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Transcript

The Happy Face Killer pt.2 · Eerily Beloved

0:00
SPEAKER_00: All right, welcome back to the podcast and eerily beloved, we are gathered here today with Gadwords.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: Mom.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: And today we are on the second part of the happy face killer.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: I think I said smiley face once last time.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: I didn't mean to.
0:15
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I thought it was smiley face.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: No, it's it's happy face.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh, you said smiley face.
0:19
SPEAKER_00: I meant to say happy face.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: I totally screwed that.
0:21
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of goofy.
0:22
SPEAKER_02: Smiley face is way better.
0:24
SPEAKER_00: Well, because you don't say he like drew a happy face.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: He drew a smiley face.
0:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: That's yeah.
0:32
SPEAKER_02: That's why a smiley face is so much better.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: But isn't it smiley face?
0:34
SPEAKER_00: So why is it happy face?
0:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't know, because that's what it is, a happy face.
0:40
SPEAKER_02: A government name.
0:41
SPEAKER_02: I didn't come up with it.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: It's a smiley face.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: I know.
0:44
SPEAKER_00: That's why I was thrown off.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: But I was like, oh my bad.
0:49
SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: I didn't get any angry emails about it.
0:52
SPEAKER_03: So surprised, honestly.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: I think it's because it like we're kind of using happy face and smiley face interchangeably in the reporting.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: And then when I did the episode title, I was like, oh happy face.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Whoop Pepsi Daisies.
1:06
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, we are on part two.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: So if you haven't listened to part one, that is required to listen to this episode.
1:13
SPEAKER_03: Required you have to sit through Laverne's lying.
1:18
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
1:20
SPEAKER_00: And Laverne is done lying.
1:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, good.
1:22
SPEAKER_00: But someone else isn't.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: So we're not done.
1:28
SPEAKER_00: And this episode is kind of um there's kind of a lot.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, since there's a second part, there was a lot to begin with.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: I'm doing my best to go into chronological order.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: But chronological order isn't necessarily the victim order.
1:42
SPEAKER_00: If that makes sense.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: No, yeah, because the order in which he was convicted isn't like victim one, victim two, victim three.
1:49
SPEAKER_00: Like that's not.
1:51
SPEAKER_03: So I'll Okay, you're gonna take us on a journey.
1:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Everybody but we gotta go on a journey before we get to that journey.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't like a nonlinear storyline.
2:00
SPEAKER_00: I did my best, but it is kind of confusing, and I think he did that on purpose to confuse investigators.
2:08
SPEAKER_03: So Okay.
2:15
SPEAKER_00: So in part one, we covered the tragic discovery of 23-year-old Tanya Bennett's body and the investigation confession and conviction of Laverne and John for their involvement in her murder.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: Also, during the trial, Laverne changed her story for the fourth time and confessed her innocence, stating she only used the information published in the news about her death, about Tanya's death, to convince police of her stories one through three to escape her abusive boyfriend, John.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Then, mid-trial, investigators were confronted with the possibility that the couple was innocent of the crime, when the note on the wall of multiple bus depots confessed to the crime, saying the wrong people were serving time.
2:52
SPEAKER_00: We ended the episode on May in May of 1994 when a letter was sent to the Oregonian confessing to four additional murders, including Tanya Bennett in Portland in 1990.
3:01
SPEAKER_00: Despite the confession in connection to the crimes that had been committed, verified by journalist Phil Stanford, the district attorney still believed that Laverne and John were right rightfully convicted of the crime.
3:11
SPEAKER_03: Come on.
3:13
SPEAKER_03: We're just gonna stand by.
3:15
SPEAKER_00: Just a little refresher, obviously, more detail.
3:19
SPEAKER_00: Again, if you haven't listened to part one, go listen to part one.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so the present police heard nothing else from the happy face killer.
3:27
SPEAKER_00: Laverne's daughter, like I said last episode, even wrote a note that was published to the papers asking for the author of the letter to come forward so her mom could be released from prison, but that went unanswered.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: With no further clues as to who might have written the letter, and with many in law enforcement believing it was a hopes to hoax to begin with, the investigation into the letter writer went cold.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: Nearly a year later, on March 11th, 1995, the body of 41-year-old Julie Winningham was found in Camas, Washington, strangled and dumped at a viewpoint off of Highway 14.
4:00
SPEAKER_02: Come on.
4:01
SPEAKER_02: So this is what, like number six?
4:05
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into it.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: Five six.
4:07
SPEAKER_00: We'll get into it.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: The person she was seen with shortly before her death was her fiance.
4:12
SPEAKER_00: He was described as being 6'6 in his early 40s, about 285 pounds, wore glasses, and he was known to be a truck driver.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: What?
