen it in writing anywhere it could be somewhere uh that when I was 14 years old I ran away from my mother they mentioned that but if you look at in the overall picture why did I run away I wanted to be with
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my father that's a very topical uh approach to it I wanted to get away from my mother because I was dreaming thinking fantasizing murder all day long I couldn't get it out of my head she and I I couldn't battle with her because I
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was very intimidated by her she's 6 feet tall she weighs 2 and a qu 225 lbs she's not a fat woman she's just this great big woman who I was terrified of she had uh verbal capabilities you wouldn't
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believe I used to watch her field strip grown men in emotional little contests and when they get to the point where they wanted to smack her then she start attacking them on beating women oh slap the woman around you know and then she'
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toy with them on that and I'd watch these guys dance around the room having fits knocking out windows punch a hole in the door and stomp off and she could control people like that I'm sitting there watching that in
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awe from the one point of view and in Terror from the other I grew up with this stuff she did that to my dad when they were always battling before the divorce I'm not trying to put on her
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what happened to the girls or to her but I'm saying there was a lot of psychological involvement there did you feel early on I got it in the legs one time I turned around shrieking and she hit me
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in the mouth and the little keeper on the clasp flew off Little Silver Buckle thing and she smacked me this thing breaks off on my mouth right she hits me across the face with his Pelt says shut up the
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neighbors are going to think I'm beating you I'm looking at her what you know I'm not supposed to cry out which is a natural reaction to these great red wels that are going on me I sure I was a
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little [ __ ] I got roted downstairs she took me upstairs and beat the hell out of me um I would like to think it was a better part of my character that was resisting this kind of pressure to fit into some
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mold that she had the image of as being the good little kid I'll be damned if I'm going to be that good little kid I'm getting the hell beat out of me for not being that little kid I got I got uh I
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don't know what you call it resistant to it but again it's not a manly ways or in prideful ways it was sneaky levious ways I'd get around that and one of the ways was she won't give me an allowance I'll
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take money out of her purse I never robbed her took all of it I'd take a dime here a quarter there 15 cents there 50 cents here she comes in drunk at night I she's not going to know how much
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change she has so to re to rebound on that she started counting her money at all kinds of odd times to keep on top of me and it was like a game we played for years at the age of 13 she finally lets
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me go visit my father okay down in La where I was born I'm in Montana where she was born I don't like Montana it's cold in the winter it's hot in the summer it's miserable and the people up
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there are nice people but hey they're not my people that's what I'm saying now I wasn't viewing or voicing those things then I was feeling them but I didn't know how to put them into words so I finally get to come down and
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see my dad again down in La all right one month I never touched her purse again that scared her that really bothered her because she had never she beat me halfway senseless with that belt trying to impress and and Terror tactics okay
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we're going to eat dinner and I'm going to beat your ass afterwards you know so I can think about it for a half hour or after after some little thing she's doing and she tried psychological tactics she tried I'm going to put you
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in an orphanage I'm going to disavow you and none of that [ __ ] worked so I go see my dad for 30 days and my stepbrother and I we go out in molans we say gee dad Co you know you're going out to dinner
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tonight can we go someplace and eat and he say sure give us a few dollars we go down to some little diner down the street he treated us like little men like he wanted to be treated by his he
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came from a matriarchal house old too I guess if you know how that stuff runs in families right matriarchal household the son goes out and finds a mother image and marries her I didn't know all this stuff back then it would have made a lot
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more sense right but I got this domineering grandmother on my father's side I got this uh domineering grandmother on my mother's side who died before I was born but now she's reincarnated in my mother and her sister my Aunt they're two very domineering
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very aggressive very successful women Okay so these two women are in terrible conflict with each other competition you know and uh they didn't get along at all all right so I'm in the middle of that trying to find my my way
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and I go stay with my dad and he I can only say he reflected back on his childhood and said Gee I wish I'd been treated this way so that's how he treated me and my step brother and we
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responded to that we go if we needed spending money we would go out and we do tasks around the neighborhood clean yards rake this mow that water the flowers and make a few dollars and we'd have some fun okay and
