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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them Gaesy Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every
Speaker 3: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 3: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 3: host journalist and author Dan.
Speaker 6: Zufanski, Good Evening. Over twenty five people murdered in just
Speaker 6: over two and a half years. What was happening in
Speaker 6: the small coastal town of Santa Cruz between October nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy and February nineteen seventy three. John Linley Fraser home
Speaker 6: invasion murders of the Ota family and Dorothy Cadwalder in
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy and the serial murder spreees of Herbert Mullen
Speaker 6: and Edmund Kemper left tremors in Santa Cruz that can
Speaker 6: still be felt today. Local law enforcement, victims, families and friends,
Speaker 6: classmates and acquaintance of the killers, local historians, voices from
Speaker 6: the past and present, and the killers themselves all come
Speaker 6: together to tell the horrific stories and explain why Santa
Speaker 6: Cruz was dubbed the murder Capital of the World in
Speaker 6: the early seventies. Murder Capital of the World is a
Speaker 6: primary source history telling the story of Santa Cruz in
Speaker 6: the early nineteen seventies through quotes and first persons stories.
Speaker 6: The book that were featuring this evening is Murder Capital
Speaker 6: of the World. The Santa Cruz Community looks back at
Speaker 6: the John Linley Fraser, Herbert Mullen, and Edmund Kemper murder
Speaker 6: spreees of the early nineteen seventies with my special guests,
Speaker 6: journalist and author Emerson Emerson Murray. Welcome to the program,
Speaker 6: and thank you so much for this interview. Emerson Murray, thank.
Speaker 4: You so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much. First Off, as I mentioned beforehand,
Speaker 6: a very very impressive package, the entire book and especially
Speaker 6: the incredibly astounding photos that you have, which are over
Speaker 6: three hundred in all in total. Let's start off right
Speaker 6: away with this, the acknowledgments where you've got this idea
Speaker 6: and the impetus and the unique format, and how you
Speaker 6: came to this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I tell people I've really been working on
Speaker 4: this book for about thirty years. The whole story itself,
Speaker 4: Aaron Sanakers has just been in our family since before
Speaker 4: I was born. One of my father's good friends, a
Speaker 4: man named Jim Genera, was murdered by Herbert Mullen, just
Speaker 4: a few months before I was born, actually, And so
Speaker 4: as we were growing up, and I tell the story
Speaker 4: in the book, there was always a picture of my
Speaker 4: dad and Jim hiking on my dad's wall, and it
Speaker 4: was something that we just always knew. We knew Jim
Speaker 4: had been murdered by this serial killer, and of course
Speaker 4: that term wasn't around at that time, but he had
Speaker 4: been murdered by this man, and it was just something
Speaker 4: we talked about. And really, that whole time period was
Speaker 4: sort of in the air in Santa Cruz, you know,
Speaker 4: in the late seventies and early eighties when I was young,
Speaker 4: and I can remember my family being at parties and
Speaker 4: hearing other adults talking about these crimes and about all
Speaker 4: the things that went down at that time period. So
Speaker 4: because Santa Cruz was such a small community, it was
Speaker 4: just there.
Speaker 2: It was present.
Speaker 6: Now, you mentioned the film The Lost Boys that was
Speaker 6: filmed in Santa Cruz under the fictional name of Santa
Speaker 6: Carlo explained how the relevance and the importance to the
Speaker 6: story and your book and The Lost Boys know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think a lot of people actually know
Speaker 4: Sannaker is just simply from the film The Lost Boys.
Speaker 4: They know it was filmed here, and when they came
Speaker 4: and filmed they changed a name. But Fannakers was known
Speaker 4: as the murder capital of the world at that time.
Speaker 4: And so in the beginning of the film, as the
Speaker 4: protagonist and his mom and his older brother are driving
Speaker 4: into town, they passed by this big billboard and it says,
Speaker 4: you know, welcome to Santa Carla and all this. And
Speaker 4: as they passed by, the camera lingers on the sign,
Speaker 4: and on the back of the sign you can see
Speaker 4: somebody has scrawled the graffiti murder Capital of the World.
Speaker 4: So they sort of kept har Moniker. But I always
Speaker 4: make the joke that in the movie they just they
Speaker 4: had to deal with a handful of teenage vampires, and
Speaker 4: we had to deal with an eco terrorist and a
Speaker 4: serial killer who was killing people for earthquakes, and a
Speaker 4: pscho sexual killer who was murdering teenage hitchhikers. It was
Speaker 4: like in the movie they had nothing on us.
Speaker 6: Yeah, much stranger than fiction. Yeah. Yeah, your book also
Speaker 6: includes modern quotes and historic quotes, meaning back from the
Speaker 6: seventies when this occurred, seventies seventy three, but also modern
Speaker 6: quotes from many people like Herbert Mullen and Edmund Kemper
Speaker 6: and this Fraser, John Linley Fraser. Let's get to right away.
Speaker 6: You talk about a headline. You also talk about the
Speaker 6: district Attorney Peter Chang in an interview, asked if Santa
Speaker 6: Cruz was murder capital, and he said, right now, we
Speaker 6: must be the murder capital. Now you talked about the
Speaker 6: format that this quotes us. So let's talk about the
Speaker 6: who is quoted, and let's talk about the first headline
Speaker 6: that you have in the book, with the Santa Cruz
Speaker 6: spent in al February thirteen, nineteen seventy three. I guess
Speaker 6: that really talks about this and really identifies what you're saying,
Speaker 6: that this recognizes that there's something very, very unusual and
Speaker 6: murderous going on.
Speaker 4: Right Yeah, So first let me talk about the newspaper. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: that was from Tuesday, February thirteenth to nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 4: and that was the day that Herbert Mullen murdered his
Speaker 4: last victim, and he was caught just minutes later, and
Speaker 4: it sort of encapsulates what the entire book is about.
Speaker 4: If you look at this newspaper headline along the top,
Speaker 4: it's says something like crimes three sore is another murder,
Speaker 4: and then underneath the Santa Cruz Sentinel the banners the
Speaker 4: senseless slaying of an old man. And then there's another
Speaker 4: murder that's unrelated to these three killers, about youth held
Speaker 4: in a capitol at death, about a young man who
Speaker 4: killed a woman named Ida Stein and sannikers. And then
Speaker 4: they're also talking about these bodies that are washing up
Speaker 4: on the ocean that are found and rape victims being
Speaker 4: picked up by hitchhikers, who are these hitchhikes, and then
Speaker 4: another kidnapping case and an article about women hitchhike. It
Speaker 4: was unbelievable, and this is all from one day. It
Speaker 4: was just stunning, and it sort of exemplified what I
Speaker 4: wanted to talk about in the book, and that is,
Speaker 4: you know, it was absolute overwhelming chaos for law enforcement
Speaker 4: and for our community at that time. And you said
Speaker 4: it right. Peter Chang was being interviewed after four boys
Speaker 4: were murdered by Herbert Mullen, and their bodies were found.
Speaker 4: He was being interviewed by a San Francisco Examiner reporter
Speaker 4: and the reporter was, you know, halfway joking around, you
Speaker 4: must be the murder capital of the world. And Peter
Speaker 4: Chang said, yeah, this time, we must be the murder capital.
Speaker 2: And it just stuck.
Speaker 4: It stuck to us like glue. And you know, our
Speaker 4: city council, our board of supervisors couldn't stand it. There's
Speaker 4: there's records I found in there's notes in the official
Speaker 4: records of the transcripts of our supervisor meetings, and they're
Speaker 4: railing against this. Oh who gave us this stupid title.
