1955–present
Latest News: Happy Face Series Portrays Prolific Serial Killer
Keith Hunter Jesperson, the notorious “Happy Face Killer,” is portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the new true crime series aptly named Happy Face. The show is inspired by the true story of Jesperson’s daughter, Melissa Moore, who discovered her father was a serial killer when she was 16 and subsequently changed her name only to reveal her true identity over a decade later. She co-wrote the 2009 autobiography Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter and more recently hosted the Happy Face podcast.
In the series, a fictional Moore, played by Annaleigh Ashford, must confront an imprisoned Jesperson after years of no contact to clear an innocent man’s name before he is executed for a crime her father committed. “If I don’t deal with him, there is a family who lost a daughter, who will never get answers,” Ashford says in the Happy Face trailer. The show began on Paramount+ March 20 with new episodes releasing every Thursday through May 1.
The real-life Jesperson is currently serving multiple life sentences for the rape and murder of eight women in the 1990s. Similar to the new series, his first victim’s killing was initially pinned on a couple after the woman falsely declared her and her boyfriend’s guilt. Jesperson, now 69, earned his nickname prior to his capture by anonymously confessing to his crimes in messages signed with a smiley face symbol.
Who Is the Happy Face Killer?
The Happy Face Killer, whose real name is Keith Hunter Jesperson, killed eight women between 1990 and 1995 while traveling across the United States as a long-haul trucker. Before the serial killer was identified by his legal name, he anonymously confessed to his crimes in messages containing the smiley faces that prompted his infamous nickname. His victims, who were often sexually assaulted and strangled, included short-term acquaintances, sex workers, and one of his girlfriends. After his girlfriend’s body was discovered in March 1995, Jesperson became a suspect and eventually confessed to his crimes as the Happy Face Killer. He is currently serving multiple life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Keith Hunter Jesperson
BORN: April 6, 1955
BIRTHPLACE: Chilliwack, Canada
SPOUSE: Rose Hucke (1975–1990)
CHILDREN: Melissa Moore, Jason, and Carrie
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries
Early Life
Before becoming internationally infamous as the Happy Face Killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955, in Chilliwack, a city in the Canadian province of British Columbia. His parents were Leslie “Les” Samuels and Gladys Jesperson. Keith was the middle child of five siblings, with two brothers and two sisters.
His history of violence dates back to early childhood when he began torturing and killing animals. At as young as 5 years old, he would capture cats, birds, small dogs, and other animals to inflict pain on them through brute force and strangulation. Jesperson was also on the receiving end of violence and ridicule. Les, who approved of his son’s gruesome activities, frequently abused Jesperson by hitting him with a leather belt. The boy was also singled out at school for his large stature and was taunted with names like “Monster Man” and “Igor.”
When Jesperson was 10, he escalated his violence from animals to humans when he attacked his friend Martin after repeatedly being blamed for his wrongdoings. He beat the boy unconscious, insisting that he would have killed Martin if his father hadn’t pull him away. The following year, Jesperson was swimming in a lake when another boy held his head under water until he blacked out. In retaliation, Jesperson tried to drown his bully but was stopped by a lifeguard.
After moving with his family to Selah, Washington, he started shoplifting and attacked an adult for the first time when he shot an arrow with an exploding tip at a teacher. As a teenager, Jesperson was frequently rejected by girls and didn’t attend any high school dances or prom before graduating in 1973.
Family
Despite this, a 20-year-old Jesperson got married only two years later to Rose Hucke in August 1975. The couple had three children together: two daughters and one son. It was around this time that he started working as a long-haul truck driver.
Several years into their marriage, Hucke began to suspect that her husband was having an affair after strange women starting calling the house. This caused tension in their marriage, prompting her to move to her parents’ house in Spokane, Washington, with the kids. They divorced in 1990.
Becoming the Happy Face Killer
After his marriage collapsed, Jesperson relocated to Cheney, Washington, and began killing women on his long-haul trucking routes. He was angry at his ex-wife and at women in general and tapped back into the violence that filled his childhood. He found many of his victims at truck stops. He raped some before killing them via strangulation.
His infamous nickname was sparked by a desire for notoriety. Following the discovery of his first victim in January 1990, a woman named Laverne Pavlinac lied to police that she had aided her boyfriend John Sosnovske in committing the murder. Pavlinac made this false statement because she wanted to escape her abusive relationship. She later rescinded her confession, but in 1991, a jury still found her guilty. Sosnovske pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty.
These convictions meant Jesperson was unlikely to ever face charges for his crime. However, a part of him wanted to claim credit, so he wrote about his first murder in a bus terminal bathroom. The message was signed with a smiley face. He went on to share details of the crime on other restroom walls.
In later years, Jesperson also sent anonymous letters to The Oregonian newspaper about what had become his multiple murders. Smiley faces again served as his signature, prompting a journalist to dub him the “Happy Face Killer.”
Victims
The Happy Face Killer has claimed to have killed 166 people, but only eight murders have been attributed to him. These crimes occurred between January 1990 and March 1995, shortly before his capture.
Happy Face found his first victim at a bar near Portland, Oregon. He met Taunja Bennett, a 23-year-old with developmental disabilities, while out drinking and convinced her to go back to his rental house. There, he beat, sexually assaulted, and strangled her on January 21, 1990. Bennett’s body was found near Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge later that month.
