World's Most Evil Killers - Season 5, Episode 16 - Keith Jesperson - Full Episode | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: In March, 1995, the body of 41-year-old Julie Winningham was found just off Highway 14
in Washington in the USA's Pacific Northwest. She'd been strangled to death. DON FINDLAY: He's a monster.
Six plus feet, 280 pounds. My mom was five pounds and 100 pounds soaking wet. So it's like a toothpick He's a big man.
NARRATOR: Julie had become the eighth victim of an active serial killer named Keith Jesperson.
The 39-year-old truck driver had been murdering innocent women across America for the previous five years.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: In a sense, they were falling into the hands of a wolf. They're hens in the hen coop, and Jesperson
is the wolf at the door. NARRATOR: Jesperson captured the intrigue of the nation
when he confessed to five murders in an anonymous letter he sent to a newspaper, which he signed with a smile.
NARRATOR: Keith Jesperson, labeled the Happy Face Killer had made his mark as one of the world's
most evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYING] NARRATOR: When 39-year-old trucker Keith Jesperson
confessed all to detectives in March, 1995, the media finally got a chance to put
a name to the notorious Happy Face Killer. Over a five year period, Jesperson squeezed the life out of at least
eight women across five states. Detective Monty Beuttner was part of the investigative team
that finally brought an end to the happy face killer's reign of terror. MONTY BEUTTNER: Jesperson targeted typically
prostitutes, homeless women, women that he felt that would not have anybody that would report them missing
any time soon to give him a chance to escape to get out of the area driving his truck.
NARRATOR: Six foot seven inch Jesperson, a divorced father of three, towered over his diminutive victims.
MONTY BEUTTNER: For Keith Jesperson, his big thing was control. He wanted to control women, he wanted to abuse them in the way
that he was aroused by, so he focused on finding victims that he thought would meet that need for him.
NARRATOR: Despite his size and destructive power, Jesperson was mild-mannered and softly spoken
during his confessions to detectives. CHRIS PETERSON: Every time I talked to him, he was my best friend.
And when you looked at him, the last thing you would ever suspect was that this guy was a serial killer.
I mean, he didn't hang around with bad people. I never heard him swear. If you met Jesperson, the last thing
you would suspect that he was a criminal. He doesn't come across as a criminal. At one point he said to me, you know,
you and I could go on a tour teaching people how not to get murdered. And that was kind of the mindset of this particular guy
that he really enjoyed people looking at him and saying, oh my God, this is a serial killer,
and he must be really an important powerful person to be involved in that sort of a lifestyle.
And so I don't think there was ever any remorse. It was it was all about I want people to look at me.
NARRATOR: This killer's story begins just outside of Vancouver, Canada. Keith Hunter Jesperson was born in Chilliwack,
British Columbia, on the 6th of April 1955. He grew up in a large family in a rural home.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Jesperson had two brothers and two sisters. He was the so-called runt, I think, of the litter.
The boy, I think, sought to get his father's attention from quite an early age. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: His father was incredibly domineering.
His father really looked down on women, so from a very early age he develops this view
that a misogynistic view of women, a view of women that is quite demeaning, is one that's normal.
NARRATOR: Jesperson's assertive father appeared to bring out a violent side in the young man.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: One of Jesperson's earliest memories is apparently of throwing a rock down
a slide at a children's playground that hit his brother in the head. And I think what he was trying to do here was essentially
get his father's attention. His father was somebody who valued aggression, who valued
this kind of behavior, and I think this really was a cry for that kind of validation from him.
CHRIS PETERSON: The ugly truth must be that he had no normality in his life. There was no convention in that family life
from that upbringing, which meant that, in a sense, there was no moral compass, there was no right and wrong.
NARRATOR: Before he'd even turned seven, Jesperson displayed traits that have become
synonymous with serial killers. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson like to kill and torture animals.
So he harmed cats, and dogs, and gophers, and crows. That gave him a sense of power a sense of control
that he couldn't get in any other way. But he's also realizing that he quite enjoys having control
over another living creature, of holding its life in your hands. NARRATOR: The family moves south across the border into the US,
and Jesperson would eventually find work in a job that would assist him in his murderous career.
