Very Scary People returns to delve into twisted crimes and investigates the background, possible motives, psyche, and investigations of the criminals. The fifth season starts Sunday, 15th December at 10pm on Crime+Investigation, and features the crimes of the Happy Face Killer.
The 'golden age of serial murder' between 1970 and 2000 encompassed some of the most horrific crimes imaginable, including those committed by Keith Hunter Jesperson, also known as the Happy Face Killer.
The Canadian-American truck driver murdered at least eight women across California, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming. However, he's confessed to as many as 160. Read on to discover the shocking story of a notorious serial killer.
Keith Hunter Jesperson: Isolated child to prolific serial killer
Keith Hunter Jesperson's life starts exactly how you'd expect. His father was an overbearing alcoholic who held him to standards he could never quite meet, and his mother was completely absent in every meaningful way.
The bullying was bad enough from inside his own family, but Jesperson suffered everywhere he went. Kids at school teased him about his enormous size (he would grow up to be 6 ft 8 in), nicknaming him 'Igor' or 'Ig'.
Consequently, he withdrew from his peers and mostly played by himself. However, despite his shyness, he was prone to violent outbursts at school, which would be punished severely at home with a belt and various other instruments.
As with so many other cases, the conditions of his upbringing were perfect for psychopathy. From a young age, Jesperson captured and tortured animals — something which he believed pleased his father. He also tried to murder two of his friends.
His Jekyll and Hyde personality would manifest throughout his life. He eventually married and had three children. According to his daughter, he 'seemed like such a good dad at times'. But away from the family home during his shifts as a long-distance truck driver, he became a depraved sexual predator.
The crimes
Jesperson gravitated towards truck driving because it afforded him anonymity. He realised it was the perfect opportunity to satisfy his violent urges. When his marriage broke down after 14 years, he spent all his time on the road, scouting out victims.
His first known victim was Taunja Bennett. They met at a bar near Portland, Oregon, on 21st January 1990. He invited her back to a house he was renting and, according to a later confession, strangled her to death after an argument.
It's unclear whether Jesperson set out to murder Taunja or if he finally irreversibly succumbed to his impulses. Either way, from here on, a serial killer was born.
Over the next five years, Jesperson murdered seven more known victims, most of them transient sex workers. But, more importantly, they were mothers, daughters and sisters. Nearly all were raped and unceremoniously discarded in remote locations.
Unbelievably, on trial, he would try to shift the blame onto the women, claiming that one had entered his truck while he slept and another wanted to double her fee. This has been vehemently denied by the victim’s friends and families.
The Happy Face Killer
While Jesperson was committing crimes, a weird twist of fate saw a false confession. A woman called Laverne Pavlinac followed the news story closely and devised a plan to falsely accuse her boyfriend, John Sosnovske, of murdering Taunja. She hoped this would force an end to their abusive relationship.
Both would be charged with the murder — John received life and Laverne no less than ten years for her 'participation'. This was much more than she anticipated, but nobody believed her when she retracted her story.
In the meantime, Jesperson was furious he wasn't receiving recognition, so he wrote confessions at truck stops and bus stations signed with a smiley face. He also sent letters to media and police departments, outlining details of the murders, all featuring the same eerie signature. This led journalists to dub him the 'Happy Face Killer'.
The trial
Jesperson was eventually arrested on 30th March 1995 for the murder of his then-girlfriend, Julie Winningham. After two failed suicide attempts and ultimately resigning himself to imprisonment, he confessed to the other crimes. Although he claimed to have murdered 160 women, only eight have been confirmed.
The trial was fairly straightforward. He received four consecutive life sentences, which he's currently serving at Oregon State Penitentiary.
His daughter later wrote a memoir called Shattered Silence, describing her childhood with Jesperson. She recounts the horrors of watching him torture animals and connects the dots to some of his earlier confessions.
'After my book came out in 2008, I got a letter from [Jesperson] in which he said: "I don't want the world to judge me as a dad. I was a great dad. My only mistake was my eight errors in judgement." But he's talking about murders. He's calling them errors in judgement. That's the way he sees things.'
