Speaker 1: Let's start from the beginning. I was a young girl.
Speaker 2: I was eleven years old, and my parents had just divorced,
Speaker 2: and my dad was now living with his girlfriend in Portland, Orgon.
Speaker 2: And this was my first summer vacation where I stayed
Speaker 2: at a different home than my childhood home. And the
Speaker 2: moment I walked in that house, I felt like I
Speaker 2: wasn't alone, that there was energy there, that there were
Speaker 2: spirits there, that I was being watched in every room.
Speaker 2: In every room, he had purchased bunk beds for my
Speaker 2: sister and I and my sister picked the bottom bunk
Speaker 2: and I picked the top bunk.
Speaker 1: And it was my first night in this new house.
Speaker 2: I fall asleep a little bit, but then I'm awakened
Speaker 2: by being touched.
Speaker 1: And then my hair is touched. It's not a heavy touch,
Speaker 1: it's a light touch.
Speaker 2: So I leap and go down the little stairs of
Speaker 2: the bunk bed and I rush over and I'm going
Speaker 2: to go run into my dad's room, but I froze.
Speaker 1: I felt that.
Speaker 2: Whatever was touching me was over there too. I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to be safe in my dad's room, and I
Speaker 2: didn't feel safe with my dad, and so I laid
Speaker 2: in the hallway floor with a light on, curled up
Speaker 2: in a ball, hoping that the night would just go
Speaker 2: away fast. And in the morning my dad stepped over
Speaker 2: me and he said, why did you fall asleep in
Speaker 2: the hallway? And I said I was being touched, Dad,
Speaker 2: something was touching me. And he said, Oh, don't pay
Speaker 2: any attention to them. They bothered me all the time
Speaker 2: at night. Don't pay them any mind.
Speaker 3: Melissa, who is your dad and what is he known as?
Speaker 2: My father is Keith Hunter Jesperson. He's known as the
Speaker 2: happy Face serial killer.
Speaker 4: My girl, my girl, don't lie.
Speaker 5: To me.
Speaker 4: Tell me where did you sleep last night? In the pies?
Speaker 4: In the pies where the sun don't have a shine?
Speaker 4: I will shiver.
Speaker 2: Oh nice.
Speaker 3: My name is Lauren bry Pacheco. I'm a television producer
Speaker 3: and I've worked with Melissa Jessperson Moore for about four years.
Speaker 3: We work on crime stories together and we travel a lot,
Speaker 3: and during our downtime we've had the chance to really
Speaker 3: get to know one another. And she shared a lot
Speaker 3: with me about her past, especially her childhood.
Speaker 1: My childhood home was amazing. My parents had three children together.
Speaker 2: I'm the oldest a year later, my brother was born,
Speaker 2: and then two years after my brother, my sister, Carrie
Speaker 2: was born, and my mom was a stay at home
Speaker 2: mom and my father was a long haul truck driver.
Speaker 2: I felt loved, I felt provided for, I felt adored.
Speaker 2: I actually felt like I was a super are.
Speaker 6: Menissa, how big are you?
Speaker 7: This big yees real big.
Speaker 4: Dance Manista, you dance, You're a good dancwer.
Speaker 2: We lived in the country, and when I would hear
Speaker 2: the semi truck pull up, and you could hear the
Speaker 2: wheels on the gravel, and you just knew, you knew,
Speaker 2: you could easily recognize that sound. The window panes would
Speaker 2: actually shake because of the size and the rumble of
Speaker 2: his engine. So we would just both my brother, my
Speaker 2: sister and I would actually race to get to my
Speaker 2: dad to see who could get into his pockets first,
Speaker 2: because in his pockets were tons of change and tokens
Speaker 2: and things from his trips, and so it was like
Speaker 2: a competition who could get who.
Speaker 1: Could get Dad's change. And that was our first encounter
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: And you pick us up and he would throw us
Speaker 2: in the air and play with us and be excited
Speaker 2: to see us. He would be just as excited to
Speaker 2: see us as we were excited to see him.
Speaker 3: Everybody thinks they're you know, their dad is the center
Speaker 3: of the universe, But your dad, How did you feel
Speaker 3: being placed up on his shoulders.
Speaker 2: I love the view that I could see so much more,
Speaker 2: and I felt that I was absolutely safe and that
Speaker 2: anything was possible, and that I could do whatever I
Speaker 2: wanted to do, and that was safe in the arms
Speaker 2: with my dad. He was six foot six and close
Speaker 2: to three hundred pounds. His size was something. The first
Speaker 2: thing you notice, how you feel so small in comparison.