CHRIS PETERSON: He's become a truck driver for a company in Washington state, which gives him access to freedom,
drive around, can sleep in the cab. He can pull up with whatever truck stop he fancies,
where that almost always a collection of young women knowing that drivers want company.
Is the perfect fit for Jesperson's character. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he's got a lot of time
on his hands to ruminate, to fantasize, to start to plan things, so this is quite a dangerous situation
to be in because nobody's there to put the brakes on his behavior. NARRATOR: By early 1990, Keith Jesperson
was separated from his wife and spending much of his time driving his truck up and down the seemingly
endless highways of America. On the 22nd of January 1990, in Portland, Oregon, a 23-year-old woman was found dead.
CHRIS PETERSON: Taunja Bennett was reported missing by her mother, and some young man stopped along
that highway one day then discovered her body, which had been drug off the road down into a little bit of a ravine
off of the scenic highway out in the Columbia Gorge. NARRATOR: Detectives presumed they'd solved the case quickly
when a local woman Laverne Pavlinac told the police that her boyfriend was responsible for the death
of Taunja Bennett. CHRIS PETERSON: Laverne was several years older than John Sosnovske and John was an alcoholic,
and I think John was probably a very abusive partner to Laverne. And I think she was just trying to get John Sosnovske out
of her life, and decided she would frame him for murder as a way to get John out of her life.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: In the beginning she just tries to pin it completely on him, but then she kind of inserts herself into this narrative.
And I think there's almost a sense in which she's enjoying the drama of the story and she wants
to play a larger part in it. NARRATOR: Laverne's story was a lie. The police didn't know it yet, but Taunja
had in fact been killed by a 34-year-old trucker named Keith Jesperson. He had met Taunja playing pool at the B&I tavern, which
was in east Wallowa county and they had decided we'll go get something to eat at a nearby restaurant,
and when they left the tavern, he realized he didn't have enough money with him to buy dinner.
So he said, let's go to my house and I'll get some money. He gets involved in a sexual act with Taunja and at that point
Taunja said something that offended him and he murdered her. He choked her with his fist.
And he was a big man, Taunja was a little woman, and so that wasn't a big challenge to kill Taunja.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: And I don't think he cared very much. I mean, he left her in the house, and to cover his tracks,
went back to the bar and had another series of drinks, and then went back to the house and decided
he's going to dump the body. What he's got plenty of opportunities to dump the body.
All he needs to do is to load her into the truck and he can drop her where he wants.
NARRATOR: Taunja Bennett had become Jesperson's first victim. And despite the fact that two other people were in court,
charged with the 23-year-old's murder, Jesperson had an urge to tell the world that he was her killer.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: While the trial's taking place, he stops off in a restroom and writes a message
on the wall, which is "I beat her, I raped her, I killed her. I liked it. You may think I'm sick, but I enjoyed it."
And two other people are taking the fall. And he signs it with a smiley face. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And at first, this
would appear to be quite compelling, but it wasn't new information. It was information that anybody could have had, and just
repeated onto the wall. So I think this was a desire for recognition on Jesperson's part.
It was a desire to be noticed, and to actually take the credit for these murders.
NARRATOR: As news of the truck stop confession reached Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske's lawyers,
they were intrigued. But the jury would never get to hear about the revelations signed with a smiley face.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: The defense of Laverne and John try to get these confessions brought
in as evidence in the trial, but the judge forbids it. It's hearsay, it could be anybody, it's not convincing,
there's no forensic proof. Sorry, we're not allowing it into evidence. And both are duly convicted of the murder,
and Keith Jesperson is free to kill again. After all, he's already boasted that he can.
So why shouldn't he? NARRATOR: As to innocent people were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Taunja Bennett,
Keith Jesperson remain free. In 1992, two years after killing for the first time,
Jesperson struck again. This time in California. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson second victim,
Claudia, was a woman who he kept alive in his truck for four days. He quite enjoyed torturing her.
