Book excerpt: American serial killer Edmund Kemper III stalked co-eds in California at the height of the era of peace and free love, dismembering his victims and tossing their body parts in remote areas around Santa Cruz. As pieces of young women began washing up on shore and turning up alongside rural highways, female residents - especially college students - were decidedly on edge. A lust killer who savored the act of decapitating his victims - and often used their severed heads for sexual pleasure - Kemper's story is particularly twisted among historical serial killers. Still, the true crime tale of Edmund Kemper is particularly fascinating, because the man many people called "a gentle giant" was a near genius whose cunning manipulation of others made him particularly depraved and dangerous. This true crime story, a detailed biography of one of the most psychopathic serial killers of our time, shares some insight into the troubled childhood and awkward nature that led the American serial killer to take 10 lives, including those of six pretty co-eds, his paternal grandparents, his calculatingly cruel mother and his mother's best friend. Among historical serial killers, Kemper is especially depraved, since he included necrophilia and cannibalism in his gruesome mix of sordid criminal activity. Ultimately, Kemper's murderous inclinations and urges to kill were satisfied after he bludgeoned to death his mother, a woman he'd hated since he was eight years old, and he turned himself in. But if he hadn't finally acted on his long-held fantasy to end his mother's life, he might still be trolling California highways, getting away with murder.