The Happy Face Murderer – Keith Hunter Jesperson –3. Married Life

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Married Life
For the future serial killer, life as a married man was entirely different to what he had experienced before. A job with a lumber company beckoned, but the constant need for surgery on his foot kept Keith close to his parents, working in his father's various workshops when he could. Rose was beginning to discover that life away from her family was not as blissful as she had imagined. The pair moved into a mobile home, which they parked on a part of the Jesperson estate that had been turned into the "Silver Spur Mobile Park." Together with his father, Keith operated the heavy machinery and carried out the work needed to turn a plot of land into a trailer park ready for over a hundred mobile homes. Numbers began to swell as residents moved in. Les was sure to be strict with residents, while Keith took a friendlier approach. Perhaps too friendly, it might have seemed, as his father could recall an instance where a soon-to-be-evicted tenant with a teenage daughter mentioned the possibility of calling the cops, with the charge of statutory rape on her mind. Keith shrugged off the suggestion, but he does remember watching women through the windows of their trailers at night, before returning to his home to fantasize while in bed with his wife about what he had seen.

But the base instincts were never far away. Even when he was busy working at the trailer park, Keith felt the need to return out to the wilderness and find something to kill. With a set of by-laws on the park to guard against strays, Keith one day encountered a cat on the property where he had had trouble before. He picked up the creature and slammed it into the pavement. Picking up the stunned cat, he wrung its neck, and then drove out a few miles to fling it from the window of his car. The tenant was told that the cat had simply run away.

Animals that Keith deemed to be pests were taken out in a variety of ways. While Les has resigned himself to drowning the occasional stray cat in a sack, his son would use anything he had available. Shovels, screwdrivers, sickles, scythes, hammers, or simply his bare hands. He would shoot dogs with his pistol or simply throw them out of the window of a speeding car. A dog rummaging through his garbage was beheaded with a scythe (the blade only managed to cut through half of the neck,) while poisoned meat was used to kill seven cats and kittens in just one night. Other cats were burned alive in an incinerator, or trapped in a barrel with gasoline before Keith threw a match in afterwards. Later, he would admit to deriving an almost sexual pleasure from the act of killing.

Eventually, Keith's court case against the school regarding his horrific injury was finally settled. In 1976, he was awarded $33,000 in a settlement. For Keith, this seemed like the chance to finally move back to Chilliwack. Instead, Les managed to convince his son to invest the money in expanding the trailer park. They would be business partners, with Keith and Rose owning ten percent. Rose could even be put in charge of the books. Keith agreed and went about the work of laying concrete for the expansion.

Following the business proposal, Rose began to pressure Keith for children. The idea perturbed Keith, who knew himself to still be attracted to other women, one in particular named Arliss who was a member of his bowling team. After being turned round to the idea by Rose, six months of attempting to conceive bore no results. On checking with a doctor, it was found Keith had a low sperm count. He blamed the stress of his living and working arrangements, especially the influence of his father. Rose, desperate for children, even put the couple on an adoption list.

The dream of the Silver Spur Mobile Home Park did not last. After only two years, money problems forced the family to sell. Spending what money he had from the sale on a series of poor ventures, Keith found that he needed money fast. He took a series of low paying jobs, often all at once. Eventually, he managed to secure a position at a local trucking company. The idea of being an independent truck driver appealed to Keith, and this was his first step along the path. It began with working in the garage, welding, repairing, and performing other tasks. Away from the stress of the trailer park and working sixty hours at his new job, Keith became a father for the first time. Melissa was born in 1979, into a household still experiencing money troubles, but she was well-loved by her parents.

A year later, Jason was born. Keith doted on the children. When they were around their grandfather, Les, Keith was adamant that he should never touch them. Keith never beat his children, and was sure that his father wouldn't either. Keith's beatings and humiliations at his father's hands still festered under the surface of their cordial relationship.