He quite enjoyed the fact that she would have been fearful for her life and probably
pleading for her life. So this really highlights that it's the process that Jesperson
enjoys, it's that feeling of power, that feeling of complete control and domination
he gets when he has got somebody who's completely subservient to him. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He eventually, after a few days,
gets bored, kills her by punching her literally to death, and then chucks her out of the truck.
Now, how do you identify the body of a young woman found miles away from where she may have been last seen.
Remember, we're in the early 90's here. We don't have the kind of elaborate databases
that the police authorities have now. It's simply a body. And again, that confirms to Jesperson
his ability to get away with it, his ability to do what he wants. It's a very powerful addictive substance
for a man who's already got a warped mind, and has no moral compass. This is powerful medicine indeed.
NARRATOR: By April 1994, Jesperson had killed another three women, taking his gruesome tally to five.
But the 39-year-old was growing frustrated with the lack of credit he felt he deserved
for his ongoing killing spree. He began to right that wrong by sending letters to an Oregon
courthouse and a local newspaper, reiterating his claims that he was the person responsible for the death of Taunja Bennett
back in January 1990. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith loves the media attention. He was doing anything he could to obtain that attention.
And when somebody else was getting it, Keith wasn't comfortable with that. So when that occurred, it was the first time Keith
came out of hiding so to speak. Contacted the newspaper, took credit for the homicide of Taunja Bennett,
but would not divulge who he was. With all of the letters, he signed them with a happy face
at the bottom, and the Oregonian newspaper deemed him the Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: At this point he's really, really frustrated.
He's written on the walls of truck stops, he's written to the county court, and yet still he's not getting the recognition that he feels
he deserves, especially around that smiley face moniker that he's crafted. He probably thought that was a brilliant kind
of brand identity, and nobody's picking it up. So at this point he's really, really angry.
He's screaming out now, I've done this, I'm proud of this, I deserve recognition for it.
NARRATOR: The letters detailed all five of the murders that Jesperson had committed, allowing authorities to link
the separate cases together. But the trucker continued on regardless. He killed a sixth victim known only
as Susanne in September 1994. And in January 1995, he claimed a seventh. His most inhumane so far.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Angela Surbrize is one that always sticks in my mind because it doesn't start out at a truck stop in the same way
as the many of the other killings have. This time he offers Angela a lift. She's 21, she wants to lift to see her father.
In the end, she phones her father and her father says, oh don't come now. So she decides to go and see her boyfriend in Indiana.
According to Jesperson, he got irritated with her because she was telling him to hurry up.
He says how much she was nagging at him and how much she was bitching at him. And what he's doing here is victim blaming.
He's drawing on these stereotypical notions of women as annoying, as nagging because that has often been used
in the past to justify murders. It's this kind of crime of passion type of argument.
And he really is quite in tune with that. NARRATOR: After spending a week together on the road,
Jesperson strangled Angela to death, but he was far from finished with her. GEOFFREY WANSELL: You have a man who is now
quite literally out of control. But what makes Angela's killing so horrible is that he decides to cover his tracks,
and he ties that poor dead young woman's body under his truck, and toes it. And the objective is to obliterate
her face and her fingerprints. He's sufficiently aware that he knows that this one could be traced.
After all, one or two people may well have known that he had offered her a lift,
and he wants to make sure that she's unidentifiable. This is a killing of the supreme wickedness.
I mean, one feels desperately that she couldn't possibly have deserved that horrific fate,
and yet Jesperson meted it out to her, without a twinge of conscience as far as we can see.
NARRATOR: The pace of Jesperson's killing spree was accelerating, and just two months after the murder
of Angela Surbrize, in March 1995, a body was discovered in Washington, just off Highway 14.
MONTY BEUTTNER: I was actually on days off and it was, I believe, March 11 1995, when I received a call
at home stating that they had received a report of a body that was found near the county line,
just into Skamania county. The patrol officers were responding at that time and they asked that I respond as well.
