Is “happy face” a real story? Revisiting the Murders of Keith Hunter Jesperson

Dennis Quaid cooled as a serial killer who reunited with his daughter (played by Annaleigh Ashford) in Happy face.

The series, which premieres at Paramount+ on March 20, is based on the real Happy Face killer, Keith Hunter Jesperson, and his relationship with his daughter Melissa G. Moore.

Moore was a teenager when Jesperson was arrested for murder and changed his life forever. It was later discovered that he had killed at least eight women for a period of five years and six states, per CNN.

The truck got its moniker, the lucky face killer, after signing various confessions and letters to the media with a smiley face drawing. As Moore got older, she counted on all these discoveries and crowned her journey to unite who her father is with what he did in the 2009 book Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.

Now Moore is working on family members to murderers and murder suspects To highlight their pain and help them feel less lonely.

“We are secondary victims. We have it shame and we want to remove it,” Moore said at 20/20 2015. “I somehow feel like I’m related to my father, but I didn’t cause the pain. But knowing that my father caused some pain causes me pain.”

Here’s everything to know about the true story of Happy faceIncluding how many women the Jesman killed and how it affected his family.

Is Happy face Based on a true story?

The truly happy face killer is Keith Hunter Jesperson.

Born April 6, 1955 in Chilliwack, Canada, Jesperson claimed that his father was offensive and dependent on alcohol, Per A&E Monster in my family. As a child, he showed violent tendencies and reportedly began torturing and killing animals.

Jesperson later moved with his family to Selah, Wash., And he claimed to be alleged his violence against his comrades: he killed almost two of his bullies in separate incidents and beat one of them until he was unconscious and tried to drown the other, per Radford University.

After high school, Jesperson became a long -lasting truck. When he was 20, he married a local girl named Rose Hucke and the couple continued to welcome two daughters, Melissa and Carrie, and a son named Jason.

“He wasn’t a good husband,” Hucke told 20/20. “He was very distant with me.

She and Jesperson divorced in 1990, Per 20/20And the same year he committed his first known murder.

How did the happy face killer get his name?

In January 1990, Jesman met 23-year-old Taunja Bennett in a Portland, Ore., Bar. He then brought her to his home, where he raped, beat and suffocated her and then dumped her body near Columbia Gorge, Per 20/20.

“Comments were made and various things and a change occurred, and I beat her,” said Jesperson in a telephone interview in 2010. “I had actually hit her in the face and for some reason I just continued to hit her in the face and because of it. I feared to go to jail for swallowing her in the face and causing her body injury and so I killed her.”

Jesperson almost came away with killing Bennett after Two people acknowledged falsely to be involved in her murder.

In an attempt to get out of an alleged abusive relationship, Laverne Pavlinac told police that she saw her then boyfriend, John Sosnovske, rape and murder Bennett. The police arrested Sosnovske, who then did not invoke any competition to avoid the death penalty, even though he had not committed the crime. Although Pavlinac later returned his false confession, both she and Sosnovske went to prison, Per National Registry of Exoneations.

Jesperson was shortly after the nickname The Happy Face Killer when he wrote an anonymous letter on a bathroom wall in a bus terminal in Montana and said he murdered Bennett and adds a smiley face as his signature, Per New York Daily News. Doodle became Jesperson’s brand, and he included it in other letters he wrote about his murders, including those to Oregonian.

The Smiley face also reflects Jesperson’s attitude to his crime in general. He said 20/20 That murderous women “became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it. That’s all like store lift. You break the law but you get away with it. There is a excitement to get away with it.”

Following Jesperson’s arrest, Sosnovske was subject to conviction, and both he and Pavlinac were released from prison.

How was the happy face killer captured?

Jesperson’s last known victim was his own girlfriend, Julie Winningham. Police discovered her body on March 11, 1995 on Highway 14 near Skammania County, Wash. Associated Press. When they searched for their property, investigators found a receipt with Jesperson’s signature on it, according to 20/20.

The investigators questioned Jesperson about her death, and he admitted the next day. The series of the serial order also handed over a letter to the police in which Jesperson admitted to a total of eight murders.

“I am sorry that I showed up in this way. I have been a murderer for five years and have killed eight people. Attached more,” Jesperson wrote partly. “Seems like my turn has ended. I will never be able to enjoy life on the outside again.”

He told the investigators in 1995 to admit Bennett’s murder was most important to him because Pavlinac and Sosnovske had gone to jail for the crime.

Jesperson said he wanted to “get clean … get it all over (with), the record straight. I had been worried about this for a long time. I wanted to get the two people out of prison.”

How many victims did the happy face killer have?

Jesperson had eight known victims he killed over five years and several states.

The happy facial’s confirmed victim includes Bennett and Winningham, as well as Suzanne L. Kjellenberg in Holt, Fla.; Laurie Ann Pentland in Salem, Ore.; Cynthia Lyn Rose in Turlock, California; Patricia Skiple in Gilroy, California and Angela can submit in Laramie County, Wyo.

He also killed at least another woman, currently known as’Claudia“Near Blythe, Calif.

How did the happy face killer’s daughter know about her crimes?

Moore was only told that her father was a serial killer after turning in for murdering Winningham.

“I really wanted to show people versus tell people when they asked,“ How didn’t you know your father is a serial killer? ““ Moore explained on 20/20 about himself and other loved ones by murderers. “We all have a common response, family members for violent criminals: they have two different (life), a double life.”

Moore wrote in an essay in 2014 for BBC News That her father as a child lost hints about her secret, including allegedly telling her when she was 13 that he knew how to “kill someone and get away with it” and announced that one day he would be in Oregon State Prison. She also claimed that he tortured and killed kittens in front of her.

After Jesperson’s arrest, Moore’s mother would not talk about him or his crime, which led the teenager to read about his father’s trial at their local library.

What happened to the happy face killer?

Jesperson received four life sentences without a chance for Parole, according to Associated Press. He currently earns his time at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

Moore told 20/20 In 2021, she no longer communicates with her father.

“I don’t want my dad to get into my children’s psyche and hurt them in some way because he is manipulative,” she said. “He is a psychopath. He still has the potential to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words.”

According to Moore, her grandfather told me that Jesperson had admitted thoughts of killing her own children, including her.

“Maybe people will not understand this, but to hear it gave me freedom,” she wrote for the BBC. “It allowed me to see that in fact there had been no double life – it had just been a Keith Jesman and he could have manipulated everyone around him and present different facades to the world.”

Moore added that she had often wondered what would have happened if she found out about her father’s crime before and turned him to the police.

“Finally, I knew the answer to the question that had bothered me …” would he have killed me if I had told the police about his crime? “Yes, he would,” she said. “Understanding that allowed me to say goodbye to him.”

This article was written independently of People’s editorial staff and meets our editorial standards. Paramount+ is a paid advertising partner with people.