The Happy Face Murderer – Keith Hunter Jesperson –12. Capture

donzhtm

Capture
Despite Julie's death, Keith tried to keep to his normal schedule. He hauled trucks across the country, stopped occasionally to play cribbage, and even hit on some of the girls in the truck stops. One of the girls received a few of Julie's coats as a present, which he instantly knew was a mistake. Nearly forty now, Keith was worried about his soon-to-expire driving license. Whenever he saw a cop, he didn't know whether he'd be asked about murder, an out-of-date license, or anything else.

Over the coming weeks, he felt paranoid. One night, he almost took a girl back to his truck with murderous deeds on his mind, but they kissed and said good night before she clambered inside. Instead, Keith lay back on his bunk and listened to the CB radio, as truckers and prostitutes arranged to meet one another. The urges were becoming overpowering, and feeling like it was too much, he stepped outside and resolved to go for a walk.

Before he could get both feet on the ground, a voice shouted out from behind. It was the security guard who worked at the truck stop. Fully expecting to hear that he was under arrest, Keith paused with baited breath, but it turned out that the man just wanted to chat.

So Keith tried to get back into his regular life. Several times, he had close run-ins with women, but something always got between him and their murder. They might have had a family, or they changed their mind at the last moment. He took to shoplifting detective magazines, just to see if he could. When he came across fellow truckers who worked for the same company, they seemed to try and avoid him. Everything seemed to be on edge, as though something was wrong.

Keith needed some money to cross into New Mexico. He phoned the company, and they agreed to pay it. When the money arrived, he set off. But when he reached the border, the policeman asked for his full name. This never usually happened. They let him pass through, but it seemed as though someone might be wanting to track him. When arriving at the drop off point, the entire crew worked hard to help him unload the truck. Usually, he was stuck doing it himself.

Phoning in to the company offices, he was told that he would need to check again later for his next job. As he drove into two to kill time, a couple of police patrol cars began to follow. Once he was out of town, they overtook him and drove off into the distance. Ringing the company again, he was told there was something for him tomorrow, but in the meantime, he was not to go anywhere. After three days without a load to haul, it seemed odd that they would delay further. Usually, they couldn't turn the truckers round fast enough. Keith was certain they'd been told what to say by the police. Worried and convinced that running away would only prove his guilt, Keith went to bed.

Waking up in the morning, Keith decided to wash his truck. There wasn't much else to do. As he drove up to the wash station, the little "open" light switched off. A man in a black SUV was watching him from the side of the road. Getting on the radio, he inquired as to whether the facility was open. He was told that it was always ready for business. To Keith, this meant that someone didn't want him washing evidence off the truck. Calling through to his trucking company, he finally got his orders. When he asked what the load was going to be, they didn't have an answer. They always had an answer. Possibly machine parts, they told him.

Keith drove up to the pickup site and parked a good distance away. He watched for any clues, but the fairground seemed deserted. Just as he reached the front gate, the same SUV from earlier pulled up alongside his truck. The man jumped out and told Keith that his load was right in the center of the site, and while he didn't have the keys to the front gate, they just had to drive through a gap at the side of the fence.

As he pulled into the site, he noticed how tight the space was. It had been like threading a needle driving in, and that didn't leave him much room to load. But if he drove in, then Keith believed enough in his own abilities to be able to drive out again. Dismounting from the cabin, he followed the man as they went looking for the load.

Two men stepped out from the shadows. Wearing suits and wielding guns, they ordered Keith to face the wall and spread his legs. They checked him for weapons. After he asked just what the hell was going on, he was informed that he was wanted as part of an "ongoing investigation." This told Keith nothing. Arson. Murder. Rape. He could be wanted for a number of crimes. When he was forced into a patrol car, he was reassured by the New Mexico insignia. He hadn't killed anybody in this state. Sure, he'd set a few wildfires, but that was nothing compared to murder. It was only when the car was a few blocks from the sheriff's office that one of the officers revealed that he was wanted in connection with the death of his fiancé, Julie Winningham. The body had been found a day after the murder. Keith instantly regretted not moving the body. Giving nothing away, Keith feigned disinterest. Julie was into drugs and other such things, he told the officers. They didn't seem convinced.

Arriving at the station, Keith was introduced to cops from Clark County, Washington. This was where the murder had taken place. As a suspect in the death of Julie, they asked Keith for a full confession. He lied. For the next five hours, he was grilled by the police. The longer the quizzing went on, the less evidence Keith was convinced they had. He was photographed, finger printed, and the police took hair and blood samples. DNA, Keith thought, was all over his crime scenes. But without enough evidence, the police turned him free. As the police took away the tarps from the truck and his log book, he figured he might have a few days left of freedom. Keith Jesperson needed to make plans.

