Dad is the happy face killer
The 'happy face' killer
Saturday 21st February 2009
Who sends letters these days? If people want to get in touch, they send a text or a quick email. Well, not my dad, Keith Jesperson. In fact, he was obsessed with sending me letters. So as I came down the stairs and spotted another white envelope on the doormat, my stomach lurched. By the time I'd picked it up, my hands were shaking.
'Another one?' my husband, Sam, 32, asked.
I nodded. 'Will you open it?'
As he tore the envelope open, my heart was pounding.You see, for the past 12 years, Dad, 52, had been sending me things. Sometimes, they were drawings of wild animals. Other times, gruesome blood-splattered murder scenes. All drawn in coloured pencil.
'It's a parrot,' Sam said.
'At least it's not a nasty one,' I sighed, relieved.
What sort of dad sends his daughter nasty drawings in the post? But then my father wasn't like any other dad.Not that I'd known that while I was growing up.
The oldest of three, I had great memories of him messing around with me, my brother, Jason, now 28, and sister, Carrie, 25. OK, so he had a temper too, and when he'd strangled a stray cat in front of me when I was 6, I'd been too terrified to even cry. My mum, Rose, now 52, had divorced Dad when I was 10, but he'd pop in to see me whenever he passed by with his job as a lorry driver. But at 15, I realised Dad was far from normal when I got home from school to find Mum crying.
'I need to tell you something,' she told the three of us. 'Your dad's in prison for murder.'
'M-murder?' I stammered, before breaking down in tears.
As we'd stood there crying, I remembered the last time I'd seen Dad, seven months earlier.
He'd taken me for breakfast at Denny's diner.
'I've got something to tell you,' he'd whispered. 'But you'll tell the police.'
Had he stolen something? Done something to hurt Mum? I'd been so scared, I hadn't waited to hear what he'd done. Instead, I'd raced to the loo, and by the time I'd come back, the moment had gone. Was that going to be Dad's big confession? Who knows? As Mum explained that he'd killed his fianceé, Julie Ann Winningham, 43, I felt so guilty.
'He introduced me to Julie once,' I said, remembering her blonde hair and warm smile.
After that bombshell, I vowed not to tell a soul about Dad. As far as I was concerned, he was dead.That didn't stop the newspapers following the case, though. It turned out Dad had written an anonymous letter to the police and to The Oregonian, a newspaper in Oregon, confessing to five murders and signing it with a happy face. They'd nicknamed him The Happy Face Killer. Just a year after that, his letters had started arriving at my house in Spokane, Washington. So when I'd fallen in love with Sam in April 1999, I knew I had to
tell him before another envelope landed on the doormat.
'My dad's in prison,' I blurted out. 'He's a serial killer.'
'Are you serious?' he gasped.
As Sam wrapped his arms around me, I broke down in tears. Thankfully, it didn't put him off. We married three months later, and had a daughter, Aspen, now 6, and three years later, a son, Jake, 4. Things hadn't been going quite so well for Dad. In the space of just seven years, he'd confessed to seven more murders, but was only convicted of three, Taunja Bennett, 23, in 1990, Laurie Pentland, 26, in 1992, and Angela Subrize, 21, in 1995.
For these, he was given three life sentences.But worse still, I read that after strangling Angela, he'd bound her body with rope and secured it face- down under his lorry. Then, he'd dragged her along the pavement for 10 to 12 miles, to remove identifying features, like her face and fingerprints. Evil. Pure evil. In all, he boasted he'd murdered around 160 women, while working in different cities. With him a 10-hour drive away in Oregon State Penitentiary, in Salem, I got on with life as if Dad didn't exist.But one thing kept reminding me that he did. His awful letters. Always tucked inside a picture. Always signed with a happy face.
'Why can't he just leave me alone?'
I raged, as I screwed up the latest picture and threw it in the bin.
'You shouldn't write back to him,' Sam sighed.
I know it sounds crazy, but every couple of years, I did write back. Because no matter what he'd done, he was still my dad. And that was something which haunted me every day.I was the daughter of a serial killer. Did that make me an evil person too? Was there something I could have done to stop him?
'You shouldn't think like that,' Sam insisted.
But it wasn't that easy.It didn't help that Aspen was at the age when she was learning about families.When we arrived back from school one day, she turned to me.
'Mummy,' she said. 'Who's your daddy?'
I froze.What on earth do I say?
'He lives in Salem,' I babbled, trying to stay calm.
It wasn't a lie. That's where Dad's prison was. But it made me realise that as Aspen and Jake got older, they'd ask even more questions. And while I was happy living in denial, I owed it to my children to be honest. But how on earth could I explain something like this?
I didn't have the foggiest idea. Until I switched on the telly one afternoon and started watching the Dr Phil show. Dr Phil McGraw used his training as a psychologist to help his guests with various problems. Whether it was relationships, family issues, or personal matters, he always seemed to have the answer.
'Maybe he can help me,' I muttered, going online and emailing the show.
My father is Keith Jesperson, the serial killer, I wrote. I've never had counselling and I don't know how to tell my kids who their grandfather is.
First thing next morning, there was a reply waiting for me, asking me to fill out a psychological evaluation. As I answered the questions, explaining how old I was when
I found out about Dad and that I felt guilty about his crimes, I didn't think for a minute they'd get back to me. But just a month later, the producers had arranged for me to fly to Los Angeles, to appear on the show. Suddenly, I felt nervous. A lot of my friends didn't have
a clue about Dad. Was I right to drag it all up? Before I left, I told Mum what I was going to do.
'I'm glad you're getting help, love,' she sighed. 'But I do wish you'd be more private about it.'
'I've kept the truth quiet for so long now,' I said. 'I need to stop hiding.'
When I finally sat on the set at Paramount Studios, the camera panned to me and I felt terrified. Would my family hate me for this? Would strangers judge me? And that's when it hit me. All these years, I'd been doing what was easiest for everyone else. Now, it was time to get it all out in the open. So I looked straight at the camera.
'My father is the Happy Face Killer,' I said. 'And I'm not going to hide it any more.'
I felt like a weight had been lifted. Then Dr Phil turned to me.
'You didn't do anything,' he said. 'You have nothing to be ashamed of. You didn't kill anybody. You didn't hurt anybody.'
Slowly, his words sank in. As well as teaching myself not to feel guilty for my dad's crimes, Dr Phil told me to make a list of reasons why I liked myself. By the time I got home two days later, I was exhausted. But as I collapsed on the settee and the kids clambered on top of me, I knew there was still one thing I had to do. Find out once and for all exactly what Dad was really like. I owed it to his victims and their families.So I bought Dad's biography, The Creation of a Serial Killer. I managed a few pages before I broke down.
'I can't believe any human could be capable of this,' I sobbed.
'Take your time,' Sam said.
And so I did. It took me all of last summer to get through it, bit by bit.I cried my way through every page. And do you know what I did when I finished? I sat down and wrote to Dad.
I've finally read about the things you've done. I don't like getting your letters, they're difficult for me to read. That's the last letter he'll ever get from me. Now that I've been honest with him, I can be honest with the kids, too. The next time Aspen asks about my dad, I'll tell her the truth. Who knows, perhaps my letter will even put a stop to Dad's
drawings. Then he'll be out of my life forever.