Edmund Kemper’s Early Childhood Demonstrated Psychopathic Behavior

Edmund Kemper was an American serial killer who was active in California in the early 1970s. He started his criminal life by shooting both his grandparents when he was a teenager. Kemper later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. He murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself into the authorities days later. As a child he was extremely bright, but displayed psychopathic behavior from an early age, including cruelty to animals; he purportedly fatally stabbed a cat as a child. He acted out bizarre sexual rituals with his sisters’ dolls. Ed had a horrible relationship with his mother, which was a violent woman who constantly belittles and humiliates him. His mother often made Ed sleep in a locked basement; she feared that he would rape his younger sister. Clearly, Ed developed insecure attachments to one or both of his parents and suffered from emotional loss as well as instability in his childhood conducted him to become a criminal.

I do believe there are at least three theories that can be applied to explain why Ed Kemper did the things he did, and why he chose to be a serial killer. Although I cannot be certain of his motives, I do believe that the three theories that closely relate to him are the Biological Theory, the Sociological Theory, and the Psychological Theory. There are many other theories out there that could describe the influences of his criminal acts, but these three are closely related to him. The Biological Positivism Theory claims that certain biological and mental traits present at birth make people more prone to crime.

This applies to Edmund Kemper because after he had committed murder in his teenage years, they send him off to Atascadero State Hospital where they learned that he was schizophrenic. According to Schmalleger, people suffering from schizophrenia suffer breakdowns in the relation between thought, emotion, and behavior, leading to faulty perception, inappropriate actions and feelings, withdrawal from reality and personal relationships into fantasy and delusion, and a sense of mental fragmentation (p. 87-88). This is why he was sent to a state hospital rather than a prison because his illness was believed to be able to be treated with medicine. Another biological trait is Ed Kemper’s size. He was a very strong and tall man. Sheldon’s Theory of body types describes people and their body types and how prone they are to commit a crime.

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According to Sheldon, mesomorphs, rectangular shape men who have thick skin and are able to gain muscle easily, are the most prone to commit a crime and other deviant behaviors. Kemper was a big guy and was unable to be a state trooper because of his size. I can only assume that would cause him anger and maybe even make him feel out of place with others and cause him to not care and act out in a deviant way. The second theory is the Psychological Theory, which claims that one’s past experiences and childhood and incomplete cognitive behavior can shape who they are and influence deviant behavior. Kemper had a poor childhood; his mother did not get along well with him and knew he was the odd child. His mother did not pay as much attention to him as she did with his sister. She made him live in the basement and did not give him the love and affection he needed as a kid and when he acted out, she just forced him to go live with his grandparents.

Throughout his childhood, he spent a lot of free time playing dark games, and abusing animals for his own pleasure, which also does a number on one’s psychology and can conclude that Kemper did not sympathize with others or feel any remorse. His upbringing was harsh because his father was not around and as a young man, a father influence is crucial to your childhood. He was not treated like a person, just an object that his guardians would put to the side when it was not to convenient for them to pay attention to him and it definitely have him the idea that no one act as a normal child because he did not had a normal childhood. He was antisocial to his family because of the way he was treated like an outsider and so he acted like one

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