PSYCHOPATHS HAVE AN EXTREME NEED FOR STIMULATION. ONE OF the core struggles for the imprisoned psychopath is that if nothing is happening within a repetitive, structured environment, he tends to initiate action of some sort. The psychopath is quickly bored with life (in general) and cannot sit idle and watch the world pass by; it’s not in his nature to “relax.” He needs to be continually doing something. What’s more, most serial killers are hypersexual, overactive needs of which can be attributed to a number of causes: sexual abuse as a child, being exposed to violent pornography at an early age, sexual experimentation with siblings. As for Keith Jesperson, he has upheld that he was never sexually abused, but as a child he had exposed himself (after being asked) to an adult male neighbor and spent many a night listening to his parents engage in sexual intercourse in the room next to his.
I wondered if Jesperson’s victims, as he lived life behind bars, were a part of that need for perpetual stimulation, either sexually or otherwise. Books, Hollywood, and unscripted true-crime television have given us the clichéd image of the serial killer in prison, arms folded behind his head, lying in his cell, reliving his crimes, while getting a high (sexual or otherwise) from the memories. Does a serial killer, in fact, go back to those intense, violent moments when he took a life and relive them for his own personal and/or sexual gratification?
“You ever dream or flash back to the moment when you killed one of your victims?” I asked. Jesperson’s manner of murder was personal; with the exception of Taunja Bennett, he strangled his victims, which meant he stared into their eyes and watched them die. He’d said things to me while talking about the moment of death: “She pissed herself” or “She shit her pants” after “I put her out of her misery.” She “foamed at the mouth” and “spit on me.” This meant he was there with them, in the moment, at the point of death. What was it like for him being incarcerated for twenty years? Were his victims still a part of him? Was he scared to go back? Had he put them out of his mind completely and purposely? This would become a contentious issue between us later as I began to work on identifying two of his Jane Does, asking him to recall faces, features, details, names, and demand he draw a portrait of a particular victim in Florida. But early into our interviews, while I was gathering information and listening more than questioning, he provided what I believed then to be an honest answer.
“I don’t think I actually go back to that point in time where I kill the victims. I remember mostly about what we were doing, what we have done. And some of them I don’t ever try to get back into their world. I don’t want to remember. After I murdered them, I wanted to forget them. Therefore, for a long time, I just kept pushing the memories out of my mind. Only after I was arrested did I have to start owning up to the fact that I did this. Then I had to come up with the story line for my lawyer.”
We discussed a comment he’d once made, which I considered a predetermined, calculated delusion he’d devised to face the reality of murder and the monstrosity behind his crimes: There are no coincidences in murder. One of his catchphrases, Jesperson used this line with me on many occasions.
“Everyone thinks there’s . . . that the solution to murder is like a map,” he explained. “You follow a road and that all roads lead [you there]. Well, I don’t think all roads lead to murder. There’s no coincidence in the fact that things happen and people say things happen for a reason.”
This was one of the ways in which he justified the horror he’d brought upon his victims and their loved ones. He needed to preserve a clear-cut image and answer (a way out) for the trajectory his life took; he needed to feel that it was not by his doing alone he happened upon these women and they wound up dead.
I would hear him say things like this and want to reach through the phone; I grew angrier each time he tried to take the sting out of what he’d done and reobjectify his victims. Still, I stuck to my early plan of allowing him to say what he needed, knowing I would confront him about it all at a later time.
He broke into a rant about a divine being, noting God was not what he meant. He laughed at how some people believe life has a grand design, and others have faith that there is life after death.
“You’re a Catholic, aren’t you, Phelps?” he said with his snarky, sarcastic, characteristic laugh, which made me seethe with hatred for him. “Your God controls everything you do, am I right?”
I’d never said anything to him about my religion. He was fishing. “We’re talking about you,” I responded. “Let’s keep the focus on you.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.... That I am acting on behalf of a playwright named God and just doing His will,” he continued in a flippant tone. “So I don’t have any choice in the matter. I do not believe in that. We have a choice. And whether this person is expected to be the one I kill or the one I don’t kill, I do not know. Timing is everything.” He dropped his voice, paused. I could tell he had taken himself back to the moment of violence, perhaps reliving it. Then, in a near whisper: “That’s just the way . . . it . . . it works out.”
*
THE PARKING LOT OF the B&I was full when Jesperson drove around the corner and pulled in. Finding himself at the same bar now for the second time within twelve hours, he parked at a spillover lot on a side street nearby. As he opened the door into the bar, a burst of crowd energy struck him. The atmosphere was far different from earlier that day when, as a local gin mill, dark and quiet, nothing more than a few regulars and a bartender polishing glasses filled the space. Now it was lively, boisterous: patrons yelling, tipping back beers, clanking glasses and bottles, a haze of cigarette smoke lingering. Every pool table was filled, players waiting in line, quarters stacked up on the railed, green felt.
The plan was to “sweet-talk,” while shooting a game of pool, either Bennett, if she was around, or another woman “into a romp in either her car or mine.” Jesperson played down the idea that as he left Pamela’s house and drove back to the B&I, he had Taunja Bennett exclusively on his mind. But in several of our follow-up conversations, he told me that, in fact, he was hoping on Bennett being there because he knew she’d be easy to charm out of the bar and get alone.