In 1943, Susan Hughey Kemper was born into a middle-class family in California. Her father was a World War II veteran and her mother was a homemaker. Susan was the eldest of three children. Her younger brother was Edmund Emil Kemper III, who would later be known as the “Co-ed Killer”.
To find out more about Susan Kemper’s life and her relationship with the Co-ed Killer, do keep on reading.
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Personal Life & Struggles of Susan Hughey Kemper Swanson
Susan Hughey Kemper was born to Edmund Emil Kemper Jr and Clarnell Elizabeth Kemper née Stage, on November 8, 1943, in Great Falls, Montana. Her parents had three children: Susan Hughey, Edmund Emil (named after their father), and Allyn Lee. Susan was five years older than her brother Edmund and Allyn was eight years younger than her.
Susan attended the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she majored in English. While in college, Susan met and began dating her future husband, Irving Swanson. The couple married in 1961.
In the early 1970s, Susan’s brother Edmund began his killing spree, targeting young women in California. Edmund would later confess to murdering ten people, including his own grandparents and mother. Susan was devastated by her brother’s actions and cooperated with authorities in his capture and prosecution.
Susan Swanson’s Family Life
Susan faced a very troublesome time during her childhood, after her parents’ divorce. Her mother was a very domineering woman and would often lock her brother in a basement. This led her brother, Edmund Kemper III to develop a very twisted psychology. He later became serial killer. Susan testified against her brother in court.
Even after all these sufferings, Susan happily married her husband of 52 years when she was only 19 years of age. Her husband, Irvin Swanson served in the U.S. Navy for 33 years before retiring in 1994. She has two sons and a daughter: Donald, Roy, and Christie. The 70-year-old lived a very long and happy life in Montana before she passed away on January 17, 2014, in Belgrade, Montana. Her husband was buried three months after her.
Who is the “Co-ed Killer”?
Edmund Emil Kemper III, also known as the Co-ed Killer, was a serial killer who murdered ten people, including his own mother, in the early 1970s. Born in California in 1948, Kemper had a troubled childhood. His parents divorced when he was nine, and he was sent to live with his paternal grandparents.
Kemper began exhibiting disturbing behavior at a young age. He killed his grandparents at the age of 15 and was sent to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and spent the next five years in a state hospital. After his release, he moved back in with his mother.
Kemper began his killing spree in 1972 when he picked up two hitchhiking students, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. He strangled them both and then decapitated them. He kept their heads in his mother’s closet. He killed four more female students before murdering his mother and her friend in 1974. He then surrendered himself to the police.
During his trial, Kemper claimed that he had killed his victims because he wanted to see what it was like to kill someone. He received maximum penalty with no chance of parole. Kemper is currently incarcerated at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
Conclusion
Susan has since spoken out about her brother’s crimes and has advocated for stricter gun control laws. After her brother’s life imprisonment, Susan lived a very happy life with three children and seven grandchildren before her demise.
