The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (50 page)

invaded another home in Leonia, New Jersey, holding The California “trash bag” case officially began on eight captives at gunpoint while they ransacked the April 13, 1975, when the mutilated remains of 21-year-house. Nurse Maria Fasching was stabbed to death for old Albert Rivera were discovered near San Juan Capis-refusing Joe’s order to bite off a male victim’s penis, but trano. By November, five more bodies had been found Kallinger got careless on the getaway, discarding a in Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Diego coun-bloody shirt near the scene. Officers traced the shirt to ties. The discovery of two more victims in March 1977

its owner and the Kallingers were arrested on January raised the body count to eight, and by that time police 17 by a joint raiding party of federal and state authori-had their pattern. All the identified victims were gay; ties. Two months later, Michael Kallinger was ruled each was found nude, shot in the head with a similar delinquent but “salvageable,” with murder charges dis-weapon; several were dismembered or otherwise muti-missed in return for his guilty plea on two counts of lated, their remains packaged in identical plastic robbery. He was placed on probation until his 25th garbage bags.

birthday, in December 1982.

The final victim was 17-year-old John LaMay, last Joe Kallinger’s first trial in Pennsylvania ended with seen by his parents on March 13 when he left home to a hung jury in June 1975. Three months later, at his visit a friend named “Dave.” Police entered the case five retrial, he was convicted on nine felony counts and sen-days later, after LaMay’s dismembered remains were tenced to prison for 30 to 80 years by a judge who found beside a highway south of Corona. Friends of the called him “an evil man . . . utterly vile and depraved.”

victim identified “Dave” as David Hill, supplying homi-Convicted of the New Jersey murder in October 1976, cide detectives with an address. Warrants were issued
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KEMPER, Edmund Emil, III

for Hill and his roommate, but the lovers remained at Kearney pled guilty on all counts, receiving another life large until July 1 when they entered the Riverside sentence. If his original confessions were truthful, at County sheriff’s office, pointed to their posters on the least seven victims remain unidentified today.

wall, and smilingly announced, “That’s us.”

A high school dropout from Lubbock, Texas, David Hill joined the army in 1960 but was soon discharged
KEMPER, Edmund Emil, III

on diagnosis of an unspecified personality disorder The product of a broken and abusive home, belittled by (possibly related to his HOMOSEXUALITY). Back in Lub-a shrewish mother who occasionally locked him in the bock, he married his high school sweetheart, but the basement when he failed to meet her standards of romance was short-lived. In 1962, he met Patrick Kear-behavior, Edmund Kemper grew up timid and resentful, ney, stationed with the air force in Texas, and the nursing a perception of his own inadequacy that gave attraction was mutual. Hill divorced his wife in 1966

rise to morbid fantasies of death and mutilation. As a and moved to California with Kearney a year later.

child he often played a “game” in which his sisters took They were living together in Culver City, a Los Angeles the part of executioners, with Kemper as their victim, suburb, when the long string of murders began. (The writhing in imaginary death throes as they “threw the first victim, known only as “George,” was buried switch.” Preoccupied with visions of decapitation and behind Kearney’s Culver City duplex in September dismemberment, he cut the heads and hands off of his 1968; detectives following the killer’s directions sister’s doll—a MODUS OPERANDI that he would repeat, unearthed his skeleton in July 1977.)

as an adult with human victims.

On July 14, 1977, Patrick Kearney was formally Before the age of 10, Kemper graduated to living tar-indicted on two counts of murder, including that of John gets, burying the family cat alive and subsequently cut-LaMay. David Hill was released the same day, his ting off its head, returning with the gruesome trophy to charges dismissed as Kearney shouldered full responsibil-his room, where it was placed on proud display. Despite ity for the slayings, telling police that he killed because his tender age, he brooded over fantasies of love and

“it excited him and gave him a feeling of dominance.” By sex, with violence playing an inevitable role. Unable to July 15, Kearney had signed confessions to 28 murders, express affection in a normal way, he showed the with 12 of the cases confirmed by police. On December WARNING SIGNS of latent necrophilia. One afternoon, 21, he pled guilty on three counts of first-degree murder, discussing Edmund’s childish crush upon a grade-school receiving a sentence of life imprisonment.

teacher, Kemper’s sister asked him why he didn’t simply Prosecutors launched the new year by charging Kear-kiss the woman. Kemper answered, deadpan, “If I kiss ney with another 18 counts of murder in February her, I would have to kill her first.” A second family cat 1978. Nine of those charges disposed of the first dozen fell victim to his urges, this one hacked with a machete victims in Kearney’s confession; the others included two and the pieces hidden in the closet until they were acci-children, ages five and eight, along with four victims dentally discovered by his mother.

whose bodies were never recovered. On February 21, Branding her son “a real weirdo,” Kemper’s mother first packed him off to live with her estranged husband, and then—after running away—the boy was delivered to his paternal grandparents, dwelling on a remote California ranch. There, in August 1963, 14-year-old Kemper shot his grandmother with a .22-caliber rifle, afterward stabbing her body repeatedly with a kitchen knife. When his grandfather came home, Kemper shot the old man as well, leaving him dead in the yard.

Interrogated by authorities, Kemper could only say that “I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma.” He regretted not stripping her corpse, and that statement, along with the motiveless violence displayed in his actions, got Kemper committed to the state’s maximum-security hospital at Atascadero. In 1969, a 21-year-old behemoth grown to six-feet-nine and some 300 pounds, Kemper was paroled to his mother’s custody over the objections of state psychiatrists.