Speaker 3: Keith was this huge giant man even to adults, so
Speaker 3: for a child, he must have seemed even that much
Speaker 3: more enormous. And when Melissa talks about him, she has
Speaker 3: this reverence, this almost mythological lens that she views him through.
Speaker 2: I felt like my dad was a superhero because he
Speaker 2: was so large, and he could actually eclipse the sun
Speaker 2: with his with his head, like he just his body,
Speaker 2: like the sun would just like beam behind him, and
Speaker 2: he could just eclipse the sun.
Speaker 8: Phil Stanford, The Oregonian, Maywecond, nineteen ninety four. The letter,
Speaker 8: unsigned and written on pale blue paper, has a happy
Speaker 8: face at the top of the first page, two tiny
Speaker 8: circles for eyes, an upturned sliver of a moon for mouth.
Speaker 8: Have a nice day, all five of it, says next
Speaker 8: to the cartoon face. However, the letter is six pages long,
Speaker 8: So what does that mean? Five? What? Five murders? That's what.
Speaker 3: Melissa agreed to go on the road with me and
Speaker 3: our producer Noel and revisit the places from her past
Speaker 3: that have incredible significance, both good and bad, to her today,
Speaker 3: and one of those places was Spokane, Washington, where she
Speaker 3: moved with her mother and siblings after her parents' divorce.
Speaker 2: I haven't been Spokane for a long time, but whenever
Speaker 2: I come back here, I think about the first time
Speaker 2: I came here back in nineteen ninety. My dad was
Speaker 2: home for the weekend and we had a great weekend.
Speaker 2: We're really close and it was like a normal weekend,
Speaker 2: and then it was time for my mom to drop
Speaker 2: off my dad at the truck station. And on the
Speaker 2: way to the truck station to his offices, there was
Speaker 2: just this tension in the air and there was something
Speaker 2: obviously going on between my parents, my mom and my dad.
Speaker 2: When we arrived at my dad's work, he got the
Speaker 2: car and acted like he was never going to see
Speaker 2: us again. He hugged us super tight, said how much
Speaker 2: he loves us, and was just gripping us like it
Speaker 2: was his last time ever holding us. When I saw
Speaker 2: him walk away and go to his job, my brother
Speaker 2: and sister and I got back in the car, and
Speaker 2: my mom was silent until we were about a block
Speaker 2: away from the house. She said, when we go into
Speaker 2: the house, I need you to pick one thing, your
Speaker 2: favorite thing.
Speaker 3: We drove there because we were going to meet her mom, Rose,
Speaker 3: who we met at work.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to see her. Yeah, I'm glad that you're
Speaker 2: going to meet her. She's a caseworker for a Salvation
Speaker 2: Army where she helps families who are on the streets
Speaker 2: transition to having a life off the streets. And so
Speaker 2: these are children that have lived in cars. These are
Speaker 2: children that have nothing very similar to what I had
Speaker 2: and what she had. I wonder if she has a
Speaker 2: picture of me in her office.
Speaker 3: I think she might be coming out.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: They hadn't seen each other in a few years, but
Speaker 3: you could definitely hear the warmth and the pride and
Speaker 3: the love in Melissa's voice when she described her to us.
Speaker 2: You know what you'll find that about my mom is
Speaker 2: she's a very nurturing, soft person that you could tell
Speaker 2: anything too. So not dregonical home. Oh my skinny, Oh
Speaker 2: my gosh, you're getting small, my office.
Speaker 8: Is over here.
Speaker 3: Meeting Melissa's mom in person, I was really taken aback
Speaker 3: by the fact that they don't look alike. Melissa's always
Speaker 3: told me that she looks just like her father, and
Speaker 3: I never saw it until I met her mom. She
Speaker 3: absolutely looks like her father.
Speaker 2: When I was flying down here, I was thinking about
Speaker 2: what your experience must have been like, because when we
Speaker 2: came here.
Speaker 1: Is after you dud separated.
Speaker 2: I remember just, you know, leaving and coming here m
Speaker 2: without planning, right, That's what it felt like.
Speaker 1: It wasn't planned.
Speaker 5: You're correct, it wasn't what happened. Well, it was our
Speaker 5: thirteenth wedding anniversary and I was expecting a bouquet of
Speaker 5: flowers and he said, you know, I think we should
Speaker 5: just get a divorce.