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous and stupid to quote they use that word.
Speaker 4: And so but it just stuck. So when I, for myself,
Speaker 4: I had read the for using quotes. I had read
Speaker 4: a book by a man named Rudolph Gray who wrote
Speaker 4: a book about the filmmaker Edward and he had used quotes.
Speaker 4: This is like in the late nineteen eighties or early
Speaker 4: nineteen nineties, and I thought, what a great way to
Speaker 4: tell a very nuanced story. Because Edward was a complicated
Speaker 4: person and to some people, you know, he was, you know,
Speaker 4: a wacko, and to some people he was you know,
Speaker 4: they loved him like a brother. And I thought God
Speaker 4: for something like this, a true crime story where there's
Speaker 4: a lot of different stories going on and people are
Speaker 4: remembering events slightly different. As well as the fact that
Speaker 4: you know, we'll say Edmund Kemper, he's alone with a
Speaker 4: victim at night, and what happened to that victim and
Speaker 4: what he did only he knows, nobody knows. You know,
Speaker 4: maybe we may have some CSI information from the crime scene,
Speaker 4: but it really went down the way that he said it.
Speaker 4: So rather than come in like a heavy handed author
Speaker 4: and say that this is what happened here, this is
Speaker 4: what happened here, this is what happened here, I really
Speaker 4: wanted to get a well rounded picture of everyone's point
Speaker 4: of view. And you know, we're talking to the old hippies,
Speaker 4: we're talking to the old law enforcement, We're talking to
Speaker 4: everyone to sort of get this picture of what Santa
Speaker 4: Cruz was like at that time. And I talked to
Speaker 4: well over one hundred people and I grabbed quotes from
Speaker 4: every So I think I make a joke in the book,
Speaker 4: you know, I stole and robbed them from every source
Speaker 4: I could find, from every newspaper, just trying to get
Speaker 4: a picture, you know, what was going on back then.
Speaker 4: So yeah, we jump around and I put the year
Speaker 4: there so you can see Edmin Kemper telling his story
Speaker 4: in the nineteen seventies, right after he got caught. This happened,
Speaker 4: This happened. And then you can see him again in
Speaker 4: nineteen ninety one at a parole hearing and his story
Speaker 4: changes slightly. And then in twenty seventeen again at another
Speaker 4: parole hearing, and it changes. His story changes drastically. And
Speaker 4: what did he have to lose and gain all along
Speaker 4: the way when he's telling these different stories in different ways?
Speaker 4: And why is this story one way? Well, it may
Speaker 4: have something to do with his defense attorney just filed
Speaker 4: the insanity to insanity please, So it's just for me.
Speaker 4: I found it a great way to tell a story
Speaker 4: on many many layers.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, it's very, very very effective. One of the three
Speaker 6: people featured in this book are John Linley Fraser, Herbert
Speaker 6: William Mullen, and Edmund Kemper. The third Herbert Willie Mullen
Speaker 6: and Edmund Kemper. People know the basic stories and we'll
Speaker 6: get you to just outline him as you do this,
Speaker 6: the very basic ones. But very interestingly, this John Linley
Speaker 6: Fraser is not as well known yet when you include
Speaker 6: very early on in the book the great iconic or
Speaker 6: infamous half and half photo. So before we talk about
Speaker 6: John Linley Fraser, tell us about this very dramatic photo
Speaker 6: that you have of the half and half photo.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's like one of the most important pictures, and
Speaker 4: that like it has to be in the book.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So John lean Lee Fraser was and his attorneys, the
Speaker 4: public defenders they had, were just going into the insanity
Speaker 4: phase of the trial to see if he was insane
Speaker 4: or not. So John Lelely Fraser shows up to court
Speaker 4: and he before you know, had long hair and a beard.
Speaker 4: But he walks into court and half of his head
Speaker 4: is shaved from left to right, and his head's bald,
Speaker 4: and his eyebrows are gone, and his beard and his
Speaker 4: mustache are gone, and he just presents this stark image.
Speaker 4: And of course, you know, the public defender's office and
Speaker 4: they're quoted in there saying, what the heck is he doing?
Speaker 4: You know, like that that doesn't prove anything, and what
Speaker 4: kind of law enforcement would give him a race and prisoned.
Speaker 4: They were in jail to even do this. So, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's a very stark, stark image. And I can get
Speaker 4: into John Linley Fraser. Would you talk about and talk
Speaker 4: about that story, do you think?
Speaker 6: Yeah, tell us basically for people don't know, and I
Speaker 6: wasn't so aware of him at all, tell us basically
Speaker 6: outline of the murders he was convicted of and committed.
Speaker 4: Okay, So the Oda family was what they always say,
Speaker 4: sort of quote unquote, a prominent family in Santa Cruise,
Speaker 4: and I always wondered what exactly does that mean? So
Speaker 4: in doing my research, I learned doctor Oda was an
Speaker 4: eye surgeon. Not only was he a very accomplished eye surgeon,
Speaker 4: but he did a lot of surgeries for free, and
Speaker 4: he helped out people in the community that couldn't necessarily
Speaker 4: afford some of his work. His wife was Virginia Oda
Speaker 4: was very involved in the community, and she's actually if
Speaker 4: you look at all newspapers, she's in the newspaper much
Speaker 4: more than he ever was, on functions and volunteer work
Speaker 4: and things like that.
Speaker 2: They had four.
Speaker 4: Children, two sons and two daughters, and in nineteen seventy
Speaker 4: his two daughters were away at school. One was in Monterey, California,
Speaker 4: and one was in a design school in New York.
Speaker 4: The two sons were living at home. Doctor Oda also
Speaker 4: had an assistant named Dorothy Cott Walater, and she really
Speaker 4: took care of the kids and she was really a
Speaker 4: part of the family.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: John len Ley Frasier was another local. He was from
Speaker 4: the Santa CRUs area, and he began having these usions
Speaker 4: that he was going to start an environmental movement, and
Speaker 4: how much he was inspired by the Manson killings in
Speaker 4: the late nineteen sixties, or even the McDonald killing where
Speaker 4: the gentleman of Fort Bragg was accused of killing his
Speaker 4: wife and kids and he said a hippie cult came
Speaker 4: in and did it. So I'm not exactly sure how
Speaker 4: much he was influenced by that, but he was started
Speaker 4: to have these delusions that he was going to start
Speaker 4: an environmental movement where he would go to these rich
Speaker 4: people's houses, these pigs as he called them, in rednecks
Speaker 4: as he called them, and convinced them to burn down
Speaker 4: their house, and then they would join his group and
Speaker 4: they would march to the next rich person's house and
Speaker 4: burn down their house, and he would just start this
Speaker 4: global movement and have this brigade, this squad or this army.
Speaker 4: So he lived and not far from the Oda House,
Speaker 4: which was a prominent, beautiful, beautiful house design by an
Speaker 4: architect named Aaron Green who was a protege of Frank
Speaker 4: Lloyd Wright.
Speaker 2: So they built it.
Speaker 4: Up on this hill, and Aaron Green was very careful
Speaker 4: to work with the Oda family not to even cut
Speaker 4: down a single tree when they're building the house. And
Speaker 4: actually even today the house is built around trees, you know.
Speaker 4: But Fraser didn't see it that way. He saw it
Speaker 4: as they were polluting the environment. We're going to burn
Speaker 4: down this house. So on October nineteen, nineteen seventy, he
Speaker 4: basically ambushed the family in the house. He killed each
Speaker 4: member of the family and Dorothy Codwallader in a terrible fashion,
Speaker 4: and left this surreal note almost sort of like a
Speaker 4: Zodiac type note with terret codes and all these things,
Speaker 4: as if this was this massive movement and not one man.
