Speaker 1: In March nineteen ninety five, the body of forty one
year old Julie Winningham was found just off Highway fourteen
in Washington in the USA Spacific Northwest.
Speaker 2: She'd been strangled to death.
Speaker 3: He's a monster, six plus feet, two hundred and eighty pounds.
My mom was five pounds one hundred pounds soaken wet.
Speaker 4: So it was like a toothpick.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 4: He's a big man.
Speaker 1: Julie had become the eighth victim of an active serial
killer named Keith Jesperson. The thirty nine year old truck
driver had been murdering innocent women across America for the
previous five years.
Speaker 6: In a sense, they were falling into the hands of
a wolf. Their hens in the hen coop, and Jesperson
is the wolf at the door.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 7: Ash brawler, that I killed Tanya Bennett in January nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4: And put down a.
Speaker 7: Circle with two eyes and a happy face.
Speaker 1: Keith Jefperson, labeled a happy face killer, had made his
mark as one of the world's most evil killers. When
thirty nine year old trucker Keith Jefperson confessed all to
detectives in March nineteen ninety five, the media finally got
a chance to put a name to the notorious Happy
Face Killer.
Speaker 2: Over a five year period.
Speaker 1: Jefperson squeezed the life out of at least eight women
across five states. Detective Monte Bututne was part of the
investigative team that finally brought an end to the Happy
Face Killer's reign of terror.
Speaker 8: Jefferson targeted typically prostitutes, homeless women, women that he felt
that would not have anybody that would report them missing
anytime soon, to give him a chance to escape.
Speaker 4: To get out of the area.
Speaker 1: Driving his truck six foot seven inch, Jefperson, a divorced
father of three, towered over his diminutive victims.
Speaker 8: For Keith Jefferson, 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.
Speaker 1: Despite his size and destructive power, Jefferson was mild mannered
and softly spoken during his confessions.
Speaker 2: To detectives he.
Speaker 5: Purposes of voice certification. Would you please state your full.
Speaker 7: Amplas mynors Keith Hunter, just person, and.
Speaker 9: You understand this conversation is being recorded.
Speaker 3: Yes, I your permission, Yes it is.
Speaker 5: Every time I talked to him, he was my best friend,
and when you looked at him, the last thing you
would ever suspected this guy was a serial killer. I mean,
he didn't hang around with bad people. I never heard
him swear wall if you met Jasperson, 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 our serial killer and he
must be really an important and powerful person to be
involved in that sort of a lifestyle. So I don't
think there was ever any remorse. It was it was
all about I want people to look at me.
Speaker 1: This killer's story begins just outside of Vancouver, Canada. Keith
Hunter Jesperson was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, on the
sixth of April nineteen fifty five. He grew up in
a large family in a rural home.
Speaker 6: Jefperson 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.
Speaker 10: 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.
Speaker 1: Jefferson's assertive father appeared to bring out a violent side
in the young men.
Speaker 10: One of Jesperson's earliest memories is apparently of throwing a
rock down a slide as 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.
Speaker 6: The ugly truths 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.
Speaker 1: Before he'd even turn seven, Jefperson displayed traits that had
become synonymous with serial killers.
Speaker 10: Jefferson liked 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 an living creature,
of holding its life in your hands.
Speaker 1: The family moves south across the border into the US,
and Jefferson would eventually find work in a job that
would assist him in his murderous career.
Speaker 6: He's become a truck driver for company in Washington State,
which gives him access to freedom, drive around, can sleep
in the cab, he can pull up whatever truck stop
he fancies, where that almost always a collection of young women,
knowing that drivers want company. It's the perfect fit for
Jesperson's character.
Speaker 10: 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.
Speaker 1: By early nineteen ninety, Keith Jefferson was separated from his
life and spending much of his time driving his truck
up and down the seemingly endless highways of America. On
the twenty second of January nineteen ninety, in Portland, Oregon,
a twenty three year old woman was found dead.
Speaker 5: Kanye 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 rouffine off of the
scenic Highway out in the Columbia Gorge.