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then um sometimes he'd ask us to do something we do it because he was always fair with us and kind and he was generous with us so 30 30 days of doing this opened up whole new feelings in me
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that I'd never had before and I wish I'd had more experience with my father growing up so I could Orient more to being tall around not tall peers um there was a I I call it an artificial paranoia that developed where I walk
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into a room everybody stops and looks at me because I'm the tallest guy they've seen or the tallest guy in the room they stop and they look and ironically the average or short guy is sitting over there looking at me with a great
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resentment because he wants that attention I've got it he thinks it's really neat cuz he's looking at it from a uh a vicarious position he doesn't realize that there's thorny sides to that attention I don't want that attention I want to just blend into the
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room I just want to kind of Sidle in so I see two kinds of uh tall men or tall male or tall female personalities those who are very passive because of all of this thrust on them or who are very
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aggressive and they use that and they apply it towards ends you know like the little guy who goes out and becomes the bank president and he's the champion this and did that never saw the fourth grade yeah because he's real aggressive
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cuz he's denied all those little attentions he has to grab them and he has to go out there and put himself in the Limelight I get it naturally so there's resentment and little guys tormented me all the time I'm growing up
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did you feel like an outsider an outcast early on I always felt like an outsider and it's again because I didn't ever fit in I moved around a lot for one thing uh I went to different schools when I was
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in Los Angeles from age you know 5 till 7 when I'm going to uh kindergarten first grade second grade uh I got in trouble in public school and I look fond with back on those times because that's when I was acting out and I was normal
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you know what I'm saying I'm not saying I went around and kidnapped people in classrooms or broke windows out we didn't get into stuff like that but I was tardy and I was messing around and I was recalcitrant I was getting bad marks
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for it and my parents were getting called by the PTA but you know what that's a hell of a lot better than a few years later when I'm real spooky and I'm real quiet and nobody ever hears from me
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and I'm in school and I go home and very few people knew me because I'm in that basement and now I'm pulling into myself and now things are getting very morbid in their orientation I start becoming fascinated with things evolving around death and
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destruction and evil and all of that I'm not saying I became a Satan worshipper because I didn't I was afraid of evil things afraid of those Powers uh that we all don't understand and as a little kid you know I had a
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very very strange orientation to those I mean it wasn't rational what was your your fantasies at that time morbid fantasies at what about age eight or nine or later on when you said you were thinking all the time about
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death what I was fantasizing about I was building up big loads of frustration inside big loads of uh of hatred because I had no outlet for it I should have developed Outlets but I didn't know how at that time so the outlets that
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developed themselves or I developed without knowing it um were fantasies about um me being the last I got that out of a school book this thing of being the last person alive on the world and and the the thing that was posed to me
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in this textbook was it was uh uh social studies and it was meant to play upon the loneliness youngsters can feel and it's a very uncomfortable feeling and you can't have love and you can't have adventure and you can't have
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excitement without being able to share it with other people because that's where a lot of the dimension comes from okay so they pose this thing at me what if you were the last person in the world and you had all these cars and airplanes
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and boats and ships and and things to do but nobody to share it with right um wouldn't that be awful and I thought hey that's a thought I never thought of that before so it became a seed like a little
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core to fantasies for me some mysterious thing has happened and everybody else has gone and I got all these things I can do no inhibitions no restrictions I can do what I want I don't get yelled at anymore okay that soon became very
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Hollow so I built upon that and added to it well people were still around but they were inanimate they couldn't affect me they couldn't hurt me and then it went further and further and further till finally uh by the time I'm reaching
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uh puberty I'm approaching puberty and I'm starting to to sense myself and I've already been accosted by a girlfriend not sexually physically but emotionally she's trying to you know she was a little ahead of me uh we're the same age but she was uh pretty
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aggressive and she a beautiful young girl uh but I wasn't ready for that kind of relationship and I was scared by it she kind of cowed me into backing away from the relationship all together because she wanted to get physical she