Speaker 1: He said, would you mind just leaving?
Speaker 5: And were you happy at any point with him? I
Speaker 5: think at the very beginning we had a lot of
Speaker 5: fun and we would we'd take a month off and
Speaker 5: we'd traveled down I five, all the way down California
Speaker 5: along the beaches, or you know, I didn't know that. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 5: we did, we did. We'd take a month off, go
Speaker 5: to Lake Powell. We'd go to Canada. Oh. He had
Speaker 5: a golden wing motorcycle and we went all through Canada,
Speaker 5: traveling through uh Lethbridge and Alberta.
Speaker 1: And it was a good provider, he really was.
Speaker 2: And you probably felt really financially.
Speaker 5: Still, I felt safe. And then I had you, and
Speaker 5: then things changed.
Speaker 8: I would like to tell my story. The writer of
Speaker 8: the letter begins. The exclamation point is all his, so
Speaker 8: as the labored printing and the odd mixture of capital
Speaker 8: and lowercase letters. Onor about January twentieth, nineteen ninety, I
Speaker 8: picked up Sonya Bennett, and I took her home. I
Speaker 8: raped her and beat her real bad. Then I ended
Speaker 8: her life by pushing my fist into her throat.
Speaker 2: When my dad was so up into town, he didn't
Speaker 2: get a hotel. He would stay at our home, my
Speaker 2: mom's home, and even when she was with her new
Speaker 2: boyfriend who became her husband, my dad would stay in
Speaker 2: the house with him in the house as well. The
Speaker 2: reward of him coming was he's filling the pantry. He's
Speaker 2: helping her. She was a single mom. She was a
Speaker 2: sole provider for months on end, and here he comes
Speaker 2: into town. She's going to take any reprieve she can get.
Speaker 2: You know, this area right here is where when my
Speaker 2: dad would come to visit, we'd drive past this road
Speaker 2: right here. But this used to be all open fields
Speaker 2: like this, and at the end here was as a
Speaker 2: safeway where we would go and get groceries. So when
Speaker 2: my dad would come into town, he would actually take
Speaker 2: us three kids to this grocery store and just let
Speaker 2: us pick anything we wanted. And one thing that he
Speaker 2: constantly picked was just like he would get these huge
Speaker 2: five gallon tubs of ice cream and then he would
Speaker 2: get these he would get like a couple packages of bacon.
Speaker 2: He would make not like one package of bacon at
Speaker 2: a time, he would make like five packages of bacon
Speaker 2: at a time. So when he came, he was a
Speaker 2: source of all at A girl that I used to
Speaker 2: hang out with, Tamera, and she lived right here in
Speaker 2: this house.
Speaker 1: And what happened was she lost her.
Speaker 2: Jacket and she accused me of stealing her jacket.
Speaker 1: And you know, in the j just person households.
Speaker 2: We don't steal like that is like something is the
Speaker 2: coat of honor, you don't steal. And so I told
Speaker 2: my dad that her parents think I'm a thief and
Speaker 2: that I.
Speaker 1: Stole her coat.
Speaker 2: So he walked over there and confronted her parents.
Speaker 1: And I was so nervous because he was so aggressive.
Speaker 1: I was just terrified of what.
Speaker 2: He's going to do to that to her parents. And
Speaker 2: he explained how I didn't steal that jacket, and he
Speaker 2: pretty much I don't know remember exactly what he said,
Speaker 2: but he really terrified her parents so much so that
Speaker 2: she never came back to my house.
Speaker 8: But there's something about the letter that holds you that
Speaker 8: makes you keep reading. Maybe it's the urgency of the
Speaker 8: prose itself. Maybe, although you might not want to admit it,
Speaker 8: it's the lurid details spelling off the pages like cold sewage.
Speaker 8: Maybe the writer, whoever he is, is making it all up.
Speaker 8: But if so, you have to wonder what kind of
Speaker 8: person would even be able to write something like this.
Speaker 8: This turned me on. I got high panic set in
Speaker 8: where to put the body? First? He says he drove
Speaker 8: to the Sandy River and threw Tanya Bennett's purse and
Speaker 8: walkman into the water. Then he drove back home and
Speaker 8: dragged the body out to his car. I want the
Speaker 8: world to know that it was my crime, so I
Speaker 8: tied a one half inch soft white rope around her neck.