Soon, Keith was driving trucks. His assignments were getting to be longer and longer, with Keith spending more and more time behind the wheel, away from his young family. At this point, he was only present some five or six days every four weeks. This took a toll on the marriage. Arguments began to abound, and tempers frayed. Rose had put on weight during her pregnancy, a fact that Keith was sure to mention. Their libidos were running at different speeds, with Keith's urge to rush to the bedroom on their first meeting not in line with Rose's desires of how to spend what little family time they had.

Even when out driving the truck, Keith was still something of a prisoner to his urges. Sometimes he might start a random fire, or attack a stray cat, even in front of his children. Similarly, old feelings of distance began to creep back into his life as he found it tough to make friends with those in the same business. In Canada, he was viewed as American. In America, he seemed Canadian. So, in 1981, after Keith discovered a new spate of jobs opening up in British Columbia, he moved the family back north of the border. Rose, pregnant once again, was less than enthusiastic. She would follow once Keith was settled in the new home.

Finally, Keith was free. Free from his parents and his father's influence over his life. Free from the rigorous work schedules that locked him down to one place. Even free from his wife and children. Out on the road, he was independent. This was put to the test soon, when an effervescent Keith decided to pull over and help a young girl on the side of the road. She was having trouble with her car. A quick check under the bonnet revealed that it was a simple fix. Delighted, the attractive young girl gave Keith her number and promised to buy him dinner in Spokane. Keith refused the temptation to stray from his martial vows, but he pulled to the side of the road a short while later and masturbated to the image.

It didn't take long for Keith to settle in Canada. He started out by waving flags on site, but was soon driving the coal trucks. In the bottom of the coal pits, the huge trucks that moved the produce weighed up to 170 tons when fully loaded. Driving them around the quarry was dangerous work. If the brakes failed on an incline, the driver was told to drag his truck along the side of the wall in an attempt to slow the vehicles down. This work was great for Keith's long-term goal of cross country trucking adventures. And away from the family, getting to know his new work colleagues, Keith found himself even enjoying his bachelor lifestyle.

But this came to a shuddering halt when Rose and the kids arrived. The family took a two bedroom flat, and Rose made her annoyance at Keith's new misadventures known. Scared he might lose his kids, Keith reeled in his behavior. Jason, Melissa, and the newborn Carrie were very, very important to Keith. But trouble was always just around the corner and, as usual, the relationship between Keith and his father was to blame.

In British Colombia, the real money was in welding. Abandoning his trucking dreams to focus on the large debts he had racked up, Keith retrained as a welder and was soon making good money. But he noticed that everyone around him in the workshop was stealing. Batteries, tools, even engine parts. Everything seemed to go missing, and everyone seemed to be in on the heist. Eventually, Keith was too.

Meanwhile, Les had opened a hardware store back in America. Speaking over the phone, he casually mentioned how nice the leather overalls were that they had in Keith's workshop. Soon, the son was on the lookout for a set in his father's size. A guard posted at the door caught him as he tried to smuggle the clothes out of the shop. Keith was offered a deal: admit the theft and have it all forgotten about in a year. Les advised Keith to deny everything, lest everyone at the company assume he was a thief. Keith, against his better judgement, took his father's advice. He denied everything and was fired. After the good money he had been making in the welding shop, he chose to blame his father once again for his current, precarious predicament.

The next two years were spent looking for a job in Canada. None paid as well as the welding position. Truck driving was back on the cards, but it paid a fraction of the wages. The family moved a hundred miles east to escape any possible rumors about Keith's dismissal. A brief stint as the driver of a huge Peterbilt machine allowed him to control a dream machine, but company layoffs hit after only eight months. A fleeting interest in boxing helped Keith get back into shape, but the cold Alberta weather caused Rose to complain. Soon, news arrived that Gladys had contracted lymph-node cancer. To bring the grandchildren back near their dying grandmother, the whole family moved back to the south. Rose was happy, but Keith was not. It seemed that, though he loved his kids, Keith had fallen out of love with his wife.