MONTY BEUTTNER: The only thing really in that area between the highway and the river
is a set of railroad tracks. It was all the way at the lower edge of that. But just over that bank, probably 20 feet down
over the edge from the highway, is where the body was located. This latest case bared all the hallmarks
of the notorious Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When we look at the locations in which
Jesperson dumped the bodies, and you look at the other types of items that you find in that location, it's trash,
it's rubbish, it's discarded things that people no longer want. And that is exactly how Jesperson sees his victims.
He's had fun with them, they've served a purpose, and now he's just going to dispose of them.
MONTY BEUTTNER: It appeared to me that she had not been there very long, between possibly
24 and 36 hours. She was laying on her right side and her face was facing the ground.
I could see evidence that's either consistent with strangulation or lividity because she was basically inverted,
her head was lower than the rest of her body. Once the heart stops, blood will pool at its lowest point.
And in this case, it would have been her upper torso, neck, and face. GEOFFREY WANSELL: One of the things
that became a hallmark of Jesperson killing was he punched his victims repeatedly
in the neck, and face, and in the throat, thereby eventually killing them. He was a puncher, beat them literally to death.
NARRATOR: The first task for the investigating team was identifying the body. MONTY BEUTTNER: We had no clothing,
we had no personal wallet, no way to identify her. So one of the things that we do at the medical examiner's
office is we take fingerprints from the victim. We then run those through the automated fingerprint
identification system, known as AFIS, and in this case, the victim Julie Winningham,
her fingerprints were in the AFIS system. NARRATOR: 41-year-old Julie Winningham
had become the latest woman to be killed at the hands of the Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson is a man
who feels completely entitled to treat women in this way. He picks up women in his truck, he thinks,
I have a right to do with these women whatever I want. Now, he knows that what he's doing is wrong,
but that doesn't stop him because he feels that he has some God-given right to do this.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: In a sense, they were falling into the hands of a wolf. They're hens in the hen coop and Jesperson
is the wolf at the door. NARRATOR: But Jesperson's world was about to come crashing down around him.
The 39-year-old serial killer had made a mistake that would lead the police to his door.
Julie Winningham had become Keith Jesperson's eighth victim, but she would also be his last.
Julie's son Don Findlay was 24 at the time. DON FINDLAY: My mom, she was a cheerful free spirit,
caring, and loving. She was just a traveler and an adventure, and was a free soul.
And didn't understand that when I was young, But as I grew up I grasped what it was all and why she chose her life the way
she did. NARRATOR: Julie and Don did not have a traditional mother-son relationship.
Don was working in California, while Julie moved between the Pacific Northwest. DON FINDLAY: There was a time when I came up here in '91.
The last time I physically saw my mom, we drove around, we talked, we got caught up, and in '95
my mom had called me February 12, which was her birthday. And my birthday was February 20.
She told me she was up in Idaho with a friend and planning on coming down to Washington.
NARRATOR: By March, 1995, Julie was spending a lot of time with some friends in the Portland area,
just on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. MONTY BEUTTNER: She started hanging
out at some of the truck stops. Burns Bros, over in Troutdale, had a dance floor and quite the nightlife.
A lot of people would go over there whether they drove trucks or not. And I believe as a country and Western bar.
And they would just hang out and have drinks with friends over there. So she got into that circle over there as well.
NARRATOR: After Julie's body was found just across the river in Washington, her son Don
was given the devastating news. DON FINDLAY: I was at work, and I received a phone call
from my aunt telling me that they had found my mom dead on the side of Highway 14,
murdered and raped. I lost it. I punched fences, I pulled off the paper towels, walked down the street and just collapsed
in the middle of the street. No one around. The people I knew as friends didn't know what to think.
NARRATOR: Detectives interviewed Julie's friends and they immediately had a lead.
She had a boyfriend who was a truck driver. MONTY BEUTTNER: Speaking with Julie's friends,
we were very interested in who this truck driver was she was with. Unfortunately her friends really didn't
pay much attention to him. They noticed that he drove a big blue semi truck with a sleeper cab, but they weren't sure of his name.
Some of them said his name maybe was Keith, some of them said his name was Chris.
