On January 23, 1990, in Portland, Oregon, serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson claimed his first known victim, 23-year-old Taunja Bennett. After watching Bennett drink too much while hanging out at a local bar, Jesperson took her back to his rented house on a false pretense, seduced her, and then strangled her with a rope. He left her body in the house for a few hours while he went back to the bar to establish an alibi. He later dumped her body off the side of the road some miles away. This would become his typical method of operation.
Jesperson was a textbook case. A tall, hulking man who was teased about his size as a child, he also suffered the wrath of his abusive father. He took much joy (and seemingly gained his father's approval) by killing dogs, cats, and gophers at his family's trailer park while growing up in British Columbia. A divorced father of three, a training injury dashed his dream of joining the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He turned to interstate trucking in the U.S. to earn a living, which allowed him the benefit of mobility in claiming his victims.
Laverne Pavlinac, an armchair detective stuck in an abusive relationship, read about Taunja's murder and decided to use it to her advantage. After studying the crime intensely, she convinced the police that her boyfriend, John Sosnovske, had murdered Taunja and had forced her to help. Her plan backfired when both of them were convicted. The innocent Sosnovske plead guilty to avoid the death penalty and she received 10 years. Since she was the chief witness, her claim that it was all a hoax fell on deaf ears.
Jesperson didn't like losing credit for his work, and wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop. He signed it with a smiley face. When that didn't get any attention, he wrote numerous letters to newspapers and police departments, all with the same signature. The Oregonian dubbed him the "Happy Face Killer."
Most of Jesperson's victims were transient women, some of whom have yet to be identified. But in early 1995, Jesperson finally murdered someone he knew -- his longtime girlfriend, Julie Ann Winningham. This connection allowed police to eventually catch up with him. He's now serving three consecutive life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Pavlinac and Sosnovske were eventually released, both having served four years for a crime they didn't commit.
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