Ed Kemper Research Paper

Ed Kemper was born on December 18, 1948. He was born in Burbank, California to mother, Clarnell Stage, and father, Edmund Emil Kemper II. Ed Kemper’s parents divorced in 1957, when he then moved with his mother and two sisters to Montana. This divorce seemed to be a small part of his story, this one small event caused many bigger, worser events. The divorce of his parents is definitely a nurture. The mental effects of a parents divorce can hurt a child very much. Ed Kemper’s mother was a lot. She was an alcoholic, and very critical of her son. Ed Kemper blamed his mother for all of his problems. She had forced him to live in the basement, pushed by the fear that he would harm his sisters. He would also cut off the heads of his sisters’ dolls.

She met the same fate as Anita and Mary Ann. In January of 1973, Ed Kemper had picked up a girl named Cindy Schall. He shot and killed her. He had then hid her body in his room, dismembered the corpse and the next day threw her parts into the ocean, where many were later discovered washed up onshore. He had also buried her head in his mother’s backyard. The last victims in this case were Rosalind Thorpe and Alice Liu. He had used a campus sticker that his mother had given him to facilitate the murder. In February of 1973, Ed Kemper drove to the university, where he offered the two students a ride. He shot them and then decapitated them. He further dismembered their bodies and removed the bullets from their heads. He disposed of their parts in different locations. In March, both of the girls’ remains were discovered by hikers near Highway 1 in San Mateo County. I feel as though these murders were not particularly sparked by one thing. I believe this was nature and he had a feeling in his brain and acted on it. In previous statements, there was always something that had triggered Ed Kemper acting

Overall, I feel that both nature and nurture played into Ed Kemper’s life. He was nurtured in a negative way, which pushed him to do things he shouldn’t have. There was always a feeling of nature as well. He knew what he was doing, he was incredibly smart, but could not control his schizophrenia, nor could he control the way his mind may have been processing events in his life. I believe that Ed Kemper was affected both by nature and nurture. I have strong feelings that Ed Kemper was born to be the person he became, and that his surroundings also created him into this person. Ed Kemper has problems he could not control that affected him negatively. There is always the possibility that if Ed Kemper was brought up in a different environment, that all of those people would not have lost their lives. I strongly believe that humans should treat everyone kindly and with the most respect they can. I think there are people who are born to be the person they become, but I 100% believe that people become what others push them to be. Without the negativity of his childhood, maybe Ed Kemper could have been different. I think there's just no way to prove this to be right or