by Erin Banks
Emerson, your second book, “Murder Capital Of The World” focuses on Herbert Mullin and Edmund Kemper and John Linley Frazier’s murders. Was your writing it inspired by your father having been friends with Mullins victim Jim Gianera, or what sparked the interest?
Definitely. I cannot remember a time that I did not know the name Herbert Mullin. He was the boogeyman for my brother and me. I remember hearing my parents and other adults talking about the crimes at parties and over dinner. My brother and I knew all about him and used to tell our neighbors stories to try and scare them.
I believe that I first heard about Frazier from newspaper clippings that my grandmother had saved. I remember my foster brother and I looking at them when I was in kindergarten.
There were always rumors and stories and legends about Kemper and his horrible crimes all throughout my childhood. I think many kids who grew up in Santa Cruz heard the same stories. The ironic part is that as horrible as the stories were, the truth is somehow more horrible. But, I think, and I’ve wracked my brain over this, the first time I heard about Kemper was over dinner at my friend Steve’s house. I was going on about Mullin and Steve’s dad told the story of Kemper and his crimes in grisly detail. Steve’s mom was not too pleased.
When you began researching for your book, how did you go about learning about these crimes? Did you first avail yourself of all primary sources or knew early on you were going to reach out to individuals who had actively worked on these cases?
So, I had the idea for some kind of project for years: documentary, book, movie, my co-worker and I imagined an epic HBO series. To this end, I was collecting newspaper clippings and articles and anything related to the crimes since I was a teenager, 30+ years. In 2019, my wife and I saw retired Santa Cruz Sheriff’s Office Detective Mickey Aluffi speak about his work on the Kemper cases. It was an inspiring and amazing talk but most everyone there was older in age. I panicked a little. As these memories faded and folks passed away, we would lose these primary source stories. That Monday, I decided to write the book.
The first thing I did was start transcribing all the YouTube video interviews with Kemper, I started scouring old newspapers for quotes, and I started writing letters to the folks I knew were involved in the cases in some way. I created timelines, lists of dream interviewees and questions and who they should go to. I used a program called Trello to organize the project.
The book was created in InDesign. There is no manuscript, it is a work of art unto itself. That sounds weird, but the book is the book. I wrote directly in the InDesign documents and began inserting pictures directly into the text. When I wrote my previous book, much time was wasted writing in Word and later converting to InDesign. I streamlined quite a bit.
There’s a myriad of incorrect information and fake Kemper photos on the internet. Was it difficult for you to discern between fact and fiction when perusing the different groups, blogs and statements made by those who either were or claimed to have been in contact with the offenders?
Yes, extremely difficult to discern fact from fiction sometimes. I’ve even used an incorrect picture and, being nervous, said a few incorrect things in interviews. It happens.
One thing I learned with my first book, a biography of the professional wrestler, Bruiser Brody, is that the internet cannot be trusted on its own. Corroborating evidence is critical. I tried to correct folks on message boards about the facts of Brody’s life as I discovered discrepancies but few people cared. Tall tales are more important to many people. In the end, I simply released that book and stopped correcting anyone. The facts are there if anyone wants them.
So, for this project, right out of the gate, I did not start correcting anyone. Early on, I did not look at any message boards or websites. I didn’t want the rabbit holes of misinformation to trip me up. I know there is a lot of amazing research being done and much of what is out there IS true, but those repeated bits of misinformation are like landmines and they can easily blow up in your face. So, I started mostly from scratch. I hope I’m not insulting anyone, but it’s just what worked best for me. Also, my own head was full of tall tales about the crimes. These landmines needed to be avoided as well. I needed to come to it all fresh and new.
I tried to corroborate where I could. When a killer is alone with a victim, CSI evidence aside, all we have is the story of the killer. And there are plenty of one-off stories that I could not get a second fact check on. But my book is a first person, primary source book, a book told in quotes with me acting as a narrator to bridge gaps and fill in details. It’s kind of a cheat. Other authors are forced to write with certainty and authority, to declare the facts. Using quotes lets me step aside and let others tell the story as they know/remember it. I can also throw in contradicting quotes which end up giving the reader a more well-rounded and thorough history in my opinion.
I’ve seen you write, Erin, that you have a tough time watching any documentaries on the subjects you know very well; the mistakes drive you up the wall. It was similar for me, but so many stories and tales changed as I researched and some documentaries are nothing but Wikipedia research, so I’ve honestly never seen a doc that does not have mistakes of one type or another.
What was the most surprising thing you learned from the people, such as Aluffi, that you interviewed? Has anything they shared with you changed your outlook on the offenders in question?