Speaker 1: Detectives presumed they'd solve the case quickly when a local woman,
Laverne pavilion Neck, told the police that her boyfriend was
responsible for the death of Tanya Bennett.
Speaker 5: Well, Laverne was several years older than John Sisnovsky, and
John was an alcoholic, and I think John was probably
a very abusive to Laverne, and I think she was
just trying to get John Sosnowski out of her life
and decided she would frame him for murder as a
way to get John out of her life.
Speaker 10: 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.
Speaker 1: LaVerne's story was alive. The police didn't know it yet,
but Tanya had in fact been killed by a thirty
four year old trucker named Keith Jefferson.
Speaker 5: He had met Tanya playing pool out to be an
i tavern, which was an Esmolam canyon. They had decided
we'll 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. I'll get some money. He
gets involved in a sexual act with Tanya, and at
that point Tanya said something that offended him and he
murdered her. He choked her with his fist, and he
was a big man, Tanya was a little woman, and
so that wasn't a big challenge to kill Tanya.
Speaker 6: 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.
Speaker 1: Chanya Bennett had become Jefferson's first victim, and despite the
fact that two other people were in court charge with
the twenty three year old's murder, Jefferson had an urge
to tell the world that he was her killer.
Speaker 6: While the trial's taking place, he stops off and I
rest room and writes a message on the wall which
is ibter I raped her, I Kilda. I liked it.
You may think I'm sick, but I enjoyed it. And
two other people are taking the form and he signs
it with a smiley face.
Speaker 10: And at first this would appear to be quite compelling,
but it wasn't new information. It was information that anybody
could have heard and just repeated onto the wall. So
I think this was a desire for recognition on Jafferson's part.
It was a desire to be noticed and to actually
take the credit for these murders.
Speaker 1: As news of the truck stop confession reached Laverne Pavilink
and John Sarsnowsky's lawyers, they were intrigued, but the jury
would never get to hear about the revelations. Signed with
a smiley face.
Speaker 6: The defense of Laverne and John try to get these
confessions brought in as evidence in the trial, but the
judge forbids 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
Jefferson is free to kill again. After all, he's already
boasted it he can, so why shouldn't he.
Speaker 1: As two innocent people were sentenced to life in prison
for the murder of Tylia Bennett, Keith Jefferson remained free.
In nineteen ninety two, two years after killing for the
first time, Jefferson struck again, this time in California.
Speaker 10: Jefferson's second victim, Claudia, was a woman who he kept
alive in his truck for four days. He quite enjoyed
void 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 Jessperson 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.
Speaker 6: He eventually, after a few days, gets bored, kills her
by punishing 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. We remember we're in
the early nineties here, we don't have the kind of
elaborate databases that the police authorities have. Now is 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.
Speaker 1: Indeed, by April nineteen ninety four, Jefferson had killed another
three women, taking his crusome tally to five.
Speaker 2: But the thirty nine year old.
Speaker 1: Was growing frustrated with the lack of credit he felt
he deserved for his ongoing killing spree. He began to
write 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 Tania Bennett back
in January nineteen ninety.
Speaker 4: Keith loves the media attention.
Speaker 8: 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 was the first time
Keith came out of hiding speak contacted. The newspaper took
credit for the homicide of Tiny Bennett, but would not
devult 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 Facekiller.
Speaker 10: At this point, he's really really frustrated. He's written on
the walls, 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 monika that
he's crafted.
Speaker 6: He probably thought that.
Speaker 10: 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.
Speaker 1: The letters detailed all five of the murders that Jessperson
had committed, allowing authorities to link these separate cases together.
But the truck you continued on regardless. He killed a
six victim known only as Suzanne, in September nineteen ninety four,
and in January nineteen ninety five, he claimed a seventh
is most inhumane so far.
Speaker 6: Angela's sabrese 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 twenty one.
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.
Speaker 10: According to Jasperson, 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.
Speaker 6: Here is victim blaming.
Speaker 10: He's drawing on these stereotypical notions of women as annoying
as nagging, because that has often been used in.