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wanted to kiss and to neck and to smooch and imitate what she saw in older kids and that kind of terrified me because I didn't understand the feelings inside at one point your sister teased you also about a woman school teacher and you
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said uh if I wanted to kiss her I had have to kill her first yeah that had been um that had been a uh um you can imagine how that goes uh deep dark secrets that one sibling shares
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with another it's troubling inside of me so uh that was from that that period that more advanced period where people were still there they just weren't animate they could not react or respond to what I was feeling or what I was
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sharing because what I was sharing was very embarrassing very humiliating it's hard to talk about now really because it's uh obviously it affects uh how a person feels about himself but it's not too hard to get around that because then I look at the
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wreckage I have behind me the dead people caused by my self-indulgence in Fantasy Life and and my self-indulgence and not doing something about it like getting help or taking action against myself even a lot of people committed suicide at early
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age and they don't understand why you know and a lot of times uh Again by troubled parents and school counselors they'll water it down into well he couldn't adjust and he was having a difficult time so he took his life I
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would not want to say too casually that they're probably pretty lucky he did not in every case not even in most cases but in some of those cases you might have had some very inwardly violent young people that they had on the one hand the
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prospect of they're about to act out and on the other in a very violent way or a very un unsocial and socially abhorent way and on the other hand they keep holding it in you know and they say
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can't do that so they you know sometimes they kill themselves I played with death um one of my favorite tricks back then was to go out and lay in front of the in the cars in the traffic I'm walking down the sidewalk
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with a friend you know it's a Rous about friend and we're clowning around about something and I'll say hey check this out and I'll go lay in the street like a stiff I go I'll lay in the street like I
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got run over and a car comes driving by and of course I'm expecting this guy isn't drunk I'm expecting this guy isn't slightly mented and say hey there's a kid laying in front of me it's his fault bo bo you know just shift gears going
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over me they always stop and they get jump out of the car and get all upset when I get up and walk off or run away and uh but it was a little game we played he didn't go lay in front of the
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car so I was doing that you know I laugh now because it's embarrassing but uh it indicated I think uh how little I thought of myself I think it indicated that a part of me would rather I got run
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over right then then uh I pursue what I was continuing to pursue in my life because you know looking at myself and how I was developing inside nothing good could come of that and you had also a great admiration for John Wayne at the
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time he looked a lot like my dad and he acted a lot like my dad my dad was kind of a big loud guy actually John Wayne was 6'4 had very little tiny feet my dad was 6'7 he had little tiny feet and you
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notice how comedians when they imitate how John Wayne walked uh there's this rambling thing with the hips waving and they always do this trip you ever wonder why he didn't just pick that way to walk I found uh quite by accident that very
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big men with very little feet who have abnormally small feet have a tough time balancing and it's a little Balancing Act they're going through I went to uh Gran's Chinese Theater after it was renamed and I went and checked all those
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different Footprints out and here I'd grown up as a kid not a very tall kid looking at other people being like this much shorter than me um in my mind's eye it was all balanced and when I saw pictures of
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other kids in me or other people in me and there's this great difference it was always shocking to me too because I never saw it that way but here I went I watch all these movies and TV programs
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and I see these people as being bigger than me because I'm a youth and then I go to this this physical exhibit where it shows their foot size and I step on John Wayne's bootprint with his cowboy boot and my shoe completely covers it
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over it's gone when I was 14 years old I had bigger feet than he did you know when I was 14 years old I had bigger feet than my father I was 6' 3 and A2 he's 67 he works on a construction site as an
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electrician I'm going to Junior High School we go to Kenny's we get the same kind of Oxford shoes black oxfords I wear a 14 1/2 excuse me I wear a 12 and 1/2 he wears a 12 all right in the mixup of getting up
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and going to work and going to school in the morning he comes running around the house looking for his shoes he grabs mine I can't find mine so I go running around the house and I grab his and all
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day long I'm walking around with these pinched feet I got blisters developing he's flopping around at work half a size too big in his shoe and he says God damn it got my kids shoes again and they're all saying gee Big Ed you know your kid
