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NARRATOR: In March, 1995, the body of 41-year-old Julie Winningham was found just off Highway 14
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in Washington in the USA's Pacific Northwest. She'd been strangled to death.
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DON FINDLAY: He's a monster. Six plus feet, 280 pounds. My mom was five pounds and 100 pounds soaking wet.
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So it's like a toothpick He's a big man. NARRATOR: Julie had become the eighth victim
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of an active serial killer named Keith Jesperson. The 39-year-old truck driver had been
00:00:36
murdering innocent women across America for the previous five years. GEOFFREY WANSELL: In a sense, they were falling
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into the hands of a wolf. They're hens in the hen coop, and Jesperson is the wolf at the door.
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NARRATOR: Jesperson captured the intrigue of the nation when he confessed to five murders in an anonymous letter
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he sent to a newspaper, which he signed with a smile. NARRATOR: Keith Jesperson, labeled the Happy Face
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Killer had made his mark as one of the world's most evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYING]
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NARRATOR: When 39-year-old trucker Keith Jesperson confessed all to detectives in March, 1995,
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the media finally got a chance to put a name to the notorious Happy Face Killer.
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Over a five year period, Jesperson squeezed the life out of at least eight women across five states.
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Detective Monty Beuttner was part of the investigative team that finally brought an end to the happy face
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killer's reign of terror. MONTY BEUTTNER: Jesperson targeted typically prostitutes, homeless women, women that he felt that would
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not have anybody that would report them missing any time soon to give him a chance to escape to get out
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of the area driving his truck. NARRATOR: Six foot seven inch Jesperson, a divorced father of three, towered
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over his diminutive victims. MONTY BEUTTNER: For Keith Jesperson, his big thing was control.
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He wanted to control women, he wanted to abuse them in the way that he was aroused by, so he focused on finding victims
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that he thought would meet that need for him. NARRATOR: Despite his size and destructive power,
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Jesperson was mild-mannered and softly spoken during his confessions to detectives.
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CHRIS PETERSON: Every time I talked to him, he was my best friend. And when you looked at him, the last thing
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you would ever suspect was that this guy was a serial killer. I mean, he didn't hang around with bad people.
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I never heard him swear. If you met Jesperson, the last thing you would suspect that he was a criminal.
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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
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people how not to get murdered. And that was kind of the mindset of this particular guy
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that he really enjoyed people looking at him and saying, oh my God, this is a serial killer,
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and he must be really an important powerful person to be involved in that sort of a lifestyle.
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And so I don't think there was ever any remorse. It was it was all about I want people to look at me.
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NARRATOR: This killer's story begins just outside of Vancouver, Canada. Keith Hunter Jesperson was born in Chilliwack,
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British Columbia, on the 6th of April 1955. He grew up in a large family in a rural home.
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GEOFFREY WANSELL: Jesperson had two brothers and two sisters. He was the so-called runt, I think, of the litter.
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The boy, I think, sought to get his father's attention from quite an early age.
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ELIZABETH YARDLEY: His father was incredibly domineering. His father really looked down on women,
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so from a very early age he develops this view that a misogynistic view of women,
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a view of women that is quite demeaning, is one that's normal. NARRATOR: Jesperson's assertive father
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appeared to bring out a violent side in the young man. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: One of Jesperson's earliest memories
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is apparently of throwing a rock down a slide at a children's playground that hit his brother in the head.
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And I think what he was trying to do here was essentially get his father's attention.
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His father was somebody who valued aggression, who valued this kind of behavior, and I think
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this really was a cry for that kind of validation from him. CHRIS PETERSON: The ugly truth must be that he
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had no normality in his life. There was no convention in that family life from that upbringing, which meant that, in a sense,
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there was no moral compass, there was no right and wrong. NARRATOR: Before he'd even turned seven,
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Jesperson displayed traits that have become synonymous with serial killers. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson like
00:05:41
to kill and torture animals. So he harmed cats, and dogs, and gophers, and crows.
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That gave him a sense of power a sense of control that he couldn't get in any other way.
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But he's also realizing that he quite enjoys having control over another living creature, of holding its life in your hands.