Speaker 4: And he was captured very shortly after because he had
Speaker 4: been spouting off all of these ideas to his friends
Speaker 4: and neighbors, so with him a couple of days he
Speaker 4: was caught for those murders. But you know, the flood
Speaker 4: of the press descended on Santa CRUs and this made
Speaker 4: headlines all over the world. One of the district attorneys
Speaker 4: was actually in Africa and he saw a newspaper and
Speaker 4: there was in the headlines in Africa, in Africa, and
Speaker 4: he said, oh, my goodness, I better go home. So
Speaker 4: that and then, as you talked about before, hot on
Speaker 4: the heels of that. Right after the trial, both Herbert
Speaker 4: Mullen and Edmund Kemper started their murder spree.
Speaker 6: Right and people know that Herbert William Mullen between October
Speaker 6: seventy two and seventy three, right, he murdered thirteen, apparently
Speaker 6: after the death of his best friend and excessive use
Speaker 6: of eleuggenic drugs. Of course, he showed signs of mental
Speaker 6: illness and soon began killing. He stated that he believed
Speaker 6: the murders could at earthquakes. Edmund Kemper, the third, is
Speaker 6: more well known. Tell us a little bit about Edmund Kemper,
Speaker 6: because he did a lot of talking and according according
Speaker 6: to your book as well, John Douglas and Robert K. Wrestler,
Speaker 6: when they decided to do their impromptu visits to the
Speaker 6: prisons to speak to serial killers, or before that term
Speaker 6: was even coined. The first person that they spoke to
Speaker 6: was Edmund Kemper. So he was very cooperative in trying
Speaker 6: to have some insights into exactly how he became how
Speaker 6: he became.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so yeah, very quickly, Yeah, Edmund Kemper. When he
Speaker 4: was fifteen years old, he had murdered his grandparents. He
Speaker 4: desperately wanted to live with his father. He lived with
Speaker 4: his mother, who I'm sure most of your listeners know
Speaker 4: was very abusive or somewhat abusive, and she shipped him
Speaker 4: or he ran away from home to live with his fathers.
Speaker 4: Fathers shipped him off to his parents in this very
Speaker 4: remote area of California. He ended up killing his grandparents
Speaker 4: and he was sent to the SAYA, the California Youth Authority,
Speaker 4: and then also to a Taska Daro, which was sort
Speaker 4: of a mental hospital. And he had stated many and
Speaker 4: that many times, but a couple of times that at
Speaker 4: a Taska zero, you know, as a young man, he
Speaker 4: saw that the hospital was full of rapists that had
Speaker 4: been caught, and so he started to formulate these ideas
Speaker 4: that well, I want to do that and I will
Speaker 4: not be caught, so he started working on his ideas.
Speaker 4: I always think of Edmund Kemper as almost like a hunter,
Speaker 4: hunter of people. He was a very clever man, very
Speaker 4: intelligent man who knew law enforcement, knew the techniques, and
Speaker 4: really practiced. So anyway, he gets out of a taskadero
Speaker 4: the mental hospital, they tell the CYA, you know, whatever
Speaker 4: you do, do not release him to of the custody
Speaker 4: of his mother, because she's sort of the triggering factor
Speaker 4: in his violence. So in their infinite wisdom, the CYA
Speaker 4: releases him to the custody of his mother and he
Speaker 4: goes to live with her in Sankers, California. So very
Speaker 4: shortly after, Edmond Kimper starts picking up hitchhikers and sort
Speaker 4: of perfecting his plans. You know, by his own account,
Speaker 4: he picked up hundreds of hitchhikers and dropped them off
Speaker 4: safely right where they wanted to go. But in his
Speaker 4: mind he starts planning what clothes am I going to wear?
Speaker 4: What glasses am I going to wear that make me
Speaker 4: look less intimidating. He starts developing little techniques, but like
Speaker 4: looking at his watch when he's picking, I don't know
Speaker 4: if I have time to take you where you need
Speaker 4: to go, I guess, so get in. He starts designing
Speaker 4: even his car. His car had these pull handles, and
Speaker 4: he could drop a chapstick or a broken off door
Speaker 4: handle in it, and the person would be the hitchhiker
Speaker 4: would effectively be locked in with him. And of course,
Speaker 4: you know, he's six foot nine and he's got a pistol,
Speaker 4: he's got a knife, and they're not going to be
Speaker 4: able to stop him. So he started formulating all of
Speaker 4: these ideas, and I would say a few months or
Speaker 4: more than that, several months later he started enacting as plan,
Speaker 4: and he killed a total of six hitchhikers in the
Speaker 4: Sanakers area. The first three he had picked up in
Speaker 4: the Berkeley area, but he ultimately brought their bodies to
Speaker 4: Sannakers And and that's when, you know, at the almost
Speaker 4: simultaneous time, like you said, Herbert Mullen, who had experienced
Speaker 4: this tragic loss of his friend and started experimenting with drugs,
Speaker 4: sort of went over the edge and started having these
Speaker 4: these ideations in his head about I'm going to save
Speaker 4: California from this massive earthquake and falling into the ocean,
Speaker 4: and that the Aztecs had it right. Really, the only
Speaker 4: way we can do this is through human sacrifice. And
Speaker 4: I guess I will be that that that person that
Speaker 4: saves California. Yeah, I will be that sadist as he said,
Speaker 4: So he started killing people. He picked up a hitchhiker
Speaker 4: as well, but almost simultaneously with Edmund Kimper. And that's
Speaker 4: where sort of the impact on the community really started
Speaker 4: to get felt. You know, everyone was breathing the sigh
Speaker 4: of relief after the Fraser crimes, and here we go again.
Speaker 4: Bodies start washing up in the ocean, they start finding
Speaker 4: heads out in the wilderness, and people are being.
Speaker 6: Killed now in the media and you say it disattracted
Speaker 6: worldwide attention. So you talk about Santa Cruz being a
Speaker 6: lumber and fishing town, and Peter Chang says, you go
Speaker 6: from a crowded metropolis to a deserted forest in about
Speaker 6: three minutes, and that's why you have things happen here
Speaker 6: that don't happen anywhere else. Tell us more about Santa Cruz.
Speaker 6: You talk about the phenomen of hitchhiking and its contribution,
Speaker 6: but just Santa Cruz in general at this time and
Speaker 6: its effect from again, this murder capital of the world tag.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Sure, So Santa Cruz, you know, it had been for many,
Speaker 4: many years sort of a sleepy retirement community. Sure there
Speaker 4: were surfers here and things.
Speaker 2: Like that because the beach is so beautiful, but.
Speaker 4: Mostly there was this conservative retirement community, you know, like
Speaker 4: you said, fishermen, lumberjacks. You know, we had logging up
Speaker 4: in the mountains. And in nineteen sixty five, the University
Speaker 4: of California at Santa CRUs was opened up up on
Speaker 4: the hill and Santa Cruz and that brought in just
Speaker 4: a flood of youth and new ideas and society just
Speaker 4: started changing. So that was sixty five. And as the
Speaker 4: sixties roll on, you have the anti war movement, you
Speaker 4: have women's movements, you have all you know, drugs start
Speaker 4: coming into the community. So the community started to go.
Speaker 4: I mean, if I say it went to war with itself,
Speaker 4: that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not much.
