This is 911. How can I help you?
Uh, I think I saw a body alongside the road.
I think it's a female. I can see a hand with fingernail polish.
She says, I know he did it because I was there.
What did he look like?
He's tall, built, brown hair. He's about 6"6. Weight 300 pounds.
He'd tell anyone who'd listen: "I'm the Happy Face Killer."
The shadowy figure looms over the wall, scribbling a message.
The flickering lights of the truckstop bathroom make it difficult to see...
Determination is the drive— to let everyone know the truth.
How dare someone else take credit for their work?
They sign the confession with a smiley face.
January 24th, 1990.
A young college student was riding his bike along the
Columbia River Gorge when he spotted something.
He got off his bike to inspect.
To his horror, it was a woman, with her clothes pulled apart,
in a compromising position.
She was dead.
Nauseous and overwhelmed, he sped off to notify the police.
Investigators thought that she was just a Jane Doe,
but later were contacted by her parents who identified
the body as 23-year old Taunja Bennett.
Taunja was a mentally disabled woman, who was very trusting of others—
the perfect target for bullies—
but her parents would never imagine she would be a victim of brutality.
The night prior to her being found, Taunja had entered
the B&I Tavern in Portland, Oregon.
She was a regular there, often opting to switch between two types of drinks.
After becoming tipsy, she began playing pool with a couple of unknown men.
Witnesses said she disappeared shortly after, never to be seen again.
On February 5th, the Multnomah County Police Department
received a phone call from an anonymous source,
claiming to have overheard a man bragging about murdering Taunja.
This man was John Sosnovske and the anonymous caller was determined
by his parole officer to be his longtime girlfriend Laverne Pavlinac.
Laverne, 58, was well known by police to file false police reports
on John so law enforcement were reluctant to believe her at first.
John was an alcoholic and known to get physically a______ at times.
The police suspected that this was just another one of her ploys
to get out of this undesirable relationship.
According to her account, on January 21st, she received a phone call from John,
claiming that he was in trouble and she needed to meet him right away in Troutdale.
She drove up to a truck stop to find John hiding behind two trailers.
On the ground was the body of Taunja,
wrapped in a blanket at his feet.
“Is she sick?”
“She’s dead.”
Laverne certainly felt sick but she was there to help.
The two rolled the body in a shower curtain
and disposed of it along the Old Columbia River highway.
As a souvenir, John cut a piece of Taunja’s jeans.
Following the tip, a raid on the Sosnovski-Pavlinac residence,
police found an envelope addressed to John that said:
“T.Bennett-a good piece.”
Police gave Laverne a wire to attempt to have John implicate
himself but it was unhelpful. Also, during questioning,
it didn’t seem like Laverne could keep the story straight.
after a forensic was completed on her vehicle,
there was no evidence found of a body having been in there,
and the shower curtain couldn’t be located.
Her next interview changed drastically.
Laverne claimed that Taunja was still alive when
she got to the truck stop and willingly got into the car.
They were to give her a ride to her mother’s house in Portland,
but John had other plans.
John knocked out Taunja and forced Laverne to drive to Crown Point
where they entered the Vista House, a historical building converted into a rest stop.
Laverne was then coerced to assist in holding Taunja down with a rope
as she was assaulted by John.
It wasn’t long before she eventually suffocated to death.
Still suspicious, the police had Laverne guide them
on how to get to the location of the body.
They were proved wrong when Laverne brought them to the
exact spot where Taunja was found.
Both Laverne and John were promptly arrested.
Laverne changed her story yet again in her trial on January 24th,
when she told the police she initially lied to them in an attempt
to escape her a_____ boyfriend, but the damage was already done.
She was charged with being an accomplice to second degree murder,
and sentenced to a maximum of 10 years,
and John was sentenced for life.
To avoid the death penalty, John pleaded guilty.
Just when the police thought they cracked the case,
graffiti was found in a truckstop bathroom in Livingston Montana...
signed with a smiley face.
Another piece of graffiti was found on the walls of a bathroom in Umatilla, Oregon:
Detectives thought that these notes couldn’t possibly be true,
that they’d already caught the culprits,
and decided that it must have been a friend of John’s who was trying to get him out of jail.
The notes were ignored.
All was calm for four long years until 1994 when newspapers
began receiving letters attesting to several murders of women across the country.
All with the same handwriting,
all with the crudely drawn smiley face.
The Portland Oregonian newspaper received a confession:
“l feel bad, but I will not turn myself in. I am not stupid...