With money still tight, the family bought a home. Keith had a trucking job, but nothing to fall back on if he lost it. Les offered to help with the down payment on the mobile home, a move which Keith saw as just another attempt to exert control. But these days, Keith was too busy to argue. He was too busy, still, to indulge his violent fantasies. There were no chances to drive out to the middle of nowhere to dismember a cat or to torture a dog. There was no time to set fires. He had to work.

This meant driving trucks all across the state, and it was something that Keith, finally, liked. At times, he was essentially living in the truck, away from the family. Out on the road, there was no one to criticize or complain to him. In Keith's view, he was the master of his fate, the king of his domain. As an extra benefit, there was always a slew of available women present in the regular truck stop haunts. While he was still adamant about staying "true" to Rose, Keith saw no crime in looking at other women when he was out of town. In every stop, Keith would flirt with the waitresses in the diners and cafes. No longer finding his relationship with Rose sexually gratifying, leaving Keith with masses of stored-up tension in need of release. This meant, at first, bike rides or hikes, attempts to make himself too tired to pursue sex with his wife.

One day, Keith arrived back from a trucking journey to learn that his mother's cancer had grown worse. She died two weeks later, after Keith came to visit her on her deathbed. At the funeral, several people noted that Keith was not showing any real, explicit emotion. When looking back over their fuss, he failed to see the problem. His mother was "just ashes." Within a year, Les would be remarried.

In 1986, Keith faced his worst fear. He lost his trucking job after the boss's son took his place. This made mortgage repayments a problem, and the family soon had to move. Again, Keith was back to juggling part-time jobs, trying to get by on caffeine, sugary drinks, and not enough sleep. At times, he even stole from the bar where he was working as a doorman. Eventually, it got to be too much. Rose accidently overdrew the family bank account, and Keith was furious. Determined not to beat his wife (or his children) as his father might have done, he unleashed his rage on the front door. A big hole was punched through the wood. Rose left for a few hours to allow her husband to cool down. The door was never fixed, existing as a perpetual reminder, Keith thought, to think before writing a check. But it was no good. Eventually, the family declared bankruptcy.

Eventually, Keith found another trucking job. Once again, he was free to travel up and down the state. But his sexual frustration found no release. That was until he chanced upon an encounter with the wife of a friend. After dropping little Jason off to play with the friend's son, the father – Billy – made his excuses and left. As soon as he was gone, the mother – Ginny – began to make advances for Keith. He played them off, worried about Billy finding out. When Billy arrived back home, Keith's confession was met with indifference. The couple were swingers. Confused but interested, Keith had sex with Ginny that night and many time afterwards. It was the first time he cheated on Rose, and he only stopped after Billy and Ginny moved away from the area.

From then on, the seal on Keith's promiscuity seemed to have broken. After fantasizing about the women he met while driving his truck, and never skipping an opportunity to assist a damsel in distress on the side of the road, Keith began to pick up a series of mistresses. The divorcee he met in a late-night restaurant. The two young girls who wanted to see inside his truck. Anyone but the prostitutes who frequented the truck stops. They were considered a step too far. Keith liked to assume that his moral compass was still very firmly pointed towards the good, in actions if not in thoughts.

But this wouldn't last long. One night saw Keith and his truck travelling down Highway 97. His lights picked out the shape of a young girl pushing along a bicycle in the middle a storm. Pulling over, he offered her a lift. She was young – possibly around fifteen – and of Native American descent. She reminded Keith of the young girls who had lived near his home in Chilliwack. Already, his fantasies were running wild with ideas. Driving along, he imagined taking her by force. Picking a parking spot, he reached over before he could even completely park the truck. The girl seemed to have predicted such an attack and leaped out of the cabin.

