EDMUND KEMPER- WAS IT NATURE OR NURTURE?
Best known as the notorious killer who murdered his own family and young girls hitchhiking. Kemper or the "Co-ed killer" was feared amongst the Californian community, parents told their children to not hitchhike yet, the trusting and friendly look of Kemper lured them into a false sense of security. Unbeknown to them, they would end up murdered, dismembered and sexually abused.
Below is a URL to a documentary that recently aired (November 2019) which in depth, describes the horrors of Kempers crimes. It also explores his crucial role in identifying, describing and distinguishing types of murders and their murderer. With that said, the ideology of serial crime would not be as developed as it is today.
(copy and paste URL)
https://www.sky.com/watch/title/programme/9cdbc124-2a8b-44d8-be6d-aabb2b3ccb30/kemper-on-kemper
Kempers crimes were inexcusable. But was he destined to kill? Did he have a predisposition to murder? And could we have predicted his callous acts?
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For this we firstly need to look closely at his childhood to see if there was any maternal abandonment, domestic violence, an unstable background or an alcoholic mother which would play a key factor in his development into adulthood. Not only this, but does he have a significant resemblance to the early warning signs of a serial killer through his time as a young person?
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We then look into brain trauma, did he suffer from brain injuries from either a fall, accident or physical abuse which may have damaged an area of the brain responsible for impulse control, fear, morality and emotions?
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Finally we look at their genetical makeup, does he carry the MAOA gene, the CDH13 gene, the low version of transporting serotonin gene or are they exposed to extremely large amounts of testosterone or even all.
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All the above is how criminologists and pathologists profile the hidden factors which may have led to the reasons behind the murders happening. It doesn't remove the outcome nor punishment but it does help in the explanation for the reasons behind why they may have acted in such ways.
In Kempers situation, it can be said he had a difficult childhood. His mother in some ways abandoned him, locking him in the basement free from light or people. Her addiction to alcohol through his birth was prevalent and provided the foetus with a neurotoxin, damaging his brain cells. That in effect gave Kemper a 56% chance of becoming a juvenile delinquent.
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While in prison, a brain scan revealed that Kemper did in fact have some brain injury in his temporal cortex. A shrinkage in this area, as the seat of emotions, is responsible for a lack of fear and could be an explanation as to why he was so comfortable with his own murderous actions. This was seen when he received his last check-up before being permanently released from the Atascadero State Hospital (a maximum-security facility for mentally ill convicts) after he killed his grandparents. While finalising his permanent release, he controversially and sinisterly had the body of a young girl in the boot where he had just stabbed her to death, because they believed he was now mentally stable and not a harm or risk to society anymore.
It is unknown if Kemper carries any sort of gene linked to his abnormal behaviour, but we can assume due to his social awkwardness and lack of being able to communicate with others, specifically to the opposite sex, that he may have had ADHD. His actions also contributed hugely to that of a psychopath. His shrunken Temporal cortex and the maternal abandonment may have caused the numbing of emotions to avoid the feeling of pain. This could have led to his body to turn off active genes and even turn on dormant genes. Overall, his behaviour comes across as psychopathic, which is not unusual when considering that 25% of murderers are psychopaths.
As Kemper himself said, “If I killed them, you know they couldn’t reject me as a man”. Inside he was an insecure man and these insecurities turned into sexual fantasies and these sexual fantasies turned him into a real-life killing machine to satisfy his desires. He had even “thought of annihilating the entire block that (he) lived on”. That’s when you’re glad that a psychopathic serial killer is locked up inside and that he surprisingly was willing to help the police in their future hunts for serial killers. It takes one to catch one.