Speaker 4: It became a very hot place. And they actually performed
Speaker 4: the study at that time and about this what they
Speaker 4: called an undesirable transient element, the utes, and who are
Speaker 4: these utes? And so they the bort of Supervisors paid
Speaker 4: this company. The company came in and they were hoping
Speaker 4: they were going.
Speaker 2: To say, oh, yeah, there's homeless people.
Speaker 4: And drugs and all this. And the study came back
Speaker 4: with two big findings. One Santa Cruz was very unique
Speaker 4: in the state of California, and that it had a
Speaker 4: massive population of elderly and older people and a massive
Speaker 4: population of young in youth and not a large population
Speaker 4: of middle aged people, and so it was creating this
Speaker 4: conflict within itself. And also, hey, yes there's a lot
Speaker 4: of hippies. Drugs are coming in, but these people are
Speaker 4: number one, they're mostly just smoking dope. They're not you know.
Speaker 4: The people that are doing hard drugs are look look
Speaker 4: more like you and me than this is them talking
Speaker 4: to the Board of Supervisors than these hippies. And number two,
Speaker 4: they move on. The hippies move on. And number three,
Speaker 4: a lot of them that are staying they're your kids.
Speaker 4: They're not coming in from the outside. They're your kids. So,
Speaker 4: of course, needless to say, the Bord of Supervisors hated
Speaker 4: the report. They refused, they refuted the report.
Speaker 2: But that's what it was like here.
Speaker 4: It was just a hot, tense place. You know, my father,
Speaker 4: he was a big hippie in the valley and he
Speaker 4: had a bus. So you can see it at the
Speaker 4: beginning of the Monterey Pop documentary. You can see my
Speaker 4: dad and they're in his big hippie buss. Well, the
Speaker 4: local fire department tried to fire bombit. They they threw
Speaker 4: molotov cocktails at it, and so people were getting beaten up.
Speaker 4: And the idea of hippies, you know, which maybe in
Speaker 4: the early sixties or as it was formulating, oh, peace
Speaker 4: and love, you know, by the time of the Manson killings,
Speaker 4: by the time of the McDonald murders, by the time
Speaker 4: you know, it was sort of the notion of it
Speaker 4: was headed south and this peace and love was turning
Speaker 4: into something dark.
Speaker 2: So we've dealt with that.
Speaker 4: In Santa Cruz. There was also a change in the
Speaker 4: welfare laws here where you didn't have to live in
Speaker 4: the community that you got your check, and so it
Speaker 4: just made Santa Cruise and the whole state of California
Speaker 4: a little more transient or transiatory, where people were moving
Speaker 4: around and had the freedom to move around. So you
Speaker 4: had all of these elements sort of stacked on top
Speaker 4: of each other, and then these crimes start happening and
Speaker 4: the fingers start pointing.
Speaker 6: A very interesting way of telling the stories that you
Speaker 6: mentioned with this source helement or source documents and then
Speaker 6: quotes from people important to the story, and very much
Speaker 6: that's demonstrative in the Oda family and Dorothy godwallerder murders.
Speaker 6: You have quotes from Lark Oda, you have quotes from
Speaker 6: a person named Harold Cartwright. You have the psychologist and
Speaker 6: expert witness for the defense, David Marlowe, you have Donald Lund.
Speaker 6: Tell us just a little bit of some of these
Speaker 6: people's quotes or any example of some of these quotes,
Speaker 6: because it was so important all of them to tell
Speaker 6: the story of this. John Lindley Fraser.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll tell you about Lark Oda. Lark Oda ended
Speaker 4: up she's the sole survivor of the Oda family. Her
Speaker 4: sister ended up committing suicide a few years after them.
Speaker 4: She just, you know, and directly blamed the murders. Doctor
Speaker 4: Oda's mother committed suicide after the murders. So Lark has
Speaker 4: for a very long time been the soul survivor.
Speaker 2: And I wrote Lark a letter and reached out to her.
Speaker 4: It was right at the fiftieth anniversary of the murders
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty and I was shocked because there was
Speaker 4: nothing in our local newspapers about the murders. Here was
Speaker 4: the fiftieth anniversary, and they had always done every ten
Speaker 4: years a story because it was so impactful, and I
Speaker 4: thought to myself, is this a good thing or a
Speaker 4: bad thing? Does this mean that we're healing or does
Speaker 4: this mean that we're forgetting? And so I reached out.
Speaker 4: I always had intended to reach out to Lark, but
Speaker 4: sort of that was the trigger was Wow, this is interesting,
Speaker 4: and she was gracious enough to call me back, and
Speaker 4: we ended up talking for many, many hours about her
Speaker 4: family and about Santa CRUs in general. She doesn't have
Speaker 4: like a complete awareness of the crime. She has self
Speaker 4: censored herself in a very what I would call a
Speaker 4: very healthy way, so she doesn't have a lot of details.
Speaker 4: In fact, I actually made a one off book. I
Speaker 4: had one printed at one of those print on demands
Speaker 4: where I cut out all the pages regarding that particular crime.
Speaker 6: Just for her.
Speaker 4: So there's a Murder Capital of the World, like one
Speaker 4: off edition, just the larco To edition for her. But
Speaker 4: she was what I would call a partner. She was
Speaker 4: a great partner in it, and her quotes really give
Speaker 4: you an in depth look into that family and who
Speaker 4: they were as people. And really, Dan, that was like
Speaker 4: my goal, that was, I really want this book to
Speaker 4: tell the story of the victims and who are the
Speaker 4: victims and what happened to the community and that rather
Speaker 4: than you know, sometimes you get the books that are
Speaker 4: sort of serial killer as rock Star, and I I
Speaker 4: just didn't want to do that with this. I wanted
Speaker 4: something completely different, you know.
Speaker 6: Yes, And then a lot of people talk about, you know,
Speaker 6: talking and focusing on the victims, but you very much do.
Speaker 6: And especially the photo array, the best photo selection I've
Speaker 6: seen on people that have passed away. It's very that's
Speaker 6: much an honor for these people in terms of at
Speaker 6: least the dignity wise, the portrayal in this book and
Speaker 6: the attention.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate you saying that I do, because you
Speaker 4: never knew. I never knew when I was reaching out
Speaker 4: to the families. You know exactly how I always sent
Speaker 4: a letter first. When I was dealing with the families.
Speaker 4: If it was somebody professionally involved in the case, I
Speaker 4: felt comfortable calling them, but if it was like family,
Speaker 4: and some of them, you know, were like, how dare
Speaker 4: you even contacting or you know that, but like I
Speaker 4: want to say, it was Mullen's second victim. I reached
Speaker 4: out to her family and they were just gracious. They
Speaker 4: sent me pictures and they were so kind. Her name
Speaker 4: is Mary Guilfoyle, and there's the only person left that
Speaker 4: I could find at the time was her brother's wife,
Speaker 4: so it would be her sister in law. And she
Speaker 4: sent pictures and she told me, thank you so much
Speaker 4: for doing this, because we've seen books about the killer,
Speaker 4: we've seen movies or documentaries about the killer, and no one,
Speaker 4: no one has ever talked about Mary or asked us
Speaker 4: or contacted us about Mary. And so for me, that
Speaker 4: was like, oh, that's like a badge of honor. I
Speaker 4: was very proud and sure enough that she's got a chapter,
Speaker 4: we've got pictures nobody's ever seen before, and you and
Speaker 4: her life was very interesting. You know, she was born
Speaker 4: in a taxiicab and had heart surgery when she was
Speaker 4: like six years old.
Speaker 2: She was in medical textbook she skipped the grade, and
Speaker 2: she was.