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NARRATOR: The family moves south across the border into the US, and Jesperson would eventually find
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work in a job that would assist him in his murderous career. CHRIS PETERSON: He's become a truck driver for a company
00:06:17
in Washington state, which gives him access to freedom, drive around, can sleep in the cab.
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He can pull up with whatever truck stop he fancies, where that almost always a collection of young women
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knowing that drivers want company. Is the perfect fit for Jesperson's character.
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ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So he's got a lot of time on his hands to ruminate, to fantasize, to start to plan
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things, so this is quite a dangerous situation to be in because nobody's there to put
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the brakes on his behavior. NARRATOR: By early 1990, Keith Jesperson was separated from his wife and spending much of his time
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driving his truck up and down the seemingly endless highways of America. On the 22nd of January 1990, in Portland, Oregon,
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a 23-year-old woman was found dead. CHRIS PETERSON: Taunja Bennett was reported missing by her mother, and some young man stopped along
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that highway one day then discovered her body, which had been drug off the road down into a little bit of a ravine
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off of the scenic highway out in the Columbia Gorge. NARRATOR: Detectives presumed they'd solved the case quickly
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when a local woman Laverne Pavlinac told the police that her boyfriend was responsible for the death
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of Taunja Bennett. CHRIS PETERSON: Laverne was several years older than John Sosnovske and John was an alcoholic,
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and I think John was probably a very abusive partner to Laverne. And I think she was just trying to get John Sosnovske out
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of her life, and decided she would frame him for murder as a way to get John out of her life.
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ELIZABETH YARDLEY: In the beginning she just tries to pin it completely on him, but then she kind of inserts herself into this narrative.
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And I think there's almost a sense in which she's enjoying the drama of the story and she wants
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to play a larger part in it. NARRATOR: Laverne's story was a lie. The police didn't know it yet, but Taunja
00:08:32
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
00:08:42
was in east Wallowa county and they had decided we'll go get something to eat at a nearby restaurant,
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and when they left the tavern, he realized he didn't have enough money with him to buy dinner.
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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
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Taunja said something that offended him and he murdered her. He choked her with his fist.
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And he was a big man, Taunja was a little woman, and so that wasn't a big challenge to kill Taunja.
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GEOFFREY WANSELL: And I don't think he cared very much. I mean, he left her in the house, and to cover his tracks,
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went back to the bar and had another series of drinks, and then went back to the house and decided
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he's going to dump the body. What he's got plenty of opportunities to dump the body.
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All he needs to do is to load her into the truck and he can drop her where he wants.
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NARRATOR: Taunja Bennett had become Jesperson's first victim. And despite the fact that two other people were in court,
00:09:47
charged with the 23-year-old's murder, Jesperson had an urge to tell the world
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that he was her killer. GEOFFREY WANSELL: While the trial's taking place, he stops off in a restroom and writes a message
00:10:03
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."
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And two other people are taking the fall. And he signs it with a smiley face. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And at first, this
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would appear to be quite compelling, but it wasn't new information. It was information that anybody could have had, and just
00:10:26
repeated onto the wall. So I think this was a desire for recognition on Jesperson's part.
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It was a desire to be noticed, and to actually take the credit for these murders.
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NARRATOR: As news of the truck stop confession reached Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske's lawyers,
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they were intrigued. But the jury would never get to hear about the revelations signed with a smiley face.
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GEOFFREY WANSELL: The defense of Laverne and John try to get these confessions brought
00:11:01
in as evidence in the trial, but the judge forbids it. It's hearsay, it could be anybody, it's not convincing,
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there's no forensic proof. Sorry, we're not allowing it into evidence. And both are duly convicted of the murder,
00:11:21
and Keith Jesperson is free to kill again. After all, he's already boasted that he can.
00:11:29
So why shouldn't he? NARRATOR: As to innocent people were sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Taunja Bennett,
00:11:38
Keith Jesperson remain free. In 1992, two years after killing for the first time,
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Jesperson struck again. This time in California. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson second victim,
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Claudia, was a woman who he kept alive in his truck for four days. He quite enjoyed torturing her.
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He quite enjoyed the fact that she would have been fearful for her life and probably
00:12:05
pleading for her life. So this really highlights that it's the process that Jesperson
00:12:12
enjoys, it's that feeling of power, that feeling of complete control and domination
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he gets when he has got somebody who's completely subservient to him. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He eventually, after a few days,
00:12:23
gets bored, kills her by punching her literally to death, and then chucks her out of the truck.