In a lot of opinions I should be k____ and I feel I deserve ¡t.
My resposiblity [sic] is mine and God will be my judge wben I die.
I am telling you this because I will be responsibil [sic]
for these crimes and no one else.
It all started when I wondered what ¡t would be like to k___ someone.
And I found out.
What a nightmare ¡t has been…
Look over your shoulder.
I'm closer than you think."
The Columbian newspaper in Vancouver, Washington received a similar
letter that the police would use to compare handwriting and crimes:
Meanwhile, dead bodies were showing up all around the country
in the same compromising position.
On March 10th 1995, a man with a clean criminal record,
Keith Hunter Jesperson, was a suspect in the murder of his girlfriend
Julie Ann Winnningham.
Clark County Washington Sheriff's Department Detective Rick Buckner
investigated the Cheney trucking company he worked for.
His travel itinerary was provided and he was tracked down in
Las Cruces, New Mexico on March 22nd.
He refused to speak without an attorney, so he was released.
On March 24th, he attempted s_____ twice
before writing a letter confessing to his crimes
Afterwards, he called Detective Buckner and confessed on the phone, as well.
Keith was an unassuming divorced father of three with no criminal record,
who made his living as a truck driver.
He originally wanted to be an RCMP officer but his dreams were shattered
when he was injured during training. He was described as a caring man,
but was prone to anger, even allegedly hurting neighbourhood animals,
according to his daughter. His divorce came because he was
suspected of being unfaithful while on his drives, and his wife deemed him unstable,
and had moved herself and the kids away for their own safety.
According to his family, he was born in British Columbia to a family of six,
but was treated differently than his siblings.
He would be a____ by his alcoholic father
and charged room and board as if he were a nuisance.
As a child, he would act out and set fires, t____ animals,
and threaten to k___ his friends.
Keith’s attorney Thomas Phelan sat him down as he confessed
to the murder of Julie Anne Winnigham.
Eventually, Keith confessed to the murder of Taunja, as well as the other women.
He was the Happy Face Killer or “Face,” as he preferred.
The following is Keith’s story of the night of January 24th, 1990:
Taunja had gone to the Tavern that night and was playing pool with a couple of men—
one of whom was Keith Jesperson.
They were both having a couple of drinks together before he offered to buy Taunja dinner.
She easily accepted but upon checking, he noticed he was out of money.
Keith offered to drive her to his house to pick up the cash.
he agreed and hopped into his car.
On the way to his house, he tried to coerce her into s__ and eventually r____ and
s______ her after a verbal argument got violent.
Keith then quickly drove back to the Tavern to plant his alibi.
He had a couple of drinks with the patrons to make himself known before
hopping back into his car to drop off the body close to Columbia River Gorge.
One alibi wasn’t enough, he needed something else.
Keith drove off to a rest stop near Troutdale and drank coffee for the rest of the night.
The next morning, he drove to the Sandy River Highway
and flung the contents of Taunja’s purse into a bushy area.
Detectives didn’t believe him initially, as they had convicted the killer years ago,
suspecting he was trying to take the blame for a friend,
and brought Keith and Laverne in for a lie detector test.
Weirdly enough, Keith passed... but lie detectors weren’t always accurate.
They drove him to the area to have him show where he’d dumped the body,
but he wasn’t able to properly point the location out.
The police decided he was lying until Keith mentioned that he threw Taunja’s purse nearby.
Days later, an officer came by with Taunja’s ID. Keith was declared the killer.
On November 27 1995, after four years in prison for a crime
they didn’t commit, Laverne and John were let out.
Keith, on the other hand, received a life sentence initially for the murder
of Julie Anne Winningham, and another life sentence was tacked
on for the death of Taunja Bennett.
Keith never made it easy for the court, however.
Over the years, he kept retracting and adding to his statements,
likely to throw off prosecutors.
One of which was for the murder of Bobbi Crescenzi,
but police learned from tracking Keith’s movements that he was being fed
information from her husband Jack Crescenzi, who was being held in the same prison.
Jack had promised to pay Keith’s children $10,000 if he was released.
In all, Keith admitted to 160 murders that he was unable to prove.
In 1997, he went back and forth in his confession to the murder of Angela Subrize.
Keith finally admitted after Laramine County prosecutors offered a plea deal
that would prevent him from receiving the death penalty if he confessed to her murder.
Keith Hunter Jesperson claimed that he was no monster.
A sentiment he can continue to reflect on over three consecutive life sentences
in the Oregon State Penitentiary,
where there are no happy faces.