Speaker 4: In New York. This is all in New York. She
Speaker 4: came out to Santa Cruz and strangely, no one is
Speaker 4: alive that remembers exactly why she came to santag like
Speaker 4: how that connection was made. But she ended up here.
Speaker 4: And then Herbert Mullen was driving in front of Cabrio
Speaker 4: College and he saw a car in front of it
Speaker 4: and belonged to a man named ray Leebenberg, who was
Speaker 4: sort of a local character here. Even I can remember
Speaker 4: ray Leabnberg, and Mullan heard in his head ray Leevenberg's
Speaker 4: voice and it said, Oh, you're going to need to
Speaker 4: kill someone for me, and Mullen, you know, being a
Speaker 4: good soldier, said, oh, yes, sir. So the next day
Speaker 4: he's driving in front of Cabrill College in this exact
Speaker 4: same spot, and who's standing out of the cars not there,
Speaker 4: but who's standing out there with her thumb out. It
Speaker 4: was Mary Guilfoyle, and unfortunately Mullen picked her up killed
Speaker 4: her immediately. And he even said like, oh, she was
Speaker 4: a willing participant. She agreed to be sacrificed. And I
Speaker 4: knew that because after I had stabbed her in the heart,
Speaker 4: rather than get blood on my seat, she ducked down
Speaker 4: under the dashboard on the floor of the car, and
Speaker 4: that was to him, was a sign that she was
Speaker 4: a willing participation in her own death, which of course
Speaker 4: is absolutely sick.
Speaker 6: But yeah, that's the mindset. Yes, this esus as an opportunity.
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Speaker 6: to hire. Now we're just talking Emerson about Herbert Mullen
Speaker 6: and his the catalyst or the impetus for him to
Speaker 6: go on his murderous spree. You also, when we talked
Speaker 6: about John Lindsay Fraser, you also had interestingly quotes from
Speaker 6: his mother, Pat Pascal, from right from the time nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy Again, what are the kinds of things and the
Speaker 6: information that she imparted that if you included as part
Speaker 6: of this book.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so Pat Pascal was an interesting character. She was
Speaker 4: another sort of local character. She ran a bunny ranch
Speaker 4: which I think was called bunny Haven, and it sounds
Speaker 4: cute and fun and everything, and she would show off
Speaker 4: her bunnies at local fairs and around the state and
Speaker 4: in competitions and things like that. But she was actually
Speaker 4: interviewed by our local newspaper and it's it's sort of funny.
Speaker 4: She's talking about bunnies and it's great. And then at
Speaker 4: the bottom there's a little excerpt and it's a recipe
Speaker 4: for rabbit lakes stew that she had written. So it's like,
Speaker 4: not it wasn't all fun and games, you know, she
Speaker 4: was also breeding the rabbits for food. So the information
Speaker 4: that I got the interviews with her were from I
Speaker 4: believe it was the District attorney's officer, from the Public
Speaker 4: Defender's office. I can't remember off the top of my head.
Speaker 4: But she went yeah in depth on on Frasier's childhood
Speaker 4: and his upbringing. He was he was very sickly as
Speaker 4: a child. He was born in New Mexico. The father
Speaker 4: really did not have anything to do with the picture,
Speaker 4: and he was just in and out of hospitals constantly
Speaker 4: through his youth and getting misdiagnosed and just very unhealthy troubles.
Speaker 4: And he always said that she sort of treated him
Speaker 4: like a friend as he was growing up and not
Speaker 4: really as a mom. So he started getting in trouble
Speaker 4: very early on. They moved to California, I think when
Speaker 4: he was in junior high or middle school. He started
Speaker 4: getting in trouble at school. He ended up running away
Speaker 4: from home. They put him in foster care, and he
Speaker 4: stole a gun from his foster father, and then he
Speaker 4: was sent down to like an aunt or a grandparent
Speaker 4: I can't remember, down in southern California, where he got
Speaker 4: in even more trouble. So he gets sent back up here.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't until he met his wife that he
Speaker 4: started to settle down and they moved up to into
Speaker 4: north I think it was Portland or in Oregon, and
Speaker 4: really started making go of it and working. He became
Speaker 4: an auto mechanic and a very successful auto mechanic. I mean,
Speaker 4: he was well known as being a good auto mechanic,
Speaker 4: very proficient, and then he started he also started having
Speaker 4: mental health issues. We're becoming more paranoid and things like that.
Speaker 4: And then he actually was in a car accident, which
Speaker 4: strangely enough is about a mile from where I'm sitting
Speaker 4: right now where I live, and supposedly had a head
Speaker 4: injury and the police report doesn't bear that out. But
Speaker 4: he went home from that automobile accident, which really shook
Speaker 4: him up, and just started ranting to his wife and
Speaker 4: their roommate that was living with them about you know,
Speaker 4: nature and man, and he was never going to drive
Speaker 4: another car. And that's where he really started down that path.
Speaker 4: As I was explaining earlier of this idea that hey,
Speaker 4: we got to get rid of these pigs and these
Speaker 4: what he called rednecks that were polluting the land and
Speaker 4: destroying nature and get back to nature. And he had
Speaker 4: a Bible he would edit and cross out ideas, and
Speaker 4: his mother had this property. His mother is the one
Speaker 4: that lived near the Oda. Family later went to go
Speaker 4: live with her in a little milk barn, but she
Speaker 4: also had a water tower and he'd sit up on
Speaker 4: top of the water tower and meditate because he was
Speaker 4: afraid of these invisible enemies that were going to try
Speaker 4: to crawl up the water tower. And he just had
Speaker 4: a lot of mental health issues that sort of went undiagnosed.
Speaker 4: And I think he was in a culture. He was
Speaker 4: not really in the hippie culture, but he was around
Speaker 4: that culture where a lot of people were doing drugs,
Speaker 4: and I think a lot of the issues that he
Speaker 4: had were sort of mistaken, possibly for being drug related,
Speaker 4: when really they were mental health issues.
Speaker 6: You talk about the September nine, nineteen seventy two, and
Speaker 6: Herbert Mullen, his parents are away, right, and he has
Speaker 6: an intense LSD high or an intense trip and then
Speaker 6: he writes into housing journals all night. That's what happens
Speaker 6: after or shortly after. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So yeah, So he had just moved back into the
Speaker 4: area from San Francisco, and he had actually gotten those
Speaker 4: drugs from Jim Jeneia, who was his high school friend,
Speaker 4: and that is when he really started to lose it.
Speaker 2: While his parents were.
Speaker 4: On vacation, he moved back into the house or he
Speaker 4: was staying in the house, and then they came back
Speaker 4: and he agreed, and that's when he really started imagining,
Speaker 4: you know, that the Aztecs were right and that we
Speaker 4: have to do this and I have to make my
Speaker 4: family proud. And he started hearing his mother and his
Speaker 4: father's voices, and just days later, well roughly a month later,
Speaker 4: on Friday, October thirteenth, nineteen seventy two, he was leaving
Speaker 4: the house in Felton to I forget he was going
Speaker 4: to return a book to the library of the San
Speaker 4: Francisco Library, and ironically the book was Einstein on Peace.
Speaker 4: And he's driving and he sees a man walking alongside
Speaker 4: the road and this is very rural road out in.
Speaker 2: The forest of redwood forests.
Speaker 4: And the man was a man named Lawrence Whitey White,
Speaker 4: and he was a known homeless person in the area.
