Mindhunter

On April 20, 1973, while waiting for his mother, 52-year-old Clarnell Elizabeth Strandberg, to come home from a party, Kemper fell asleep and was then awakened by her arrival. While his mother was sitting in bed reading a book, she noticed Kemper enter her room and said, "I suppose you're going to want to sit up all night and talk now." Kemper replied, "No, good night!", before waiting for her to fall asleep and returning to bludgeon her with a claw hammer and slit her throat with a knife.

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He then decapitated her and engaged in irrumatio with her severed head before using it as a dart board; stating that he "put [her head] on a shelf and screamed at it for an hour ... threw darts at it," and ultimately, "smashed her face in." He also cut out her tongue and larynx and put them in the garbage disposal. However, the garbage disposal could not break down the tough vocal cords and ejected the tissue back into the sink. "That seemed appropriate," Kemper later said, "as much as she'd bitched and screamed and yelled at me over so many years." He then had sex with his mother's corpse, hid it in a closet and went out to drink.

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Kemper then left the scene in Hallett's car, driving eastward, leaving California and through Nevada and Utah. He arrived in Pueblo, Colorado and, after not hearing any news on the radio about the murders of his mother and Hallett, found a phone booth and called the police. He confessed to the murders of his mother and Hallett, but the police did not take his call seriously and told him to call back at a later time.

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Several hours later, Kemper called again asking to speak to an officer he personally knew. Kemper then confessed to that officer of killing his mother and Hallett, and waited in his car for the police to arrive, arrest him and take him into custody, where he then also confessed to the murders of the six students. When asked after his arrest what motivated him to turn himself in, Kemper said: "The original purpose was gone ... It wasn't serving any physical or real or emotional purpose. It was just a pure waste of time ... Emotionally, I couldn't handle it much longer. Toward the end there, I started feeling the folly of the whole damn thing, and at the point of near exhaustion, near collapse, I just said to hell with it and called it all off."

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