Edmund Kemper: The Coed Butcher

 

On May 7, 1972, as people were still troubled by the conclusion of the Frazier trial less than six months before, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa hitchhiked from Fresno State College to meet friends at Stanford University. Damio, Newton, and Frazier laid out the events chronologically. When the girls failed to arrive at their destination, their families contacted the police. But runaways were all too frequent during those days and the girls had left behind no clues as to where they had gone, so there was little the authorities could do.

Then, on August 15, the remains of a female head were recovered from an area in the mountains and identified as that of Pecse. No other remains were found, but it was assumed that both girls had met with foul play and were dead.

On September 14, dance student Aiko Koo disappeared while hitching from Berkley . On October 13, Mullin's series of murders began to catch people's attention, but then, early in 1973, 18-year-old Cindy Schall disappeared while traveling to class at Cabrillo Community College . She was hitchhiking, and had stopped off at a friend's house. Someone saw her get a ride and then she was just gone. Less than two days later, dismembered arms and legs were found on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Then an upper torso washed ashore, which was identified via lung X-rays as Schall's. Eventually a lower torso came in. A surfer also found her left hand, which offered fingerprints, but her head and right hand remained missing. The papers began talking about the "Chopper" and the "Butcher."

Then, on January 25, two local families were shot to death in their homes. The Santa Cruz area was in a panic, and soon four young men who were camping were all shot at close range in the head.

Two more girls out hitchhiking disappeared on February 5: Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. There were no leads whatsoever in their disappearances. Then on February 13, a witness called the police after another shooting of a man in his garden. In short order, they arrested Herbert Mullin. He was tied to most of the shootings, but not to the murders of Cindy Schall or Mary Ann Pesce, or the disappearance of the other hitchhikers. Kidnapping and dismemberment were not part of his MO. Yet Damio indicates that upon Mullin's arrest, the media coverage of the local violence inspired an atmosphere of terror.

One reporter, whom Ward identifies as television reporter Marilyn Baker, consistently exaggerated rumors and offered uncorroborated information as fact, angering the police and alarming the citizens. She gave daily reports of satanic rituals and linked together a number of murders over the course of a year. "The butcher murders are unique," Damio quotes her as saying. "The decapitation and dismemberment is done with the skill of what police say borders on perhaps professional knowledge. The bodies were placed in a slant position, the heads lower than the feet, so the blood would drain out, making such dismemberment easier." Baker also mentioned that one of more of the victims appeared to have been held captive for a period of time prior to being killed, and noted that the Achilles tendon was sliced on Cynthia Schall. She suggested that the killer was a lesbian or transvestite and scolded the police for their mistakes during the investigation. She warned that the butcher murders occurred on Mondays after dark and during the full moon—which was patently untrue. Yet for her, it seemed like evidence of cult activity.

On March 4, a couple of hikers came across a human skull and jawbone not far from Highway 1 in San Mateo County. They were not from the same person. The police searched the area and found another skull that went with the jawbone, so they knew they had a pair of victims killed close together. They had reports of several missing female hitchhikers, so they compared what they had to the descriptions, and identified the remains of Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. Liu had been shot twice in the head, Thorpe once. It was not long thereafter that the university decided to institute a bus system that would assist off-campus students to get safely to their classes.

The authorities were stymied. The area had become a hotbed of murder and missing persons, mostly young women. They had few leads and no methods for ending the killing. The university experienced a sudden drop in enrollment. But then the unexpected occurred. The police heard from the last of the killers— the one who was killing the coeds. He had stopped the spree himself.