The Happy Face Murderer – Keith Hunter Jesperson –4. Taunja Bennett

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Taunja Bennett
Life for Keith Jesperson was complicated. With work harder to come by, any job seemed like the right one, while his home life had been devastated. The wife and kids had moved far away, and the relationship with Peggy was oscillating wildly between furious arguments and wild, lustful reconciliations. To Keith, it felt as though everything that could be going wrong in his life was going wrong. Even the house he was living in with Peggy felt old and haunted, as though he couldn't stay a day longer. He found himself tired, depressed, and with no easy way out.

This had been made especially difficult by the arrival of the Christmas season. Still a dedicated father, Keith had sold the majority of his possessions in order to be able to afford presents for his kids. His truck, his fishing rod, and his childhood toys had all been sold. Amid this, Keith received a phone call while he was staying at Peggy's mother's house. Peggy was out on the road and placed a collect call to Keith to inform him that she had met a new man while trucking and that he was to move out immediately.

Keith was furious. Falling back on old habits, he wandered out into the street. A stray cat was walking by, until Keith cornered it and wrapped his hands around its throat. Choking the life out of the animal relieved some of the anger.

Moving out of the house, Keith began to miss Peggy. Their relationship was far from ideal, but at least it gave a release to some of the sexual tension Keith felt building up inside himself every day. He was still living in Peggy's house while she was away, with her mother and the ghosts of two men who had reportedly hanged themselves in the home half a century ago.

On the morning of the 21st of January, 1990, Keith left the home. He purposefully only took a couple of dollars with him, worried about overspending in his current financial dire straits. As usual, he wandered from place to place, killing time. Visiting a bar, he played some pool for a while (he was very good) and won a bit of money. This cash was taken to a nearby bar, and by 2pm, Keith had started drinking. The establishment was run down and seedy. Playing pool again (and drinking black coffee), Keith noticed a girl on the other side of the room. She was playing pool with a couple of male friends. She was about a foot shorter than Keith, wore her dark her at shoulder length, and looked a little like a slimmer, prettier version of Rose. The girl smiled effortlessly and seemingly without a care in the world.

When the girl noticed that Keith was staring at her from across the bar, she ran right over and gave him a hug. The confused bartender asked why, to which the girl gave no real answer. Asking later, Keith discovered that she was a girl who hung out with many of the bar's less fortunate, run-down customers. Despite her warmth and pleasant character, it was generally accepted that she was far from the brightest girl. Eventually, she asked Keith to join her and her friends in a game of pool and introduced herself as Taunja. Keith took one look at the lack of money on the table. This usually meant one thing. The girl was feigning interest in order to encourage a confused man into buying her beer. Keith left for home.

At home, Keith found little of interest. Television was dull, and there was little on. Everything seemed to be depressing, and he just couldn't shake the image of the girl from the bar out of his mind. His fantasies ran wild thinking about her. Jumping in his truck, he drove back to see if she was still there.

Just as he pulled the truck up in front of the bar, Taunja was walking out. Keith followed her all the way to the parking lot, thinking that he might be able to convince her to get in his car, and that he might be able to seduce her. Even if she wasn't entirely willing, Keith supposed, he might take her anyway. By this point, she was playing on his mind enough that rational thought was moving further and further into the rear-view mirror.

But it seemed the girl remembered him. Walking up to her and starting a conversation, Taunja smiled while she chatted. Keith invited her to have something to eat, after which they might play a little pool somewhere. To his relief, she accepted. Once she hopped in his car, however, he pulled open his empty wallet. Despite the lack of money on him, Keith was certain he had a twenty dollar bill left at home. Would she mind if they went back and collected it?

Arriving at the house belonging to Peggy's mother, Keith invited the girl inside. Again, she agreed, but chose to leave behind a few of her possessions (a purse and a Walkman) in the truck. At this point, Keith considered actually taking the girl to a restaurant. His mind was on fire with the possibilities that lay ahead. The idea of treating her well was compelling, but thoughts about what he had done to the stray cat were also beginning to creep into his mental space. Welcoming her inside, Keith closed the door behind them and stepped into the bedroom while he planned his next move.

Keith, caught up in the moment, wasn't sure what he should do. There were fantasies of kidnapping the girl and keeping her as a sexual slave. There was the idea of taking her to dinner and showing her a good time. Exercising total possession over this attractive young girl was appealing, the opposite of what he had had when he was with Peggy. He could keep her under his control for a few weeks before kicking her out of the house. At the back of his mind, he could recall stories about the serial killer Ted Bundy who had done something similar. Some, he remembered thinking at the time, just had it coming.

But as the two stood in the room, Taunja began to interrupt Keith's thought pattern. She asked about the mattress lying on the floor and above the picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. As he explained to her how he would fall asleep on the mattress while watching TV, Keith was fascinating by how much this girl trusted him. Was it because she had been drinking all day? Keith realized that he had total control of the situation.

Thinking this, he walked up behind the girl and kissed her on the back of the neck. Wriggling free, Taunja ran straight for the door. Keith grabbed her before she could run outside. Asking her whether this meant that sex was totally out of the question and receiving no answer, he picked her up and laid her down on the mattress. To all intents and purposes, with the windows curtained and the door shut, she was trapped. Writhing free once again and running to the door, this started to dawn on the girl. Keith wrestled her back onto the mattress, surprised by her resilient strength. She was trembling. Assuming her to be utterly in terror, Keith was shocked when she kissed him. Hurry up, she whispered.