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Now, how do you identify the body of a young woman found miles away from where she may have been last seen.
00:12:38
Remember, we're in the early 90's here. We don't have the kind of elaborate databases
00:12:43
that the police authorities have now. It's simply a body. And again, that confirms to Jesperson
00:12:54
his ability to get away with it, his ability to do what he wants. It's a very powerful addictive substance
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for a man who's already got a warped mind, and has no moral compass. This is powerful medicine indeed.
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NARRATOR: By April 1994, Jesperson had killed another three women, taking his gruesome tally to five.
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But the 39-year-old was growing frustrated with the lack of credit he felt he deserved
00:13:27
for his ongoing killing spree. He began to right that wrong by sending letters to an Oregon
00:13:33
courthouse and a local newspaper, reiterating his claims that he was the person responsible for the death of Taunja Bennett
00:13:42
back in January 1990. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith loves the media attention. He was doing anything he could to obtain that attention.
00:13:51
And when somebody else was getting it, Keith wasn't comfortable with that. So when that occurred, it was the first time Keith
00:13:57
came out of hiding so to speak. Contacted the newspaper, took credit for the homicide of Taunja Bennett,
00:14:05
but would not divulge who he was. With all of the letters, he signed them with a happy face
00:14:09
at the bottom, and the Oregonian newspaper deemed him the Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: At this point he's really, really frustrated.
00:14:18
He's written on the walls of truck stops, he's written to the county court,
00:14:21
and yet still he's not getting the recognition that he feels he deserves, especially around that smiley face moniker
00:14:29
that he's crafted. He probably thought that was a brilliant kind of brand identity, and nobody's picking it up.
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So at this point he's really, really angry. He's screaming out now, I've done this, I'm proud of this,
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I deserve recognition for it. NARRATOR: The letters detailed all five of the murders
00:14:48
that Jesperson had committed, allowing authorities to link the separate cases together.
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But the trucker continued on regardless. He killed a sixth victim known only as Susanne in September 1994.
00:15:03
And in January 1995, he claimed a seventh. His most inhumane so far. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Angela Surbrize
00:15:13
is one that always sticks in my mind because it doesn't start out at a truck stop in the same way
00:15:23
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.
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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.
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According to Jesperson, he got irritated with her because she was telling him to hurry up.
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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.
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He's drawing on these stereotypical notions of women as annoying, as nagging because that has often been used
00:16:02
in the past to justify murders. It's this kind of crime of passion type of argument.
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And he really is quite in tune with that. NARRATOR: After spending a week together on the road,
00:16:14
Jesperson strangled Angela to death, but he was far from finished with her. GEOFFREY WANSELL: You have a man who is now
00:16:22
quite literally out of control. But what makes Angela's killing so horrible is that he decides to cover his tracks,
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and he ties that poor dead young woman's body under his truck, and toes it. And the objective is to obliterate
00:16:47
her face and her fingerprints. He's sufficiently aware that he knows that this one could be traced.
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After all, one or two people may well have known that he had offered her a lift,
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and he wants to make sure that she's unidentifiable. This is a killing of the supreme wickedness.
00:17:08
I mean, one feels desperately that she couldn't possibly have deserved that horrific fate,
00:17:17
and yet Jesperson meted it out to her, without a twinge of conscience as far as we can see.
00:17:27
NARRATOR: The pace of Jesperson's killing spree was accelerating, and just two months after the murder
00:17:33
of Angela Surbrize, in March 1995, a body was discovered in Washington, just off Highway 14.
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MONTY BEUTTNER: I was actually on days off and it was, I believe, March 11 1995, when I received a call
00:18:06
at home stating that they had received a report of a body that was found near the county line,
00:18:12
just into Skamania county. The patrol officers were responding at that time and they asked that I respond as well.
00:18:27
MONTY BEUTTNER: The only thing really in that area between the highway and the river
00:18:30
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
00:18:37
over the edge from the highway, is where the body was located. This latest case bared all the hallmarks
00:18:44
of the notorious Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When we look at the locations in which
00:18:49
Jesperson dumped the bodies, and you look at the other types of items that you find in that location, it's trash,
00:18:55
it's rubbish, it's discarded things that people no longer want. And that is exactly how Jesperson sees his victims.