Speaker 8: I drove her to a switchback on the scenic Road
Speaker 8: about one and one half miles east of Lateral Falls.
Speaker 8: I dragged her downhill. Her pants were around her knees
Speaker 8: because I had cut her buttons off.
Speaker 1: Now happy faces.
Speaker 2: On one side of the coin, he's a loving family man,
Speaker 2: and he's a good friend, and he's.
Speaker 1: He's a good provider.
Speaker 2: He's everything that you know as a child you want
Speaker 2: for a dad. And then on the other side of
Speaker 2: the coin, he is everything that scares you, everything that
Speaker 2: could hurt you. He goes from protected or predator and
Speaker 2: wrapping my mind around it is impossible. I started to
Speaker 2: notice the shift in the household, probably about when I
Speaker 2: was in kindergarten first grade.
Speaker 1: Things started to change in the household.
Speaker 2: My mom seemed more withdrawn, and I imagine her being
Speaker 2: isolated in a house with three young children must have
Speaker 2: been difficult for her and my father being gone.
Speaker 1: But when he would come home.
Speaker 2: There seemed to be a distance between my mom and
Speaker 2: my dad physically as well, that I didn't witness them
Speaker 2: hugging or being affectionate with one another. I actually don't
Speaker 2: even recall kissing. I can't even remember if they even
Speaker 2: kissed each other when they greeted each other. Now, looking back,
Speaker 2: I see the dynamic between my parents and recalling how
Speaker 2: critical and degrading he was to my mother. He would
Speaker 2: put her down for driving, He embarrassed her, He told
Speaker 2: her all the time about what a horrible housekeeper she was.
Speaker 2: He complained about her food, he complained about her weight.
Speaker 2: Everything my mother did was wrong.
Speaker 5: I was never thad enough or I was too fat.
Speaker 5: You know, if I ate dinner, old God forbid, if
Speaker 5: I ate dinner.
Speaker 2: As a kid, when I was alone with my father,
Speaker 2: he would bring up that he constantly felt sexually rejected,
Speaker 2: and he would say that My mom would tell him
Speaker 2: to go.
Speaker 1: Put it in a key hole.
Speaker 3: So what was your father thinking talking about his sex
Speaker 3: life with his child?
Speaker 2: My father sex life was always a part of the conversation.
Speaker 2: I heard it with his friends. I heard it in
Speaker 2: the flirtation and the sexual harassment of waitresses. I heard
Speaker 2: it having to hear him tell me these details about
Speaker 2: their sex life. I never asked my father, it was
Speaker 2: just part of the conversation constantly. I knew that my
Speaker 2: father was a very sexual man from a young age.
Speaker 2: I recall finding hustlers and playboys all around, like all
Speaker 2: around the house, and when I would go to the
Speaker 2: truck stops, I would see his offices were lit like
Speaker 2: discovered and nude calendars. So nude women and pornography was
Speaker 2: always a part of my childhood.
Speaker 8: My good.
Speaker 2: Lie to me.
Speaker 8: When Bennett's body was found actually about a mile west
Speaker 8: of Lateral Falls and a mile and a half east
Speaker 8: of the Vista house, there was a rope around her neck.
Speaker 6: Ely addition, as the police reports indicate, the buttonfly of
Speaker 6: bennett jeans had been cut away.
Speaker 2: In the fin.
Speaker 8: In the letter continues, she was my first and I
Speaker 8: thought I would not do it again, but I was wrong.
Speaker 3: It was clear that Keith had no filter for what
Speaker 3: was appropriate to say or do in front of his kids,
Speaker 3: and many of his other impulses were even darker, and
Speaker 3: he acted upon them.
Speaker 2: I remember there was a weekend that my dad was
Speaker 2: back home and he from one of his long hauls
Speaker 2: and there was a barrel, a rusty barrel that he
Speaker 2: was burning shrubbery and old debris.
Speaker 1: From the yard. And he was cleaning the yard.
Speaker 2: And we had this barn, and behind the barn, I
Speaker 2: saw my brother and he had a black cat. And
Speaker 2: I remember how dark the cat's fur was, because it
Speaker 2: was so shiny. It looked silvery like, almost like glass
Speaker 2: from the sun hitting the cat's back, hitting the fur.
Speaker 2: And so I saw my brother just petting this black cat,
Speaker 2: and how slick and pretty the cat looked, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to touch this cat too. I wanted to pet
Speaker 2: and so I went up to my brother and I
Speaker 2: sat next to him behind the barn, and I started
Speaker 2: petting the cat with him. And quickly I noticed that
Speaker 2: my dad had witnessed me petting the cat with my brother.
