‘Co-ed butcher’ serial killer Edmund Kemper is denied parole again for murders of eight women
The 75-year-old was convicted following a spate of horrific killings of several women as well as his own mother
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Serial killer Edmund Kemper, who was nicknamed the “co-ed butcher” for his brutal murders of eight women in the 1970s, has been denied parole once again.
The “depraved” 75-year-old was convicted in 1973 following a spate of horrific killings, which included female high school and college students aged between 15 and 23, his own mother and grandparents.
Kemper was known to decapitate and dismember his victims, as well as engage in necrophilia with the bodies.
He was denied parole on Tuesday by a California state panel during a hearing that he did not attend. Santa Cruz County District Attorney Jeff Rosell urged the parole panel to keep Kemper inside the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
“We made the argument that he is essentially untreated for all these years,” Rosell said, per the East Bay Times. “That in terms of serial killers, he is one of the most depraved in the country.”
Pointing to Kempers absence from the hearing, he added: “He is essentially blowing this off because he doesn’t care. He doesn’t respect it.”
Kemper will next be eligible for parole in 2031 at the age of 82. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time of his sentencing, and he is currently serving eight concurrent life sentences.
His last unsuccessful bid for parole before the Board of Parole Hearings took place on February 21 2017.
Kemper has been similarly denied during at least eight past parole hearings, as listed on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation website.
Years before his conviction in 1973, Kemper – who is 6ft 9 – murdered his paternal grandparents at the age of 15. He shot his grandmother during a heated argument inside her kitchen and his grandfather when he later returned home.
According to Crime and Investigation Network, when asked about why he had committed the crimes, he replied “I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma.”
Kemper served a stint in a mental hospital as a result of those slayings, according to The East Bay Times.
He buried his victims all over Santa Cruz County, including near Summit Road in the Santa Cruz mountains and his Aptos home’s backyard.
Kemper reportedly called the Santa Cruz Police Department from Colorado to confess and beg them to stop him.