00:19:02
He's had fun with them, they've served a purpose, and now he's just going to dispose of them.
00:19:08
MONTY BEUTTNER: It appeared to me that she had not been there very long, between possibly
00:19:13
24 and 36 hours. She was laying on her right side and her face was facing the ground.
00:19:20
I could see evidence that's either consistent with strangulation or lividity
00:19:26
because she was basically inverted, her head was lower than the rest of her body.
00:19:31
Once the heart stops, blood will pool at its lowest point. And in this case, it would have been her upper torso, neck,
00:19:37
and face. GEOFFREY WANSELL: One of the things that became a hallmark of Jesperson killing
00:19:45
was he punched his victims repeatedly in the neck, and face, and in the throat, thereby eventually killing them.
00:19:54
He was a puncher, beat them literally to death. NARRATOR: The first task for the investigating team
00:20:02
was identifying the body. MONTY BEUTTNER: We had no clothing, we had no personal wallet, no way to identify her.
00:20:09
So one of the things that we do at the medical examiner's office is we take fingerprints from the victim.
00:20:16
We then run those through the automated fingerprint identification system, known as AFIS,
00:20:20
and in this case, the victim Julie Winningham, her fingerprints were in the AFIS system.
00:20:25
NARRATOR: 41-year-old Julie Winningham had become the latest woman to be killed at the hands
00:20:31
of the Happy Face Killer. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson is a man who feels completely entitled to treat women in this way.
00:20:38
He picks up women in his truck, he thinks, I have a right to do with these women whatever I want.
00:20:44
Now, he knows that what he's doing is wrong, but that doesn't stop him because he
00:20:49
feels that he has some God-given right to do this. GEOFFREY WANSELL: In a sense, they were falling
00:20:55
into the hands of a wolf. They're hens in the hen coop and Jesperson is the wolf at the door.
00:21:03
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
00:21:12
lead the police to his door. Julie Winningham had become Keith Jesperson's eighth victim, but she would also be his last.
00:21:22
Julie's son Don Findlay was 24 at the time. DON FINDLAY: My mom, she was a cheerful free spirit,
00:21:34
caring, and loving. She was just a traveler and an adventure, and was a free soul.
00:21:41
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
00:21:51
she did. NARRATOR: Julie and Don did not have a traditional mother-son relationship.
00:21:57
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.
00:22:08
The last time I physically saw my mom, we drove around, we talked, we got caught up, and in '95
00:22:17
my mom had called me February 12, which was her birthday. And my birthday was February 20.
00:22:24
She told me she was up in Idaho with a friend and planning on coming down to Washington.
00:22:33
NARRATOR: By March, 1995, Julie was spending a lot of time with some friends in the Portland area,
00:22:40
just on the Oregon side of the Columbia River. MONTY BEUTTNER: She started hanging
00:22:45
out at some of the truck stops. Burns Bros, over in Troutdale, had a dance floor and quite the nightlife.
00:22:52
A lot of people would go over there whether they drove trucks or not. And I believe as a country and Western bar.
00:22:57
And they would just hang out and have drinks with friends over there. So she got into that circle over there as well.
00:23:04
NARRATOR: After Julie's body was found just across the river in Washington, her son Don
00:23:09
was given the devastating news. DON FINDLAY: I was at work, and I received a phone call
00:23:15
from my aunt telling me that they had found my mom dead on the side of Highway 14,
00:23:26
murdered and raped. I lost it. I punched fences, I pulled off the paper towels, walked down the street and just collapsed
00:23:43
in the middle of the street. No one around. The people I knew as friends didn't know what to think.
00:23:51
NARRATOR: Detectives interviewed Julie's friends and they immediately had a lead.
00:23:57
She had a boyfriend who was a truck driver. MONTY BEUTTNER: Speaking with Julie's friends,
00:24:02
we were very interested in who this truck driver was she was with. Unfortunately her friends really didn't
00:24:08
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.
00:24:15
Some of them said his name maybe was Keith, some of them said his name was Chris.
00:24:21
They were just unsure. NARRATOR: Just as it seemed the trail was going cold, investigators got their biggest break yet.
