Hitchhiking was a great way to get around. Yes, she knew it was potentially dangerous. Two of her friends had been raped and beaten up. But the thing that finally put a stop to it all was Kemper.
Kemper was a huge 6’7″ psycho murderer and necrophiliac. He killed his grand parents “just to see what it was like” when he was a boy and had been in a mental hospital until he turned of age. He spent all those years in hospital trying to fool the nurses and doctors into thinking that he was alright, all the while knowing that when he got out, he was going on a rampage.
Kristie’s roommate, Cindy, was one of his victims. She was a big girl – almost six feet and about 220. She was on her way to class when she hitched an unfortunate ride with Kemper. He said he knew what was going to happen to her as soon as she put her hand on the door handle of the car.
He was big and strong and what made it more confusing was that he wasn’t a bad looking guy. He might be someone that Cindy would have dated, so she didn’t hesitate to get in when he stopped to give her a ride.
She tried to fight back and run away and he cut the tendons in her arms and legs…. eventually raping and killing her and sawing her body up into pieces that floated up in different parts of the bay. Thigh in Monterey. Torso in Santa Cruz. They found her head buried in his mother’s back yard!
Kemper killed 10 people; his grandmother, grandfather, and six co-eds. His final triumph was the murder of his mother and her friend both of whom he also raped. He was on his way out of state when he called police to turn himself in for arrest. He is still alive. He is considered criminally insane and is kept in a mental institution, but he still comes up for parole every so often.
Kristie is adamantly against his parole. “I hope they never let him out,” she says. Do you know he liked to have oral sex with the severed heads!?! Even his own mother! Despicable!” It’s the one reason why she is in favor of the death penalty. ” He should be dead. We don’t need his energy on the planet!” Cindy is dead and Kristie doesn’t hitchhike anymore.
(First published 7/28/11)
