Where Is Keith Hunter Jesperson Now? Inside the Happy Face Killer's Life Decades After His 5-Year Murder Spree

Mar. 15, 2025

Clark County Sheriff’s office booking photo of self-proclaimed serial killer Keith Jesperson.Photo:Clark County Sheriff’s Office/AP

Clark County Sheriff’s Office/AP

Keith Hunter Jesperson wanted the world to know he was a killer — and now, his story will be told on the small screen.

The hulking, 6'6" Jesperson is confirmed to have killed at least eight women across California, Florida, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming between 1990 and 1995, boasting about the slayings in letters on bathroom walls and to local newspapers. He would sign the confessions with smiley faces, earning him the moniker of the Happy Face Killer.

For more than half a decade, Jesperson got away with murder until one slaying hit too close to home, leading him to turn himself in as the Happy Face Killer.

So where Keith Hunter Jesperson is now? Here’s everything to know about how he turned into the Happy Face Killer and what his life looks like today.

Who is Keith Hunter Jesperson?

Keith Hunter Jesperson.A&E

A&E

Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955, in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. He was a middle child with two sisters and two brothers, and recalled his alcoholic father often beating him with a belt, perI: The Creation of a Serial Killer.

At a young age, Jesperson began abusing, torturing and killing animals. His aggression intensified when he was 12 years old, and his family moved to Selah, Wash., where he had trouble adjusting at school.

Jesperson nearly beat one of his bullies to death, later describing the experience as akin to a dissociative one, in which he felt like he’d stepped out of his own body and watched someone else pummel the boy. He later attempted to drown another bully and only stopped after a lifeguard intervened.

After graduating from high school in 1973, Jesperson opted not to go to college and instead pumped gas and worked for his father, pursuing a developing passion for long-haul trucking.

When Jesperson was 20, he married a local student named Rose on her 18th birthday. They had two daughters, Melissa and Carrie, and a son named Jason.

Decades later, Melissa recalled toBBC Newsthat her father had tortured kittens in front of her and her siblings as a child. Jesperson and Rose eventually divorced, finalizing their split in 1990. That same year, Jesperson’s murder spree began, and it spanned over the next five years, according toABC News.

What did Keith Hunter Jesperson do?

Keith Hunter Jesperson and attorney Tom Phelan before pleading guilty to murder charges on October 18, 1995 in Vancouver, Washington.AP Photo/The Columbian, Troy Wayrynen

AP Photo/The Columbian, Troy Wayrynen

Jesperson committed his first known murder in January 1990 when he brutally sexually assaulted, beat and strangled 23-year-old Taunja Bennett to death, according to20/20.

After meeting Bennett at a bar in Portland, Ore., Jesperson brought her back to his house and killed her. Afterward, he left her body near Columbia Gorge, where a college student later discovered it.

“Comments were made and different things and an altercation happened, and I struck her. I actually had hit her in the face and for some reason I just kept hitting her in the face and because of that,” Jesperson told20/20in 2010. “I feared going to prison for slugging her in the face and causing her bodily injury and so I killed her.”

Jespersongot away with the murder initiallyafter Laverne Pavlinac told authorities that she witnessed her then-boyfriend, John Sosnovske, rape and kill Bennett. Pavlinac later recanted her confession, but Sosnovske pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, perThe New York Times. They both went to prison for the slaying, and investigators closed the case.

While Sosnovske and Pavlinac were incarcerated, Jesperson continued meeting, raping and murdering women for another four years. He became known as the Happy Face Killer after he wrote an anonymous letter on a bathroom wall in a Montana bus terminal, confessing to the murder and signing it with a smiley face, according to theNew York Daily News.

In the years that followed, Jesperson sent more letters to newspapers confessing to other murders, includingThe Oregonian, signing each with a happy face.

“It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it,” Jesperson told ABC News in 2010. “It is everything like shoplifting. You’re breaking the law but you’re getting away with it. And so, there’s a thrill of getting away with it.”

Jesperson also admitted to killing Bennett,saying at the timethat he wanted “to come clean … get it all over [with], the record straight. I had been worried about this for a long time. I wanted to get those two people out of prison.”

Aside from Bennett and Winningham, Jesperson’s other known victims includeCynthia Lyn Rosein Turlock, Calif.;Patricia Skiplein Gilroy, Calif.;Suzanne Kjellenbergnear Holt, Fla.;Laurie Ann Pentlandin Salem, Ore. andAngela May Subrizein Laramie County, Wyo., as well as at least one other Jane Doe he referred to as “Claudia” near Blythe, Calif., according to theRiverside County district attorney’s office.

What was Keith Hunter Jesperson’s sentence?

Keith Jesperson before sentencing on December 19, 1995 at the Clark County Courthouse in Vancouver, Washington.AP Photo/The Columbian, Jeremiah Coughlan

AP Photo/The Columbian, Jeremiah Coughlan

Where is Keith Hunter Jesperson now?

Convicted murderer Keith Jesperson at a court appearance on November 2, 1995 in Portland, Oregon.AP Photo/Don Ryan

AP Photo/Don Ryan

Jesperson is serving his life sentences at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

He is estranged from daughter Moore, who says she doesn’t want a relationship with him — or her kids to get to know him.

“I don’t want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath,” she toldABC News. “He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words.”

For his part, JespersontoldThe Independentin February 2024that he’s still being investigated for several other murders and offers his DNA whenever he can to rule himself out as a suspect in open cases.

“I don’t need murders I didn’t commit being pinned to me just because,” he explained. “I don’t need to be made to be even more of a monster than I already am.”

source: people.com