Speaker 6: The past to justify murders.
Speaker 10: It's this kind of crime of passion type of argument,
and he really is quite in tune with that.
Speaker 1: After spending a week together on the road, Jesperson strangled
Angela to death, but he was far from finished with her.
Speaker 6: 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
the 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. 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 Jefferson meted it out to her without a
twinge of conscience.
Speaker 1: As far as we can see, the pace of Jefferson's
killing spree was accelerating, and just two months after the
murder of Angela's surprise, in March nineteen ninety five, a
body was discovered in Washington, just off Highway fourteen.
Speaker 11: I'm at the washing Over Police Department and I need
to see an officer. How I think I've found a
body longside thrown?
Speaker 9: So why didn't think it's the body?
Speaker 11: Well, because I was decided the row and I was furinating,
and I thought down on the hillside looked like a female.
I could see a hand and singer of Polish.
Speaker 8: I was actually on days off and it was I
believe March eleventh, nineteen ninety five, 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 Scamania County. The patrol officers were responding at
that time, and they asked that I respond as well.
Speaker 11: I went off the bushes there and I looked down
the hill and it looked like I thought it was
a manneku At a first night, I saw the puno pause.
I went down and got kind of close to then
I got kind of sick.
Speaker 8: 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 the bank, probably twenty feet down over
the edge from the highway, is where the body was located.
Speaker 1: This latest case bared all the hallmarks of the notorious
happy Face killer.
Speaker 10: When we look at the locations in which Jefperson dumped
the bodies and you look at the other types of
item that you find in that location, it's trash, it's rubbish,
it's discarded things that people no longer won. And that
is exactly how jesperson sees his victims. He's had his
fun with them, they've served the purpose, and now he's
just going to dispose of them.
Speaker 8: It appeared to me that she had not been there
very long, between possibly twenty four and thirty six hours.
She was laying on her right side and her face
was facing the ground. I could see evidence it's either
consistent with strangulation or lividity, because she was basically inverted.
Speaker 4: Her head was lower than the rest of her body.
Once the heart.
Speaker 8: Stops, blood woll Pool at its lowest point, and in
this case it would have been her upper torso, neck
and face.
Speaker 6: One of the things that became a hallmark of Jesperson's
killing was the 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.
Speaker 1: The first ask for the investigating team was identifying the body.
Speaker 8: 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 offices we take fingerprints.
Speaker 4: From the victim.
Speaker 8: We then run those through the automated fingerprint identification system
known as ape's and in this case the victim, Julie Winningham,
her fingerprints were in ape's system.
Speaker 1: Forty one year old Julie Winningham had become the latest
woman to be killed at the hands of the Happy
Face killer.
Speaker 10: Jefferson 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.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 10: He knows that what he's doing is wrong, but that
that doesn't stop it because he feels that he has
some God given right.
Speaker 11: To do this.
Speaker 6: In a sense, they were falling into the hands of
a wolf. Their hens in the hen coop, and Jefferson
is the wolf of the door.
Speaker 1: But Jefferson's world was about to come crashing down around him.
The thirty nine year old serial killer had made a
mistake that would lead the police to his door. Julie
Winningham had become Keith Jefferson's eighth victim, but she would
also be his last. Julie's son, Don Finley, was twenty
four at the time.
Speaker 3: My mom she was a cheerful, free spirit, caring and loving.
She was just a traveler and an adventurer, 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.
Speaker 1: Julie and Don did not have a traditional mother son relationship.
Don was working in California while Julie moved between the
Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 3: There was a time when I came up here in
ninety one, the last time I physically saw my mom.
We drove around, we talked, we got caught up and
in ninety five. My mom had called me February twelfth,
which was her birthday, and my birthday was February twentieth.
She told me she was up in Idaho with a
friend and planning on coming down to Washington.
Speaker 1: By March nineteen ninety five, Julie was spending a lot
of time with some friends in the Portland area, just
on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.
Speaker 4: She started hanging out at some of the truck stops.
