Kemper: The CoEd Killer

In Santa Cruz, the police department is under pressure to solve a series of murders which appear to be the work of two independent serial killers. To help with the cases, Detective Tom Harris turns to his best friend, Edmund Kemper, a genius, but psychopathic, house painter who lives with his abusive mother, and who had previously helped Harris capture another criminal named John Linley Frazier. Together, Ed and Tom decipher a message sent by one of the killers, who they discover taking pictures at the latest crime scene while they are staking it out. During the ensuing confrontation, the delusional man, Herbert McCormack, opens fire on the two, but is shot to death by Tom. Upon returning home after the encounter with McCormack, Ed bludgeons his mother with a hammer, and kills a female hitchhiker he had taken captive, revealing that he is the second killer.

While inspecting the abandoned pool where the hitchhiker's body was dumped, Tom receives a call from Ed, who reveals his involvement in the girl's death. While rushing to the Kemper residence, Tom gets another call from Ed, who instructs him to go into the kitchen, where Tom discovers Mrs. Kemper's vocal cords in the garbage disposal, and her severed head pinned to the wall with several darts protruding from it. Ed is eventually traced to a motel, but manages to escape, wounding an officer in the process. This, coupled with his past association with Ed coming to light, results in Tom being suspended from the force by the mayor, though he is quickly placed back on duty when Ed abducts a woman named Brandi, and threatens to kill her and one other person a day if Tom is not rehired.

As the investigation continues (with Ed shooting his grandparents at a young age coming to light, and a number of his previous victims being found in his backyard) a weary Ed ultimately allows the police to trace him to an abandoned hospital, where the mutilated Brandi is rescued. When Tom finds him wandering the building, Ed tells him that he was born there, and that his mother viewed him as nothing more than a burden forced upon her, a toxin spawned from the poisoned seed of a man who did not even bother to stick around. After apologizing for everything he has done, Ed tries to commit suicide, but is wounded by a sniper, and arrested. The film ends with Tom visiting Ed on death row.