“We were surprised,” Haley said.
“Well, with a striking number of similarities and bits of information coming together that seemingly linked Jane Doe with Ylenia Carrisi, we were both starting to get sweaty palms, thinking we may have had this case on the verge of closure,” Moody added, speaking for him and Haley. “We both thought that so many uncanny and coincidental details could not possibly exist without our Jane Doe turning out to be Ylenia. And we also knew that everyone in Italy had been sitting on the edge of their seats, waiting to hear, while the Italian news media virtually had Jesperson tried and convicted for Ylenia’s murder. It was rather intense.”
To me, it felt like another death. I wanted so badly for Jane to find her home.
Haley and Moody were back at ground zero. Haley had exhausted all the leads that had come in, except for a couple of missing women who’d never been reported to NamUs, or any of the other databases. Her DNA had not been tested against Jane’s. Haley ran down family members of those women and obtained familial samples. But those, too, turned out to be negative, compelling the Jane Doe mystery to continue.13
50
SAME OLD SUFFERING
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being
unable to love.”
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
WHAT HAD ALWAYS SCARED ME CONCERNING MY FRIENDSHIP WITH Jesperson was finding out that there was a side of him I might like. When I began, I was determined to stay objective by putting up an emotional barrier between us, confident my hatred for him was enough to get me through it. There only had been one time in my career when I sided with a convicted murderer and argued her case for innocence in that book. That’s not what I mean here. I understand Jesperson is evil, that he is guilty, that he lied to me and others and he fits into the Hare/Cleckley psychopath checklist as though it had been created for him. I also know psychopaths can love, but do it in their own way, on their own terms. Still, Jesperson could not get beyond his narcissism. Anytime he showed the slightest bit of interest in my life, or expressed a trace of morality, and the focus was not completely on him, he’d veer off into how whatever I was talking about reflected on his life or something that had happened to him. He couldn’t suppress this impulse. Nor could he stop it. A psychopath is part of who this man is and always will be.
In his eighty-page letter sent to clear the record, beyond detailing all he’d done, stimulated to clean up many of the misconceptions and untruths said and written about him throughout the years, he talked about the type of killer he’d become at the end of his run. His thoughts became more complex and sinister, he said, during those final months, and once again he went back to, strangely enough, necrophilia, now offering cannibalism as part of the conversation.
“While they lay dead before me, I knew I could have had sex with their bodies. It just wasn’t in me—not yet, anyway. What about eating them? Yes, the idea was there. The question of what does the meat taste like? How would it feel fucking a cold, dead body? My thought process hadn’t driven me to do it, [but] there would have to be more time included with them . . . with me.”
I took away from this that had he continued killing, with a need to increase the stimulation (which wasn’t there anymore), necrophilia and cannibalism would’ve come into play.
“True?” I asked him.
“I think so.”
These questions he posed were also, I soon realized, designed to keep me thinking about him. His way of trying to continue to stick to the inside of my head, to keep a hold on me.
“So now, Phelps, there you have it. Creative writing or a lie? Us killers have been known to lie to save our skins. But to lie to throw us into hell? Hell of a switch! Kill them for not wanting sex or even a kiss? Call your book, Kiss the Girls. Oh, sorry, that title is taken. You asked for answers. It is the best I got.”
Here he was explaining that all of his kills were motivated by him wanting sex from these women and each of them turning him down at some point.
Near the end of the Ylenia Carrisi investigation, as I was immersed in all of Jesperson’s writings, the recordings I’d made of our calls and Video Visits, I hit him with several hardball questions: Did you rape all of them? Bind them? Torture them? Beat them? He sensed I’d been interviewing sources related to his cases without telling him, and he was beginning to understand that perhaps I was not writing the book he’d envisioned and, from day one, had been desperate to control. One of the serial killer’s most recognizable traits—one they cannot hide, no matter how hard they try—is the need to control every possible aspect of their lives. We’ve seen this time and again in Jesperson’s complete need to reign supreme over his victims (when/where he picked them up, while in his custody, while murdering them, and even after, while disposing their bodies and even telling their stories). This is the same thought process certain serial killers unconsciously rely on as they store corpses inside their homes, go back to where they dumped bodies and spend time with them, and, in cases of necrophilia, have postmortem sex. In those instances, we have the serial killer wielding absolute power and control over his victim. Research indicates a tenable loneliness associated with this behavior: the solitary figure searching the world for his version of the perfect victim, killing, making sure to keep her within his grasp so as to feel as though he can, even in death, maintain that power and control. Jeffrey Dahmer took this to the extreme by consuming various body parts of his victims “in order to become one with them,” Dahmer told authorities.
Dr. Willem Martens, a leading researcher studying psychopaths from within their own psychological perspective, explains that for the general public to comprehend the amount of isolation and loneliness these men feel is perhaps “unimaginable.” We could never fully understand the separation from society the serial killer experiences and how that antisocial view of the world affects their decisions and crimes. A percentage of serial killers have, Martens contends, “describe[d] their loneliness and social failures as unbearably painful. Each created his own sadistic universe to avenge his experiences of rejection, abuse, humiliation, neglect, and emotional suffering.”14
Five characteristics, among many others, I know for certain, completely and emphatically define who Keith Hunter Jesperson truly is.