4:21
SPEAKER_00: He at this point was completely MIA, and that immediately placed him as a person of interest for investigators.
4:29
SPEAKER_00: In an affidavit filed by Clark County's chief criminal deputy prosecutor, Dennis Hunter, to obtain an arrest warrant, it's revealed that a detective received a call from a man on March 24th.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: On this call, he confessed, the man confessed to strangling Julie in the cab of his truck, gagging her with duct tape, and sexually assaulting her.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: He also confessed to trying to kill himself at least twice before deciding to turn himself in.
4:53
SPEAKER_00: So police arrested Keith Hunter Jesperson March 27th, 1995, in New Mexico for the murder of Julie Winningham.
5:02
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so he confessed.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: And if you remember in part one, Keith Hunter Jesperson was also one of the people last seen with Tanya Bennett at the BI Tavern.
5:14
SPEAKER_00: Let's get into um Keith Hunter Jespersen.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: And it should be noted that before we get into who this guy was, he is a notorious liar and avid media manipulator.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: So anything he says is like not 100% true.
5:31
SPEAKER_00: Keith Hunter Jesperson was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, in 1955.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: He was the middle of five kids with two older brothers and two younger sisters.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: From a very young age, he already began showing signs of disturbing and not normal behavior.
5:45
SPEAKER_00: At age five, Jesperson began showing no regard for life, torturing small creatures and animals.
5:50
SPEAKER_03: Oh no.
5:51
SPEAKER_03: Oh wow.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: As a child into his young adult years, Jesperson was relentlessly bullied for his large size.
5:57
SPEAKER_00: Because of this, he struggled socially.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Home provided no escape.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: He was physically abused by his alcoholic father, later claiming that he would be publicly whipped, so he tried subjected to electric shock and was beaten unconscious on multiple occasions.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Oh, but this is the liar, so he was the self-proclaimed black sheep of the family and teased by his older brothers for his size.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: He was teased for his size and ill inability to make friends with them and nicknaming him Igor or Egg, which followed him throughout his years in school.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: He claims that the only time his father was proud of him was when he had been caught strangling a bird, which then led to fantasies about doing it to a person.
6:34
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, see, like I'm I'm starting to think that he got ostracized, especially from his family, because of his these weird things he was doing with animals, not his size.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: Right.
6:45
SPEAKER_00: That's awful.
6:46
SPEAKER_00: He was ten years old when he attempted his first murder.
6:49
SPEAKER_00: What?
6:50
SPEAKER_00: Another schoolboy named Martin often did things that would get him in trouble, but then then blamed it on Jasper Sense, so he would be punished instead.
6:57
SPEAKER_00: Fed up with the antics, he beat Martin unconscious and didn't stop until his father pulled him off the boy, claiming that he would have killed Martin had his father not stopped him.
7:05
SPEAKER_03: Wait, at ten.
7:06
unknown: Yep.
7:07
SPEAKER_03: And this is true, or this is him retelling.
7:10
SPEAKER_00: Well, this is allegedly true.
7:12
SPEAKER_03: I mean, but it's not him lying.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: A year later, when a bully at the local swimming pool had pushed Jesperson underwater, he claimed he was under until he saw Black and realized he needed to stand up to him.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: In retaliation, he held the boy's face underwater until the lifeguard pushed him away, with Jesperson saying later saying that he had every intention of drowning him.
7:31
SPEAKER_00: Petty crimes followed soon after.
7:33
SPEAKER_00: He's eleven at this point.
7:36
SPEAKER_00: He began shoplifting and had a proclivity for lighting fires.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: One report says that during his early teens he experimented with pipe bombs.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: In high school, his antisocial behavior further alienated him from his peers.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: He was unsuccessful with girls, and the humiliation from constant rejection led to a deep-seated resentment towards them.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: When he was 17, after being taunted, he couldn't climb up a rope.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: He sought to prove his classmates wrong.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: When he reached the top, the rope came loose from the bracket and he fell 25 feet, smacking his head on the hardwood floor.
8:06
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
8:06
SPEAKER_00: So in addition to all of this stuff, there's like multiple head traumas happening, which is also known to cause behavioral problems and I don't know if that's if that's the case.
8:17
SPEAKER_02: This guy was strangling kids like animals that No, I know, but it definitely doesn't six.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: It definitely doesn't help.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: How would you strangle a bird?
8:24
SPEAKER_02: He was strangling kids, Molly mean a bird.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: After he graduated, he didn't attend college because his father said he couldn't do it.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: And despite his previous struggles with girls, when he was 20, he married Rose Huck in 1975.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: They moved to Topinish, Washington, and went on to have three kids, two daughters and a son.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: During this time, Jesperson began working as a long haul trucker to support their family.