00:24:29
MONTY BEUTTNER: Fortunately, one of Julie's friends had just bought a car from Julie.
00:24:34
And out of that transaction of buying the car, Keith was there, and he was asked to sign the bill of sale
00:24:39
as a witness. So the friend gave us the bill of sale, and on it as a witness had said Keith Hunter Jesperson.
00:24:47
So that was our first indication of who we were looking for. NARRATOR: For the first time since his killing spree began,
00:24:54
the name Keith Jesperson was with the detectives. The 39-year-old had made an uncharacteristic error.
00:25:02
GEOFFREY WANSELL: There's all sorts of footprints that had been left in the sand that lead you directly
00:25:10
back to Keith Jesperson. He makes the mistake of killing someone who has got a past,
00:25:15
would have a future, and has got a whole network of friends to prove it. It's a gigantic miscalculation.
00:25:21
But the reason he miscalculates is by now he is simply addicted to killing. He oversteps the mark.
00:25:27
He goes too far because he can't stop himself. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And I think that's
00:25:31
testament to his arrogance at this point in his serial murders. He really does think he's untouchable,
00:25:39
but he's not going to get caught. NARRATOR: Detectives traced Jesperson via his employers to a job over 1,000
00:25:46
miles away from Washington. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson was told that when he dropped
00:25:52
off his load in Hurley, that he was to travel to the Las Cruces, New Mexico, county fairgrounds to pick up
00:25:59
a load of steel at that point. That was fabricated to the point where we could basically bring
00:26:03
Keith Jesperson to us, and him thinking that it was another pickup point. It was actually us waiting for his arrival.
00:26:10
NARRATOR: Monty remembers his first encounter with the imposing killer. MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson is a very big man.
00:26:18
However, he is somewhat soft spoken, so it's almost like he's using that to make people
00:26:26
feel comfortable around him. And my first impression was using the way he was speaking
00:26:33
to us in the soft tones, even though he a very big man, I could see where he could pick a victim up
00:26:40
and they would feel somewhat safe being with him until he changed unexpectedly. So that was my first impression that this man could
00:26:49
easily victimize some women. NARRATOR: Jesperson claimed that Julie was still alive when he last saw her.
00:26:56
Without any physical or forensic evidence, the detectives were powerless to arrest him.
00:27:02
They flew back to Washington to continue their investigation into the death of Julie Winningham.
00:27:10
DON FINDLAY: I saw my mom for the very last time in a white room on a silver slab with a white sheet up
00:27:21
to her neck, with a black and blue mark across her whole face, shrub marks on her cheeks,
00:27:28
and that was the last time I basically saw my mom. | NARRATOR: No sooner had the detectives
00:27:40
touched down in Washington, Jesperson had a sudden change of heart. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Maybe at this point
00:27:47
Jesperson realizes that really the game is up and there's nothing he can do.
00:27:53
So he confesses to his employer, the truck company, that he's going to confess to the police.
00:28:01
And he himself leaves a voicemail for one of the detectives who's come to interview him.
00:28:57
NARRATOR: Detective Rick Buckner spoke to Jesperson on the phone when the killer reached a truck stop in Arizona.
00:29:41
MONTY BEUTTNER: Julie then was angry because of the car that she recently sold to the friend
00:29:47
because Keith Jesperson signed it as a witness. She wanted the car back, and she blamed Keith
00:29:54
because she couldn't get the car back because of the bill sale that he had witnessed.
00:29:58
Keith said that they got into an argument about that. MONTY BEUTTNER: He held his hands
00:30:26
around her neck or his fist on her throat and held her down. At that interview, on the phone interview,
00:30:33
he said as long as five minutes. And later interviews he thought it was as long as 10 minutes
00:30:37
that he held his fist or hand over her neck, strangling her until she stopped moving.
00:31:00
MONTY BEUTTNER: So at our request, Cochise County Sheriff's Office sent deputies out
00:31:05
and they arrested him at the truck stop where he had made the call to call detective Buckner.
00:31:10
NARRATOR: Keith Jesperson was finally in custody, but the police we're only just beginning to realize they'd
00:31:16
captured the notorious Happy Face Killer. In a letter to his brother sent just before his arrest,
00:31:23
Jesperson had outlined his crimes, writing, I am sorry that I turned out this way.
