The term "Smiley Face Killers" come from the graffiti smiley faces supposedly found at the crime scenes. The following morning, James did not show up for work. The body of 23-year-old Taunja Bennett was found in this remote woodland near the Columbia Gorge in 1990. The couple divorced in 1990.[8]. whos serving multiple concurrent sentences in Oregon State Penitentiary. Crime News is your destination for true crime stories from around the world, breaking crime news, and information about Oxygen's original true crime shows and documentaries. Jesperson was a middle child, with an older sister and brother and a younger sister and brother. Between 1997 and 2008, authorities pulled the dead bodies of more than 40 young white men out of rivers and lakes in more than 25 cities across 11 states. In 1975, when Jesperson was aged 20, he married Rose Hucke, and the couple had three children: two daughters and one son. Get an all-access pass to never-before-seen content, free digital evidence kits, and much more! "She was a free spirit, and she would go here, there, and she would go to work at a place, and wouldn't work for very long because she would always go out on the road. Before he was identified as a serial killer, he anonymously confessed to his crimes in messages that contained smiley faces, leading to his being nicknamed the "Happy Face Killer." Moore, Melissa G. & M. Bridget Cook (2009). Daughter of the infamous 'Happy Face' serial killer, Melissa Moore, and leading female Forensic Criminologist, Dr. Laura Pettler, unearth chilling details from homicide case files in this weekly true-crime series which tells the actual stories of people who shared their lives with a killer or their victims. Jesperson, who was born in British Columbia in 1955 and moved to the US when he was 12, kept on killing until he was caught in 1995. Victim 2: California Jane Doe. He was sentenced to life in prison while Pavlinac was sentenced to no less than ten years, much more than she had anticipated. Sign up forOxygen Insiderfor all the best true crime content. Patricia Skiple of Colton, Oregon, had been . Jespersons fifth victim was known only as Susanne, whom he met in Crestview, Florida. You could tell where people had been in and out, the vehicles and everything else, limbs broke. Some say the Smiley Face Killer has taken 40 victims over two decades. He decided to drag her body underneath his truck to impede identification. After a series of letters are sent to the press, the killer earned the moniker, the Happy Face Killer. I just said it, this is close enough," she said. In reality, smiley face is a joyous symbol to convey happiness and joy, which is used everywhere from message chatting to letters to wall decoration in our daily lives. [21], Following Bennett's murder, as all the attention was going to Pavlinac and Sosnovske, Jesperson wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop and signed it with a smiley face. The production features interviews between, Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer.. Victim 4:Laurie Ann Pentland, 26. [20], On 7 January 1996, more than five years after their conviction, Pavlinac and Sosnovske were released from prison after Jesperson and his attorney offered his confession with convincing evidence of his guilt. I will be writing about that more in the future so stay tuned. The purse had not been found at the crime scene, and its location was considered information only the killer would know. [27] In November 2014, she wrote an article about her father for the BBC.[28]. I'm thinking, 'My God, she is actually involved in this,'" Ingram said. [6] Although Jesperson was not successful with girls in high school, having never even attended a school dance or his prom, he did enter into a relationship after high school. He strapped the woman beneath his big rig,. His brothers did not help him, instead they nicknamed him "Igor" or "Ig", a name that stuck throughout his school years. . M. William Phelps penned a memoir about his interactions with Jesperson: Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer (2017). The area had been searched repeatedly in the weeks before his body was discovered, but no one had seen Booth. Her body was found on a roadside rock pile in Santa Nella, California. Detectives first became aware of Pavlinac when she anonymously called them to report that she overheard Sosnovske at a bar bragging about killing Bennett. In the majority of the cases, the victims were successful students and athletes who disappeared after a night out drinking with friends, and they were ultimately found dead in a body of water. Cloud State University. Judge Paul Lipscomb of the Circuit Court of Oregon agreed to vacate Sosnovske's sentence after ruling his no-contest plea violated his constitutional rights because it had not been voluntary since he was facing the death penalty. Following the discovery of Bennett's body in January 1990, Laverne Pavlinac lied to police that she'd aided her boyfriend John Sosnovske in committing the crime. Authorities came to believe they had convicted the wrong people. Eight murders were eventually linked to Jesperson. A smiley face was found painted near the river. Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske are seen here in this 1985 family photo. For the 2014 film about Jesperson, see, List of serial killers in the United States, List of serial killers by number of victims, "The National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs)", "Serial killer receives fourth life sentence", "Dr. Phil Returns to The Oprah Show: My Father Is a Serial Killer", "ABC '20/20': Melissa Moore, Daughter Of Serial Killer, Opens Up Tonight About Life With 'Happy Face Killer' Keith Jesperson", "Meet Crime Watch Daily Correspondent Melissa Moore | Truecrimedaily.com", "My evil dad: Life as a serial killer's daughter", "Happy Face Presents: Two Face on Apple Podcasts", "Life After Happy Face on Apple Podcasts", Daughter of the 'Happy Face Killer' Talks About Growing Up With a Serial Killer Dad, Keith Hunter Jesperson: Happy Face Killer, Daughter of serial killer confronts her past, Radio Interview with Melissa Moore (daughter), https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Keith_Hunter_Jesperson&oldid=1142498372, American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, Canadian prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment, Crimes against sex workers in the United States, People extradited within the United States, Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Oregon, Violence against women in the United States, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from November 2010, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, 8 confirmed (confessed to as many as 185). Halfway through the game, Hurley called hisfiance, ClaireMahoney, pictured above, and said he wanted to leave. She later rescinded her confession, but in 1991 a jury still found her guilty. She also examined her father's actions in the podcast Happy Face. Pavlinac told investigators during her last recorded statement on Feb. 26, 1990. Create your free profile and get access to exclusive content. Pavlinac soon admitted to making up her entire story, but her claims were ignored. In September 2009, Jesperson was indicted in Riverside County, California, on murder charges; he was extradited in December 2009. He split from his wife in 1990 after 15 years of . "Theyhave her tell me the story and I looked at her again, and I said, 'Mom, are you sure?' But when investigators were unable to match the purse and denim piece to Bennett, they confronted Pavlinac about fabricating evidence. Skiples remains were found on the side of. After he raped and strangled her, Jesperson dumped her body near the Columbia River Gorge, outside Portland. Her sister Michelle White said Bennett was a compassionate person who loved everyone.. Her real name remains a mystery. He strangled her and left her corpse in Oregon. Pavlinac had been with Sosnovske, a farmhand 18 years her junior, for a decade when the Bennett case caught her attention in 1990. She ran to get her mother, and when they returned, the kittens lay on the ground dead. Laverne Pavlinac convinced investigators she and John Sosnovske had killed Taunja Bennett, when they hadn't. The term "smiley face" became connected to their theory when the team . At the time, Pavlinac said she was able to dupe authorities because she had learned details of the crime from newspaper articles and from reading the search warrant without police noticing. Jesperson resides in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he spends much of his time making art. She found out that her son had reportedly suffered blunt force trauma to the head, his eye socket and behind his left leg. "The greatest human tragedy is that Laverne Pavlinac derailed the investigation in 1990, and in four years, Keith Jesperson killed more women," said Jim McIntyre, the Multnomah County, Oregon, prosecutor who handled the cases. "Just so many bad things that happened in her life that I think, I don't know, it caused her to kinda snap or something," McAlpine said. That letter-writer turned out to be. Revealed as the Happy Face Killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson confessed to killing eight women in Florida, California, Oregon, Wyoming, and Washington. He never made it home. Notorious serial killer Keith Jesperson, better known by the "Happy Face Killer" nickname he was given in the '90s, has spent decades behind bars but his daughter believes he would kill again if released from prison today. Photo: Tommy Booth, 24, disappeared on January 19, 2008 from a bar in Woodlyn, Pennsylvania. I wanted to get those two people out of prison," he said in 1995, referring to Pavlinac and Sosnovske. [33] The episode was released on July 9, 2021. ABC News/YouTube By Jean Mendoza / June 8, 2021 9:24 am EST Keith Hunter Jesperson is a serial killer who claimed the lives of eight women between 1990 and 1995. Patricia Skiple of Colton, Oregon, had been known only as "Blue Pacheco" for the color of her clothing until genetic genealogy was used to identify her last week, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said. "Then it becameserious,a seriousargument. A smiley face was paintedon a wall of the bar under a deck. He claimed to have victims in five states: Washington, California, Florida, Wyoming and Oregon. Watch the full story on "20/20" THIS FRIDAY at 9 p.m. For example, the Canadian-American serial killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson, who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the . His victims, who were often raped and strangled, included short-term acquaintances, sex workers and a girlfriend. [3], Treated like an outcast and a black sheep by his own family and teased by other children for his large size at a young age, Jesperson was a lonely child who showed a propensity for torturing and killing animals. He then sought work again as an interstate truck driver after relocating to Cheney, Washington. Buddy up at all times. The Smiley Face Killer. Jesperson would capture birds and stray cats and dogs around the trailer park where he lived with his family, severely beating the animals and then strangling them to death, something for which he claims his father was proud of him. "He says, 'Because I choked her' I said, 'I think weneed to take her to a hospital. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. When she arrived, however, he was nowhere in sight. "I think what happened to mother was she was in an abusive relationship, and she was desperate, and desperate people do desperate things, not to say that it was right, but that's what I think happened," said Pavlinac's daughter Bonne McAlpine. At some of the sites where the victims' bodies were found, smiley face graffiti had been left behind. Todd Geib was 22 years old when he went missing during the early hours of June 12, 2005, at a bonfire party in an orchard close to his home in Casnovia, Michigan. Her daughters are still trying to understand why their mother did what she did, and why she didn't see another way to end the relationship. Hurley walked outside while Mahoney drove to the stadium to pick him up. Officials did not implicate the band member in Homan's death. "To come clean get it all over, the record straight. When an Oregon newspaper ran a five-part series called The Happy Face Serial Killer in 1994, an anonymous author took credit for the five murders. On January 25, 2017 around 11:30 p.m., James was walking back to his apartment after a night out drinking with friends and co-workers. They'd mostly all been college-aged, popular, and athletic.