8:46
SPEAKER_00: His daughter Melissa Moore recalls when he was home, he'd be doting and kind, bringing home trinkets from the route he had driven, but that she also remembers the other man he could be.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: When Melissa was five, she found kittens in their farmhouse cellar and took them outside to play with them.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: When Jespersen saw what she was doing, he took them and hung them on a clothesline.
9:06
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
9:07
SPEAKER_00: For an interview with the Daily Mail, she said, I remember the smile on his face and I could see blood coming off my dad's forearms, but that didn't seem to faze him.
9:15
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god.
9:17
SPEAKER_03: What?
9:17
SPEAKER_03: And that's his daughter?
9:19
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
9:20
SPEAKER_03: What a disgusting human.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: Long stretches on the road, followed by calls to the house of random women, led to tension in the home, which was further fueled by his increasingly erotic behavior.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: After 14 years of marriage, Rose and Keith Jesperson divorced in 1990, and she moved with the kids to Spokane, Washington to be with her family.
9:39
SPEAKER_00: Criminologists consider the divorce to be the catalyst for the murders that followed.
9:44
SPEAKER_00: His loss of control, increased isolation, and resentment against women resulted in a psychological breakdown that amplified his existing violent and psychopathic behavior.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: Melissa recalls other instances throughout the years after the divorce, now looking back, that point to more than just just her dad being awed.
10:01
SPEAKER_00: For an interview with BBC, she remembers a time when she was 13, and the two of them were driving by the Multnomah Falls area of the Columbia River Gorge when he suddenly said, I know how to kill someone and get away with it.
10:13
SPEAKER_00: Then he just started to tell her how he would cut off the victim's buttons so there wouldn't be any fingerprints left, and he would wear cycling shoes that didn't leave a distinctive print in the mud.
10:21
SPEAKER_02: You said what?
10:22
SPEAKER_00: This was in 1993, three years after he had already killed Tanya Bennett in the same area.
10:29
SPEAKER_03: What?
10:29
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
10:30
SPEAKER_03: He tells his daughter that driving in the truck and dropping tips.
10:33
SPEAKER_03: You don't think that's like strange?
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
10:36
SPEAKER_03: You wouldn't call she at that point.
10:38
SPEAKER_03: 911?
10:39
SPEAKER_03: Doesn't matter if you were old enough to remember.
10:42
SPEAKER_03: Oh, 13, yeah.
10:44
SPEAKER_03: Call 911.
10:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, what if he knows that I called 911?
10:48
SPEAKER_02: I'm in the truck with him.
10:49
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's Keith Hunt Keith Hunter Jasperson, who was arrested for the murder of and confessed to the murder of Julie Winningham.
10:56
SPEAKER_00: His girlfriend or other sources call her his fiancee.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, back in 1995, the brother of Jasperson contacted police after he received a letter post-march on March 24th, followed by a call from Keith in jail telling him to destroy it.
11:11
SPEAKER_00: Presumably this had been a suicide note, and when he was arrested after the failed attempts, realized what it would mean if the note got into hands of police.
11:20
SPEAKER_03: Oh, please tell me he gave it to him.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: The handwritten letter, of course, he handed it over to police.
11:25
SPEAKER_02: He's got no love for this family.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: His brothers don't like him.
11:28
SPEAKER_00: The handwritten letter said, Hi, Brad, seems like my luck has run out, and I'll never be able to enjoy life on the outside again.
11:33
SPEAKER_00: I got into a bad situation and got caught up with emotion.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: I killed a woman in my truck during an argument.
11:39
SPEAKER_00: It looks like I truly am a black sheep.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure they will kill me for this.
11:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry I turned out this way.
11:44
SPEAKER_00: I've been a killer for five years and have killed eight people, assaulted more.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, and what so originally he only confessed over the phone to the detective to the murder of Julie Winningham, so now there were seven more that needed to be accounted for.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: And of course, everyone who remembered the reporting in the years prior of the happy face killer kind of started thinking, and they're like, wait a minute, there were quite a few coincidences between coincidences.
12:12
SPEAKER_03: The the way that he went about doing it.
12:14
SPEAKER_00: And what does Gibb say?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: There's no such thing as a coincidence.
12:18
SPEAKER_02: Okay, I mean there is such a thing as circumstantial evidence, but no such thing as a coincidence.
12:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, whatever.
12:27
SPEAKER_00: Yes, both of the men being truck drivers could have been a coincidence, but the similarities similarities didn't end there.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: The original letter said that he was married with three children, Jesperson was divorced with three children.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: The letter writer started killing in 1990, and Jesperson had been killing since 1990.
12:46
SPEAKER_00: Investigators wanted a handwriting sample to compare the letter sent to the Oregon in 1994 to definitively tie him to the crimes the happy face killer confessed to committing.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: But fortunately for them, they didn't have to wait long for him to fulfill their request in an indirect manner.