Speaker 8: Burns Brothers over in Troutdale had a dance floor and
quite the nightlife.
Speaker 4: A lot of people would go over.
Speaker 8: There, whether they drove trucks or not, and I believe
it was a country in western bar and they would
just hang out and have with friends over there.
Speaker 4: So she got into that circle over there as well.
Speaker 1: After Julie's body was found just across the river in Washington,
her son Don was given the devastating news.
Speaker 3: 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 fourteen, murdered and raided.
Speaker 6: I lost it.
Speaker 3: I punched fences, I pulled off paper towells, walked down
the street and just collapsed in the middle of the street.
Speaker 5: No one around.
Speaker 3: Friends, the people I knew as friends didn't know what
to think.
Speaker 1: Detectives interviewed Julie's friends and they immediately had a lead.
She had a boyfriend who was a truck driver.
Speaker 8: Speaking with Julie's friends, we were very interested in who
this truck driver was that she was with. Unfortunately, her
friends really didn't pay much attention to him. They noticed
that he drove a big blue truck, a 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.
Speaker 4: They were just unsure.
Speaker 1: Just as it seemed the trail was going cold, investigators
got their biggest break yet.
Speaker 8: 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 I was asked to sign the
bill of sale as a witness. So the friend gave
us the bill of sale and on his witness it
said Keith Hunter Jefferson. So that was our first indication
of who we were looking for.
Speaker 1: For the first time since his killing spree began. The
name Keith Jesperson was with the detectives. The thirty nine
year old had made an characteristic error.
Speaker 6: There's all sorts of footprints that have been left in
the sand that lead you directly back to Keith Jesperson.
He makes a 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 why now he is
simply addicted to killing. He oversteps the mark. He goes
too far because he can't stop himself, and.
Speaker 10: I think that's testament to his arrogance at this point
in his serial murders. He really does think he's untouchable,
that he's not going to get cool.
Speaker 1: Detectives traced Jefferson via his employers to a job over
one thousand miles away from Washington.
Speaker 8: Keith Jefferson was told that when he dropped off his
load in Hurley, that he was to travel to the
Las Crucis, New Mexico Fairgrounds County Fairgrounds to pick.
Speaker 4: Up a lot of steeler.
Speaker 8: That point that was fabricated to the point to 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.
Speaker 1: Monsie remembers his first encounter with the imposing killer.
Speaker 8: Keith Jesperson is a very big man. However, he is
somewhat soft spoken, so it's almost like he's he's using
that to make people feel comfortable around him. And my
first impression was using the way he was speaking to
us and the soft tones, even though he was 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.
Speaker 1: Jesperson claimed that Julie was still alive when he last
saw her. Without any physical or forensic evidence, actives wore
powerless to arrest him. They flew back to Washington to
continue their investigation into the death of Julie Winningham.
Speaker 3: 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 hall face, shrug marks on her cheeks,
and that was.
Speaker 2: The last time I.
Speaker 4: Physically Simon.
Speaker 1: No sooner had the detectives touched down in Washington, Jefferson
had a sudden change of heart.
Speaker 6: 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.
Speaker 9: This is Keith j just forer.
Speaker 11: Some like to talk to you.
Speaker 9: I'll be in Phoenix in the morning, and You're.
Speaker 6: Right I have.
Speaker 9: I've been a fight with myself for the last two days.
Tried to kill myself a couple of times and it
hasn't worked. It's not a tamn killed in this damn country.
I'll talk to you in the morning.
Speaker 11: Bye.
Speaker 12: March twenty three, ten thirty eight pm.
Speaker 11: To save this message, Press.
Speaker 12: One, Yes, Keith, I am in Arizona. I'll call you
when you're there. I guess I want to turn myself in,
so I'll talk to you later.
Speaker 2: Bye.
Speaker 1: Detective Rick Buckner spoke to Esterson on the phone when
the killer reached a truck stop in Arizona. Okay, Keith
to me.
Speaker 11: What happened right now? And Keith still what happened?
Speaker 4: Stream?
Speaker 11: I am?
