1 Father vs. Son

From his first days behind bars in Clark County, Washington, where he was charged with the first-degree murder of his girlfriend Julie Winningham, Keith Hunter Jesperson seemed intent on a personal crusade to embarrass the justice system. Thrust onto a public stage for the first time in his life, he began strutting in the limelight like the villain in a silent movie.

To reporters he issued a pious statement that he had no interest in saving his own skin but was determined to free the two innocent Oregonians who were now in their fifth year of imprisonment for the murder of Taunja Bennett. “That takes priority over everything else,” he proclaimed. “Those people have suffered long enough.” He also expressed annoyance that no one in the justice system had taken his earlier graffiti and Happy Face letters seriously.

 

Journalists and behaviorists jumped in to explain why he seemed so eager to be in the public eye, but no two seemed to agree. His sister Jill thought there was a simple answer: “Keith is just trying to get attention. He never got a whole lot when he was growing up.”

Others suspected a darker motivation. By trying to prove himself superior to authority figures, Keith seemed to be repeating his lifelong pattern with his father. It seemed to be an echo of events like the mutual trucking adventure: the experienced, skilled son versus the neophyte dad.

 

Leslie Samuel Jesperson, burdened in his advancing years by his son’s claims of child abuse, didn’t see the situation quite the same way. From his first stunned awareness that Keith was a confessed killer, the alpha-male groped for an explanation. “The morning I found out, I couldn’t think straight. I’d walked into my son Brad’s office to say good morning and talk business. He looked awful—eyes red, downcast. The last time he looked that bad was in 1985, when I had to tell him we’d lost his mother. He handed me a sheet of paper. ‘Here, Dad,’ he said. ‘Read this.’

“He sat behind his desk with his face in his hands. When I read Keith’s letter, I understood why. Brad and his brother shared the same bedroom for sixteen years. I had to read the letter twice to absorb it. When I realized that Keith had confessed to serial murder, the walls closed in. I cried and shook all over. In my mind I saw my little curly-haired son coming home from Sunday school in Chilliwack, dressed in the short pants and shirt his mother made for him.

“Of course I told Brad he had to give the letter to the police or he might go to jail himself. I was so upset I had to go to the doctor. I couldn’t stop shaking, couldn’t stand up or support my own weight. Doc gave me a shot and diagnosed a nervous breakdown.”