13:02
SPEAKER_03: Oh boy.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: In September of 1995, Drusperson started a letter writing campaign and sent out seven letters to local news and press agencies from the Clark County jail.
13:12
SPEAKER_03: This guy's disgusting.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: The letter with a smiley face on it starts, I'm in fact the happy face killer.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: I created that man because I wanted to be stopped, but it is hard just to come out and say it.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: It's quite a long letter.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: And later he says, I'm not a monster, just like the movie Jurassic Park.
13:29
SPEAKER_00: I was created by people.
13:31
SPEAKER_02: I I mean, I guess I was created by society.
13:35
SPEAKER_03: No.
13:36
SPEAKER_03: No.
13:37
SPEAKER_03: Bro thinks he ate.
13:39
SPEAKER_03: So he's craving attention, not gaining attention in prison, has to send out these letters.
13:44
SPEAKER_03: You're disgusting.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Despite all that had come out, District Attorney Michael Schrunk still remains steadfast in his belief that they had the right people in prison for the murder of the city.
13:53
SPEAKER_03: Okay, Michael, come on.
13:55
SPEAKER_00: Well, he doesn't want to be the one responsible responsible for wrongly convicting people.
14:00
SPEAKER_03: Like, yeah, but yeah, you sometimes have to admit you're wrong.
14:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but the male ego is a beast.
14:06
SPEAKER_00: In October of 1995.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: It's always a white man.
14:12
SPEAKER_00: Bro, it's always a white man.
14:15
SPEAKER_00: In October 1995, Jess Persen pled guilty to the murder of Julie Winningham, avoiding trial, aggravated kidnapping, rape, and murder charges, and the death penalty.
14:24
SPEAKER_00: Because had he gone to trial.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: Right, yeah, he didn't want the death penalty.
14:28
SPEAKER_00: Julie Winningham's friend Melissa for 2020 said she was beautiful inside as well as outside, and that's how I will remember her.
14:35
SPEAKER_00: So sad.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: Before investigators pursued charges related to Tanya Bennett, because now they're like, okay, he's he confessed to the crimes of the letter writer, and the letter writer said that I did this crime, this crime this crime.
14:48
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, they were gonna look into the Tanya Bennett case because we're people serving time that they shouldn't be there for.
14:56
SPEAKER_00: Right.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: So before they pursued charges related to Tanya Bennett, they were going to be thorough looking into any of his claims to avoid what had happened before.
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Jesperson provided the location of her long-lost purse that they this time verified as hers, the black purse.
15:13
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, not the one that was put in the back of the car by Laverne with the wrong button.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: In November of 1995, Jesperson pleaded no contest and received a life sentence for the murder of Tanya Bennett.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: Later in in an interview, he said the letter's purpose was to create interest in the press to push the Multnomah County justice system to reopen the Tanya Bennett murder case to hopefully prove both Laverne and John innocent.
15:37
SPEAKER_00: I had no intention of telling the truth in the letter, just to stir up a mess.
15:41
SPEAKER_02: This guy's a piece of work.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
15:43
SPEAKER_03: What?
15:44
SPEAKER_03: A piece of garbage.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: You just wanted airtime.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Following his conviction in November of 1995, after serving four years in prison, Laverne and John were released.
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Of the release, Judge Paul Lipscomb of the Circuit County Court of Oregon said, Pavlinak has selfishly engaged in an obsessive and persistent obstruction of justice, which deflected the investigation at an early stage, causing it to focus on her boyfriend.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: While the real killer remained free to kill again and again.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: Her persistence in this manip manipulation resulted in her own conviction.
16:14
SPEAKER_03: Amen.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: I hope they put her back in.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: No, he was pissed.
16:18
SPEAKER_00: He was like, You were looking for a little bit of a child.
16:21
SPEAKER_00: She was convicted off of based off of jury.
16:25
SPEAKER_03: So it wasn't just But it was her evidence.
16:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean it was her testimony.
16:30
SPEAKER_03: Right.
16:30
SPEAKER_03: Don't get me started about I was still mad about Laverne up until yesterday.
16:34
SPEAKER_03: Just getting over it.
16:36
SPEAKER_03: I'm just getting over it.
16:38
SPEAKER_00: So following this, Cylthia Cynthia Wilcox was one of the first identified victims from the original letter who was discovered behind the Blueberry Hill Cafe in California.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: Jesperson confessed to strangling her and dumping her body.
16:51
SPEAKER_00: He pled guilty and received another life sentence for her murder.
16:54
SPEAKER_03: Well now he just may as well rack him up.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Also in November 1995, he pled guilty for the death of Lori Pentlin from Carleton, Oregon, who was found in Salem behind the GI Joe's and was sentenced to life in prison.
