This month, I’m bringing you the story of three terrifying years that unfolded in Santa Cruz, California. Between 1970 and 1973, a series of murders rocked Santa Cruz, a once-peaceful beach community. Before it was all over, residents would live through unimaginable horrors - a prominent family wiped out in a mass murder by a deranged killer and two serial killers working simultaneously, but separately, in their midst.  

In this second part of the series, we’ll pick up the story at the tail end of 1971. John Linley Frazier’s trial had just concluded, and he was sentenced to die. While the courtroom drama played out for one Santa Cruz killer, another was moving into town.  

Edmund Emil Kemper III would become one of the most infamous serial killers on record. By the time he arrived in Santa Cruz in 1971, Kemper had already been convicted of a double murder.  Less than a year after his release from prison, he would commit a series of gruesome murders that would forever cast a dark shadow over sunny Santa Cruz.  

I’ve taken an unprecedented deep dive into “The Co-ed Killer” to provide details about Kemper’s life and crimes you haven’t heard anywhere else.  

This is part two of “Murder City: Santa Cruz, California 1970 to 1973 - Ed Kemper. 

Sources:

Murray, E. (2020). Murder Capital of the World. 

Cheney, M. (1976). The Co-Ed Killer. Goodreads Press. 

Edmund Kemper: The Life of the Co-Ed Killer. (2017). Hourly History. 

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