The Happy Face Murderer – Keith Hunter Jesperson –1. Early Life in Canada

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Early Life in Canada
Tracing the life of a serial killer can be a daunting task. Many of the more famous killers, such as John Wayne Gacy or Jeffrey Dahmer, exhibit similar traits and can help point towards a future of deviant behavior. Psychological trauma, abuse, and an inclination towards violence can all hint at what might lie ahead for the young person. In the case of Keith Jesperson, a journey into his childhood can be illuminating, chilling, and prophetic. As we begin to look into exactly what shaped him into the man he became, it becomes increasingly obvious just how distressing a childhood he experienced.

On the 6th of April, 1955, Leslie and Gladys Jesperson gave birth to their third child. The couple lived in a town named Chilliwack in British Columbia, Canada. The boy was named Keith and would eventually be the middle child of five, with two brothers and two sisters. Leslie Jesperson was a stoic man, an alcoholic whose emotional distance from his family would be noted in later years. The distant and often remote Northwest district of Canada has a habit of breeding strong men, but the cold of the climate was bred into Leslie's bones. Out in the wilderness, it was not uncommon to have to endure zero temperature chilling gales, with blizzards regularly forcing the locals indoors. The son of a blacksmith, Leslie Jesperson's father had moved to the region in the 1930s. A failed move to the warmer, more agricultural pastures of Saskatchewan resulted in a humiliating failure for the family, who were some of the millions affected by the aftershocks of the Great Depression. Forced back to the cold, Leslie's family was used to going hungry and to the cold.

The family patriarch, Leslie's father, Arthur, was unfamiliar with the concept of defeat. The failed move to the east and the resigned move back to British Columbia was said to have broken him, embittering him, and forcing him to come to terms with the idea of failure. In the family – descended, they said, from warrior Danes – such losses were abhorrent and not to be tolerated. Arthur's own brother – Keith's great uncle – was committed to an insane asylum around this time. Not wanting to face the idea, he decided to kill himself. Lacking the traditional means, the man took a nail measuring three and a half inches and hammered it into his own skull. This was the family atmosphere in which Leslie was raised and which he would imprint on the young Keith.

The family's blacksmith shop was always busy. There were two forges, and the kids would help out when they weren't in school. Leslie would grow up swinging the hammer against the red hot iron as his father made horse shoes and other metal works for the locals. He worked to the point of exhaustion every day just to help the family put food on the table. By the time Keith was born, the old blacksmith Arthur was relegated to a looming presence in the corner of the room. Rather than the strong-armed iron worker remembered by Leslie and the family, Keith recalled a "tough guy" who never showed emotion to anyone, much less spent time talking to the kids in the family. Women were, to Arthur, seeming wastes of space. The ideas and concepts were impressed upon Leslie and Keith from a young age.

Forever shocked by the failure in Saskatchewan, old Arthur was tainted by the idea that he was forced to sometimes go out and shoot gophers just to feed his family. It was a work ethic and approach to life that left a huge imprint on Keith's father. Leaving school in the tenth grade, Leslie found himself doing anything he could to put together money. Not only was he a plumber and blacksmith, but he took to teaching himself Morse code, mechanical and hydraulic engineering, electronics, and how to manufacture items. During a particularly difficult time, he became a coffin maker for the local native tribes who were suffering from an epidemic. His hard work and creativity left Leslie with a string of clever inventions designed to simplify logging in the area and make it more efficient. Turning his skills to anything, he was able to teach himself how to play the accordion and the keyboard, as well as write poems. Friends of Leslie remembered him as the six-foot-tall life of any party, but the man never topped five foot eleven. The soft rural accent belied a furious anger known only to those closest to him.

Having seen his own father's struggle to piece together a living, Leslie was determined not to let himself be caught in such a rut. As well as being named the Master of the Fraser River Dikes, he took on a number of jobs and started a number of businesses. This time spent on his career impacted the family and the time he was able to spend with his wife and five children. Added to this and above all else, he drank.

To Keith, however, the man was still an icon, a figure demanding respect. Leslie was an engineer, a trusted member of the community, a friend to all who knew him, and he was the family's authority figure. As Keith remembered it at a later date, however, his father would "work and eat and then drink himself to sleep." Just like in the blacksmith's forge, Leslie encouraged – practically demanded – that the children help their father when they could. Every day was a work day, and if the children showed any signs of laziness, they were beaten.

Leslie was a master of both physical and psychological abuse. Keith would remember the sarcastic put-downs, the insults, and the wisecracks made by his father. One incident involved a young Keith asking his father whether an electric fence was working. Leslie encouraged his son to urinate on the fence and laughed uproariously when the boy received a sharp electric shock. He pulled a similar trick with one of the girls, encouraging her to touch the fence while he laughed. As a learned and practical man, Leslie would get angry when his children couldn't replicate his own capacity for learning. He was emotionally and physically distant from the children. Drinking, working, and missing school plays, for example, were all par for the course. Women, too, were also seemingly not deserving of Leslie's respect, with him telling Keith on numerous occasions that he was only still with his wife, Gladys (Keith's mother,) because of her cooking. It was an attitude that Keith would absorb.

