The city of Santa Cruz, California is gripped by fear as two separate serial killers stalk and murder young women.  Detective Tom Harris (Christopher Stapleton) may not have many clues but he does have a brilliant best friend named Edmund Kemper (Robert Sisko).  Though most people just see Kemper as being a nerdy, middle-aged house painter who lives with his abusive mother, Harris understands that Kemper is actually a genius who has an instinctive understanding of the criminal mind.  With Kemper’s help, Harris is able to take down one of the killers.  Kemper celebrates by murdering his own mother and then calling Harris and revealing himself to be the other killer.  Harris must now track down Kemper before he can murder again.

2008’s Kemper: The CoEd Killer is very loosely based on the true story of serial killer, Edmund Kemper.  And by loosely, I mean that it has next to nothing in common with what actually happened.  In real life, Kemper was indeed a genius who lived with his mother and he did kill several hitchhikers.  However, Kemper committed the majority of his murders in the early 70s and, by most accounts, he did not have any friends on the police force.  Nor did he play a cat-or-mouse game with the police.  Instead, he committed ten murders and turned himself into the police after killing his mother and her best friend.  He was sentenced to life imprisonment.  Once in prison, he was frequently interviewed by FBI agents who were looking to understand how the mind of a serial killer works.  According to veteran profile John Douglas, Kemper proved to be an amiable and honest interview subject and much of the science behind what is known as profiling is a result of the insights that Kemper provided.  Douglas has described Kemper as being the most likable serial killer that he ever met, which is something that I’m sure provided little comfort to the families of the women that he killed.

In the movie, Kemper is a modern-day serial killer who calls the police on his cell phone.  (A major plot point involves Detective Harris trying to trick Kemper into getting frustrated enough to call the police station’s landline so it will be easier to trace his call.)  Kemper taunts the police and kidnaps a woman and holds her hostage in an attempt to mess with Detective Harris’s mind.  Kemper doesn’t so much come across as being particularly clever as much as the police themselves just come across as being amazingly bad at their jobs.  Somehow, they can’t find Kemper in the city, even though he never makes an attempt to disguise his distinctive appearance and continues to eat at the same diner where he and Harris ate at before Kemper revealed himself to be a killer.  The film’s version of Edmund Kemper takes the idea of hiding in plain sight quite literally.

The film has the same flat, made-for-video look that one tends to find in a lot of these low-budget serial killer biopics.  None of the acting is particularly effective, though Patricia Place does have a few memorable moments as Kemper’s foul-tempered mother.  For the most part, this is a true crime film that you can safely skip.