Has Killed and Will Kill Again
'Happy Face Killer'southward' daughter believes he would kill again if released
Serial killer Keith Jesperson has been in prison since 1995.
Notorious series killer Keith Jesperson, better known past the "Happy Face Killer" nickname he was given in the '90s, has spent decades behind bars but his daughter believes he would kill again if released from prison house today.
"I sometimes now wonder, if he was freed now, if he was released, would he kill over again? And I believe he would," Melissa Moore told "twenty/twenty" in a new interview. "I don't believe my dad is pitiful at all … what he is sorry nearly, though, is that he got caught."
Jesperson, now 66, is serving five non-consecutive life sentences in Oregon'south country penitentiary.
A Canadian-born long-haul truck commuter and divorced father of iii, Jesperson claimed to have killed 8 women in 5 states: Washington, California, Florida, Wyoming and Oregon.
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His killing spree spanned from 1990 until 1995, when he turned himself into regime. At the time, he was being investigated for the murder of his last known victim, 41-yr-old Julie Winningham, who some described as his girlfriend.
In a 2010 interview with ABC News, Jesperson equated committing murder to "shoplifting." When ABC News' Juju Chang challenged him on that framing, Jesperson doubled downwards, maxim his killings were "everything like shoplifting."
"Information technology became a nonchalant type thing, considering I got abroad with it," he continued. "It is everything like shoplifting. You're breaking the law but you're getting away with it. Then, at that place'southward a thrill of getting away with it."
He was dubbed the "Happy Face Killer" for the smiley face drawings he included on a letter he sent to a Portland, Oregon, newspaper, in which he bragged about his crimes.
"It's only a moment in time when situations present themselves, and you become what you are," Jesperson told ABC News in a previous interview. "I'g pitiful it happened, [I] wish it never happened ... it'south done, it'south over with."
After Jesperson came forward in March 1995, he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder charges for his first known victim, 23-year-erstwhile Taunja Bennett, and Winningham. Both women'south bodies were found on contrary sides of the Columbia River from each other.
"What actually stood out to me about my father is that in one case he killed Taunja Bennett, it'due south like he got a gustation for claret and power and control that he'due south probably never had in his life and that excited him. And then much and then that he seemed to start killing very rapidly over again after Taunja," Moore said.
Jesperson was linked to murdering six other women, some of which remain unknown to this day: an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named "Claudia" in August 1992 near Blythe, California; Cynthia Lynn Rose in September 1992 in Turlock, California; Lori Ann Pentland in Nov 1992 in Salem, Oregon; an unidentified adult female who Jesperson said was named "Carla" in June 1993 in Santa Nella, California; an unidentified woman who Jesperson said was named "Suzanne" in September 1994 in Crestview, Florida; and Angela Subrize in January 1995 in Laramie County, Wyoming.
Moore believes her father has no remorse. Even at present, she said, if her father could get back in fourth dimension to change anything, information technology would be to accept never turned himself in so he could keep killing.
"I believe he would be killing more women" if he were a free man, she said.
Growing upward, Moore said the father she knew as a young child wasn't violent. He was a homo who carried her on his shoulders and made her feel "on top of the earth," she said, someone who made up bedtime stories nigh a princess and tucked her in at nighttime.
One of the concluding things he bought her, Moore said, was a karaoke and music recording organization for her 10th birthday. Soon after that, her parents got divorced and that's when she said her begetter inverse.
Dr. Robert Schug, a forensic psychologist, has spoken to Jesperson multiple times. He said that Jesperson's violent outbursts may accept stemmed from his divorce.
"Keith mentions this menses of his union when things actually went southward, and then all of this really starts creating a very turbulent emotional period for the unabridged family unit," Schug said. "But, particularly for Keith."
Moore said she idea her father unleashed his anger over the divorce into his killing of Bennett.
"Then after that release and that excitement and the idea that he got abroad with it, plus two other people getting the blame, he was costless to kill again, and he did very quickly," she said.
A jury starting time convicted a Portland, Oregon, woman named Laverne Pavlinac for Bennett'due south murder in 1990, largely based on her detailed confession to constabulary in which she falsely claimed she helped her boyfriend John Sosnovske rape and kill the young woman.
Sosnovske subsequently pleaded no competition to the murder accuse.
In reality, neither had anything to exercise with the crime. Jesperson told investigators 1 of the reasons he wanted to come frontwards was he wanted credit for Bennett's murder and to get Pavlinac and Sosnovske out of prison. The two were released in 1995.
It had been more 15 years since Moore spoke to her begetter until she said he called her this past Father'southward Twenty-four hour period. With all the time that had passed, she decided to take the phone call.
"It was interesting to hear his voice once more, and just that old, familiar vox. Information technology's aged … He sounds more like my grandfather," Moore said. "Equally we signed off, he said, 'Adieu, my daughter,' and it definitely asserted that he wanted to control that I would have a relationship with him."
Now a parent herself, Moore said her children are curious well-nigh their grandfather. They had visited him in prison when they were young, merely they have no memory of the coming together. In messages to ABC News, Jesperson expressed how much he would like to reunite with his family unit.
"For years, I take reached out to my children to be a function of their lives," Jesperson wrote in i of these letters. "They're in my thoughts daily and I love them and am proud of them."
Still, Moore said she doesn't want her children to have a relationship with her father.
"I don't want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and injure them in whatever style because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath. He has the potential, still, to hurt, fifty-fifty if non with physical violence or murder, but with his words," she said.
Moore's 21-year-onetime daughter Aspen Moore, who said she learned the truth about her grandfather when she was about 10 years sometime, agrees that she doesn't want to see him.
"I think that he has excuses for his actions," she said. "I don't feel that his actions can be simply brushed off."
Melissa Moore maintains she doesn't desire to have a relationship with her male parent and said in that location was nothing he could offer her to bring her "whatever kind of closure."
"There isn't going to exist closure," she said. "But I'm okay with that. I'm content with my life, and I don't need him to say deplorable. I don't need him to ask for forgiveness, and I frankly wouldn't believe in his request for forgiveness."
Source: https://abcnews.go.com/US/happy-face-killers-daughter-believes-kill-released/story?id=80909539
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