Gladys herself was an equally hard worker, but was at least present for the raising of the children. Having been brought up in a strict, puritanical household, she found even the slightest mention of sex abhorrent. When she had been growing up on a farm, the women and girls of the household were not even allowed to be present when the animals were being encouraged to breed. There was not a single member of the Jesperson family – including Leslie – who was ever permitted to see Gladys without her clothes. In her own house, Gladys would allow no discussion of sex, sexuality, or any associated matter. To her, it was an entirely taboo subject. It was a known fact that she preferred the two girls, Jill and Sharon, while Leslie favored two of his boys, Brad and Bruce. Keith was left alone, the forgotten middle child.

For Keith, childhood was not a happy time. Between his father's alcoholic beatings, his mother's staunch religious approach to child rearing, the indifference by both of them, he was encouraged to find his own way in the world. Recognized as the least bright of all of the Jesperson children, Keith's earliest memory is of a day at the park. Standing at the top of the slide and noticing his younger brother Brad sitting at the bottom, he took a decent-sized rock and balanced it at the top of the chute before letting go. The rock rolled down the plastic and caught the younger boy in the head. Blood was drawn, and Brad erupted into a barrage of tears. It would be Keith's sister Sharon who took the blame, however, and he was happy to let her.

People have come forward with memories of Keith's early childhood as being fairly normal. He was a quiet and obedient young boy, but one who was prone to day-dreaming. Facing a lot of teasing about his inability to focus and his lack of mental athleticism, Keith was a ponderous, sluggish young boy. The only area where he showed any capacity was in the family's favorite game, cribbage, which he was able to play before he could read.

During the time of Keith's childhood, Chilliwack was a rural area. Though the family would later move to the larger town of Selah, they would always own animals, including chickens, horses, ducks, sheep, and dogs. Leslie, ever the handyman, built a wooden water wheel to help trap salmon in the stream that would run through their land. As the children were out helping and working, they would be scattered across the several acres the family owned. When it was time for dinner, Gladys would pull the cord on a huge orange whistle, and the children would come running back to the kitchen table.

Keith was also a shy boy. Happy to play alone, even before he started school, he could be found digging tunnels and building forts. His mother thought that he was never happier than when playing alone. Daydreaming and imagining his life as a hunter in Africa or a sailor in the navy, Keith played out heroic fantasies in his mind, but always on his own.

But sometimes, it was impossible to escape his father's attention. Speaking after his imprisonment, Keith could recall one day when he was forced into hiding under the kitchen table from the leather belt that Leslie used to whip the children. As his father screamed, "Don't you run away from me!" the then four year old attempted to hide amid the chair and table legs. Grabbed and dragged out, Leslie laid the belt repeatedly across his son's backside, punishment for some long-forgotten indiscretion. Stop crying, Keith was told, or he would be given something to cry about.

One incident that Keith remembered incurring his father's wrath involved a duck that Leslie kept as a pet. Keith had been playing outside when he came across the bird, a favorite of his father's various menagerie. Suddenly struck by a violent impulse, Keith took a rock and killed the bird. His father found out, and despite Gladys's attempts to intervene, Keith received a whipping with the belt. The drink consumed by Leslie gave the beating an extra edge and made him almost impossible to reason with when his temper flared.

Keith would find a friend before he was five years old. A brown Labrador named Duke arrived in the house just before Keith's birthday and soon became firmly attached to the middle child. Sharing a room with Brad, Duke could often be found sleeping on Keith's bed during the nights. For once, Keith had a topic he was happy to discuss with anyone. He would animatedly chat about Duke with anyone who would listen. The dog would chase salmon along the stream and cars along the road, taking a few blows in the process. Duke would chase off rival dogs and even killed two of the neighbor's dogs who might have ventured into the yard. Protective of Keith, Duke would shield him from any intruders onto the property. This was where Keith got his first insight into the reproductive ways of the world, with Duke attempting to have sex with any female dog he came across. Keith later joked that the dog gave him a "head start about sex."

When Keith did try to make friends, however, things did not proceed in the best of fashions. He was often teased for being taller and more cumbersome than the other children at school. One attempt to befriend a Native American child resulted in Leslie becoming angry and telling Keith to break off any relationship with the boy, as there was simply nothing to be gained from the friendship. A school sports day ended in disaster when a hop, skip, and jump event involved Keith. Rather than running before launching himself forwards, Keith simply stood in one spot, hopped, skipped, and then jumped. The teacher pointed out his efforts as the exact opposite of the desired technique, the other children burst into laughter, and Keith ran home, telling himself that he didn't need anyone else.

