He became a fly in my head I could not swat.
One day, I picked up and told him to stop calling. I hadn’t yet shared with him that Dark Minds wasn’t coming back for a fourth season. He was itching for me to send him material on new cases we were going to profile on the show, so he could prepare. I kept telling him we hadn’t chosen the cases, but I would send the material soon. If I told him the series was over, he’d fear I didn’t need him anymore and, feeling sorry for himself, badger me about cutting the cord and walking away. I was still on the fence about whether I was going to continue interviewing him.
“Okay,” he said. “How long should I wait? When are you scheduled to start filming?”
“Not sure. Give me some time. I’ll be in touch. I’m sure you will be.”
When dealing with Jesperson, I understood he functioned best when he had assigned tasks. A serial killer’s mind runs at hyperspeed. I needed him to utilize that energy toward a project that could benefit me. What that project had now morphed into, I wasn’t sure. I would figure it out soon enough. I’d been pressured by many to reveal Raven’s identity, along with the nagging impulse to scream at all the naysayers and Internet trolls claiming Raven was an actor and did not exist. Seeing that the series was over, I began working up a proposal for a three-part documentary about Jesperson’s life, our “friendship,” and his role as Raven on Dark Minds. That kept me busy for a while.
I wasn’t sure what—if anything—to tell him about the documentary, because once I did, that’d be his only focus.
“What can I do?” he asked, looking for direction.
“I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. I need time away from you. You need to confront who you are, I suppose. You still haven’t done that. You make excuses. You blame your victims. You blame your dad. You know how I feel about the way in which you talk about your victims. I’ve held back. I’ve stuffed my feelings of the scourge I believe you are and I find myself feeling sorry for another part of you I’ve gotten to know. It’s confusing and . . . well, challenging and overwhelming. You are probably lying to me and laughing at me when we hang up.”
“No, no, no,” he tried to say, but I cut him off and demanded to be heard.
“I have to reevaluate. Doesn’t mean we’re done. Also, I have other serial killers I am speaking to and thinking about using on Dark Minds and other television projects I’m developing. You’re not my only source.”
He went quiet. The mere mention of competition made him seethe with contempt. “Sometimes I think I’m your only game,” he continued with a pathetic, somber tone, “but you have a life beyond me, I know that. And you also have your work that I know very little about and have nothing to do with. I know you are talking to other killers.”
Imagine: he was jealous.
Contemplating whether to tell him Dark Minds was over and I was considering a feature-length documentary, I got a letter from him explaining how we could now set up Video Visits.
Skype with a serial killer? He had to be confused.
So I went online, logged into my Telmate account, and, to my surprise, he was right. In late 2014, OSP initiated a program called Video Visits, basically a Skype system for inmates and those on their visiting lists. I set up an account so Jesperson and I could utilize the technology and communicate on a far more personal level. It included being able to e-mail each other as often as we wanted. Within a few weeks of the program being installed at the prison, incredibly, there was Happy Face—a ghost I could not expel, a demon I could not exorcise—staring back at me as I sat at my desk three thousand miles away.
I decided to record each Video Visit on a GoPro, with the thought I’d use the footage in my documentary. My office is inside my home. Though it is not part of an active area of living space, I made sure to schedule the visits when no one was around. It was bad enough that whenever Jesperson called my office, the Telmate number popped up on television screens throughout the house, reminding everyone who was calling. Here now, though, was a man who hated women, a psychopath who had killed eight females, inside my professional and personal space. Three thousand miles separated us, but he had managed, somehow, to infiltrate every facet of my life.
After recording hours of Video Visits, we got back to talking on the phone. “Listen,” I told him, “why don’t you take some time and write about your father, your childhood, and let’s try to find out exactly how you were made and where you might have begun to unravel?”
I expected resistance.
“Okay. Yes. I can do that.”
“I still need some time. Let’s not talk for a while.”
What came in the mail about a month after my request, us not interacting much throughout that period, as my emotional burns healed and I felt strong enough to step back into the fire, once again ripped to shreds any preconceived notions I had about serial killers.
PART TWO
FAMILY
19
SELECTIVE MADNESS
“Who we are takes generations to create and doesn’t
end with death.”
—Stanley Siegel
THEY CALLED HIM “CRAZY CHARLIE.” HE OWNED A PATCH OF PRODUCTIVE farmland outside Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada, allegedly worth what would be considered millions by today’s standards. It was the early 1930s. Some in the Jesperson family wanted a piece of Charlie’s pie. Whenever one of the clan stopped by, sniffed around, asked questions, old Charlie barked at them. He was hostile and ferocious. He could sense certain family members were hoping one day to bask in the glory of his wealth.
“You want what I have, work your ass off for it like I did,” Charlie said.
Keith Jesperson, a teenage kid the size of an NFL lineman, who by then had become known within the family as “Igor,” a nickname one of his brothers had given him based on the character’s abnormal looks, had heard the “Crazy Charlie” stories. Charlie had built a fortune blacksmithing and buying up land around Chilliwack. No one in the immediate Jesperson family liked him. He kept to himself and was considered a bitter, antisocial miser.
“They’re all out to get me,” Charlie claimed. “They want to take my land from me.”