Over the coming days, the scale of the problem began to dawn on Keith. There were a lot of witnesses who could attest to him being with Julie at the time of the murder. He considered fleeing to Canada. Still a Canadian citizen, it would at least give him some respite, plus Canada did not have the death penalty. But he couldn't depend on his trucking company to send him up there, as they were in league with the cops. Taking a bus would give the police plenty of time to intercept him, and when he looked through the window, there was a police car stationed outside the diner where he was drinking coffee.

Keith went to the nearest shop. He bought as much pain medicine as he could lay his hands on and retired to the truck, where he knew he had more. Getting undressed and worried that the police car outside would rush in and save his life, Keith debated whether or not he should write a note. But there was no explanation that would make the situation better. He swallowed all the pills as quickly as possible and laid back in the cabin. After an initial feeling like his eyeballs were expanding, he passed out.

It was raining when he woke up, and it was still night. Keith wasn't dead. He crawled to the truck stop restroom, and when he went to climb back into the cabin, someone hit him in the face. Looking around, he realized that he'd tried to get in the wrong truck. Dragging Keith into the offices, the driver deposited him in front of the security guard. Keith could barely speak, yet alone remember his name. He eventually tried to explain the situation, enough that the guard just took his keys and told him to sober up. Suicide was never mentioned.

Back in the truck, Keith took the rest of the pills. He passed out, this time until midday. Waking up again, he realized that this was just another entry in the long list of things Keith Jesperson could never do right. Phoning up his employers, he found that he was now free to get back to work and argued with them about how they had turned the police on him. He hit the road, his mind racing for fresh ideas of how to kill himself. He tried again with sleeping pills but failed and considered wandering up a mountain and allowing himself to die of hypothermia. Instead, he wrote a letter to his brother confessing what he'd done. After that, Keith rang up the detective who'd arrested him and gave a full confession to the murder of Julie Winningham.

Keith Jesperson went to jail to await his trial. He was placed on suicide watch and didn't much like the people he was sharing his cell with. The other inmates didn't like him much either, due to the rape charges they overheard from an officer. Shunned, taunted, and threatened, he was moved to a solitary cell. A few days later, when talking with the cops again, all he could think about was the confession letter he'd sent to his brother and the Happy Face confessions he'd sent to the court houses and the newspapers. They might match up. He'd only confessed to Julie's murder. If they made the connection, he was doomed. While being flown across state lines, he resolved to call his brother at the first opportunity.

He was finally able to call Brad and immediately asked his brother to destroy the letter. But he was told that Les Jesperson, their dad, had already made Brad turn the letter over to the police. Keith was stunned. Les hadn't wanted to be accused of withholding evidence. Keith was visited by his kids. They were rushed away before they could really talk about much. As he was led back to his cells, Keith cried.

But as soon as Keith hit the stage in the court, he was a changed man. He seemed determined to right the wrongs of the court, who had convicted a couple of the murder of Taunja Bennett. He was furious that no one had responded to the confessions he had scrawled on the walls of restrooms. He accused the court of incompetence for their ability to address the Happy Face letters he had sent. It was like a one-an campaign to distract from the actual murders he had committed.

From his cell, Keith seemed happy to confess to more and more murders. At one point, he told his father that the actual figure stretched into three figures. Across the country, convicted killers began to chime up and insist that they had been convicted of Keith's crimes. But the courts refused to entertain such ideas. The only two that stuck around were the pair accused of murdering Taunja, and it took a series of smuggled press releases for the detectives to even consider the idea that the pair might have been falsely convicted. The cops seemed unwilling to overturn the case and even half-heartedly toured Keith around the murder site to try and see if he knew what he was talking about. It took Keith's discussions with journalist Phil Stanford to solve the case. Phil went and found the girl's missing purse following Keith's instructions. It would take another year before the court's overturned their initial decision.

Writing from jail, Keith began to sign letters with a Happy Face. Despite his lawyer's recommendations, he continued to talk to people on the outside and confessed to the crimes. He insisted on his own sanity and even drew diagrams to find the remains of the victims he said he had killed. He even managed to start a website from jail, where he sold a Self-Start Serial Killer Kit, which came with a free inflatable murdered woman.

Eventually, despite the fame Keith was trying to earn himself, the courts ruled against him. He was found guilty of eight counts of murder and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. Originally serving his time in Oregon, he was transferred in 2009 while police investigated another potential victim of the Happy Face killer. To this day, he is still behind bars and is not likely to ever be released. After spending his life torturing animals, setting fires, and murdering women, Keith Hunter Jesperson is one long haul trucker who is never likely to hit the road ever again.