17:08
SPEAKER_00: In early 1996, Jesperson confessed to the murder of 21-year-old Angela Subrise in Wyoming.
17:14
SPEAKER_00: However, in his confession, he carefully avoided any admission that would lead him to receiving the death penalty.
17:20
SPEAKER_00: In Wyoming, a person convicted of murder can only be sentenced to death if the murder is premeditated or committed during a fen a felony crime.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So he was like, I did it, but So if you just do it at that point.
17:33
SPEAKER_03: I hit her on the accident.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: That flip of a switch, you just yeah, you saw her on the side of the road and just worked my truck.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
17:39
SPEAKER_02: And that's fine.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: After realizing that the Wyoming prosecutors were not going to cut him a deal to avoid the death penalty, he wrote another letter that was published in the Statesman Journal, the main newspaper out of Salem, Oregon.
17:50
SPEAKER_00: He said, if they feel that a death penalty is in order, then okay.
17:53
SPEAKER_00: I will give them everything they want to convict me.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: So according to him, in January 1995, he picked up 21-year-old Angela, who was hitchhiking from a truck stop in Spokane, Washington, and was planning on going to see her dad in Colorado.
18:08
SPEAKER_00: It's estimated she was with him for about a week.
18:11
SPEAKER_03: What?
18:11
SPEAKER_00: Jesperson wrote the one night they were sleeping in his cab in Cheyenne after she changed her mind and wanted to go with him to Indiana instead of visiting her dad.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: He said she wouldn't shut up and let me sleep.
18:26
SPEAKER_03: Oh God.
18:28
SPEAKER_03: This guy.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: When he woke up, he proceeded to tie her face down on the underside of his trailer and drove for 10 miles in hopes that her face would be unidentifiable.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: He then dumped her off the side of I-80 in Nebraska.
18:42
SPEAKER_03: What?
18:45
SPEAKER_03: How could you do that?
18:46
SPEAKER_00: Mom.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Imagine seeing a truck with a body hanging under it.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Mom, he's genuinely he's sick in the head.
18:53
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't need to be said.
18:54
SPEAKER_02: He's a Your mind probably wouldn't even let you believe that you actually.
18:59
SPEAKER_00: Imagine driving by a truck.
19:00
SPEAKER_02: I don't think he'd be able to he would see it.
19:02
SPEAKER_00: He pled guilty, and while waiting to see if he would be extradited, or he didn't plead guilty, he confessed.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: So while waiting to see if he'd be extradited to Wyoming in prison, he began bragging to other cellmates about the number of people he had killed, and then went as far as writing more letters to police and the media stating that he had killed upwards of 166 people.
19:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: He then confessed to the death of a woman who was missing named Bobby Crescenzi, who was last seen in October of 1992 in Bend.
19:30
SPEAKER_00: This became another issue because her husband Jack had been convicted of the crime in 1995 and was currently serving a life sentence even though she had never been found.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
19:39
SPEAKER_02: Is he just free in like all the homies?
19:41
SPEAKER_00: In 1997, Dateline went to interview Jesperson about the disappearance of Bobby, and his confession contained information that seemingly only the killer would know.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Dateline producer Marcia Bartell wasn't so quick to believe him and began looking into his story.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: It was then found that an inmate who had served time with Crescenzi had been transferred and was now serving time at the Oregon State Penitentiary with Jespersen.
20:03
SPEAKER_00: Through the mutual inmate, the two were able to communicate.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: Using information from Jack Crescenzi, Jespersen was able to confess to the murder with a convincing enough amount of detail.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: When he was confronted by Dateline producers for attempting to manipulate them, he said it will make a good story.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Right.
21:03
SPEAKER_03: So now he's just trying to manipulate everyone.
21:07
SPEAKER_00: His attempt to control the narrative backfired, and Dateline released the episode titled True Lies, exposing his scheme, his history as a manipulator of the media, and deconstructed the false information he fed them.
21:18
SPEAKER_03: Good on them.
21:19
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I'm so glad that they dug into that and didn't just take his word for it.
21:24
SPEAKER_03: He would have let me know.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: He was just sitting bored in jail, confessing to a million things, writing letters.
21:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
21:29
SPEAKER_03: But he could have let out someone that likely committed a crime.
21:33
SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
21:34
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
21:35
SPEAKER_03: And he did commit that crime.
21:36
SPEAKER_02: Well he did commit the crime.
21:38
SPEAKER_02: The husband.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: He did?
21:40
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: Well, he he fed details to to this guy.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: They don't want the killer would know.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: On June third, nineteen ninety eight, Keith Jesperson was extradited to Wyoming to stand trial for the murder of Angela Subbrise.
21:53
SPEAKER_00: When he got there, he pled guilty to first degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison before being transported back to Oregon to continue.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Serving his existing sentences.