His parents attempted to find a friend for Keith, and a boy named Martin would occasionally be welcomed to the home. Martin was a troublesome boy, who would find ways to create mischief and leave Keith saddled with the blame. The clumsy child, too tall for his age, near-sighted and not especially bright, Keith found few ways in which to escape the punishments Martin's behavior brought his way. Subjected to beatings and punishments in front of everybody, one day Martin's actions grew too much for Keith. Keith tracked the boy down and trapped him in the space behind the family's garage. Keith jumped on the youngster, wrapping his hands around Martin's neck. He choked and choked, refusing to let go until Leslie arrived on the scene and pulled him away. By the time Keith relinquished his grip, Martin was unconscious. If his father had not arrived, Keith admits that the boy would likely have become his first victim. Once again, Keith received a beating. This time, he knew he was guilty.

Discussing the event later, Keith Jesperson remembers that this was the first time he was able to envisage himself as two distinct people. The normal, gentle side of his personality stood by and watched as the angrier side took control. This added to the imaginary world into which the boy would often retreat, something he named "Keith's World." In this place, he was able to retreat from the difficulty of everyday life and spend his time with animals, away from antagonists such as his brothers and his classmates.

Keith's relationship with animals was complicated. As well as Duke, whom he loved, and the other family pets, Keith once came across a raven with a broken wing. He picked up the bird, splintered its wing, and made a home for it out of rags. He named the bird Blackie. Arriving home from school one day, Keith discovered that his older brother and a friend had taken the bird and trapped it under an orange milk crate. They hurled their pocket knives at the bird until it died, all while Keith watched. Furious, he ran into his brother's room and threw all of the toy planes out of the window. Leslie was unimpressed, saying Blackie was just a "dumb crow." Keith was punished, Bruce was not.

But animals' deaths were not unfamiliar to Keith. He would help his father out around the land, killing gophers on a regular basis. He would arrive home covered in gopher blood after an enjoyable day's hunting. Leslie could not abide the presence of too many cats on the farm. When kittens were born, they were killed quickly. Keith would help, much to his sisters' disgust. Similarly, he was taught how to deal with garter snakes that were found on the property, taking a hoe and cutting the reptiles in two. But this often wasn't enough. Keith admits that he "enjoyed" watching them struggle as he balanced the blade on their backs, even going as far as to torture the animals with garden tools. For young Keith, it was just one more way of having fun.

Alongside various stories of torturing animals and disagreements with other children, Keith was aware of sex from an early age. As is perhaps inevitable for someone growing up in a rural area, the animals gave some insight for the young boy, providing ideas that were carried over into a relationship with a little girl. When Keith was five, he had his first kiss on the back seat of his mother's car. The two continued their experiments and "practiced sex," which for the children meant kissing, a little bit of inquisitive touching, and showing one another the more private areas of the body. If Gladys had ever discovered her child in such a position, she would likely have been furious.

Sex presented itself in Keith's life in an entirely more dubious fashion when he was playing on a neighbor's farm. While he and some other children entertained themselves, one of the workers offered to teach them about sex. He encouraged the children to undress and did likewise, before encouraging them to touch one another. Keith quickly grew scared and ran away before anything could happen. Later, he would ask one of the boys who had been left behind what had occurred. He was told that the dairy worker had sodomized the youngster, that it had hurt, and that the boy had told his father. The boy's parents encouraged their son to keep quiet, but the worker was never seen again on the farm.

Friendships with the local boys were always fractious. Despite being the same age, in the same class, and living right next door to one boy, Keith managed to provoke nothing but ire in the child. Keith was often bullied by the boy, punched and hit almost every time they met one another. This culminated in another close call when, with the pair swimming at nearby Cultus Lake one summer, the boy took Keith by the head and held him under the surface of the lake, briefly allowed him up to breath, then forced him back down again. This went on for ten minutes, until Keith could see nothing but black. He was saved when a counsellor jumped in the water and pulled him out. But vengeance would be had. When the pair visited a local swimming pool, Keith grabbed the boy by the head and thrust it underwater. Keith was always the bigger, stronger one of the pair, though rarely knew how to use his size advantage. This time, however, he took advantage of his size and held the boy underwater with every intention of letting him die. The boy was only saved when a lifeguard dragged Keith away. It was the second murder attempt of a young life.

As Keith grew older, his interests grew more complicated. After briefly making friends with some boys in the area, he began to learn various techniques for torturing animals. They would attach firecrackers to sparrows, nail crows to a wooden board as throwing knife target practice, or would feed Alka-Seltzer to seagulls, a practice which would make the birds' stomachs burst inside them. But the torture was not limited to birds. Keith and his cohorts would take cats and dogs, nailing them to the same boards and fill them with needles and other sharp objects. Keith still recalls one of his favorite pastimes, which involved crimping together cats' tails using wire, throwing them over either side of a rope, and watching until one clawed the other to death. The boys would sit and laugh. Even after one cat had died, the other would still yelp, howl, and scream until it died of its wounds. The boys found it uproariously funny.