Speaker 8: Julie then was angry because of the car that she
recently sold to the friend because Keith Jefferson signed it
as a witness.
Speaker 4: She wanted the car back, and she blamed Keith.
Speaker 8: 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, what'd.
Speaker 11: You do it that way?
Speaker 7: What do you do?
Speaker 12: Then grabbed your throat and he pushed her down and
the bike parts click?
Speaker 11: Okay, and.
Speaker 9: You still bringing when I uh, I'm mars sure.
Speaker 8: 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.
In later interviews he thought it was as long as
ten minutes that he held his fist or hand over
her neck, strangling her until she stopped moving, drove up.
Speaker 12: Why was worked up to.
Speaker 9: Know what way to do?
Speaker 12: Here? I had you read of the marsh parked her
white apart and took her over to ride.
Speaker 8: 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.
Speaker 1: Keith Jesperson was finally in custody, but the police were
only just beginning to realize they'd captured the notorious happy
Phase 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.
Speaker 8: By the time that we had knowledge of those letters,
the investigation at Julie Wenningham was in his final stages,
and so at that point in time, the letters to
his brother that was reviewed, the letters to The Oregonian
that were reviewed, it was it was believed at that
time that yes, we indeed possibly had multiple victims in
this case of Keith Jesterson.
Speaker 1: Was trying to sit down with Keith Jefferson and find
out exactly what the happy Faced Killer had to say
for himself.
Speaker 7: I didn't feel like I had control of what I
was doing. I felt like I was sitting back watching
I just couldn't believe I did it.
Speaker 1: From the letters and interviews with Jefferson, detectives learned that
he'd 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 Jefferson had claimed
to have murdered.
Speaker 6: 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 are in five states,
so it's not an easy chance.
Speaker 1: In a letter he sent to the orig newspaper a
year before his arrest, Jesperson had claimed to have killed
a woman before dumping her body in Salem, Oregon.
Speaker 2: This alerted Marion County.
Speaker 1: DA Mark Mackler when he heard that the happy Faced
killer had been apprehended.
Speaker 5: His hands were very large.
Speaker 13: When I met him and interviewed him and Simon for
the first time in the Clark County Jail in Vancouver, Washington,
he had a 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.
Speaker 6: So much as.
Speaker 13: Somebody who probably looked like a big, giant, friendly guy
until enraged.
Speaker 5: I suppose Mark was.
Speaker 1: Able to get a blood sample from Jesperson which revealed
a DNA match to semen found on the body of
Lorie Pentland, who'd been the killer's fourth victim.
Speaker 2: In November nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 13: Lory Pentlin 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, and oral sex acts with him.
I think it probably got violent with him a little
bit and she bit him and he killed her.
Speaker 5: That's what we understood.
Speaker 1: Jesperson had employed his usual emo of squeezing the life
out of Lolly Pentland's body.
Speaker 10: Jefferson 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 round again, and then he would start.
Speaker 2: That process over again.
Speaker 10: 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's something that
he wants to amplify. So this must have been incredibly
terrifying for his victim.
Speaker 13: When a victim has choked, typically bones and the neck
are broken. Remember I told you had massive hands, so
he crushed her neck. I mean, that's effectively what happened.
Speaker 1: Jefferson was charged with the murder of Lolly Pentland, and
after telling detectives where they would find her mutilated body,
the forty year old was charged with a third murder,
that of Angela's Surprise, the woman he dragged under his
truck in January nineteen ninety five. As his confessions continued,
he once again claimed to be responsible for killing Tania
Bennett in January nineteen ninety a crime for which two
people had already been convicted.
Speaker 5: Okay, at some point, did you mean a female that
you were killed?
Speaker 4: Yes, I did.
Speaker 7: I met a a gal that's I can't remember exactly.
It's the twentieth to the twenty first of the month.
It's been such a long time ago of what month
of January nineteen ninety I mean, you know what her
name was. I found out it was Tanya and Bennett.
Speaker 1: Jesperson told detectives that Tanya 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.
Speaker 7: And she made a comment to when I was over
the top for her, something like, well, I'm not getting
there once.