They were just unsure. NARRATOR: Just as it seemed the trail was going cold, investigators got their biggest break yet.
MONTY BEUTTNER: Fortunately, one of Julie's friends had just bought a car from Julie.
And out of that transaction of buying the car, Keith was there, and he was asked to sign the bill of sale
as a witness. So the friend gave us the bill of sale, and on it as a witness had said Keith Hunter Jesperson.
So that was our first indication of who we were looking for. NARRATOR: For the first time since his killing spree began,
the name Keith Jesperson was with the detectives. The 39-year-old had made an uncharacteristic error.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: There's all sorts of footprints that had been left in the sand that lead you directly
back to Keith Jesperson. He makes the mistake of killing someone who has got a past,
would have a future, and has got a whole network of friends to prove it. It's a gigantic miscalculation.
But the reason he miscalculates is by now he is simply addicted to killing. He oversteps the mark.
He goes too far because he can't stop himself. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And I think that's
testament to his arrogance at this point in his serial murders. He really does think he's untouchable,
but he's not going to get caught. NARRATOR: Detectives traced Jesperson via his employers to a job over 1,000
miles away from Washington. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson was told that when he dropped
off his load in Hurley, that he was to travel to the Las Cruces, New Mexico, county fairgrounds to pick up
a load of steel at that point. That was fabricated to the point where we could basically bring
Keith Jesperson to us, and him thinking that it was another pickup point. It was actually us waiting for his arrival.
NARRATOR: Monty remembers his first encounter with the imposing killer. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson is a very big man.
However, he is somewhat soft spoken, so it's almost like he's using that to make people
feel comfortable around him. And my first impression was using the way he was speaking
to us in the soft tones, even though he a very big man, I could see where he could pick a victim up
and they would feel somewhat safe being with him until he changed unexpectedly. So that was my first impression that this man could
easily victimize some women. NARRATOR: Jesperson claimed that Julie was still alive when he last saw her.
Without any physical or forensic evidence, the detectives were powerless to arrest him.
They flew back to Washington to continue their investigation into the death of Julie Winningham.
DON FINDLAY: I saw my mom for the very last time in a white room on a silver slab with a white sheet up
to her neck, with a black and blue mark across her whole face, shrub marks on her cheeks,
and that was the last time I basically saw my mom. | NARRATOR: No sooner had the detectives
touched down in Washington, Jesperson had a sudden change of heart. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Maybe at this point
Jesperson realizes that really the game is up and there's nothing he can do. So he confesses to his employer, the truck company,
that he's going to confess to the police. And he himself leaves a voicemail for one of the detectives who's come to interview him.
NARRATOR: Detective Rick Buckner spoke to Jesperson on the phone when the killer reached a truck stop in Arizona.
MONTY BEUTTNER: Julie then was angry because of the car that she recently sold to the friend
because Keith Jesperson signed it as a witness. She wanted the car back, and she blamed Keith
because she couldn't get the car back because of the bill sale that he had witnessed.
Keith said that they got into an argument about that. MONTY BEUTTNER: He held his hands
around her neck or his fist on her throat and held her down. At that interview, on the phone interview,
he said as long as five minutes. And later interviews he thought it was as long as 10 minutes
that he held his fist or hand over her neck, strangling her until she stopped moving.
MONTY BEUTTNER: So at our request, Cochise County Sheriff's Office sent deputies out
and they arrested him at the truck stop where he had made the call to call detective Buckner.
NARRATOR: Keith Jesperson was finally in custody, but the police we're only just beginning to realize they'd
captured the notorious Happy Face Killer. In a letter to his brother sent just before his arrest,
Jesperson had outlined his crimes, writing, I am sorry that I turned out this way.
I've been killing for five years and have killed eight people, assaulted more. I guess I haven't learned anything.
MONTY BEUTTNER: By the time that we had knowledge of those letters, the investigation
of Julie Winningham was in its final stages. And so at that point in time, the letters
to his brother that was reviewed, the letters to the Oregonian that we reviewed,
it was it was believed that time that, yes, we indeed possibly had multiple victims in this case of Keith Jesperson.
