In making bold admissions, Jesperson knew it would send scores of detectives from all over to interview him in prison. He relished the attention. It kept him busy while behind bars. He’d be written about in newspapers and magazines and books; he’d be talked about on television. A celebrity.
Manson. Bundy. Gacy.
Jesperson.
“They lie, too,” he said, referring to law enforcement. “I killed one hundred sixty-six in thirteen years, seven in Nevada, I told them. There is a story called ‘a tale of two tails.’” (It’s actually an academic article from a March 1990 issue of the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty.) “I sent it to [someone] in 1996 and he shared it with the Green River Task Force. I got letters from [the Task Force] begging me to confess to being the Green River Killer. I was messing with them all.”
Jesperson said much of what he told ABC’s 20/20, during its 2010 “exclusive” interview with him from inside the prison (the last time cameras were allowed into OSP to interview Jesperson), “was all bullshit lies,” adding how “documentation” and “just a little bit of research” would have proven most of what he said on ABC to have been fabricated. “But when a killer speaks, everyone accepts what he says and takes him for his word. Nobody checks it out.”
*
BEFORE HEADING INTO THAT mountain range to end his life, Jesperson parked at a nearby truck stop. He took out a piece of paper and wrote a letter to his brother Brad. He’d tried to kill himself two separate times since Buckner shoved that affidavit in his face, but only had gotten ill from taking all the pills at once. After writing and mailing the letter to Brad, however, he was determined to succeed. Dated March 24, 1995, the short missive began with Jesperson—in his humdrum narcissistic vitriol—saying how his “luck” had “run out.”
I will never be able to enjoy life on the outside again. I got into a bad situation and got caught up with emotion. I killed a woman in my truck during an argument. With all the evidence against me, it looks like I truly am a black sheep. The court will appoint me a lawyer and there will be a trial. I am sure they will kill me for this. I am sorry that I turned out this way. I have been a killer for 5 years. And have killed 8 people. Assaulted more. I guess I haven’t learned anything.
“Tell me about this letter?” I asked.
“You see, right there, in the letter, I say eight. Remember, I believed I was going to be dead not long after writing it, so why not, at this time, take credit for ten, fifteen, twenty? It’s because I only killed eight. But later, even though this letter was published, they still wanted to put one hundred sixty-six and twenty-two or whatever number they came up with on me.”
Dad always worried about me. Because of what I had gone through in the divorce and finances, etc.... As I saw it I was hoping they would catch me. I took 48 sleeping pills last night and I woke up well-rested.... Keith.
Jesperson intended it to be a suicide note to his family, he told me. He needed them to hear the “truth” from him, not what would come out in the media.
My interest was in the addressee. Why Brad? They had been in conflict, very competitive as kids. As much as Jesperson maintained that his greatest fear was to disappoint the Jesperson clan and his kids, why reach out to Brad?
“Brad was an accountant,” Jesperson said. “He took care of our finances. He would have known how to get hold of everyone in the family for me. I still had a connection with Brad. Bruce, I mean, you know, he was an asshole. Even though Brad and I were always at odds with each other, there was always some kind of connection.”
After mailing the letter, sitting in his truck with a fresh bag of pills, Happy Face got out and started what he believed to be a final ascent up “Suicide Mountain.”
“I was looking up and I saw snow. I thought, ‘Go hiking, take the pills, it was going to get cold, and I was just going to fall asleep and die. Let nature take its course.’”
He failed to go through with it, however. Jesperson could not end his life with over-the-counter medications because he was too big. Every time he tried, it made him sick to his stomach, nothing more. So, after the mountain air “cleared” his mind and he watched a man on a horse tend to his cattle, Happy Face decided to “act like a man for a change” and turn himself in.
This was the coward’s way of explaining he didn’t have the nerve to complete the task. Anyone bent on killing himself, especially a guy who had murdered eight human beings, can find a way to get the job done. In addition, Jesperson was no doubt thinking about the fame in becoming a notorious serial killer was about to bring him. He was a big fan of True Detective magazine. He knew what type of celebrity certain killers had attained by becoming what the public perceived as the ultimate evil. He’d even written to True Detective and by then had read about himself (as Happy Face) in magazines and newspapers.
Forty-eight hours after Detective Buckner had shoved that affidavit into his face, the over-the-road trucker stopped at a rest stop and called Buckner. One report had it as a voice mail Jesperson left, while Jesperson insisted he spoke directly to the detective: “Hi, Rick. This is Keith. I’d like to talk to you. I’ll be in Phoenix tomorrow morning. You were right. I’ve been fighting with myself for the last two days. Tried to kill myself a couple of times and it hasn’t worked. Not enough pills in this damn country. I’ll talk to you in the morning. I want to turn myself in.”
The next day, Buckner asked where he was, then demanded details.
Jesperson explained he was in Cochise County, Arizona, before saying he’d taped Julie Winningham’s “mouth shut and strangled her to death as [I] raped her in [my] truck cab.” Afterward, he drove down Highway 14 and, just outside Camas, dumped her body.
There was enough “nonpublic” information in the admission to prove Jesperson was Julie’s killer.
“But wait,” I asked him, “why would you say you raped Julie? Wasn’t she your girlfriend?”
“I made it up. I gave Buckner a story he wanted to hear.”
Happy Face, the celebrity serial killer, was born.
“Why did you turn yourself in?” This was important. Serial killers do not turn themselves in; Jesperson is an anomaly in that respect. His case remains unique in that he actually played the Hollywood card: Here I am, come and get me. I did it.
“I don’t know why. I was up there walking through [the mountains] and my rationale wasn’t altogether right, and I thought, ‘Why kill myself when I can let the system kill me?’ I thought that turning myself in, I was just going to get the death penalty and that was going to be that. I thought the system worked quickly.”
“Why not continue to kill?”
“I didn’t want to be a killer. I thought about it all the time: I. Did. Not. Want. To. Kill. Anymore. I was fighting this. I didn’t want to be a killer. I just wanted to be Keith, the nice guy.”