Speaker 2: And at this point, the cat is still my brother's
Speaker 2: lab and then my dad approaches us.
Speaker 1: He walks up to us, and he says, what do
Speaker 1: you have there.
Speaker 2: I remember my dad's sitting down to the other side
Speaker 2: of Jason and taking the cat in his lap, and
Speaker 2: he started petting the cat, and both my brother and
Speaker 2: I were tense, like if we could feel like something's
Speaker 2: something's wrong because we knew my dad hated cats, absolutely
Speaker 2: hated them. So for my dad to be sitting next
Speaker 2: to my brother petting this cat was odd that he
Speaker 2: would be lovingly petting a cat.
Speaker 1: And quickly he was. I remember his big hand.
Speaker 2: Just like engulfing the whole cat, and then all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, with one hand, he pinned the head down
Speaker 2: and grabbed it with the other hand, and he's just
Speaker 2: started squeezing the cat's neck. And then the cat started
Speaker 2: to like screech and to scream and started clawing for
Speaker 2: its life on my dad's forearms and.
Speaker 1: Just was clawing.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, and my brother and I were screaming,
Speaker 2: and we're like stop a dad, Stop a dad, Like
Speaker 2: why are you doing this, dad, Why are you doing this?
Speaker 2: And just screaming at him to try to like stop it,
Speaker 2: like it just it made me so nauseous, Like it
Speaker 2: just made me.
Speaker 1: How old would you and Jason have been?
Speaker 2: We were young, My brother and I were young, we
Speaker 2: were six seven years old. I don't recall telling my mom,
Speaker 2: I don't recall telling anybody. And the reason and why
Speaker 2: is it's just like when it came to my father,
Speaker 2: there was just this thing that people said in the family,
Speaker 2: they would say, Oh, that's just Keith, That's just how
Speaker 2: Keith is, and it seemed to be acceptable.
Speaker 9: Keith Jessperson takes steps toward a court appearance he's tried
Speaker 9: to avoid for years, as well as an order and
Speaker 9: your plea of no contest to the aggravated murder cat
Speaker 9: After prosecutors read off the charges and with the victim's
Speaker 9: family looking on, Jesperson gave grizzly details of how in
Speaker 9: nineteen ninety he killed twenty three year old Tanya Bennett
Speaker 9: in his apartment.
Speaker 10: And forced my fist into her throat and later grabbed
Speaker 10: the rope and tied around her neck securely, and she
Speaker 10: was dead.
Speaker 2: You know. I slept in the hallway that one night.
Speaker 2: The second night, I slept on the couch.
Speaker 1: And kept the TV on so i'd have light.
Speaker 2: And as I laid on the couch, I looked up
Speaker 2: the ceiling and I saw markings on the ceiling of
Speaker 2: some kind of splatter. And then as I was laying there,
Speaker 2: the cabinet doors in the kitchen were opening and closing,
Speaker 2: and I remember touching my eyes and rubbing my eyes,
Speaker 2: thinking I must be seeing things.
Speaker 1: But I would hear it too. They would open and
Speaker 1: they would close.
Speaker 9: Says, He left the body in the Columbia Gorge, then
Speaker 9: cleaned up his house.
Speaker 10: Washed the carpet, I washed the blood off the walls
Speaker 10: what I could, and eventually painted the walls of the
Speaker 10: house I was in and try to forget about it.
Speaker 2: I would later discover that in that very room where
Speaker 2: I was laying down was where he he murdered Tanya
Speaker 2: Bennett in the most gruesome and brutal way possible, And
Speaker 2: that now I look back and think, was that blood
Speaker 2: that I saw?
Speaker 1: And I believe it was.
Speaker 8: My girl?
Speaker 4: My girl? Don't lie to me? Tell me where didiou sleep?
Speaker 4: Last night?
Speaker 7: Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
Speaker 7: producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Butcheco Mangesha Ticketer, and
Speaker 7: Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by Claire Campbell,
Speaker 7: Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor
Speaker 7: is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown.
Speaker 7: Assistant editor is Taylor Chacoygne. Special thanks to Phil Stanford,
Speaker 7: the publishers of the Oregonian newspaper in k t U
Speaker 7: News In Portland, Oregon
Speaker 4: Go away where the cold Wan blows