The most surprising series of facts came to me from a series of transcribed interviews with Edmund Kemper and his younger sister. Their stories from Kemper’s youth paint a very different portrait of Edmund Kemper than had been seen before. Whether it was groups of Native American girls, his neighbor Lee, or Lee’s friends, Kemper was bullied mercilessly and never fought back. He ditched his younger sister to be beaten up by a group of girls. After he was accused of killing his neighbor, Lee’s, dog Kemper was targeted in a very serious way. Lee and groups of boys would beat up Kemper or bully him in some way every single time they saw him. They broke his glasses at a movie theater, they chased him in their trucks, they even chased him into a stranger’s house where Kemper hid in her bathroom. At one point, Kemper was walking with a friend and carrying the rifle he would ultimately kill his grandparents with, he was telling his friend that if Lee and/or any of Lee’s friends came after him, he was going to shoot them dead. Well, the group spotted Kemper and went after him and his friend. What did Kemper do? He ran. Carrying, his rifle, he ran.
Sure, Kemper is a giant and talks a big game but by his own accounts and the account of his sister, Kemper was a big wimp and scared of everyone. “Sympathy” is too strong of a word, but I definitely saw Kemper in a new light and understood his pent-up rage as a teenager much better.
The other thing that always hits me is that his mother is just so vilified. She had a sister whose son (so, one of Kemper’s cousins) was gay. Clarnell blamed the way her sister coddled and spoiled the boy for his turning out gay. She was determined to raise her son as a father of that time period would, with strict discipline, without softness. She was also a mother whose son was sneaking out at night with a bayonet and dreams of killing and having sex with the body of his teacher. From the age of eight, Kemper would sometimes stand over his sleeping mother with a hammer raised, trying to build up the courage to bring it down on her skull. You think she never woke up to that shocking sight? His basement dungeon was child abuse, no doubt, but it doesn’t come out of nowhere. Just my two cents and I encourage others to disagree with me.
What was it like for you diving into the minds of the offenders, could you on some level relate to how they had developed into killers, or was your approach always more victim-centric, or entirely clinical throughout?
I sort of answered a bit of this in the previous question. But I’ll give this a different spin. I was reaching out to Mullin and Kemper (Frazier committed suicide in prison in 2009) through letters at the same time as I was reaching out to victim’s friends and families. I will admit that the book was originally intended to be a small, local history of these events. It got swept up into the true crime family very quickly and I did not discourage that. I’m just not a HUGE true crime buff or serial killer expert or anything like that. So, being a local history book, I was mostly interested in the impact the crimes had on the community. That got super complicated very quickly. You would think the community would be horrified and frozen and basically in shock and much of it was. But Santa Cruz also has this laid back, whatever, kind of attitude that runs very deep. There was great article in the Stanford University newspaper at the time of the crimes that makes fun of this. It includes interviews where Santa Cruz locals all note that they were horrified by the crimes but either were not going to stop hitchhiking or might stop for a few weeks. The article basically laughs at and shames Santa Cruz for that cooler than cool attitude. Writing about this is not what people want to hear, it doesn’t fit into the normal narrative of a terrified community. So, that theme in the book shrunk a bit. At the same time, I was gathering these incredible stories of the victims. Just really getting three dimensional pictures for the first time. Family members, friends, and even police reports helped make these people real instead of just statistics. And how can your heart not break when you talk to these people on the phone? The pain never leaves. So, the stories of the victims started growing and ultimately became a huge part of the book and the parts of which I’m the proudest.
Kemper never responded to my letters but I was fine with that. I heard something about him being nearly blind so I wrote a third in HUGE typeface. No response on any of them. Between all the YouTube interviews and transcripts and tapes I had gathered, I had more than enough on him. Mullin and I struck a deal that he would answer my questions about that time period (he refused to answer questions about the crimes) and I would answer his questions about what was going on in Santa Cruz now. I kept reminding him that I was not his friend but that it was all business and we wrote back and forth dozens of times with that agreement.
You described your book as “a primary source history telling the story of Santa Cruz in the early 1970’s through quotes and first person stories,” but were there quotes by people you interviewed that you thought didn’t reflect the reality of things and that you redacted, or were you comfortable with just sharing the quotes and letting people come to their own conclusions about them?
Great question. There were a few faulty memories which completely contradicted established facts and other people’s interviews. I redacted those. The tall tales, especially surrounding Kemper’s crimes came up every once in a while. As kids we always heard this story about Kemper placing his mother’s head their stairwell banister and throwing darts at it. First, none of that is in the police reports or remembered by any detective. One person mentioned dart pricks on Clarnell’s face but no one else did and Kemper did not admit that in his Pueblo interview, which I contend is the most accurate confession he’s given. Lastly, the Kemper home did not have an indoor stairway! What banister?