Speaker 4: Herbert Mullen passed and passed Whitey. He turned around, went
Speaker 4: drove out in front of Whitey and pulled over his
Speaker 4: car and acted like he was having car troubles. Mister
Speaker 4: White went out to help him and say, you need
Speaker 4: some help, and while he was looking under the hood,
Speaker 4: Mullen murdered him with a baseball bat and dragged his
Speaker 4: body off. And that was Herbert Mullen's first victim was
Speaker 4: Lawrence White and so, and that actually was not discovered.
Speaker 4: They did not discover that he had killed Lawrence White
Speaker 4: until the trial began, and he admitted that crime as
Speaker 4: well as the second crime, which was the Mary Guilfoyle one.
Speaker 4: They were not aware that those were Herbert Mullen crimes
Speaker 4: until the trial.
Speaker 6: He wrote about briefly about the trials as well and
Speaker 6: offer quotes about Herbert Mullins trial. What quotes stuck out
Speaker 6: most dramatically importantly from the trial Herbert Mullins.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, in Herbert Mullen's trial, that was really where
Speaker 4: it was, you know, to the public and everyone else,
Speaker 4: that that is when it came out what his belief
Speaker 4: system was and what he was thinking, what was going
Speaker 4: on in his head. Because you have to remember that
Speaker 4: his crimes were so random. Even for us, like when
Speaker 4: we were kids, we knew Herbert Mullen. Logically, we knew
Speaker 4: he was in prison, but he was still sort of
Speaker 4: like a boogeyman to us because he killed men, he
Speaker 4: killed women, he killed children, he killed a priest right
Speaker 4: outside his own confessional. And so that for me is
Speaker 4: you know, like, if you're not a female and you're
Speaker 4: not hitchhiking, you know Edmond kemper Is, you're never going
Speaker 4: to run across them in any kind of violent way.
Speaker 4: So but with Herbert Mullen, it was just it was random.
Speaker 4: And I think that was really what struck so much
Speaker 4: fear in Santa Cruz was you know, what is going
Speaker 4: on here? Who's killing these children, who's killing you know,
Speaker 4: these people that you know it's a homeless man over here,
Speaker 4: and then somebody that was selling drugs over here, and
Speaker 4: then these four boys that were camping out camping. And
Speaker 4: so when it hits the trial and and Mullin actually
Speaker 4: took the stand for himself, everybody was just completely blown
Speaker 4: away by these ideas that he's talking about in these
Speaker 4: rants that he's going on. And and I mean, I
Speaker 4: think clearly, and I think the jury knew this. He
Speaker 4: had mental health issues. He may not have been insane
Speaker 4: by the definition of the law according to the Monoton standard,
Speaker 4: but he clearly had mental health issues. He was not
Speaker 4: not fit, he was not mentally healthy in any way.
Speaker 6: No, he's not taking it. Certainly quite a bit of
Speaker 6: quite a bit of this book has Edmund Camp like
Speaker 6: I mentioned, he'd likes to talk, and you have him
Speaker 6: quoted from seventy three, eighty one, nineteen eighty four, and
Speaker 6: nineteen ninety one, with variations in stories as you say,
Speaker 6: but also just more elaboration and some other specifics that
Speaker 6: he didn't go into in seventy three that he may
Speaker 6: have done in the future. There are some incredible stuff
Speaker 6: about this. Nine days after murdering this Aco coup, Kemper
Speaker 6: gets engaged to his girlfriend, he tells a little bit
Speaker 6: about some of the stuff that you have concluded about Kemper.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, sir. So a lot of in the more
Speaker 4: modern quotes were taken from parole transcripts, and like you said,
Speaker 4: he doesn't stop talking. So you can go on YouTube
Speaker 4: and find interviews with him, you know, from nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 4: in various interviews, and I think one of the videos
Speaker 4: is even recorded by John Douglas and the FBI for
Speaker 4: a presentation they were given. But a lot of the
Speaker 4: earlier quotes were taken from interviews that I had discovered
Speaker 4: from the Public Defender's office and with psychologists that he
Speaker 4: met with with Lundy, doctor Lundy, with Donald T. Lundy,
Speaker 4: and so a lot of them were very early on,
Speaker 4: right after he had been caught, and even transcripts from Pueblo, Colorado,
Speaker 4: right after he turned himself in and they traveled out
Speaker 4: there to interview him. So these are the first time
Speaker 4: he's opening his mouth and sort of what it just
Speaker 4: comes flooding out, you know, he's gushing out with all
Speaker 4: of this because he loves to talk and he wants
Speaker 4: to talk about himself, so finally he can do So
Speaker 4: it got to the point actually where he was held
Speaker 4: in jail. They're getting ready for the trial, and he
Speaker 4: keeps calling into the District attorney's office to tell them more,
Speaker 4: and to tell them more, and tell them another story,
Speaker 4: and tell him another story. They finally had to call
Speaker 4: the public Defender's office and said, look, you got to
Speaker 4: get this guy to stop calling us. This is wholly inappropriate.
Speaker 4: So they just could not get him to stop talking.
Speaker 4: And you know, like like you mentioned earlier, John Douglas
Speaker 4: and Robert Russeler went out and you know, you want
Speaker 4: to get started on an interviewing serial killers. Man, here,
Speaker 4: here's a guy that's going to go in depth, remembers
Speaker 4: every single detail, you know, down to the socks people
Speaker 4: were wearing, you know, every single detail, and and you
Speaker 4: can't get him to stop. You can't get him to
Speaker 4: stop talking. So I don't remember what your original question was.
Speaker 6: It's just some of the things that I wanted you
Speaker 6: to expound upon.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 6: It was interesting too when he talked about the one victim,
Speaker 6: a who I believe decapitated and put in the backyard
Speaker 6: of his mom's place, and he confessed to that you
Speaker 6: feature of one of the well you feature many victims,
Speaker 6: Like I say, and then you it's a more much
Speaker 6: more respectful treatment. And I would you would expect to
Speaker 6: see in any true crime book you talk about this Cynthia.
Speaker 6: You write about Cynthia of Shall and you have people
Speaker 6: like for a Shaw being able to talk and some
Speaker 6: of the things that Cynthia Shall had said. So tell
Speaker 6: us about this story and what with some of the
Speaker 6: profound things that you quote.
Speaker 4: Okay, great, Yeah, So Cynthia Shaul, Yeah, she was actually
Speaker 4: another Cabrio College student like Mary Guilfoyle when Edmun Kemper
Speaker 4: picked her up. She was actually over at the university
Speaker 4: near near the University of California, Santacher's on the other
Speaker 4: side of town. But she was known in the in
Speaker 4: the community. She was a babysitter and she actually was
Speaker 4: a babysitter for some of the local police. So and
Speaker 4: she was you know, I interviewed for shaw That's that
Speaker 4: was her brother, and they you know, he admitted and
Speaker 4: we talked about it that they had a very kind
Speaker 4: of a rough upbringing with their mom was was rough
Speaker 4: on them and everything. But yeah, Cynthia Shawl she was
Speaker 4: picked up by Edmund Kemper. She was driven out to
Speaker 4: her remote area, and you know, he used his line, Know,
Speaker 4: I'm feeling suicidal and I just really want someone to
Speaker 4: talk to, but my neighbors are going to see you,
Speaker 4: and I can't have that happen. Will you get in
Speaker 4: the trunk? She got in the trunk. He shot her
Speaker 4: dead right there in the trunk, and he described as
Speaker 4: like sort of the lights going out. She didn't move,
Speaker 4: didn't clinched, like hardly anything. She just passed away. And then,
Speaker 4: you know, Kemper did what he did with many of
Speaker 4: his victims, dissected her body, and and hers was the
Speaker 4: head that he had buried in his backyard for you
Speaker 4: know that. Again, he tells the story different ways for
Speaker 4: why why he did it, whether she's looking up at
Speaker 4: his mother, or whether you know, he likes the idea
Speaker 4: of her head being back there, or whether he was
Speaker 4: simply doing it for identification purposes. He tells different stories
Speaker 4: at different times. So at any rate, he drives her
Speaker 4: body south down to Monterey and it's been cut up,
Speaker 4: and he throws it in the in the ocean, and
Speaker 4: he drives back to Santa Cruise, well within a day
Speaker 4: or two. He clearly didn't look at the tides and
Speaker 4: how the tides work. The body washes up on the
Speaker 4: beaches of Santa Cruz, the body parts start washing up
Speaker 4: on the beaches of Santa Cruise. So and of course
Speaker 4: that's another one for the newspapers where they're all over
Speaker 4: at a torso walk washes up, an arm washes up,
Speaker 4: the lake washes on the beaches of Santa Cruise. It's
Speaker 4: just shocking, shocking crimes. And she has been, you know, missing,
Speaker 4: She had been missing for a couple of days. And yeah,
Speaker 4: I was lucky enough with Cynthia Shaw's case to have
Speaker 4: Forest and Forrest was very open about it.