In April 1990, he sexually assaulted Daun Slagle after encountering her in a parking lot in Mount Shasta, California, with her infant in tow. However, Slagle managed to escape alive.
The serial killer in the making waited more than a year before striking again, but he murdered three women in 1992, more than any other year he was active. This included a woman he referred to as “Claudia,” Cynthia Lynn Wilcox, and sex worker Laurie Anne Pentland. Happy Face met “Claudia” that summer at a truck checkpoint in California. Her body, which had been strangled and tied up with duct tape, was found on August 30, 1992. Her identity remains unknown, but investigators are close to discovering who she was. That August is also when Happy Face killed again; he murdered Wilcox at a truck stop in Turlock, California. However, Happy Face later said he actually murdered another woman and didn’t recognize Wilcox’s photo. Then in November, he had an encounter with Pentland at a truck stop that ended when he strangled her and left her body in Oregon.
Remains found near a highway in Gilroy, California, on June 3, 1993, belonged to a Happy Face Killer victim he called “Cindy.” They met at a truck stop in the small town of Corning, about four hours north of Gilroy. Nearly two decades later, his fifth victim was identified as 45-year-old Patricia Skiple.
After Skiple’s killing, Happy Face later divulged that he staved off his murderous urges for more than a year by committing arson while on the road as a trucker. But come September 1994, the body of an unknown woman who had been strangled was found in Florida. Happy Face was confirmed as her killer because he knew intimate details about the murder. He said her name was “Susanna,” but it wasn’t until October 2023 that Florida authorities identified her as Suzanne Kjellenberg, who was 34 years old when she was killed.
In January 1995, Angela Subrize ran into Happy Face at a bar in Spokane, Washington. She traveled east with him in his truck. He has said he strangled her because she wouldn’t let him sleep. After the murder, the killer remembered they’d spent days together and he’d let her use a credit card. He decided to drag her body underneath his truck to impede identification. He left her remains in Nebraska, though Subrize was likely killed in Wyoming.
The Happy Face Killer’s eighth and final victim was his girlfriend Julie Winningham. He murdered her in Washington state on March 10, 1995. The discovery of her body the next day would spell the end of the serial killer’s reign of terror.
Capture and Life in Prison
Jesperson became a suspect after Julie Winningham’s body was found in March 1995 because he was known to be her boyfriend. After he was questioned by the police, he attempted suicide but ended up confessing to his girlfriend’s murder. Before his arrest, he also wrote a letter to his brother that admitted: “I am sorry that I turned out this way. I have been a killer for five years and have killed eight people.” His brother gave this letter to law enforcement.
While in custody, Jesperson began revealing graphic details about his eight murders. This included providing the location of Taunja Bennett’s purse, which only her killer would have known. The revelation led authorities to believe they had wrongly convicted Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske for her murder; both were released from prison in November 1995.
Jesperson later recanted his testimony about his eight murders as the Happy Face Killer, but he remains convicted of his crimes. Since his first murder conviction in 1995, he has received four life sentences for several of his gruesome misdeeds.
Jesperson is currently serving out his sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he spends much of his time making art. Pieces of his artwork have been seen on “murderabilia” sites. He is also a prolific letter writer behind bars and has sent correspondence to journalists at NewsNation on more than one occasion.
Daughter Melissa Moore
While two of his children maintain private lives, the Happy Face Killer’s oldest child, Melissa Moore, has publicly addressed her father’s crimes. Initially though, she too sought anonymity at Jesperson’s direction. When he was first imprisoned, he told her to change her last name. Moore, who was 16 at the time, saw this as an admission of guilt and agreed to do it. In 2008, however, she decided to come forward with her identity and has since written and spoken about her father extensively.
Moore co-wrote the 2009 autobiography Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter, which details her life growing up as the child of a murderer. Among her many interviews, she told ABC News in August 2010 that she witnessed some of his acts of animal cruelty. This included Jesperson killing kittens. She then examined her father’s actions in the 2018 podcast Happy Face.
Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter
“I loved my dad, but I didn’t really enjoy being around him,” she recalled in a BBC News article in November 2014. According to Moore, Jesperson often made her feel anxious and uncomfortable by explicitly talking about his sex life and making lewd comments about women in public.
When she was 8, Jesperson almost revealed his true nature to her, telling her, “I’m not what you think I am, Melissa.” As she got older, he became more bold. During a trip to Oregon’s Multnomah Falls, Jesperson explicitly said, “I know how to kill someone and get away with it,” and proceeded to explain how he would avoid detection from the police by removing the buttons of his victims’ clothes.
Media: Movies, Books, and TV Show
The Happy Face Killer has been depicted in several movies, books, and TV shows. In 2002, journalist Jack Olsen published a book about the murderer’s life titled I: the Creation of a Serial Killer. Over a decade later, Jesperson was the subject of the 2014 Lifetime movie Happy Face Killer, starring David Arquette.
The crime writer M. William Phelps also penned a memoir about his interactions with Jesperson in 2017 called Dangerous Ground: My Friendship with a Serial Killer. Soon, the killer will be portrayed by Dennis Quaid in the upcoming Paramount+ series Happy Face, which is set to premiere on March 20, 2025.
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Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
