Ed Kemper.Credit : Bettmann/Getty

NEED TO KNOW

Serial killer Ed Kemper narrated hundreds of audiobooks for the blind while serving time in prison

Kemper ran The Blind Project, a program that recorded hundreds of books for blind men, women and children across the United States
“I can’t begin to tell you what this has meant to me, to be able to do something constructive for someone else,” Kemper said of the initiative in a 1987 interview with the Los Angeles Times

Ed Kemper, known as “The Co-Ed Killer,” is one of history’s most notorious murderers. But the serial killer also had an unlikely gig while incarcerated: narrating audiobooks, then most commonly known as books on tape.

Kemper’s crimes began at just 15 years old, when he killed his paternal grandparents. He was committed to Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane from 1964 to 1969, before his release to the California Youth Authority in 1972 after being deemed “cured,” per The New York Times.

From May 1972 to April 1973, Kemper went on an 11-month killing spree throughout the Santa Cruz, Calif. area, during which he murdered six women, mostly college students. He also killed his mother, Clarnell, and his mother’s friend, Sally Hallett. Kemper was sentenced to life in prison in 1973 on eight counts of first-degree murder.

Ed Kemper.Bettmann/Getty

But while incarcerated at California Medical Facility state prison, Kemper led the The Blind Project, a program run through the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) and nonprofit Volunteers of Vacaville that created book recordings.

Participating inmates recorded everything from bestsellers to textbooks to children’s books for blind people across the United States, per a 1987 article published in the Los Angeles Times.

Kemper read more books for tape than any other inmate at the time, the publication reported. He spent thousands of hours narrating, and had “more than four million feet of tape and several hundred books to his credit.”

Kemper met with some of the patrons who listened to the program’s recorded books. The prison was even home to two large trophies, given to Kemper for his dedication to the initiative by outside supporters.

Ed Kemper.Bettmann/Getty

Inmates in the Volunteers of Vacaville and CDCR program worked eight-hour shifts, during which they made the recordings, handled requests and repaired Braille writers for U.S. rehabilitation centers and schools. In 1987, the prison’s recording catalogue included over 2,000 titles.

While the program was originally intended to provide reading material for those who couldn’t read books in their original format, books on tape — and now, digital audiobooks — are popular with the sighted community too.

Kemper’s recorded titles included Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett and The Rosary Murders by William X. Kienzle.

“I can’t begin to tell you what this has meant to me, to be able to do something constructive for someone else, to be appreciated by so many people, the good feeling it gives me after what I have done,” Kemper told the Los Angeles Times at the time.

Today, Kemper, 77, is still incarcerated at California Medical Facility, where he is serving eight concurrent life sentences. The Blind Project was still active as of 2024.