There are a couple others, like the mental health related group meeting in Vacaville which included Mullin, Kemper, and Charles Manson. I can’t verify that but the wife of the doctor who ran the group told me about this group. Too good not to include, but that would be a tough story to verify. Up to you to believe or not.
I did redact a lot about Mullin’s girlfriend. She was a big part of the story and a few negative things were said about her. When I asked for her side of the story, through my aunt who was school friends with her sister, she said something about how I was blackmailing her. I just redacted all the quotes about her and cut her last name. I never got to talk to her directly but honoring her privacy is more important to me.
What is your view of the more extreme personalities in True Crime, and particularly in the Kemper community, those who either idolize the man to the point of hybristophilia, or those who are quick to judge without even wanting to take into account his psychological development due to childhood abuse?
“Hybristophilia.” New word to me. The community has been amazing and kind and sharing with me. I would be quite a dirt bag to turn around and criticize anyone that helped me out. I certainly don’t idolize him by any means but that’s fine if others do. Whatever.
On the flip side, if you want to judge him without taking his childhood into account, that’s fine with me as well. I don’t have an emotional involvement with Kemper either way. Hate him or love him, whatever you feel, that’s fine. Maybe not the spicy answer you were looking for, but working on this book has put me in front of some extreme viewpoints as well as some very deep personal emotions. Pushing back on an interviewee with my feelings or agenda means people stop talking. I just shut up and listen. My opinion on their viewpoint shouldn’t be worth dirt to them.
What have the responses to your book been so far, do you feel that people have mainly understood what you wanted to convey or achieve with it?
I am thrilled to say that the book has been very well received and it seems that the focus on community and the victims has not only been understood and appreciated by locals but by the true crime community as well. I was afraid it might be a bit community-oriented and overly detailed for the true crime audience. I’m very happy that I was wrong.
It was funny, my first book was also told in the primary source quote style but it was not as well received. The book was accused of being too arty by the professional wrestling community. This time both the local history and true crime audiences have seemed to embrace the style.
When being interviewed for the Mind Of A Monster documentary, were you content with the results? There’s a habit of True Crime documentary makers to either heavily edit or splice together interview bits, which some of my friends who worked on documentaries, mentioned they struggled with.
This is hard to answer because I want to be thankful for the amazing opportunity. But yes, there are factual errors in the doc. I have not seen a doc without errors. Usually it seems to be an attempt to spice things up by relaying the myth rather than the truth or it seems to be a case where a complicated subject or topic is simplified to such a degree that it ends up being incorrect.
The other thing is that memories fade. Some of the experts and people who were there have changed their stories over the years and when a producer has to decide who is closer to the truth: someone who was there and lived it or some schlub who just wrote a book on the subject, it’s not hard to see why incorrect information is propagated. I mean, Kemper’s IQ alone seems to go up ten points every few years!
I did struggle with the editing, where the first half of one of my stories is edited together with the ending of an unrelated story. The Mind of a Monster podcast did that a lot. They even edited me to actually say something incorrect. It made my face hot with anger but, again, I feel honored they even asked me to the table.
You are not only a writer but a painter. True Crime artwork, such as by Nico Claux, Jason Stauffer and others, is in high demand. Some people have wondered whether you’d ever do a True Crime-inspired series. Is that something you could see yourself doing in the future?
I have not considered painting a true crime series. Honestly, I never thought about it. I think the studio is a very personal space where personal events and feelings are translated into images and the book and these stories are very different and I’ve actually struggled to really keep my personal life and feelings out of the story. I know the Golden State killer book and other authors and podcasters are rushing to be a part of the story and I’m probably sounding like a jerk, but that’s not for me. There’s a fat, fuzzy line there about involvement in cases that I’m just not comfortable crossing.
Can you share with us a little bit about your upcoming projects, will there be another True Crime-related book, or was that a one-time excursion for you?
I do not have any plans for a follow-up True Crime book. Writing this book was pretty heavy for me and my family. The saving grace was the kind words from the victim’s friends and families as well as the overwhelmingly positive response from the True Crime communities. If anyone is interested in my projects, Instagram is probably the best way to hear about what I’m doing: @emerson__murray (that’s two underscores). Also, emersonmurray.com gets updated every once in a while.
Thank you, Erin, for this fantastic opportunity and all your support over the last few years. It is much appreciated. Best to you and yours.
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You can purchase Emerson’s book “Murder Capital Of The World” via his website, as well as browse through images of his paintings.
Link to Emerson Murray’s Instagram.
CrimePiper 