On this day, Aug. 27, in 1964, 15-year-old Edmund Kemper III killed his grandparents with a rifle while visiting their ranch in North Fork, Calif.
He then called his mother and reportedly told her, “I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma.”
Kemper, whose later crimes would be even more horrific, was sent to a California hospital, where he tried to convince psychiatrists that he should never be released. But he was let go in 1969.
Kemper, who grew to 6-foot-9, later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers, including five college students around Santa Cruz known as the Co-Ed Killings. He then murdered his mother and her friends before turning himself in.
Kemper, 63, remains among the general prison population at California Medical Facility.
— Scott McCabe
