5 Rotting Remnants

From his county jail cell, his curly brownish mane shorn by an inmate barber, Keith Jesperson continued his campaign to muddy the legal waters. Most of his confessional letters were sent after his own lawyer told him to shut up. The notes were uniformly upbeat—“Have a nice day, from Happy Face.”

He wrote to the Columbian in Vancouver, Washington:

First of all, you probably want to know why I am doing this? Well, it has robbed me of sleep for five years….I am in fact the Happy Face Killer that Phil Stanford has talked about in his editorials. I created that man because I wanted to be stopped but it is hard to just come out and say it.

Another letter ended: “I am sane! I know what I want. I want to save everybody a lot of taxpayers money. I want justice to be served.”

 

He buttressed his credibility by using a fellow prisoner to leak information that helped California police to clear three open cases: the strangulation murders of Cynthia Lynn Rose near Turlock, an unidentified woman named Cindy near Corning, and the woman he’d known as Claudia in Blythe. He also confessed to the Laurie Pentland killing in Salem, Oregon, and the murder of Angela May Subrize.

In his cell he drew complex diagrams showing the final resting places of his victims. Bodies found by police search crews turned out to be decomposed beyond recognition, but enough rotting remnants appeared to substantiate his claims.

 

Whenever he was moved, Keith was surprised by the security measures. “They put me in handcuffs and leg irons. I had to take baby steps. Outside the jail people stared at me in my bright jumpsuit. The cops had a neck leash in case I started to thrash around. We were on I-5 when four police cars shut down a rest area so I could use the toilet. I shuffled up to the urinal with cops on my left and right. I said ‘Well, guys, who has the biggest one?’

“A laugh came from one of the shitters, and the cops covered the stall and wouldn’t let the guy out till we’d cleared. When he finally came out, he gave me a thumbsup. Later his truck passed us on the highway and he pointed to his CB mike. He was telling the world how Happy Face made the cops turn red.”

As always Keith seemed to enjoy the attention.