Happy Face Killer (2010)

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Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian serial killer who murdered 8 people in Nebraska, California, Florida, Washington, Oregon, and Wyoming while working as a truck driver… the media would coin him the ‘Happy Face Killer‘ after Jesperson wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop and signed it with a smiley face….

“Jesperson is known to have killed eight women over the course of five years. Strangulation was his preferred method, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child. After the body of his first victim, Taunja Bennett, was found, media attention surrounded Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to having killed Bennett with her abusive boyfriend.

Jesperson was upset that he was not getting the attention, and first drew the smiley face on the bathroom wall where he wrote an anonymous confession for the murder, hundreds of miles away from the scene of the crime. When that did not elicit a response, he began writing the letters to media and prosecutors. Many of his victims were prostitutes and transients with no connection to him; however, his final victim was his long-time girlfriend. That connection is ultimately what led to his downfall. While Jesperson has claimed to have killed as many as 160 people, only eight murders have been confirmed…..” murderpedia

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