22:01
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so he didn't get the death penalty.
22:02
SPEAKER_00: It cost the state of Wyoming thirty-two thousand dollars to defend, prosecute House, and transport him.
22:07
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: So he's just wasting cast taxpayer dollars too, and everyone's time.
22:13
SPEAKER_03: Well, I mean, it would only not be wasteful of time if he would actually tell the truth and they could close some of these missing persons reports and other things, right?
22:22
SPEAKER_03: And give family some closure.
22:24
SPEAKER_03: But if all he's gonna do is lie and mislead, then it's just creates a circus.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that they decided not to go to trial was that it was gonna cost them like upwards of a million dollars to try to push the death death penalty.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: So they're like, all right, if we can at least get him to plead guilty, then he's gonna be in prison for life anyways.
22:42
SPEAKER_03: Well, how many life sentences?
22:44
SPEAKER_03: See now he's racking up multiple of five.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: But some of them were like consecutive or whatever they call it.
22:49
SPEAKER_03: So they can't be served at the same time.
22:50
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: So that was Wyoming.
22:52
SPEAKER_00: So now he's pled guilty to Angela.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: He's pled guilty to Tanya.
22:59
SPEAKER_00: Tanya.
23:00
SPEAKER_00: He's pled guilty to Julie, and then he's pled guilty to Lori Penland.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: He said there were and Cynthia Wilcox.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: I think that's five.
23:09
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
23:10
SPEAKER_00: That's five, yeah.
23:11
SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, two counties in California and one in Florida were still trying to connect Jasperson to their open cases from like the originally the original letter that he confessed.
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Because he confessed five, but then time had gone by, so he so it's five plus Julie.
23:26
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're trying to kind of figure it out.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Unfortunately for them, it was a waiting game to see if forensic technology advancements could help crack the cases.
23:34
SPEAKER_03: Oh, please, please, please.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: Because it was the early 90s, so it's like not in July of 2007, investigators were finally able to charge Jesperson for the 1993 murder of an unidentified woman that he picked up in corn in California.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Prosecutors alleged that he had sent them a letter confessing to strangling and dumping the unidentified body earlier that year.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: He pled guilty and received another life sentence.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: Forty-five-year-old Patricia Skipple was identified thanks to a breakthrough with genetic genealogy in 2022 after being unidentified for 30 years.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: So he confessed this is kind of where we get off the house.
24:09
SPEAKER_00: The timeline gets a little loopy.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: He was convicted in 2007, but she wasn't identified until 2022.
24:16
SPEAKER_03: Oh my gosh.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: She had gone missing from her home in Malala, Oregon, after she left the house following an argument with her husband.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: She was a mother of two, and her family wondered for the longest time why she never came home.
24:27
SPEAKER_00: Which is really sad.
24:29
SPEAKER_03: That is awful.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: In 2023, on the 29th anniversary of when an unidentified woman's body was found in Florida off of I-10, investigators paid Jess Person a visit.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: When they questioned him about the case, he told them he met a woman at a truck stop in Tampa.
24:43
SPEAKER_00: And then they traveled to another truck stop shortly after.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: At one point, she began arguing with him, and in a bid to silence her, since he wasn't supposed to have visitors in his truck, he strangled her.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: The skeletal remains could not be identified with any of the traditional methods, and an attempt at forensic facial reconstruction in 2007 didn't provide any new leads or clues as to who she was.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: With the help of forensic genetic genealogy, they were able to create a genealogical profile which narrowed familial line down to a family member.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And Suzanne Kellenberg was identified as a six-foot victim of Keith Jesperson.
25:17
SPEAKER_03: Oh gosh.
25:18
SPEAKER_03: And when was she killed?
25:19
SPEAKER_00: Florida, 1994.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
25:21
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
25:23
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: In Riverside County in 2010, Jessen pled guilty to the 1992 murder of another unidentified woman that he referred to as Claudia.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: He met the woman at a truck spot stop in Victorville and she requested to be taken to Los Angeles.
25:38
SPEAKER_00: Instead, he drove further south and after killing her, dumped her body in Blythe at the California-Arizona border.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: She is the last unidentified victim of the happy face killer and was identified on August 27th, 2026.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: As 23-year-old Lydia Jane Wade McCorder.
25:55
SPEAKER_03: She literally was just identified like a little over a month ago.
26:00
SPEAKER_00: She had disappeared from her home in Texas in the 90s.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: A DNA sample from her older sister, Brenda Burks, helped identify her 34 years after her body had been discovered.
26:09
SPEAKER_03: Those poor families.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: I know.
26:19
SPEAKER_03: Some of those ladies those those poor women.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: And their families, yeah.
26:28
SPEAKER_00: In September of 2009, Melissa Moore, daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, released a book, Shattered Silence, The Untold Story of a Serial Killer's Daughter.