The girl was fifty feet away, and Keith had no hope of catching her. Trying to play off the incident, he returned the girl's bike and sped away as fast as he could. For the next month, he was terrified of being caught. All the possible means of identification flashed through his head – the license plate, the load, his somewhat unique appearance – and he imagined the girl informing her father of the attempted rape. But nothing happened. Keith swore to stick only to girls who wanted to have sex with him. Or his wife.

After a few months of renewed sexual frustration, Keith was back to familiar targets. A cat received a stoning in front of Jason, and Keith drowned a neighbor's dog when he was all alone. He took particular care in the latter, allowing the dog up to breath occasionally to prolong the act. It was a technique he found satisfying in a sexual fashion and one he would use later on. Animals were always under threat from Keith, and his children knew it. He might douse a cat in water and throw it out into the freezing night, or cover a dog in gasoline and throw it a lit match. Even his children's own dog was not safe. After it developed hemorrhoids, Keith took it out into the back yard and smashed the little dog's head. The children cried for days.

Following the incident with the girl who got away – and noting his growing frustrations – Keith decided that he might need to try professional assistance. Out in his truck once again, Keith met Linda, a prostitute. He spent twenty dollars for three hours of Linda's attentions. She was the first of a string of girls as Keith got more and more accustomed to paying for sex. There was a woman in almost every truck stop, dotted along the various routes. When he arrived back home to Rose, he might try to gauge her interest in romantic activity, but she was never able to satisfy his burning urges. One time, Rose asked to come along on one of the trips. The trip was no fun, culminating in her husband pushing her towards a pair of pimps in one truck stop and joking that they could take her. Once they arrived home, Keith immediately went to the irrigation ditch behind the house and drowned a cat. With scratches up his arms, he told the watching children that it had "got in his way." After that, people started to grow worried for Keith's state of mind. In all, it was the beginning of the end of their happy marriage.

It was with the marriage in this state that Keith met Peggy Jones. A waitress in a truck stop who flirted with Keith and eventually went back to his cabin, Peggy was the first woman who Keith met who could keep up with his sexual urges. A few weeks after meeting her, he called her again. Then again. And again. Soon, he was stopping at her home every time he went out on the road. He told Peggy that he wasn't married, and she told him she was going through a divorce. Soon, Keith was spending more time with the new woman than he was with his family. After a short time, Peggy and Keith began to see themselves as a couple and took trips together. The told one another that they were each in love with the other. Peggy advised Keith that he needed to finish his marriage and break away from the father he was always complaining about.

Driving Peggy up to a tavern near his home, Keith went back to the family. Before going to bed, he played with the kids for a few hours. When lying next to Rose, he told her that he wasn't happy, that he wanted a divorce. His wife rolled to one side and went to sleep. No arguments, no disagreements. In the morning, Keith played with the kids again and Rose remained silent. He left to drive his rig south and, when he returned, he found an empty home and a letter informing him that Rose and the kids had gone to live with her mother in Spokane. She wanted everything in the divorce, everything except Keith's bowling ball, his golf clubs, his bicycle, and his clothes. Keith read the letter and sat down and cried.

In the summer of 1988, Keith decided that he might need to turn to his sister Jill for advice. Driving to her place in Seattle, he was involved in a traffic accident and found himself in the hospital. Unable to work, he lost his job. Taking a new position with shorter journeys, Keith discovered that he could smuggle Peggy along for the ride. Despite her waitressing job, she was happy to attend. The manager at her workplace warned Keith against the girl, telling him that she flirted with all of the truckers who came in and very nearly rode off with some of them. Keith ignored the man. He moved in with Peggy and enjoyed, for the first time, living with a woman who enjoyed sex as much as he did.

But nothing else was quite so rosy. The kids were far away, and keeping up with the child support was proving difficult. Money was in increasingly short supply, and Les wasn't helping, having taken a dislike to Peggy. Keith, always one to take the contrarian view to whatever his father suggested, refused to listen to his father's advice to return to his family. The divorce was finalized on the couple's thirteenth anniversary. Keith would later confess that getting involved with Peggy would prove to be an awful mistake. Losing his family in such a fashion was an even worse mistake.

