Have you ever wondered what drives a serial killer and makes him go on a rampage? What drives them to want to kill and what is their drive to continue this horrible and disgusting journey through their life or what was the reason why they changed their nature in life and turned them into these monsters as we see them today. It takes tragic experiences to cause such abuse, be it verbal, physical, or even sexual, to cause a sense of harm to a person's mind and disrupt their ability to understand what is healthy and what is not. Well, Edmund Emil Kemper III had all the makings of becoming a serial killer due to his troubled childhood. He was born in Burbank, California on December 18, 1948 and was the son of Edmund Emil Kemper, Jr. and Clarnell Stage. He was the middle child of the family and was the only son. At a young age he experienced the first tragic thing in a child's life: his parents' divorce. When Kemper was 9 years old, his parents divorced and it affected him greatly because he had such a close relationship with his father. She verbally abused him, locked him in the basement for fear that he would molest her sisters. He displayed antisocial behavior at an early age. At the age of 13 he killed the family cat, decapitated it, placed its head on a stick and buried the rest of the body. He also took his sisters' dolls and practiced bizarre sexual rituals and dark fantasies. After his mother and father divorced, Edmund ran away from his mother in the summer of 1963 to find his father. Young Kemper found his father living in Van Nuys, California. It was then that he found his father remarried and also the father of another child. He was devastated but still loved his father. Edmund was allowed to stay for a short time... halfway through the paper... and looked very much like his father. Perhaps these things are what truly influence someone to change their entire mindset and become a completely different person. Works Cited “Edmund Kemper: The Co-Ed Butcher/Killer.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, November 22, 2013. Web. November 27, 2013. Stephens, Hugh. "I will show you where I buried the pieces of their bodies." With their area already labeled “the murder capital,” Santa Cruz, Cal. Insider Detective, February 7, 1998. Web. November 27, 2013. .Kemper - Santa Cruz Sentinel. April 25, 1973; October 15, 1973; November 9, 1973 and June 13, 1997. Encyclopedia of World Crime, vol. III, pp. 1791-2. (R 364.9 N17).Blanco, Juan I. "EDMUND KEMPER." Edmund Kemper. Np, nd Web. November 26. 2013. .