26:36
SPEAKER_00: She went on to become an Emmy nominated journalist, author, and television producer.
26:41
SPEAKER_00: And she has spent her life becoming an advocate for families of serial crimes.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Good for her.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: She has her own podcast called Happy Face, and a Paramount Plus call series called Happy Face was released in 2018 based off her podcast and her book.
26:54
SPEAKER_00: She's had no contact with her father for 20 years.
26:58
SPEAKER_02: Wait, she named her podcast after her dad?
27:00
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like that's that's what it is.
27:03
SPEAKER_03: But I mean, good for her that she's, you know, doing doing something good with all this bad.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: That would be really difficult.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: She Well, she was she was 15 when she found out that her dad was a serial killer and like convicted of sexual crimes and when she was 13.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: She was when he drove her.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, she was 13 in 1993.
27:27
SPEAKER_02: When he was dropping tips.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: Right.
27:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: I mean So Keith Hunter Jasper Sun is serving seven life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem and occasionally makes news for communicating with other serial killers via mail.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: He has not given up his letter writing habit.
27:46
SPEAKER_00: Most recently he made headlines for reaching out to the Gilgow Beach Killer, also known as the Long Island serial killer, Rex Huerman, following his sentencing in 2026.
27:56
SPEAKER_00: Dude, just give it up.
27:58
SPEAKER_02: He's still alive.
27:59
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
27:59
SPEAKER_03: He's still alive.
28:01
SPEAKER_03: I don't love that, honestly.
28:03
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I don't love that for him.
28:05
SPEAKER_03: Look at all he's taken away from everyone.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Jim McIntyre, the Oregon prosecutor, handled the cases, told ABC News the greatest human tragedy is at Laverne Pavlinac throughout the investigation in 1990.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: And in four years, Keith Jesperson killed seven more women.
28:22
SPEAKER_02: At least.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Just sick.
28:25
SPEAKER_02: There's other ways to get away.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: Like there's there's no way she had to do all that.
28:31
SPEAKER_03: No, exactly.
28:32
SPEAKER_02: There's no justification.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's just it's not a normal reaction that in any capacity.
28:38
SPEAKER_03: Bellburn.
28:39
SPEAKER_03: Just a bad word.
28:41
SPEAKER_00: So that's the that's the happy face killer.
28:45
SPEAKER_03: Bad guy.
28:46
SPEAKER_03: Evil guy.
28:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean what, but he just needs attention.
28:51
SPEAKER_03: Yep.
28:52
SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah.
28:54
SPEAKER_03: I mean, why reach out to other people?
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Why, you know, I mean he's reached out to multiple other people, make up some stories.
29:00
SPEAKER_03: That's the most recent one.
29:02
SPEAKER_00: I guess I guess they have something in common.
29:05
SPEAKER_03: Oh, he's now finally finding friends in his old age as a dirty dog.
29:11
SPEAKER_03: Good for you, dude.
29:12
SPEAKER_03: Just finally found the homies.
29:15
SPEAKER_03: I feel awful for those families.
29:17
SPEAKER_03: I'm glad his daughter is um making something positive of all this negative.
29:24
SPEAKER_03: I still am so pissed at Laverne.
29:27
SPEAKER_03: But between Laverne, you know, and this the time.
29:33
SPEAKER_03: Laverne is the lesser evil, unfortunately.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: Well, I know.
29:35
SPEAKER_03: But but she's not great, but she didn't have a lot of people.
29:38
SPEAKER_03: But still, it can contributed because had they were they able to find him, you know, had they had they done their due diligence at first.
29:47
SPEAKER_03: And and the police for, you know, not even looking into new information and just you know doubling down and dying on the sword of, oh, we have the right people convicted.
29:59
SPEAKER_03: Um, when they knew they were dealing with someone who changed her stories multiple times.
30:05
unknown: Yep.
30:06
SPEAKER_03: So she gave way right there for them to, you know, look into any type of new evidence.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Well, and it's kind of a debate, I guess.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: Did he actually write a letter and say that they were innocent because he felt bad that they were convicted or because he wanted attention and he wasn't getting it?
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Because they got credit for his crimes.
30:28
SPEAKER_03: I mean, if that's what it was gonna take to stop him, ultimately, I guess, you know, his own ego got in his own way.
30:34
SPEAKER_03: Well, I didn't know all those details, and knowing that he's just right down the street in Salem makes me I'm glad I'm paying for his meals.
30:44
SPEAKER_03: I don't think he deserves a meal, but No.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: The way he discarded women, the just animals.
30:51
SPEAKER_03: No, I mean imagine all the tragedy he's created in the world.
30:54
SPEAKER_03: Like hit his the wake of his negativity is just awful.
30:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, and beyond like the eight girls that he murdered, I mean, each of them had a family that had sisters.
31:05
SPEAKER_03: He had a family who was Imagine being the older sister and three years later, someone making a phone call and saying, right, we finally figured it out.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
31:14
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, just lots of lots of sad.
31:18
SPEAKER_00: Or you don't know what happened, and then all of a sudden you get a call, hey, she was actually a victim of this awful guy.
31:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: Like that's terrible.
31:27
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, or thinking that your mom ran away, you know, at after there was some type of argument and then she never came home and you would just feel like that you were potentially abandoned, have no idea that actually, you know, brutally marker, yeah, from a serial killer.
31:43
SPEAKER_03: Like Yep, he was a dirt bag.
31:45
SPEAKER_03: Dirtbag.
31:46
SPEAKER_03: Okay, well.
31:48
SPEAKER_03: I'm not a fan.
31:49
SPEAKER_00: I'm glad all of them all of the victims were identified.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: Like had we done this episode a month earlier, yeah.
31:54
SPEAKER_03: That right, there still would have been one outstanding.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, and for the longest time they thought that the Suzanne in Florida was the last unidentified one because he referred to the most recent one as Claudia when her name was actually Lydia.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: So Oh, I see.
32:11
SPEAKER_03: So thinking that maybe he just because he didn't care to know their names.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, he just he just disposed of them carelessly.
32:21
SPEAKER_03: No, not even carelessly.
32:23
SPEAKER_03: With no regards.
32:24
SPEAKER_03: Completely disrespectful and disgusting.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: What do they call that?
32:28
SPEAKER_00: The McDonald triad?
32:30
SPEAKER_00: You wet your pants, you hurt animals, and you light fires.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: Right.
32:34
SPEAKER_02: Someone did.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: And he exhibited at least Isn't that just early two of the three.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: Psychopath?
32:40
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was Wet the Bed.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: I said that.
32:43
SPEAKER_02: You said Wet Your Pants.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: What okay, whatever.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: Wet the Bed, Wet Your Pants.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: I mean, but two of the three.
32:49
SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't be surprised if he'd Oh, I'm sure yeah.
32:52
SPEAKER_03: Well, clearly exhibiting like uh obviously very not normal behavior, yeah, psychologically impaired behavior.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's pretty hard to attract bullies when you're what 6'5, 250.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I think he was just a big kid and you know he was Yeah, but I mean But there are a lot of There's gotta be other stuff going on.
33:13
SPEAKER_03: There are a lot of there are a lot of big people.
33:15
SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, like that, and that's not that's not honestly that big depending, but that doesn't mean that you need to go and become a serial killer and hate women and it was probably just a lack of empathy, people didn't like being around him.
33:29
unknown: Yeah.
33:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, had plenty of other issues.
33:31
SPEAKER_03: There's plenty of people of all sizes that are, you know, nice and wonderful.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
33:36
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know if that account came from him later on, and so he's that's why I said I'm struggling in the reason why to understand if he was telling the truth or if that was just part of his story.
33:49
SPEAKER_03: What I'd like to do is read his daughter's book.
33:52
SPEAKER_03: So thanks for telling the story.
33:54
SPEAKER_03: I'm glad that all the families have been notified, at least they get some type of closure.
33:59
SPEAKER_03: And um I really hope this guy rots.
34:02
SPEAKER_00: Yummy Tim.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: Not worth saying his name again.
34:07
SPEAKER_00: Well, and the fact that he was so scared of the death penalty, that yeah, he was so quick to kill people.
34:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, multiple people.
34:14
SPEAKER_03: You want him to be quiet, so I'm just gonna strangle him.
34:16
SPEAKER_03: I don't So you want to play God, but then kittens, hanging kittens in front of your daughter.
34:22
SPEAKER_03: I mean, like what what is wrong with you?
34:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's weird.
34:24
SPEAKER_03: What is wrong with you?
34:27
SPEAKER_02: He was happy to do it.
34:30
SPEAKER_00: Lee sick.
34:31
SPEAKER_00: He has lots of problems, clearly.
34:33
SPEAKER_00: Narcissistic behavior and Yeah, yeah, all kinds.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: That concludes our episode.
34:40
SPEAKER_00: I know that was kind of a rough one.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: If you have cases, true crime, paranormal, spooky, cryptid related, anything of the sort, email earlybelovedpodcast at gmail.com.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: If you have any encounters with any of those things, also send me an email.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: We'd love to do an encounters episode at the end at the end of this month if I get enough emails.
35:01
SPEAKER_00: Follow us on Instagram, TikTok, threads, early beloved podcast.
35:06
SPEAKER_00: And we will see you next Thursday.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: Bye.
35:09
SPEAKER_00: Bye.