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got you got his shoes on and you're flopping around in them and they he thought that was great well that was a big laugh right hey I I was kind of proud of that too cuz it's following in
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Father's Footsteps when I was 14 years old I put his old army jacket on his class a uniform I put his jacket on and if I had pulled my shoulders forward I would have ripped it right up the back
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because I had broader shoulders than he had my head's larger than his is I have a very large head I wear an 8 and 3/4 helmet for a motorcycle 8 and 3/4 is very big it's hard to find a helmet like
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that actually what's strange is that uh another serial killer from Santa Cruz herb Millan grew up hating John way actually I wouldn't blame him I was in jail cell right next to him for months and I was in prison up in the hole here
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in the lockup unit for uh going on three years with him about two two and a half years and at one point I got him a job in the kitchen I was already on the kitchen crew and a sergeant pulled me
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aside and asked me to talk to the guys about him coming on the crew cuz he alien it a lot of the guys and they were afraid there'd be violence so I talked to them and there was no problem so they
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brought him out to the crew he worked a few months he goes to the mainline I'm still sitting in the hole saying geez what happened here you know uh I knew Herby and uh I don't call him Herbert Mullen and of
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course I don't call myself Edmund a m ker III either I never heard that in my life until I was locked up for murder right um but little Herby was when I met met him in Redwood City Jail okay our
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first meeting was I bumped him out of the priority cell where they could look from the office and see through the steel door the glass in the door and see him physically or they could watch the Monitor and watch him he got bumped next
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door there was a shower in the priority cell never had to leave the cell for him to shower from the other cell he had to go out into the main area they had to lock everybody in one of the uh uh I
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guess you call them tanks they move every 15 guys 30 guys out of the tank into the activity area they'd walk him around into their tank he'd shower he'd come back out all the way over there and all the way back they're cat calling him
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they're calling him names they're yelling because he caused them great interruption in their day right he resented that he got bumped out of the priority cell into a non- shower cell I got the shower cell right so he wasn't too friendly at
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first and I'd say uh excuse me Mr Mullen I said do you have a bar of soap there's no soap over here he took it all with him he had no need for it but he took it with him and you'd say yes and I'd say
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well can I use a bar of it he said no I say oh I got one of these little shits here and what it is he's a little wimpy guy that hates big guys because he always feels intimidated by them right
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and that's how we started out so I started thinking about that and I went back to my old relationships and therapy and group therapy and tasad and Youth Authority and stuff and I'm saying okay well we can deal with this so I started
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I said well I have to be kind to him so I found out something he liked he loved Planters peanuts little bags of peanuts shelled peanuts and uh so I bought 20 30 bags of them I didn't care for them
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myself and uh I offered him some one day and they were both on camera 24 hours a day so I said Herby would you like some peanuts and he'd say yeah and I say oh I got to him right down to the inner core
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there yeah this little childhood thing comes out and I says oh here and he was fascinated by this thought of gee he's just giving me some peanuts and I didn't do anything for him I don't know him you
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know I'm not being nice to him why would he give me some peanuts so he comes over to the bars we can't even see each other and I reach out with these peanuts around the side and I see this little
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hand come out and I thought of it almost as a little monkey paw that's what it seemed like so innocent in this little little hand comes out starts to reach for the peanuts and then he and then he
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hesitated then he pulls back and I thought oh geez he's defensive he's thinking I'm going to grab his hand and rip his arm off or something I'm this great big guy right so without saying anything I just reached around and I
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laid him on the bars and then pulled my hand away and he took them and he enjoyed them and all of that and I'd say later I'd say gee uh Herby you eat all those peanuts and he'd say oh no I still
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got some left I said well I got plenty more I says go ahead and enjoy them so what I did is I started giving him bags of peanuts and he had this horrible habit there's guys back in the tank and he and
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I are in these cells fac facing them through three bars three sets of bars and I can't see him and he can't see me I don't know where on the set of bars he is the set of bars is maybe 9 ft wide
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and you know eight or nine ft high and when he would get to acting up he'd sit there for hours writing and writing at this little desk and uh the other guys were ignoring him so that night they're watching