NARRATOR: It was time to sit down with Keith Jesperson and find out exactly what the Happy Face
Killer had to say for himself. NARRATOR: From the letters and interviews with Jesperson,
detectives learned that he had killed eight women across the USA, from the very Northwest in Washington,
all the way down to the Southeast in Florida. Investigators were determined to put names and faces to some
of the unknown women that Jesperson had claimed to have murdered. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Gradually, the police
put together a picture of the victims and where they are. They begin to find, or at least identify,
some of the bodies, which were in five states, so it's not an easy task. NARRATOR: In a letter he sent to the Oregonian newspaper
a year before his arrest, Jesperson had claimed to have killed a woman before dumping
her body in Salem, Oregon. This alerted Marion County DA Mark Makler when he heard that the Happy Face
Killer had been apprehended. MARK MAKLER: His hands were very large. When I met him and interviewed him and saw him
for the first time in the Clark County jail in Vancouver, Washington, he had to duck
when he walked through doors because he had that kind of size. I mean, he was a big guy.
And he didn't present himself with that size as a monster, so much as somebody who probably looked
like a big giant friendly guy until enraged, I suppose. NARRATOR: Mark was able to get a blood sample from Jesperson,
which revealed a DNA match to semen found on the body of Laurie Pentland, who'd been the killer's
fourth victim in November 1992. MARK MAKLER: Laurie Pentland was choked to death,
and what we understood was, whether he intended to kill her or not, whether he intended that she was the next victim
or not, what we understood was that she was engaged in a sex act with him, in oral sex acts with him.
I think it probably got violent with him a little bit and she bit him, and he killed her.
That's what we understood. NARRATOR: Jesperson had employed his usual MO of squeezing the life out of Laurie Pentland's body.
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson killed Laurie by a process of stop-start strangulation.
So he would throttle her until she almost went unconscious, and then he would kind of back off
and she would come around again, and then he would start that process over again.
So I think this is part of the murder that Jesperson really enjoys. This holding somebody else's life in his hands.
It's something that he wants to prolong. It something that he wants to amplify. So this must have been incredibly
terrifying for his victim. MARK MAKLER: When a victim is choked, typically bones in the neck or broken.
Remember, I told you he had massive hands, so he crushed her neck. I mean, that's effectively what happened.
NARRATOR: Jesperson was charged with the murder of Laurie Pentland, and after telling detectives where they would
find her mutilated body, the 40-year-old was charged with a third murder, that of Angela
Surbrize, the woman he dragged under his truck in January 1995. As his confessions continued, he once again
claimed to be responsible for killing Taunja Bennett in January 1990, a crime for which two people
had already been convicted. NARRATOR: Jesperson told detectives that Taunja had come back to his home
after the pair had met in a bar and been for a meal. They soon began having sex on a mattress on the floor.
NARRATOR: Jesperson described the brutal murder, the first one he committed in a calm manner.
The Washington detectives contacted their colleagues across the Oregon State border.
CHRIS PETERSON: One day I got a call from Rick Buckner who is a Clark County detective.
Rick said we've got an inmate in custody in Clark County for killing his girlfriend, and he is telling us,
and he's telling his fellow inmates that he murdered a woman named Taunja Bennett.
MONTY BEUTTNER: Of course, detectives didn't believe him because we have two people in prison already.
One of which confessed to it. However Keith Jesperson asked if we located Taunja Bennett's
purse and ID card, which wasn't located at the location where her body was. He indicated that he dumped that at a different location
and he was willing to show us where that was. NARRATOR: Jesperson described throwing the evidence
into a blackberry field the morning after he'd murdered Taunja. CHRIS PETERSON: We took him to the crime scene or the dump
site on the Columbia Gorge and he said that he left her body, but took the purse with him.
He said, I threw the contents of her purse in this area. Well, it was a big area and the blackberry were 10 feet high.