Speaker 2: Her brother.
Speaker 4: I also found some old records where the the Sheriff's
Speaker 4: department had interviewed the gentleman she was living with, and
Speaker 4: he was she was babysitting his kids, taking care of
Speaker 4: his kids, and you know, he had certainly had a
Speaker 4: perspective of her. Oh she's drug free and all this
Speaker 4: other stuff. And then they interview her friends and they're like, oh,
Speaker 4: she was on drugs a lot and was hitchhiking a
Speaker 4: lot and stuff. So there again you get to see
Speaker 4: sort of the multi multi faceted angles of somebody. But yeah,
Speaker 4: a very bright girl, very very loved person, and her
Speaker 4: death was very obviously, very impactful to the community just
Speaker 4: because of the grizzly nature that you know that the
Speaker 4: incidents that happened after she passed away.
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Speaker 6: Now we're talking about Edmund Kemper more and one of
Speaker 6: the most fascinating profound things in your book is a
Speaker 6: really dapper photo of Edmund Kemper smoking a cigarette I
Speaker 6: guess awaiting trial. That looks like and again, very dapper,
Speaker 6: very stylish. I don't know, movie star looks. I guess,
Speaker 6: I don't know. I won't I can't go that far.
Speaker 6: But anyway, will you write in this time that Edmund
Speaker 6: Kemper says, he explains is murderous bent and he says,
Speaker 6: part of it was fear. Some of what was regret
Speaker 6: are other parts of it were the opportunities. I didn't
Speaker 6: just rush out and look for the opportunities. If you'll notice,
Speaker 6: there was a greater time spend between the first and
Speaker 6: second and the second and third, and there was and
Speaker 6: then there was anywhere else. But he besides that, he
Speaker 6: didn't want blood was not an actual plan in the sea.
Speaker 6: Blood was got in his way. What he really wanted,
Speaker 6: what he's interested in doing is seeing the death and
Speaker 6: having that power. Can you explain more about this quote
Speaker 6: that I'm talking about, this long thing that he says.
Speaker 4: Kemper says, yeah, so yeah, And it's an interesting quote
Speaker 4: because it's a little different than some of the other
Speaker 4: explanations he gives and things. You know, I forgot who
Speaker 4: it was, Willy something who said Willie Sutton who said,
Speaker 4: you know, I rob bank?
Speaker 2: Why do I rob banks?
Speaker 4: Because that's where the money is and he has said
Speaker 4: sort of something about, you know, college students and all
Speaker 4: these beautiful college students and upper middle class. He wasn't
Speaker 4: attracted to hippie types. And honestly, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: after all this research, that he really was like a
Speaker 4: psycho sexual killer. You know, if that's even a terminal,
Speaker 4: I'm just saying that, but he was like a sexual
Speaker 4: killer in that the power. He was somebody that was
Speaker 4: bullied most of his life. He was somebody that was
Speaker 4: you know, never stood up for himself, and the simply
Speaker 4: the power and the sexuality of it all. Yeah, blood
Speaker 4: wasn't an issue. His first two victims he used a
Speaker 4: knife and he didn't after that. After that, you know,
Speaker 4: he strangled like okou. And then he started with firearms
Speaker 4: and very quick quick deaths, not you know, no no
Speaker 4: torture or anything like that, anything horrendous. As if murder's
Speaker 4: not horrendous, but anything more horrendous I should say happened
Speaker 4: after the victims had passed away. And so yeah, that
Speaker 4: quote is an interesting one because you know, he's candid,
Speaker 4: but he's also a nuanced he doesn't forget that. You know,
Speaker 4: oftentimes the fights or he would have fights with his mother.
Speaker 4: They drank, both drank a lot, and they would get
Speaker 4: in these terrible fights, and then he would go out
Speaker 4: hunting as a way to relieve him, release himself, you know,
Speaker 4: and to get over it. He also said I had
Speaker 4: bought a new pistol in one case, and he was
Speaker 4: excited to try out this pistol. And so you know,
Speaker 4: a woman has to lose her life because edmun Kemper
Speaker 4: bought a new pistol. So you know, there's it's it's
Speaker 4: even the reasons I think are multifaceted, So it's not
Speaker 4: just in those cases. I wouldn't say always changing his story.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a variety of reasons of why he's
Speaker 4: going out and doing that. There's not one simple explanation.
Speaker 2: Like some people want to believe, because it just isn't isn't.
Speaker 6: So Yeah, he writes that what he wanted to see
Speaker 6: was the death, and he wanted to see the triumph,
Speaker 6: the exultation of the death. It was like eating or
Speaker 6: a narcotic something that drove me more and more and more.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He even talked about opening his trunk after he had
Speaker 4: killed him in and looking and he felt like a hunter,
Speaker 4: you know, like, oh, I had bagged this thing, you know,
Speaker 4: it's just and with the early victims, he was too.
Speaker 4: He took polaroids as if he had propped up their bodies,
Speaker 4: like he was some sort of hunter. And this is
Speaker 4: you know, it's just it's unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you provide the Pablo Peblo, Colorado, April twenty fourth,
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy three, when Kemper calls Santa Cruz Police Department
Speaker 6: and asked to talk to Lieutenant Sharer, the lead investigator
Speaker 6: on related co ed murders, You provide this amazing telephone transcript.
Speaker 6: Just again, very very interesting and amazing. Uh just told
Speaker 6: us a little bit about that. Franscaript.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, so I had all my life I had
Speaker 4: heard about this call. You know, you had, We had
Speaker 4: always heard he called in and they didn't believe him.
Speaker 4: They didn't believe him because he had gone to a
Speaker 4: place called the jury room, which was a bar. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of your listeners will know this, and
Speaker 4: he he had hung out with law enforcement, with police
Speaker 4: and deputies in the jury room and sort of you know,
Speaker 4: listening in what's going on with these crimes?
Speaker 2: What's going on? Where are you guys? At with these things.
Speaker 2: But he was also just attracted to power. He was attracted.
Speaker 4: He wanted, you know, wanted to be And when we
Speaker 4: were kids, we always heard, oh, he.
Speaker 2: Was too tall.
Speaker 4: Well he wasn't too tall. He may have been, but
Speaker 4: really it was he had killed his grandparents. You can't
Speaker 4: be a remember a law enforcement after something.
Speaker 2: Like that back then.