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Saturday Night Special you know with all this rock music playing and stuff and they're enjoying it and he'd get up and make this real loud speech about how bad television is for you and why you shouldn't watch it all the things it'll
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do to you and they're having fits they're trying to throw things at him they can't get at him they're raging they're mad because he's destroying the one thing they really enjoy and he's just having a ball doing this he'll sit
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for hours all day riding this two-hour speech exactly as long as it takes to watch that show so he'd also sit over there and sing these horrible songs he couldn't sing a lick at all and he's singing these horrible songs and one
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time I was in the car coming back to Redwood City and the cop got so upset at this singing he's doing in the back of the station wagon he turns around with his can of Mace he says I've had it get
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out of the way keer and I'm saying hey wait a minute you're going to get me with that stuff he's trying to mace the guy in the back of the car cuz he's he won't shut up and he's trying to get him
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to shut up and the guy just ignore him he had this way of really getting in people's nerves so he'd pull these little stunts these horrible songs and the speeches and things and I'd say harby why do you do stuff like that he
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says oh I have a right to do what I want to do too and yeah okay right so I started this what they call be just real basic behavior modification therapy okay I'd had a little bit of psychology study
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I'd worked in the psych testing area in a task aduro I knew some of these things so I set up a very basic and very essential just bare minimum Behavior mod experiment behavior modification right you reward them when they're good you
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punish them when they're bad and if you're absolutely accurate in when you do these things quick punishment when they do bad and quick reward when they do good supposedly this is is supposed to attack you at a subliminal level a
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subconscious level and you don't have a lot of control over your reactions that it would improve your behavior essentially and then they have these great elaborate experiments like in Youth Authority when I went through where they try these things so what I
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did is when he was bad I'd get a cup full of water in a styrofoam cup and I'd reach around I'd throw it on him and it's embarrassing and it also gets his papers wet and you know so we got in
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this cat and mouse game when he was good I'd give him peanuts and I'd try to gas him when he was bad called gassing throw this water on him and he duck all over the house I couldn't figure out where he
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was at so I kept missing him so what I did is I waited one day till I knew he was asleep or I suspected he was and I called one of the guys over to the bars from the uh the the the place in the
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back the tank and I went like this I went and I says and he reads it he says and I said I called him over to the bars and I said hey I said I want to work something out where I can get Herby
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with these cups of water and he can't figure out how I'm doing it and I says I just thought of a way and he says what's that and I said I want you to set up a grid on the bars where you're at put a
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little piece of string or a little piece of plastic or a little something he won't notice count over how many bars there are on his cell on his cell front and and from the wall go over that far
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on your set and set up boundaries and then when I give you a signal that will be a hand signal very casually walk over don't look at me just casually walk over and drape yourself on the bars where he's at so I'll know and
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if he's back away from the bars go back that far and position yourself so I it's Grid it's targeting grid so he would do this and Herby youd hear me turn the water on or maybe I'd have some already
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set up and I would reach through the bars and I blast him I got him every time and he couldn't figure out how all of a sudden I got so accurate you know and it was without fail I get him with
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that water Wham and you know it's embarrassing and everybody's laughing back there and good shoad and all that stuff and then I'd ask him if he'd do something or hey can we do this or whatever you know and he'd participate
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in something with me I give him peanuts when he's bad he gets blasted with water this went on for two or three weeks and he actually got away from the bad behavior when he said hey I want to sing
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and I says well hey guy's in the back do you mind if he sings oh we don't want to hear that [ __ ] now I said hey you want to hear it now or do you want to hear it
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tonight when you're watching the show yeah okay so go ahead Herby sing what did what did you sing sing for 30 40 seconds and then get bored and say GE I don't want to do this anymore you know
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cuz the fun was gone out of it but the point is it got to handle on his behavior and the cops are watching this the deputies are on camera watching me I mean they're on the monitors watching every move I'm making right and they're