NARRATOR: After a thorough search of the vast area by police and the local scouts, they
failed to find any evidence, but the detectives refused to give up the ghost. CHRIS PETERSON: My partner Jim McNally said maybe we
ought to do it one more time. So the next Saturday we sent the explorer scouts out again
with the police supervisor and they found Taunja's ID card, an Oregon issued ID card, and it was
as good a condition as it was the day it was thrown there. Well, only a person who threw it there
could have pinpointed that precise location within, I guess, 100 yards of where we found it.
So that was the turning point, and that was the point where I felt we could charge Jesperson with a crime
because we had enough evidence to implicate him in the crime, and we wanted more than his confession
and the ID card turned out to be that one piece that we needed. NARRATOR: Just three weeks after the ID card was uncovered,
on the 2nd of November 1995, Keith Jesperson entered a no contest plea for the murder of Taunja Bennett.
He was given a life sentence. Less than a month later, Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske
were freed from prison. CHRIS PETERSON: Jesperson, had he not wanted to talk about it,
would probably never would have been convicted. There was virtually no forensic evidence
left at the crime scene. So had Jesperson not come forward, there's a good chance that the two people went to prison
would still be in prison. NARRATOR: On the 15th of November 1995, Jesperson was given another life sentence for the murder
of Laurie Pentland. And in December, Jesperson was back in court for a third time.
This time, charged with the murder of Julie Winningham, the girl whose death had led to the downfall
of the Happy Face Killer. DON FINDLAY: I attended every day, front row. What he said in court was he had raped my mother,
he had duct tape my mother, stuck his fist down her throat to make sure she was dead, he kept her
in the cab of his truck for 12 to 24 hours, and drove her up and threw her off the side of the gorge
like a piece of garbage. And I had to hear this man say that in court, this monster's
telling me what he did. NARRATOR: Once again Jesperson was found guilty. His third life sentence.
He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Oregon, and a consecutive life
term in Washington. Effectively three lives, back to back to back. So he's going to die in prison.
DON FINDLAY: He took a kind, caring, loving, free spirited mother, aunt, sister,
daughter, soul from this planet for his enjoyment. And the impact it's left is almost unreal.
But I had to face it because it was my mom, nobody else's mom. NARRATOR: In 1998, Jesperson was found guilty once more
for the murder of Angela Surbrize. And in 2007 and 2010, he was convicted of two murders in California between 1992 and 1993.
In total, the outspoken killer has been convicted six times. He remains in prison in Oregon.
CHRIS PETERSON: I have arrested a lot of people for a lot of crimes and a fair number of murders,
and this is the only one that I ever arrested that seemed to be awful pleased with his accomplishments.
MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson is a very evil person. He looks for people's weaknesses,
he looks for women's weaknesses, and then exploits those to get everything he can possibly get from them,
and then he kills them and discards them when he's done. He is the epitome of evil.
NARRATOR: Jesperson was an imposing figure who used his huge fists to either beat his victims to death, or strangle the life out of them.
For five years he managed to evade justice, until the same hands he used to kill,
signed a document that led detectives right to his door, wiping the smile off the happy face of Keith
Jesperson, one of the world's most evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYING]

Keith Jesperson, known as the 'Smiley Face Killer,' brutally killed at least eight women across five American states in the early 1990s.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Keith Jesperson, the Happy Face Killer, murdered eight women; his capture followed the murder of Julie Winningham, impacting her son deeply.

Key points

The Chilling Confession. Jesperson wrote a confession in a restroom, claiming his crimes with pride.
The Happy Face Killer. Keith Jesperson, known as the Happy Face Killer, confessed to multiple murders, shocking the nation.
Julie Winningham's Tragic End. Julie became the eighth victim of Jesperson, leading to his eventual capture.
The Happy Face Killer Captured. Keith Jesperson, the notorious Happy Face Killer, is finally apprehended after a series of murders.
Confession and Arrest. Jesperson confesses to his employer and leaves a voicemail for detectives, leading to his arrest.
Life Sentences. Jesperson is sentenced to multiple life terms for his heinous crimes, ensuring he will die in prison.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He's a monster.

Description of Keith Jesperson by Don Findlay.

0:17WatchAug 27, 2021

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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