With several documentaries about the Happy Face Killer already released and so much information available in the media, I'm assuming most of us already know who Keith Hunter Jesperson is and all the horrendous murders he committed in the early 1990s. Keith was a fairly simple family man who lived a decent life with his wife, Rose Marie, and their three children. He worked as a machine operator for a business owned by Rod Muffett. A few years after they married, Keith and his family moved to Canada, as he wanted to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), but was unable to complete his training due to an injury.
He returned to the United States and began working as a long-haul truck driver to support his family, although the marriage didn't last, as Rose suspected her husband of having affairs with different women. In 1990, Rose took the children and went to live with her parents in Spokane, Washington, and that was the exact moment Keith lost his mind. It was this loss that triggered something and unleashed the rage that had been building inside him since childhood. So, without further ado, let's delve into the mind of this ruthless monster to explore what motivated this sadistic man and why he has never felt an ounce of remorse.
Stars: Annaleigh Ashford, Dennis Quaid, James Wolk
Janine Beghtol, Keith's classmate, recalled that the boy struggled to fit in after his family moved to Selah, Yakima County, Washington. Keith always seemed bigger than other kids his age, which made him feel self-conscious about his height. At school, he tried to make new friends, but the students just teased him. They called him "Baby Huey," which made him feel like an outcast. Keith even tried to have a girlfriend, but he was just awkward. Keith obviously craved attention, which also explains why he wrote a six-page letter to The Oregonian in May 1994, as soon as he learned someone else was being charged with the murder of Taunja Bennett. In his letter, he explained how and why he had murdered five of his victims, and his state of mind. He wanted recognition for the perfect crimes he had committed and couldn't stand it when anyone else got all the attention. The letter was marked with a smiley face next to Keith's confession: "5 out of 5." Because of this "smiley face," most media outlets that covered the story nicknamed him the Happy Face Killer, as no one learned his real name until the following year.
Janine added that Keith's father, Les, was very harsh on him. Les reportedly used to beat his younger son with a belt when he misbehaved or acted inappropriately, which may explain the bottled-up anger he kept trying to vent for so long. As Keith grew older, he refused to allow anyone to belittle or make fun of him. Recordings of his interviews with officers indicated that Keith often snapped when a girl mistreated him, for example, Taunja, whom he brought home on January 21, 1990. Inside the house, Taunja remarked, "Why don't you hurry up and get this over with?" which caused Keith to lose his temper, likely because the young woman treated him like some kind of "sex object." This was the exact moment Keith raped and brutally beat her. Finally, he took her life by ramming his fist into her throat. Similar incidents occurred with his other victims: a sex worker tried to charge him double, and one of his partners, Julie Ann Winningham, had a heated argument with him over the bill of sale for his car, which he had recently sold to a woman named Bonnie Valsnie. According to Keith's confession, Julie returned to his truck at 12 midnight. She was drunk, and the couple became intimate. But soon after, Julie accused Keith of rape, which, according to her, gave him the motivation to kill the woman and get rid of her. She began to scream and yell, and it was then that he became enraged and grabbed her by the throat. He pushed her down onto the blanket to stop her screaming.
The thing is, due to the nature of his job—being a truck driver—Keith was always on the move. He often encountered new women in different locations, making it extremely difficult to track down his victims. He told his fellow inmates that he didn't always kill them and would sometimes assault them to the brink of death if they disrespected him in any way. According to some reports, Keith, from a very young age, began strangling birds and stray animals, which he claimed made his father proud. If that was indeed what happened, regardless of Les's reasons for approving of such behavior, I believe it made young Keith believe that killing living beings was the right way to end them. They won't mock or mistreat him once they're dead, and that was what was instilled in Keith as he grew up. He told the officers that he had a high sex drive and couldn't resist talking to the women he met, but it was what came next that swept him off his feet. He suffered from malignant narcissism and didn't know how to socialize. If something wasn't about him, he didn't know what to say, and that made relationships quite complicated. He couldn't let women leave him like his wife did, because it would bruise his ego and make him feel inferior, reminding him of his traumatic childhood, which he didn't want to relive at any cost. In short, Keith fit all the criteria for a serial killer, and his motives for killing his victims were no different from those of other narcissistic predators.
In March 1995, a motorist passing along Highway 14 in the Columbia River Gorge found a body on the road and quickly reported it to the Washougal Police Department. Jane Scott, a detective with the Clark County Sheriff's Office, who was investigating the crime and the naked body dumped in the road, discovered that it belonged to a woman named Julie Winningham. This was the same woman with whom Keith had been romantically involved; at least, that's what witnesses reported. According to police reports, Julie took it very seriously and was planning to marry the truck driver when the expected incident happened.
Monty Buettner and Rick Burner, the detectives investigating Julie's murder, found the bill of sale for her car, signed by Keith as a witness. It was the first time the police had questioned Keith in connection with his victims' murders, but during the interrogation, he didn't share any credible information, except for his excellent cribbage game. The detective knew this was the man they were looking for, but had no substantial information against him. They had to let him go, but Keith called Rick and confessed to his crimes. He probably believed his crimes would never come to light, as the police were too stupid to connect the dots, which probably explained why he turned himself in. He had told Rick he was suicidal and at war with himself, although it seemed more like he wanted attention and recognition for what he had done.
After his arrest, Keith called his older brother, Brad, and asked him to get rid of the letter he had sent him on March 24, 1995. This was six days before he admitted his crimes to Rick during the call. Luckily, Brad didn't throw away the letter and handed it over to the authorities. Thanks to this letter, detectives discovered that Keith had murdered eight people and assaulted several more. They soon began interrogating him to get him to reveal the identities of his other victims and where he had dumped their bodies, and that's how Keith intentionally opened a Pandora's box to attract the world's attention. According to sources, Keith and Brad never had a good relationship, even as children, which amply proves that Keith always knew his brother would deliver the letter and likely called him just to trick him so the officers would know about his fame.
All that bragging to the inmates and the confession letter helped the police obtain the bodies of his other victims. However, the most shocking thing was when he told the detectives that he was responsible for Taunja's murder and, in fact, that he was the one who wrote that "smiley face" letter to all the major media outlets in the country. At first, Rick and Monty believed Keith was just trying to attract even more attention by talking about a high-profile murder case from the 1990s. The biggest problem with all this was that two people had already been convicted of Taunja's murder, and such a revelation would only raise doubts in the judicial system. But when Keith pointed out the exact spot where he had dumped Taunja's purse and Walkman, the detectives had no choice but to reopen the case.
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