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fascinated they're watching this thing going back and forth with me and Herby they're not involving themselves they're just watching it and after a while one of them come in and said Herby is completely Cooperative now he's not messing around because I've been as as
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we're talking these little frictions out between he and I I'm showing him some insights into why people don't like him I'm showing some insights into what his behavior is causing in them and he had realized by that point that it was just
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he's reacting to how people are reacting to him and it's just a self-perpetuating thing and it was the only way he could get out his negative feelings and I said well why don't you pose on the positive focus on the positive instead and the
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negative will go away I don't think anybody ever did that with him before cuz he responded real well to it and later when we were up here in the hole together and we weren't even supposed to be together they didn't want us together
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but we were up in the hole together uh I was the only guy he could talk to a lot of pain inside he had a lot of Anguish inside he had a lot of hate inside and it was addressed at people he didn't
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even know because he didn't dare do anything to the people he knew because he was aware of all of the structure around that and that that would be the end of his life and so I started the way I found
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out about these things is I would pose little comments or questions a at him as we're sitting up there on the tier on the concrete floor sitting there against the wall talking to one another and I would say uh how did you
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feel you know what did you when you bought that little Saturday Night Special 22 I says uh did you ever go out shooting with that you know just target shooting he says well not much and I said well try this on you loaded it up
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you went out you set up bottles you set up cans you set them around in little areas right around close and and practice shooting them real fast and he looks at me all shocked he says how do you know that I said cuz that's
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what I used to do those were people those weren't cans and bottles and you never told anybody so he got all fascinated about how I was able to read his mind and stuff I wasn't I saw a kindred spirit there somebody who was
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doing something very similar to what I was doing as a child he went to mental institutions and he went through this these processes where these doctors told him what was wrong with them and these doctors treated things that they
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decided were wrong with him and he just sat back very passively and went through these treatments and they had almost no effect on him because he didn't dare say what was really going on in his head because they would cast him off
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somewhere he'd be totally separated from the human race and there were certain things he and certain things I enjoyed in being in the human race and being part of the human race we weren't willing to let go of so that was that
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that little desperate hanging on so here comes these professionals saying oh this is wrong with you little lad and this is wrong with you and we're going to f fix this up and okay okay I'm well and yeah
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goes out and buys a gun and starts killing people and I talk about what happened when he killed those people oh they fell dead and I said no they did this they did that they gurgled and they some of them kept moving like you you
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hadn't even shot them and you shot them again and he says how did you know this you weren't there and I says I know I never told anybody that I know I was there on my own trip I know what
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happened Herby don't give me that [ __ ] about earthquakes and don't give me that crap about uh God was telling you I says you couldn't even be talking to me now if God was talking to you because of the pressure I'm putting
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on you right now these little shocking insights into what you did God would start talking to you right now if you were really that kind of ill because I grew up with people like that where in a maximum security hospital for the
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criminally insane adults I was 15 years old when I went there to go back before that time when you run away from your mother and went to your grandmother no went to my father Yes but afterwards when you went to your
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grandmother you were 14 I think mhm uh why did you feel you had to kill her that was an outburst wasn't I had felt I had to uh I went up there hoping I didn't go there for one thing I got
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left there we went there for Christmas from my father's in La we went up to the mountains to stay for Christmas and I got left behind I was having friction with my stepbrother and my stepmother there was problems there uh we were vying for his
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interests vying for his love they were desperate because they're the new family I'm desperate because I've never had the man in my life I wanted my father's love I wanted his approval I wanted his recognitions and we all got very greedy
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and desperate at that time so we fought each other a lot and it was a lot of friction and he couldn't handle that so he got rid of me uh I was old family I was already failure so you know I got
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parked up in the mou there's a lot of dressing on it and window dressing and things but I was up there with them for 10 months uh at first it was okay because it was the calm of being away
