TGF 061 Ed Kemper: The Redacted Report
In this episode of The Redacted Report, we reopen the case of Edmund Kemper, the so-called “Co-Ed Killer,” to expose the details that were buried in thousands of pages of police files, psychiatric evaluations, and trial transcripts.
This isn’t the version told in documentaries or dramatizations. This is the story of how a system failed, how warning signs were missed, and how one of California’s most intelligent predators learned to play both sides of the law .Ed Kemper wasn’t just hiding in plain sight — he was sitting at the bar with the very officers searching for him.
Inside The Jury Room in Santa Cruz, he befriended Detective Johnson, Officer Martinez, and Sergeant Williams, absorbing investigative methods, forensic procedures, and common police mistakes over casual drinks. What they didn’t realize was that their “gentle giant” drinking buddy was gathering operational intelligence. Kemper collected handcuffs, police radios, and scanner frequencies, giving him real-time access to law enforcement movements — knowledge that helped him stay one step ahead for nearly a year while bodies continued to surface. Behind the charm and calm demeanor was a man who had already fooled the system once.
At just 21, Kemper had been released from Atascadero State Hospital, declared no threat to society despite having murdered his grandparents as a teenager. Working in the hospital’s psychology lab, he studied mental health diagnostics, learned how to manipulate tests, and even handled real psychological profiles — including those of violent offenders. He used that knowledge to beat the system, understand his captors, and later, to outthink investigators.We trace the moments where fate nearly intervened — the traffic stops, the roadblocks, the missed connections between agencies that could have saved lives.
Officers questioned him, waved him through, even trusted him, all because he seemed “too polite” to be dangerous. Through firsthand reports and redacted files, we expose how institutional blind spots and bureaucratic silos allowed a killer to thrive in plain view. From the quiet house on Ord Drive, where he dismembered victims while his mother was at work, to his Alameda apartment, where neighbors lived just feet away from unimaginable horror, we explore the forensic trail left behind — the vehicle evidence, the recovered photographs, and the chilling confession tapes where Ed bragged, analyzed, and justified every act in painstaking detail.
His hours-long conversations with FBI profilers Robert Ressler and John Douglas later became the foundation of modern criminal profiling, shaping how future generations would define the term “organized serial killer.”But beneath all the psychology and procedure lies the story of his mother, Clarnell Kemper — the woman he blamed, feared, and eventually murdered. Working as an administrator at UC Santa Cruz, she may have unknowingly processed paperwork for students her son would later kill.
The tragedy of their relationship — and the evidence found in her home — reveal the disturbing cycle of resentment and rage that fueled his crimes.This episode goes beyond the headlines to confront the decisions that allowed a double murderer to be paroled into his mother’s home, the psychiatric assessments that missed every danger sign, the sealed records that kept police in the dark, and the agencies that failed to communicate. It’s not a story about glorifying monsters — it’s about learning from the systems that created them. Because monsters don’t always look like monsters.
They smile, they shake your hand, and they convince the world they’re harmless — until it’s too late.
We close by honoring the ten victims whose lives mattered far more than the man who took them: Maude and Edmund Kemper Sr., Mary Ann Pesce, Anita Luchessa, Aiko Koo, Cindy Schall, Rosalind Thorpe, Alice Liu, Clarnell Strandberg, and Sally Hallett. Their stories remind us that behind every case file and redacted page are real lives, real loss, and the lessons society cannot afford to ignore.