Speaker 4: So sure anyway, so he had he knew these people,
Speaker 4: and it took me a while to find a local
Speaker 4: law enforcement person that would say, yeah, I hung out
Speaker 4: with Ed Keimper, But I found a couple of them.
Speaker 4: One gentleman named Dave Alcoorn said, I, you know, Kemper
Speaker 4: was kind of annoying, but I liked hanging out with
Speaker 4: him because he's six foot nine, but I could beat
Speaker 4: him in arm wrestling, which I thought was sort of funny.
Speaker 4: So Kemper knows these guys, and sure enough, when he
Speaker 4: goes out to Pueblo, he kills his mother, he kills
Speaker 4: her friend, drives out to Pueblo, Colorado, and he had
Speaker 4: actually driven past and come back. But he calls in
Speaker 4: and sure enough he knows the guy there, Ed Connor,
Speaker 4: and Ed was somebody that he had hung out with
Speaker 4: in the jury room, and we had just heard these
Speaker 4: stories all my life about you know, they wouldn't believe
Speaker 4: him and whatever. And sure enough, when I talked to Ed,
Speaker 4: he said, yeah, I had a tough time believe. I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: I know him. You know, even before I was a
Speaker 4: police officer, I had been delivering tires. I work at
Speaker 4: a tire place and he worked at a gas station,
Speaker 4: So I knew Ed. We visited all the time. And
Speaker 4: so he's telling me the coed killer and he had
Speaker 4: killed his grandparents. It was just sort of sort of
Speaker 4: mind blowing. And to actually find that the transcript there,
Speaker 4: it is like, Holy Toledo. It was sort of like
Speaker 4: a gold mine after hearing about this for so long.
Speaker 4: And the the Sheer thing, the Chuck Sheer thing, was
Speaker 4: sort of interesting. Kemper had this idea that everybody was
Speaker 4: after him and they had this big posse's formed and
Speaker 4: big investigations and they were all after him. Well nobody
Speaker 4: on the law enforcement side had a clue. They just
Speaker 4: didn't know, And and that was sort of interesting. When
Speaker 4: I went into the book, I thought, Oh, this is
Speaker 4: going to be a hard boiled detective thing, and we're
Speaker 4: going to I'm going to really write about what they
Speaker 4: were doing. Well, when I talked to Mickey Aloofi, who
Speaker 4: was a deputy sheriff and really a big part of
Speaker 4: the Kemper investigation, Mickey said, we didn't have any idea.
Speaker 4: We did, you know, we were these killings were happening
Speaker 4: over here, over here, the victim types were all different.
Speaker 4: Were confident. We thought there were two killers, but you know,
Speaker 4: they were. They just weren't on it. And with technology
Speaker 4: and everything the times in such a small department, they
Speaker 4: didn't have a chance. So I quickly got rid of
Speaker 4: that idea for the book. It's not going to be that.
Speaker 4: And yeah, so that was Yeah, that was Kemper and Publo.
Speaker 4: That was quite a fine. That's pretty It just blew
Speaker 4: my mind reading that for the first time.
Speaker 6: Absolutely me too. You talk about the Momen trial in
Speaker 6: August seventy three, and you write about the Kemper trial
Speaker 6: November seventy three, and that offers some dramatic and profound quotes.
Speaker 6: You also have a chapter per se a prison life
Speaker 6: and parole hearings, and it seems like there's some artwork there.
Speaker 6: Why include this? What was what did you want to
Speaker 6: convey with this little bit of information.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I sort of I did one chat which
Speaker 4: was an aftermath of for Santa Cruz and where we
Speaker 4: were at and where they're different players, and the people
Speaker 4: that had been in the story, how they were doing
Speaker 4: and what they went on to do, you know, the
Speaker 4: people that were still alive, and just how they were impacted.
Speaker 4: But I thought it would be sort of important to
Speaker 4: also follow these gentlemen because I'm and I use that
Speaker 4: term lessly because at the time, the death penalty was
Speaker 4: taken off the table, so they all three of them
Speaker 4: ended up with life with the possibility of parole. So
Speaker 4: Mullan just was up for parole in March, and of
Speaker 4: course it was denied. Fraser went up for parole. He
Speaker 4: didn't really attend his parole hearings, but in one case
Speaker 4: I think he stood out in the hallway and was
Speaker 4: yelling in at the pro board. But he ultimately committed
Speaker 4: suicide in prison and Mule Creek Prison in two thousand
Speaker 4: and nine and August thirteenth, I think it was. And
Speaker 4: so they went on to have these long lives and Mullin.
Speaker 2: Is still alive.
Speaker 4: You can see some of the artwork in the book
Speaker 4: that he's still doing. Kemper A lot of people know,
Speaker 4: you know, he started reading books on tape for the
Speaker 4: blind for a program. He started making the pottery and
Speaker 4: cups and bowls and things like that. I also thought
Speaker 4: it was important to catch up with their parole hearings
Speaker 4: to see how their stories had changed over the years.
Speaker 4: Were Kemper suddenly said I was not a cannibal, I
Speaker 4: never ate anybody, and and sort of changed his story
Speaker 4: on that. Strangely enough, just last weekend, we're recording this.
Speaker 4: On Friday last weekend, I went to Mule Creek Prison
Speaker 4: and met Herbert Mullin, which was quite a cleansing. I
Speaker 4: had been afraid of this man my entire life, and
Speaker 4: you know, you know, he had killed my dad's friend,
Speaker 4: and just hearing about it from my dad, and my
Speaker 4: dad was a big guy, you know, just a big
Speaker 4: tough guy. And to hear my dad talk about him
Speaker 4: in those kind of scary terms was you know, as
Speaker 4: a kid, you're just impacted by that. And so to
Speaker 4: go and meet this little old man in Meal Creek
Speaker 4: just felt, you know, it was just I guess the
Speaker 4: cleansing is the only real real word for it, but
Speaker 4: it was like he's still there, and he there, he
Speaker 4: shall remain until he dies. And yeah, it's just interesting.
Speaker 4: I had never been in a prison before.
Speaker 6: Wow, that's the whole program talking about that visit. I'm sure.
Speaker 6: I want to thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 6: and talking about this murder Capital of the world. The
Speaker 6: Santa Cruz community looks back at the John Linley Fraser,
Speaker 6: Herbert Mullen, and Edmund Kemper murder spreeze of the early
Speaker 6: nineteen seventies, Emerson Murray. Where can people take a look
Speaker 6: more so about this book as they're interested, tell us
Speaker 6: more about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, for sure. Yep. It's a self published book.
Speaker 4: I did it myself. It's Murder Capital of Theworld dot com.
Speaker 4: I will I package up the books myself. I got
Speaker 4: my two daughters. We'll package them up and get them
Speaker 4: sent out to you a SAP if you order it.
Speaker 4: If you're in the Santa CRUs area, which this is
Speaker 4: a big podcast, it's in a couple of local bookstores.
Speaker 4: You can get the kindle on Amazon, but the kindle
Speaker 4: only has like twenty five pictures. You're not going to
Speaker 4: get the same the same impact as the paperback. So
Speaker 4: I had a series of a thousand printed. They're signed
Speaker 4: and numbered. I have about one hundred and fifty left
Speaker 4: and I'm going to get five hundred more. That'll be
Speaker 4: a second second printing. But yep, Murder Capital of Theworld
Speaker 4: dot com.
Speaker 2: Thank you so.
Speaker 6: Much, Thank you so much, Emerson Murray, Murder Capital of
Speaker 6: the World. It's been fascinating. Thank you so much. You
Speaker 6: have great evening, and thank you for this interview.
Speaker 2: Thank you, good night.