Missing
Anita Mary Luchessa
Luchessa, approximately 1972; Mary Pesce; Ed Kemper, approximately 1973
Date and time person was reported missing : 05/07/1972
Missing location (approx) :
Berkeley, California
Missing classification : Endangered Missing
Gender : Female
Ethnicity :
White
DOB : 10/29/1953 (67)
Age at the time of disappearance: 18 years old
Height / Weight : 5'1, unknown weight
Description, clothing, jewerly and more : A red shirt and white bib overalls.
Distinguishing characteristics, birthmarks, tattoos
: Caucasian female. Brown hair, brown eyes. Luchessa wears gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
Information on the case from local sources, may or may not be correct : Luchessa disappeared with her friend, Mary Anne Pesce, from Berkeley, California on May 7, 1972.
The two young women, both students at Fresno State University, were hitchhiking when they were picked up by serial killer Edmund Emil "Ed" Kemper III. Photos of Pesce and Kemper are posted with this case summary.
Kemper drove Luchessa and Pesce to a secluded wooded area near Alameda, California, where he stabbed and strangled both of them to death. He later dismembered their corpses in his apartment and dumped them near Loma Prieta Mountain. They were his third and fourth victims; his grandparents were his first.
Kemper would ultimately murder three more female college students, a fifteen-year-old girl, his mother and his mother's friend before turning himself in to police. He was convicted of eight counts of murder and sentenced to eight consecutive terms of life in prison, and remains incarcerated.
Pesce's skull was found in a wooded area on Loma Prieta Mountain in August 1972, but no tEthnicity : of Luchessa has ever been located.
Other information and links : ncy
Santa Cruz Sheriff's Department
September 2021 updates and sources
The Santa Cruz Sentinel
Find a Grave
October 12, 2004. October 20, 2019; two pictures added.
Interactive Missing Person Search Map