“Trash Bag Killer” Patrick Kearney (right), with David Hill During Ed’s enforced absence, his mother had settled (Author’s collection)

in Santa Cruz, a college town whose population
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KEMPER, Edmund Emil, III

was resting in the trunk of Kemper’s car next morning when he met with state psychiatrists who pronounced him “safe,” recommending that his juvenile record be sealed for Kemper’s future protection. Following the interview, he buried Koo’s remains near a religious camp located in the mountains.

Another four months passed before the “Coed

Killer” struck again, on January 9, 1973. Picking up student Cindy Schall, Kemper forced her into the trunk of his car at gunpoint, then shot her to death. Driving back to his mother’s house, he carried the corpse to his room and there had sex with it in his bed. Afterward, Kemper dissected Schall’s body in the bathtub, bagging the remains and tossing them over a cliff into the sea.

Schall’s head was buried in the backyard of his mother’s home, facing up toward the house, and Kemper would later remark to his mother that “people really look up to you around here.”

By this time, various remains of Kemper’s victims had been found and officers were on the case. Apparently, none of them had the least suspicion that their friend, Ed Kemper, was the man they sought, and some felt comfortable enough in Kemper’s company to brief him on the progress of their ongoing investigation. Smiling, often buying the next round, Kemper was all ears.

On February 5, 1973, Kemper picked up 23-year-old

“Coed Killer” Edmund Kemper (Author’s collection) Rosalind Thorpe and another hitchhiker, Alice Lin.

Both young women were shot to death in the car, then stacked in the trunk like so much excess luggage. Dri-boasted thousands of attractive coeds. For the next two ving home, Kemper ate dinner and waited for his years, through 1970 and 1971, Kemper bided his time, mother to retire before stepping outside and decapitat-holding odd jobs and cruising the highways in his ing both corpses as they lay in the trunk. Unsatisfied, he leisure time, picking up dozens of young female hitch-carried Lin’s body inside and raped it on the floor.

hikers, refining his “line” until he knew that he could Returning to the car, he chopped off her hands as a put them totally at ease. Some evenings, he would fre-casual afterthought.

quent a saloon patronized by off-duty policemen, rub-With spring’s arrival, Kemper’s frenzy escalated, bing shoulders with the law and soaking up their tales coming back full circle to his home and family. He of crime, becoming friendly with a number of detectives toyed with the idea of killing everybody on his block as who would later be assigned to track him down.

“a demonstration to the authorities” but finally disOn May 7, 1972, Kemper picked up two 18-year-old missed the notion. Instead, on Easter weekend, Kemper roommates from Fresno State College, Mary Ann Pesce turned on his mother, hammering her skull in as she and Anita Luchessa. Driving them to a secluded cul-slept. Decapitating her, he raped the headless corpse, desac, he stabbed both girls to death, then took their then jammed her severed larynx down the garbage dis-bodies home, and hid them in his room. Delighted with posal. (“It seemed appropriate,” he told police, “as his “trophies,” Kemper took Polaroid snapshots, dis-much as she’d bitched and screamed and yelled at me sected the corpses, and sexually assaulted various over so many years.”) Her head was propped up on the organs before tiring of the game. Bundling the remains mantle for use as a dart board.

into plastic bags, he buried the truncated bodies in the Still not sated, Kemper telephoned a friend of his Santa Cruz mountains, tossing the heads into a roadside mother, Sally Hallett, and invited her over for a “sur-ravine.

prise” dinner in his mother’s honor. Upon her arrival, Four months later, on September 14, Kemper offered Kemper clubbed her over the head, strangled her to a ride to 15-year-old Aiko Koo. Suffocating her with his death, then decapitated her. The headless body was large hands, Kemper raped her corpse on the spot and deposited in bed, while he wandered off to sleep in his then carried it home for dissection. Koo’s severed head mother’s room.

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KISS, Bela

On Easter Sunday, Kemper started driving east with into the ranks and issued gear. Another 18 months no destination in mind. He got as far as Colorado would pass before officials in Czinkota were informed before pulling over to a roadside telephone booth and that Kiss had died in combat, one more grim statistic for calling police in Santa Cruz. Several attempts were nec-the casualty rosters in that bloody spring of 1916. He essary before his friends would accept his confession was forgotten by the townsfolk until June when soldiers and local officers were dispatched to make the arrest visited Czinkota in a search for stockpiled gasoline.

while Kemper waited patiently in his car.

The village constable remembered Kiss and his cache In his detailed confessions, Kemper admitted slicing of metal drums and led a squad of soldiers to the dead flesh from the legs of at least two victims, cooking it in man’s home. Inside the house, the searchers turned up a macaroni casserole, and devouring it as a means of seven drums . . . but they contained no gasoline. Instead,

“possessing” his prey. He also acknowledged removing each drum contained the naked body of a woman, stran-teeth, along with bits of hair and skin from his victims, gled and immersed in alcohol. The drawers of Kiss’s retaining them as grisly keepsakes, TROPHIES of the bureau overflowed with cards and letters from women hunt. Described as sane by state psychiatrists, Kemper responding to newspaper advertisements, purchased by was convicted on eight counts of murder. Asked what Kiss in the name of Hoffmann, a self-described “lonely punishment he considered fitting for his crimes, the widower seeking female companionship.”