00:31:29
I've been killing for five years and have killed eight people, assaulted more.
00:31:34
I guess I haven't learned anything. MONTY BEUTTNER: By the time that we had knowledge
00:31:39
of those letters, the investigation of Julie Winningham was in its final stages.
00:31:43
And so at that point in time, the letters to his brother that was reviewed, the letters
00:31:49
to the Oregonian that we reviewed, it was it was believed that time that, yes, we indeed
00:31:55
possibly had multiple victims in this case of Keith Jesperson. NARRATOR: It was time to sit down with Keith Jesperson
00:32:02
and find out exactly what the Happy Face Killer had to say for himself. NARRATOR: From the letters and interviews with Jesperson,
00:32:25
detectives learned that he had killed eight women across the USA, from the very Northwest in Washington,
00:32:31
all the way down to the Southeast in Florida. Investigators were determined to put names and faces to some
00:32:39
of the unknown women that Jesperson had claimed to have murdered. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Gradually, the police
00:32:46
put together a picture of the victims and where they are. They begin to find, or at least identify,
00:32:52
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
00:33:01
a year before his arrest, Jesperson had claimed to have killed a woman before dumping
00:33:06
her body in Salem, Oregon. This alerted Marion County DA Mark Makler when he heard that the Happy Face
00:33:14
Killer had been apprehended. MARK MAKLER: His hands were very large. When I met him and interviewed him and saw him
00:33:22
for the first time in the Clark County jail in Vancouver, Washington, he had to duck
00:33:26
when he walked through doors because he had that kind of size. I mean, he was a big guy.
00:33:32
And he didn't present himself with that size as a monster, so much as somebody who probably looked
00:33:42
like a big giant friendly guy until enraged, I suppose. NARRATOR: Mark was able to get a blood sample from Jesperson,
00:33:53
which revealed a DNA match to semen found on the body of Laurie Pentland, who'd been the killer's
00:34:00
fourth victim in November 1992. MARK MAKLER: Laurie Pentland was choked to death,
00:34:05
and what we understood was, whether he intended to kill her or not, whether he intended that she was the next victim
00:34:14
or not, what we understood was that she was engaged in a sex act with him, in oral sex acts with him.
00:34:20
I think it probably got violent with him a little bit and she bit him, and he killed her.
00:34:27
That's what we understood. NARRATOR: Jesperson had employed his usual MO of squeezing the life out of Laurie Pentland's body.
00:34:35
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Jesperson killed Laurie by a process of stop-start strangulation.
00:34:40
So he would throttle her until she almost went unconscious, and then he would kind of back off
00:34:47
and she would come around again, and then he would start that process over again.
00:34:51
So I think this is part of the murder that Jesperson really enjoys. This holding somebody else's life in his hands.
00:34:58
It's something that he wants to prolong. It something that he wants to amplify.
00:35:02
So this must have been incredibly terrifying for his victim. MARK MAKLER: When a victim is choked,
00:35:08
typically bones in the neck or broken. Remember, I told you he had massive hands,
00:35:12
so he crushed her neck. I mean, that's effectively what happened. NARRATOR: Jesperson was charged with the murder of Laurie
00:35:22
Pentland, and after telling detectives where they would find her mutilated body, the 40-year-old
00:35:28
was charged with a third murder, that of Angela Surbrize, the woman he dragged under his truck
00:35:35
in January 1995. As his confessions continued, he once again claimed to be responsible for killing Taunja Bennett
00:35:44
in January 1990, a crime for which two people had already been convicted. NARRATOR: Jesperson told detectives
00:36:19
that Taunja had come back to his home after the pair had met in a bar and been for a meal.
