Ed Kemper: The Co-Ed Killer

Killer Psyche

Wondery | Treefort Media

True Crime, Exhibit C

4.6 • 4.2K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Retired FBI agent and criminal profiler Candice DeLong explores the disturbing case of Ed Kemper, known as “The Co-Ed Killer.” In the early 1970s, young women began vanishing from the streets of Northern California. When the truth finally came to light, it revealed a killer unlike any other: a towering, soft-spoken man whose charm and intellect hid monstrous impulses. By the time he was caught, eight people – including his own mother – were dead. Only later would investigators learn that Kemper’s knack for violence began years earlier. Candice examines how deep resentment, emotional isolation, and a fractured relationship with his mother fueled one of the most chilling killing sprees of the decade, and how his later cooperation with the FBI helped shape modern criminal profiling.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there. Want to know what drives someone to kill? Join Wondery Plus for early access, exclusive episodes that unpack the psychology of the crime, and it's all ad-free. Start your free trial of Wondery Plus now.
0:17.0	A listener note. This episode contains discussions of graphic violence, sexual abuse, and animal death.
0:25.4	Listener discretion is strongly advised.
0:33.9	Before the 1970s, the term serial killer did not exist.
0:43.4	There were serial killers in existence, people who committed brutal, senseless, horrifying series of murders.
0:52.1	But there was no explanation for why they did what they did. Enter Robert
0:58.5	Ressler and John Douglas, my mentors, two FBI agents who wanted to learn the why. So they did
1:07.4	something no one in law enforcement had ever done before.
1:11.5	They went behind bars sitting face to face with killers.
1:17.4	One by one, they interviewed the country's most notorious murderers.
1:22.7	They listened to how they spoke about their crimes,
1:26.0	what they remembered, how they did it, what they got out of it.
1:32.0	Their goal was not to sympathize with their subjects, but to understand them.
1:38.5	And that understanding would become the foundation of modern criminal profiling.
1:45.6	One of the first men they met was Ed Kemper.
1:50.2	Through Ed and others like him, Ressler and Douglas built a framework for understanding the criminal mind.
1:59.3	But unlike some of Ressler and Douglas's other subjects, Ed was
2:04.8	brilliant, composed, and self-aware. He described his twisted crimes, including murder,
2:14.9	dismemberment, and necrophilia, with an unnerving calmness.
2:21.3	Before them was a man who hit a burning rage behind a friendly demeanor.
2:26.9	A man who callously took the lives of ten people, including his own family members.
2:33.8	A man whose intelligence and politeness
	...

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