Later, Kemper tried to explain his motive for these crimes: "My frustration. My inability to communicate socially, sexually. I wasn't impotent. I was scared to death of failing in male-female relationships."
He purchased a .22-caliber pistol and then looked for a pretty hitchhiker. The one he found was named Cindy Schall, who accepted a ride with him on January 7, 1973. Again, he drove to a secluded area and shot her quickly. He wasn't interested in torture. He just wanted a body to handle. He was now living with his mother again, and he took the corpse home to dismember her in the bathtub. He kept her overnight in his room and then beheaded her, burying the head in the backyard. He threw the body parts over a cliff, but they quickly washed up onto the beach. Still, he knew they could not tie it to him. He'd removed the bullet from the head. And he was right. No one suspected him.
On February 5, after a horrendous argument with his mother, Kemper went out again. That's when Rosalind Thorpe and Allison Liu disappeared from campus. He picked up Rosalind first, and her presence in the car apparently reassured Allison, who willingly got in. "Miss Liu was sitting in back right behind Miss Thorpe," Kemper recalled. "I went on down a ways and slowed down. I remarked on the beautiful view. I hesitated for several seconds. I had been moving my pistol from down below my leg in my lap. I picked it up and pulled the trigger. As I fired, she fell against the window. Miss Liu panicked. I had to fire through her hands. She was moving around and I missed twice."
He hit her in the temple, and he aimed again and fired. But she was still alive as he approached the university gate. (This part of the story varies according to different accounts.) One account indicates that she was already dead, but another describes her breathing loudly and moaning. Two young men were at the security gate, but when they saw Kemper's university sticker, they waved him through. The two women were wrapped in blankets, and one of them was in the front passenger seat. He told some interviewers later that he explained to the guard that these girls were drunk and he was trying to get them back to their dorms. The guard apparently accepted the story, and Kemper decided that he was as good as invisible: "It was getting easier to do. I was getting better at it."
He took the girls' bodies to his mother's home and dismembered and beheaded them with his mother nearby and neighbors around. (Another account says that he beheaded them outside in the car and then took one headless corpse inside to have sex.) He was aware that a neighbor only had to walk by and look in the window and see what he was doing in order to catch him. But no one did. The next morning, he deposited the limbs in the ocean and around the hills, tossing the heads away separately. His fourth episode of killing had been successfully completed. It would not be long before he vented his rage closer to home.