00:36:26
They soon began having sex on a mattress on the floor. NARRATOR: Jesperson described the brutal murder,
00:37:18
the first one he committed in a calm manner. The Washington detectives contacted their colleagues
00:37:25
across the Oregon State border. CHRIS PETERSON: One day I got a call from Rick Buckner who
00:37:32
is a Clark County detective. Rick said we've got an inmate in custody in Clark County
00:37:39
for killing his girlfriend, and he is telling us, and he's telling his fellow inmates that he murdered
00:37:48
a woman named Taunja Bennett. MONTY BEUTTNER: Of course, detectives didn't believe him because we have
00:37:52
two people in prison already. One of which confessed to it. However Keith Jesperson asked if we located Taunja Bennett's
00:38:00
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
00:38:08
and he was willing to show us where that was. NARRATOR: Jesperson described throwing the evidence
00:38:14
into a blackberry field the morning after he'd murdered Taunja. CHRIS PETERSON: We took him to the crime scene or the dump
00:38:40
site on the Columbia Gorge and he said that he left her body, but took the purse with him.
00:38:47
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.
00:38:57
NARRATOR: After a thorough search of the vast area by police and the local scouts, they
00:39:02
failed to find any evidence, but the detectives refused to give up the ghost. CHRIS PETERSON: My partner Jim McNally said maybe we
00:39:10
ought to do it one more time. So the next Saturday we sent the explorer scouts out again
00:39:15
with the police supervisor and they found Taunja's ID card, an Oregon issued ID card, and it was
00:39:23
as good a condition as it was the day it was thrown there. Well, only a person who threw it there
00:39:31
could have pinpointed that precise location within, I guess, 100 yards of where we found it.
00:39:38
So that was the turning point, and that was the point where I felt we could charge Jesperson with a crime
00:39:46
because we had enough evidence to implicate him in the crime, and we wanted more than his confession
00:39:51
and the ID card turned out to be that one piece that we needed. NARRATOR: Just three weeks after the ID card was uncovered,
00:40:10
on the 2nd of November 1995, Keith Jesperson entered a no contest plea for the murder of Taunja Bennett.
00:40:18
He was given a life sentence. Less than a month later, Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske
00:40:26
were freed from prison. CHRIS PETERSON: Jesperson, had he not wanted to talk about it,
00:40:31
would probably never would have been convicted. There was virtually no forensic evidence
00:40:36
left at the crime scene. So had Jesperson not come forward, there's a good chance that the two people went to prison
00:40:45
would still be in prison. NARRATOR: On the 15th of November 1995, Jesperson was given another life sentence for the murder
00:40:54
of Laurie Pentland. And in December, Jesperson was back in court for a third time.
00:41:00
This time, charged with the murder of Julie Winningham, the girl whose death had led to the downfall
00:41:06
of the Happy Face Killer. DON FINDLAY: I attended every day, front row. What he said in court was he had raped my mother,
00:41:17
he had duct tape my mother, stuck his fist down her throat to make sure she was dead, he kept her
00:41:26
in the cab of his truck for 12 to 24 hours, and drove her up and threw her off the side of the gorge
00:41:35
like a piece of garbage. And I had to hear this man say that in court, this monster's
00:41:43
telling me what he did. NARRATOR: Once again Jesperson was found guilty. His third life sentence.
00:41:51
He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in Oregon, and a consecutive life
00:41:57
term in Washington. Effectively three lives, back to back to back. So he's going to die in prison.
00:42:06
DON FINDLAY: He took a kind, caring, loving, free spirited mother, aunt, sister,
00:42:14
daughter, soul from this planet for his enjoyment. And the impact it's left is almost unreal.
00:42:30
But I had to face it because it was my mom, nobody else's mom. NARRATOR: In 1998, Jesperson was found guilty once more
00:42:42
for the murder of Angela Surbrize. And in 2007 and 2010, he was convicted of two murders in California between 1992 and 1993.
00:42:55
In total, the outspoken killer has been convicted six times. He remains in prison in Oregon.
00:43:02
CHRIS PETERSON: I have arrested a lot of people for a lot of crimes and a fair number of murders,
00:43:07
and this is the only one that I ever arrested that seemed to be awful pleased with his accomplishments.
00:43:14
MONTY BEUTTNER: Keith Jesperson is a very evil person. He looks for people's weaknesses,
00:43:18
he looks for women's weaknesses, and then exploits those to get everything he can possibly get from them,
00:43:23
and then he kills them and discards them when he's done. He is the epitome of evil.
00:43:31
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.
00:43:40
For five years he managed to evade justice, until the same hands he used to kill,
00:43:46
signed a document that led detectives right to his door, wiping the smile off the happy face of Keith
00:43:53
Jesperson, one of the world's most evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYING]