Keith Hunter Jesperson


Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and prosecutors. Many of his victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
After the body of his first victim, Taunja Bennett, was found, media attention surrounded Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to having killed Bennett with the help of her abusive boyfriend, John Sosnovske.
Jesperson was upset that he was not getting any media attention. On a bathroom wall hundreds of miles from the scene of the crime, he drew a smiley face and wrote an anonymous letter in which he confessed to killing Bennett and provided proof. When that did not elicit a response, he began writing letters to the media and prosecutors.
His last victim was the crime that ultimately led to his capture. While Jesperson has claimed to have killed as many as 185 people, only eight murders have been confirmed.

Early life

Keith Hunter Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955, to Leslie and Gladys Jesperson in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, the middle child with two brothers and two sisters. His father was a domineering alcoholic and Jesperson claimed that his paternal grandfather was also violent. Les Jesperson denied being an abusive parent; however, while investigating for his book on Jesperson, author Jack Olsen was able to confirm much of the claimed abuse with other family members.
Treated like an outcast by his own family and teased by other children for his large size at a young age, Jesperson was a lonely child who showed a propensity for torturing and killing animals. Despite consistently getting into trouble in his youth, including twice attempting to kill children who had crossed him, Jesperson graduated from high school, secured a job as a truck driver in 1974, got married a year later, and had three children. In 1990, after 15 years of marriage, Jesperson was divorced and saw his dream to become a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman dashed following an injury. After returning to truck driving, it was that year that Jesperson began to kill.
In his younger years, Jesperson was given less attention than his siblings and treated differently by the rest of his family. After moving to Selah, Washington, Jesperson had trouble fitting in and making friends because of his large size. His brothers did not help him, instead they nicknamed him "Igor" or "Ig", a name that stuck throughout his school years. Because of this, he was a shy child, content to play by himself much of the time. He would often get into trouble for behaving badly, sometimes violently, and would be severely punished by his father. This included beatings and, in one case, he received an electric shock from his father.
At a very early age—as young as five—Jesperson would capture and torture animals. He enjoyed watching animals kill each other as well as the feeling he got from taking their lives. This continued as he got older. He would capture birds and stray cats and dogs around the trailer park where he lived with his family, severely beating the animals and then strangling them to death, something for which he claims his father was proud of him. In the years following, Jesperson said he often thought about what it would be like to do the same to a human.
That desire manifested in two attempted murders. The first happened when Jesperson was around 10 years old. He was friends with a boy named Martin, and the two would often get into trouble together. Jesperson claimed he was punished many times for things Martin had done and blamed on Jesperson. This led Jesperson to attack Martin, violently beating him until his father pulled him away. He later claimed his intention was to kill the boy. Approximately one year later, Jesperson was swimming in a lake when another boy held him underwater until he blacked out. Some time later, at a public pool, Jesperson attempted to drown the boy by holding his head under the water until the lifeguard pulled him away.
Jesperson reported that he was raped at the age of 14. He graduated from high school in 1973, but did not attend college because his father did not believe he could do it. Although he was not successful with girls in high school, having never even attended a school dance or his prom, he did enter into a relationship after high school. In 1975, when Jesperson was 20, he married Rose Hucke, and the couple had three children—two daughters and one son. Jesperson worked as a truck driver to support the family.
Several years later, Hucke began to suspect Jesperson was having affairs when strange women would call. Tension in the marriage increased, and after 14 years, while Jesperson was on the road, Hucke packed up her and her children's belongings and drove 200 miles away to live with her parents in Spokane, Washington. The oldest child, Melissa, was 10 years old. Jesperson continued to spend time with his children when he was in town. The couple divorced in 1990.
At the age of 35, standing and weighing approximately, Jesperson began working toward the goal of being a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman, but an injury suffered while training ended his dream. He then sought work again as an interstate truck driver after relocating to Cheney, Washington. Jesperson soon realized that this job afforded him the opportunity to kill without being suspected.

Crimes

His first known victim was Taunja Bennett on January 23, 1990, near Portland, Oregon, United States. He introduced himself to Bennett at a bar and invited her to the house he was renting. He brought her home with the idea of having sexual intercourse with her, and when Bennett refused, he proceeded to strike and beat her. Worried that she would report this to the police he then 'put his fist in her mouth' and killed her. He established an alibi by going back out for some drinks, being sure to converse with others, before returning to retrieve Bennett's body and belongings to dispose of them. He was back on the road the next day. The body was found a few days later, but there were no suspects and no leads.
It was two and a half years after his first kill when Jesperson killed again. On September 16, 1992, the currently unidentified body of a woman he raped and strangled was found near Blythe, California. He says the Jane Doe's name was Claudia. A month later, in Turlock, California, the body of Cynthia Lyn Rose was discovered. He claims she was a sex worker who entered his truck at a truck stop while he slept. His fourth victim was another sex worker, Laurie Ann Pentland of Salem, Oregon. Her body was found in November of that year. According to Jesperson, she attempted to double the fee she charged for the sex he had been engaged in with her. She threatened to call the police, and he strangled her.
It was more than six months before his next victim was found in June 1993, another unidentified woman, a "street person," in Santa Nella, California, who he claimed was named "Carla" or "Cindy". Police originally considered her death a drug overdose. More than one year later, in September 1994, another Jane Doe was found in Crestview, Florida. Jesperson claims her name was Susanne.
In January 1995, Jesperson agreed to give a young woman, Angela Subrize, a lift from Spokane, Washington, to Indiana. Approximately a week into the trip, Surbrize became impatient and began to nag Jesperson to hurry up, as she wanted to see her boyfriend. In response, Jesperson raped and strangled her. He then strapped her to the undercarriage of his truck and dragged her, face down, "to grind off her face and prints." Her body was not found for several months—and then only after Jesperson gave details to police. Two months after murdering Surbrize, Jesperson decided that his long-time girlfriend, Julie Ann Winningham, was interested in him only for money. On March 16, 1995, in Washougal, Washington, Jesperson strangled her. She was the only victim he had a link to, which ultimately set police on his trail.
Jesperson was arrested on March 30, 1995, for the murder of Winningham. He had been questioned by police a week before, but they had no grounds to arrest him after he refused to talk. In the days following, Jesperson decided that he was certainly going to be arrested, and after two suicide attempts, he turned himself in hoping it would result in leniency during his sentencing. While in custody, Jesperson began revealing details of his killings and making claims of many others, most of which he later recanted. Also, a few days before his arrest, he wrote a letter to his brother. In it, he confessed to having killed eight people over the course of five years. This led police agencies in several states across the country to reopen old cases, many of which were found to be possible victims of Jesperson.
Although Jesperson at one point claimed to have had as many as 185 victims, only the eight women killed in California, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming have been confirmed. He is serving three consecutive life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. In September 2009, he was indicted for murder in Riverside County, California, and was extradited to California to face the charges in December. Jesperson was convicted of this murder and received a fourth life sentence in January 2010.

Laverne Pavlinac

Early in the investigation of Taunja Bennett's murder, Laverne Pavlinac read the news reports surrounding Taunja Bennett's death and saw it as an opportunity to force an end to the long-term abusive relationship she had been in with her live-in boyfriend, John Sosnovske. She set up a meeting with the investigating detectives and gave a false confession, using the details she had read in reports to give a detailed story of how Sosnovske forced her to help him rape, murder, and dispose of Bennett's body. Pavlinac and Sosnovske were both arrested on March 5, 1990 and both were convicted of the murder on February 8, 1991. To avoid the possibility of facing the death penalty, Sosnovske pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison, while Pavlinac was sentenced to no less than 10 years, much more than she had anticipated.
She soon admitted to making it all up, but her claims were ignored.
On January 7, 1996, more than five years since their conviction, Pavlinac and Sosnovske were released from prison after Jesperson and his attorney offered his confession with convincing evidence of his guilt. He had given police officers the location of the victim's purse. The purse had not been found, and its location was considered information only the killer would know.

"The Happy Face Killer"

Following Taunja Bennett's murder, as all the attention was going to Pavlinac and Sosnovske, Jesperson wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop and signed it with a smiley face. When that did not create the attention he desired, he wrote letters to media outlets and police departments confessing to his murders, starting with a six-page letter to The Oregonian in which he revealed the details of his killings. He signed each letter with a smiley face. This led Phil Stanford, the journalist working the story for The Oregonian, to dub Jesperson "The Happy Face Killer".

Jesperson's daughter

In November 2008, Jesperson's daughter, Melissa G. Moore, appeared on the Dr. Phil Show to talk about her father. She was also featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show on September 17, 2009, the Lifetime Movies network series Monster in My Family episode titled "Happy Face Killer: Keith Hunter Jesperson", on July 1, 2015 and a 20/20 special on August 20, 2010.
In 2008, Moore published a book titled, Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter. Moore lived with her father until her parents' divorce in 1990. Moore noticed her father was different when she was in elementary school. Their house bordered an apple orchard, and her dad killed stray cats and gophers that wandered nearby. One day, she watched, horrified, as he hung stray kittens from the family's clothesline. She ran to get her mother, and when they returned, the kittens lay on the ground dead. He had watched and laughed as the kittens clawed each other to escape, then he killed them.
She wrote an article about her father for the BBC in November 2014.
In March 2018, she was featured in an episode, titled "Put on a Happy Face", of the true crime series, Evil Lives Here.
She was also a correspondent for CrimeWatchDaily.
In September 2018, podcast network HowStuffWorks began releasing a show called Happy Face featuring interviews with Melissa about her childhood and her father.