Keith began to have sex with her, feeling her beginning to accept him slowly. While he raped her, she urged him to hurry up. She wanted to get it over with, but this did not please Keith. As he remembers it, he suddenly saw red. As he lay there with her, he began to bring to mind all of the terrible thoughts he'd had about women during his life. For a short time, she seemed to look exactly like Rose.

Swinging a punch, Keith wanted to knock her out with a single blow. But it wasn't enough. He hit her first in the temple. She was still conscious. Again he hit her, but she just stared back blankly. Keith, a former boxer, couldn't understand why this girl would not just fall down unconscious. In the ring, he had been able to knock down men with one punch. Again and again he hit her in the head. This wasn't like the TV. It reminded him of the cats he would kill, but it felt somehow better. This was the first time in his life he had hit a woman in anger, and it felt good. Twenty times he hit Taunja, smashing her features until she was unrecognizable. But she still wasn't unconscious. Despite her battered face, the girl reached up, pulling at the blankets, calling out for her mother to stop the man from hitting her.

Keith found himself torn. What was he going to do next? Meditating on the idea of hogtying the girl to keep her around for sexual purposes, he began to realize that she was not far from death. He could take her to the hospital, leave her like this, or put her out of her misery. The first option was sure to end in jail. He chose the latter.

With his hands around her throat, Keith Jesperson did not stop choking until his knuckles had turned white. Even when he loosened his grip ever so slightly, she was still breathing. Keith continued. This was much harder than killing cats. The girl urinated herself, struggled, and then finally stopped moving. Keith, at last, got off the body, strolled down to the kitchen and poured himself a cup of black coffee. Sitting at the kitchen table, he mulled over what he should do next.

His first move was to get Taunja dressed again. Blood splatters littered the walls and floor; they had to be cleaned up. Looking at the girl's clothes, Keith wondered whether the metal button on her jeans would hold a fingerprint. He cut it off with a steak knife. He washed and dried his own clothes before putting them back on, before making extra sure that his victim was dead by taking a length of nylon rope and tying it tight around her neck. All the while, he shouted at the ghosts in the house that they now had one more for company. Sitting with the body, Keith was caught between enjoying the domineering sense of power and regretfully wishing he could bring her back to life.

This was abandoned when he realized he would need to get to work to rid himself of the body, set up an alibi, and make sure that he could not be caught in the same way as the criminals on the TV shows he watched, such as Perry Mason. Leaving the body behind, he drove back to the back and began to lay the foundations. Drinking beer and chatting till late in the evening, Keith made sure people saw his solitary exit from the building. Afterwards, he drove ten miles out of town to look for a good place to dispose of a body. On the drive home, he made sure he had a full tank of gas and that there were no issues with his headlights that might prompt him being pulled over by the police. He tried to leave nothing to chance, not when he would be transporting a dead girl around.

As he arrived back at the home, he found Taunja still lying there. Feeling woozy while he prepped his exit, he was shocked to hear the phone ring. It was Peggy. They chatted, and it seemed as though Peggy wanted to come home. Staring at the body as he talked, Keith agreed to see her again. As he talked to Peggy, he began to feel sexually stimulated. Staring at the body, he was soon lying next to it, touching the various areas of skin. For years, she would be Keith's favorite fantasy as he remembered the first woman he killed.

By the time he was done, it was after midnight. Rigor mortis had struck the body, and it was difficult to move. Keith dragged her by the rope around her neck. Bundling her into the car, Taunja's head rested against the passenger side window, and it looked as though she was sleeping or drunk. Driving her out into the middle of nowhere, he searched for somewhere to dump the body. New shoes were bought on the way home in case the police could trace the tread of his cycling trainers. As he drove, extra care was taken to stay under the speed limit and not to run any red light. Eventually, a ravine was found about sixty feet from the road. Though he considered covering the body with leaves, Keith was worried he had seen a car approaching and ran away. He drove away quickly, worried that he'd left the girl too exposed.

Taunja's Walkman was thrown onto a road to be run over by traffic, en route to a small truck stop Keith intended to visit. As he sat and drank coffee in the diner, three policemen walked in. Paranoid, Keith seized upon the opportunity to build up his alibi. Thoughts raced back to the girl's purse, which was still in the car. Staying at the truck stop until 8 in the morning, Keith made sure that he was seen by plenty of people. He then drove three miles away and hurled the purse into the center of a blackberry thicket.

Arriving back at the house, he opened a few windows to deal with the smell and cleaned, scraped, and washed the blood from the walls. Sheets and blankets were cleaned, and the floor was vacuumed. Keith even steam-cleaned the carpet. The next few days were spent hastily adding to as many alibis as possible, while worrying about anyone finding out what he'd done. Thoughts of suicide popped across Keith's mind while the girl's face was constantly at the forefront of his thoughts.

Several days later, reports emerged that a biker had found the body. The newspaper seemed to suggest that the police were searching for the two men who had been seen playing pool with Taunja in the bar. Suicidal thoughts were abandoned – it would bring too much shame on the family – but guilty thoughts persisted. Soon these ideas turned to acceptance and then regret that Keith hadn't managed to keep her alive a short while and abused her at his whim. But for now, it seemed as though Keith Jesperson had gotten away with murder.