Life with Peggy quickly lost its sheen. After being together a year, the couple decided that they might benefit from being on the road together. Keith put in the papers to make Peggy his official driving partner. In his fantasy, they could get twice as much work done, and he would be able to have sex as often as he liked. But Keith underwent a sudden change of mind. Whether it was his dad's constant suggestions or guilt about his family, Keith told Peggy to leave and began to make plans to go back to his family. The pair had a goodbye drink just before Keith left. After popping out of the mobile home for a few hours, Keith returned to discover the TV smashed and Peggy passed out on the bed in front of him. He was overcome with his urges.

Removing her shoes and clothes, Keith proceeded to have sex with the sleeping woman. He did so multiple times before leaving to sleep at his dad's house. When he met up with Peggy in the morning, she asked whether they had had sex. Keith admitted they had, but left out the details of the rape. He left to be with his family for the next two and a half weeks. But he couldn't get Peggy out of his head. Despite realizing how much he'd missed his family, Keith couldn't bear to leave behind the sexual gratification that Peggy offered. He chose to return to her and leave his family once again.

The move to make Peggy a co-driver was made official, but Keith soon found that it was less than ideal. Peggy was not a skilled or committed driver. She couldn't work the truck in difficult conditions, resented being given navigational advice, and refused to work the long hours Keith was used to. This meant that he was forced to do a huge majority of the driving, especially in anything resembling tricky conditions. Meanwhile, Peggy would flirt with other truckers over the CB radio. Soon enough, the boss as the trucking company decided that Peggy was a hindrance more than a help and removed her from the rotation.

Keith snuck his girlfriend back into the truck anyway. But he could never rely on her to help with driving. Peggy had no sense of direction and no road smarts. He would take a nap in the bed and, when he woke up, would find that they were parked in a truck stop, miles off course. Peggy would be inside, flirting with the other truckers. When one offered to take her off Keith's hands, he readily agreed. This resulted in Peggy chasing him out into the parking lot, begging forgiveness. They continued this way for a year. Despite all the difficulties presented by the arrangement, Keith was at least happy to be having sex three times a day.

The couple ran into trouble when Keith was laid off from his job. Suffering an injury around the same time, he was unable to work. Now armed with a license, Peggy took to the roads as a trucker. Keith began to hear from his friends that she was perpetually unfaithful and that he would be wise to dump her as quickly as possible.

By the time 1990 rolled around, the pair were nearly finished. When Peggy informed Keith that she was pregnant, his suspicions were suitably riled enough to demand proof. Keith left her at this point, refusing to talk to her until the baby underwent blood tests. Moving in with a retired military veteran with multiple sclerosis and an expert cribbage habit, he took on a position as a care provider. For a while, Keith found himself to be somewhat useful and felt good about what he was doing. This emotion soon turned to pity, however, and Keith began to entertain thoughts about killing the man and putting him out of his misery. Deciding that it was too dangerous to stay around the man lest he be accused of eventual murder, Keith went back to Peggy one final time.

The relationship was more fraught than ever. The couple was living with Peggy's mother, though Keith could go days and weeks without hearing from Peggy. Instead, he would just hear stories about her exploits from fellow truck drivers, about the various liaisons she was having with other men up and down the country.

For the first time in his life, Keith found himself without a job for an extended period of time. He spent his days watching television and going to bars. He began to have ideas, fantasies, and daydreams of a vicious and nasty nature. With the relationship with Peggy heading inevitably towards doom, Keith found himself needing a new outlet for his emotions. His next move would be the final step into the world of mass murder. After a troubled childhood, a difficult adolescence, and a complicated adulthood, Keith Hunter Jesperson would take his first steps towards becoming a serial killer.