Speaker 4: She just hurried to get it over with, kind of like.
Speaker 11: I pissed.
Speaker 7: Like I pissed me off.
Speaker 11: I tagged her with my right arm.
Speaker 5: Let me, why you tagger her with your right arm?
What does that mean?
Speaker 7: I just lost my cool and I had struck her
in the side of the face, and I never stopped,
I can hear until she was.
Speaker 11: Laying there.
Speaker 7: I took my right fist and put it into her
ABMs up and shoved down until she was dead.
Speaker 5: Or I felt she was dead.
Speaker 7: I just heard gurgling noises and that she probably died
at the time I put my fist.
Speaker 4: In her throat.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 5: One day, I got a call from Rick Buckner, who
was a Clark County detective. And 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 Tanya Bennett.
Speaker 8: Of course, detectives didn't believe him because we have two
people in prison already, one of which confessed to it. However,
heth Jesperson asked if we located Tanya Bennett's perse and
identification 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.
Speaker 1: Jesperson described throwing the evidence into a BlackBerry field the
morning after he'd murdered Tanya.
Speaker 7: I looked down off the side and nobody's around. I
take the person's contents and throw it down off over
the bank.
Speaker 5: I figure I threw the purse probably forty feet.
Speaker 4: If I could get you out of.
Speaker 5: Jail and taking show me where you adopted, yes, I were.
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 it was the blackberries
were ten feet high.
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 5: 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 Tanya's ID card, Oregon issued ID card, and
it was as good a condition as it was the
day I was thrown there. Well, only a person who
threw it there could have pinpointed that precise location within
within I guess one hundred yards of where we founded.
But so that was the turning point, and that was
the point where I felt we could charge jessperson 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. I think I just want to
tell us we didn't ask, so we should ask.
Speaker 7: I'm sorry, that's what I've been long time.
Speaker 1: Just three weeks after the ID card was uncovered, on
the second of November nineteen ninety five, Keith Jesperson entered
a no contest plea for the murder of Tanya Bennett.
Speaker 2: He was given a life sentence.
Speaker 1: Less than a month later, Laverne Pavlink and John Sovlovsky
were freed from prison.
Speaker 5: Jefperson, had he not wanted to talk about it, 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
who went to prison would still be in prison.
Speaker 1: On the fifteenth of November nineteen ninety five, Jefferson was
given another life sentence for the murder of Lorie Pentland,
and in December, Jefferson 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.
Speaker 5: I attended every day front row.
Speaker 4: What he said in court was he had raped my mother.
Speaker 3: He had duct taped my mother, stuck his fist down
her throat to make sure she was dead. He kept
her in the cab of his truck for twelve to
twenty four hours and drove her up and threw her
off the side of the gorge like a piece of garbage.
Speaker 5: And I had to hear this man say that in court.
Speaker 4: This monster's telling me what he did.
Speaker 1: Once again, Jesperson was found guilty his third life sentence.
Speaker 13: 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.
Speaker 3: He took a kind, caring, loving, free spirited mother, aunt, sister, daughter,
sul from this planet for his enjoyment, and the impact
it's left is.
Speaker 4: Almost unreal.
Speaker 3: But I had to face it because it was my mom,
not nobody else's mom.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety eight, Jesperson was found guilty once more
for the murder of Angela's Surprise, and in two thousand
and seven and two thousand and ten, he was convicted
of two murders in California between nineteen ninety two and
nineteen ninety three.
Speaker 2: In total, the.
Speaker 1: Outspoken killer has been convicted six times. He remains in
prison in Oregon.
Speaker 5: I've 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. It seem to
be awful pleased with his accomplishments.
Speaker 4: Keith Jesperson is a very evil person. He looks for
people's weaknesses.
Speaker 8: 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.
Speaker 4: He is the epitome of evil.
Speaker 1: Jefferson 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.
Speaker 2: Right to his door, wiping the smile off the happy
Speaker 1: Face of Keith Jesperson, one of the world's most evil killers.