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from Montana there wasn't the the Hest stuff was going to a good school uh as the months went on um the veneer went away my grandmother had made agreements with me from the gate that she wouldn't get into little humiliating
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mind games with me like my mother and stepfather had done right and I agreed I wouldn't do certain things and then this mind game stuff started up she decided she's going to raise me like she raised her three sons and she's going to get
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rid of all this negative crap that my mother put on me she's recognizing it as something my mother put on me and I don't know that it wasn't some of it was but a lot of it was my inability to deal
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with uh complex critical psychological situations I could not deal with them so I resisted it I ran away that was my answer to run I ran from the people in Montana I ran from my mother in Montana uh I let my father parked me up there to
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get away from The Strife in La now I'm stuck all the Bridges bridges are burned because my grandparents are there 24 hours a day I can't run from them she never let me get out of her sight for
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more than an hour without yelling my name out to see where I was she was convinced I wanted to go down the mountain into town little North Fork to uh hang around with kids boues and stuff and be a juvenile delinquent so she
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would never let me go down there on my own she'd never let me leave the property and I just it started simmering I guess started building the the the passions and attention I started developing the fantasies toward her from my mother
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killing her and the decapitation fantasies were even there they were in they were in place by then already and uh were those fantes what were they no yes um possessing the severed heads of women men didn't turn me on that wasn't
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very I couldn't appreciate the appearances of a guy I see movies as a youth and I'm you know I'm seeing this was a not common but it was a frequent feature in some movies where they use a shock effect they'll have someone get
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their head cut off or there's a head sitting there when they come around the corner or open the drawer or something and it went from that got caught up in my morbid Fascination I made a comment and someone wrote about it that uh that
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when I was young I was about eight or nine years old I went to a this little come on it was like at a record store or something and they had this crowd of kids there and there was a magic show
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and this guy you've probably seen a the fake Guillotine hand pressed and they put the potato there and someone puts their neck in the uh in the brace and they slam this thing down and the potato down below chops in two but the person's
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head doesn't fall off right and everybody gets very fascinated by that oh my God and then when he puts the blade in place and he pushes it down it goes through that neck hole but it never chops anybody's head
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off okay so he wanted to volunteer out of the I'm not standing In This Crowd watching this show and he wanted to volunteer out of the audience and some quite beautiful little 16-year-old girl gets up there and it's big laugh and all
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giddy and stuff and I said start getting caught up in this I said wow right at that moment I departed reality because logically I should have been able to ascertain that that could not happen you're not going to get away
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with chopping somebody's head off in the middle of uh the middle of Helena Montana the capital city um but the concept of it was so raw and it was titilating I says wow J I got to watch this and he had her girlfriend
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come over and put her hands there to catch her head so it wouldn't fall in the basket you know and he was making jokes about this I got caught up in this this um this interplay between normal concerns you don't want to get a bump on
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her head well hey if you're chopping her head off it doesn't matter right and this is catching in my mind somehow and I'm saying wow and naturally everybody let out a shriek and they're all excited and oh wow and
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as he chops in the potato Falls and her head doesn't go any place and he unlocks the brace and she gets out laughing and he gives her some little prize for coming up and uh participating in the experiment that's the first time I'd
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ever seen a show like that you know you see things like that on TV it's one thing but to be there and watch things like that you get more caught up in it um and I went from there that became
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another piece that's the that's the only way I can really the only event in my life that I can align that fascination with was was the fact that she was a very alluring young lady I'm coming close to approaching puberty I think I
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hit it a little early because between the ages of about 10 and 13 I was going through some incredible emotional shifts um and they say that going into puberty for young men and and girls I guess is a very very upheaving time in
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our lives and uh without a lot of positive input from parental or adult figures um it can go in some really wild directions um in my case it was embedded in this negative orientation thing I would go back to my basement bedroom and
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I would uh fantasize to protect myself I'd I'd go off into fantasy worlds that um got it got a Vengeance on my enemies it got even with the bullies who picked on the kids and me in school it got even
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with someone who slighted Meers uh even adults I mean they talk uh in various relationships how we have our darker side and there's things that you have thought as an example that you'd never want to share with anybody because they're so cruel or
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they're so unspeakably out of sync with what's going on that you would be too ashamed to share it with someone like Bo I'd like to knock his head off or I'd like to kill this guy or she's such a
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[ __ ] you know um we all do that um I didn't know that so I'm adding to the problem the impetus of this negative orientation I must be really evil little kid because I'm thinking all these horrible things
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I was in thinking of them in increasing amounts and increasing frequency so it's a kind of conditioning and negative conditioning that uh I wasn't aware of other than effect I noticed that if I worked on a certain scenario a certain kind of
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patterning in my fantasies right after a while it became numb it became insignificant it became not enough so I had to add embellishments to it a new level and it just very subtle but over many many years it just kept kept going more and
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more I've known young people that I've been able to talk to honestly and they've knowing them well enough and friendly enough over enough years share with me because it was Cur it was real of real importance to me to know where I
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dove off the deep end and they would admit that sometimes they and they went off into happier orientations they had a period where they went off into some real morb morbid or negative Fascinations but they grew out of it
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quote unquote grew out of it it it stopped providing a service that they needed it stopped filling a hole or a gap or let's say an adult came along and started sharing something with them or showed them a new Avenue of acting out
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that completely obliterated that need or vacated it and they let it go I didn't the adult wasn't there uh my mother was there and she was there to beat me she was there to humiliate me she was there to use me as
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an example of how inferior men are and that was a great little lady there she uh kind of preceded this female Movement we have now of getting rights of getting equal rights of getting equal standing of getting equal presence in various
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uh theaters but actually you had experimented the oh I was finding out the hard way what women's rights and women's antagonism me women are drove about things like that they get upset about the belittlement they get and and
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their the the lack of uh equal quality that they should that they have that they experien unfortunately my mother developed and I'm I'm not it's not fair to talk about a dead person that way they can't defend themselves they can't give you another
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perspective on what really happened I can only surmise from to try to be fair looking back on it I'm seeing that she was making an effort to balance her pain with what she was experiencing and if you look at her dad
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he's a wimp he never did anything mom did everything you know so she orientated toward her so she comes out doing that stuff I find out in sociological studies and psychological studies that's normal not necessarily healthy but that happens and my dad
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being the wimp out of his family goes and finds my mom who's the Dynamo out of her family and they get married and it'll either work or it won't and in his case it didn't work because she kept
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hammering on him she wanted him to change this she wanted him to change that and he couldn't handle that after 13 years he'd had enough what I resented was I had a mother I had a father father worked he brought in a big paycheck we
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had a nice house we had friends we went to school right we had birthdays we had Christmas we had vacations huh he had Saturday night with the poker buddies out the in the guest house by the garage we were living
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pretty good and uh she absolutely hated that this this stereotypical response of this dead head this mutton head she's married to of wanting to go out and play cards in a smoke filed room drinking beer here and with these old war
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buddies see I had another problem my father was in the first special service force in uh World War II uh they did a book in a movie called The Devil's Brigade he was a combat sergeant in that group and he
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volunteered for that as a single man they would not take married men that's how my parents met she was working as a secretary in Helena Montana the capital city he's a few miles out of town at an old retired closed down Cavalry fort for
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the US Army that was reopened as a secret base for these guys to train out of at uh Fort William Henry Harrison just outside of town they got to know each other they quite quite it wasn't secretly but it was very quietly got
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married because if they didn't know he got married he had been kicked out of the group this is what was described as a suicide Brigade 5,000 men trained in just in all his Devastation ways right he goes off to war and he does some
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horrible things he can't talk about those things
Topics:Ed Kemperserial killerprison interview1991criminal psychologytrue crimeincarcerationsentencingLandauRedwood City
