What Was Ed Kemper's Childhood Really Like?

Kemper's childhood is definitely not your average coming-of-age story: Ed's favorite childhood activities included playing with dead animal parts and decapitating his sisters' dolls. He would make his sisters play a game called "gas chamber", in which he would ask one of the girls to blindfold him and seat him in a chair, where he pretended to die a painful death.

At age 10, Kemper buried the family cat alive, and proceeded to dig up the body, decapitate it and mount its head on a spike, according to Crime and Investigation. He butchered the second family cat with a knife at age 13. According to author and professor of forensic psychology Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Kemper stated later in life that he got satisfaction from successfully lying to his parents about the kills, via Crime Library.

After a period of being bounced around between his mother in Montana and his father, Ed was eventually sent to live with his paternal grandparents in California.

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