For five years in the early 1990s, Keith Jesperson, a B.C.-born long-haul trucker, crisscrossed the western United States in his truck, killing women he met along the way. From 1990 to 1995, he killed at least eight women, sending anonymous confession letters to journalists and investigators, often signing them with a smiley face. Jesperson, known widely as the “Happy Face Killer” for his strange letter sign-off, has since confessed to the serial killings and is serving four life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary. However, police are seeking help in identifying Jesperson’s final unknown victim.
Riverside County in California released a new sketch and DNA-renderings of a California woman referred to as “Claudia” by Jesperson, although investigators are unsure if that’s her true name. Her body was found on Aug. 30, 1992, near the California-Arizona border, and is the only victim left to be properly identified.
In an effort to identify Claudia, cold case investigators interviewed Jesperson behind bars late last year. He mentioned encountering her at a brake-check area in Victorville, Calif., and offering her a ride to Arizona, ultimately leading to an argument about money which resulted in her death.
Jesperson described Claudia as being in her 20s or 30s, about five feet six inches or five feet seven inches tall, of medium build, weighing about 140 or 150 pounds, with shaggy blonde hair, wearing tight clothing, including a T-shirt bearing the image of a motorcycle, and two small dots tattooed on the left side of her right thumb. The DA’s office said they’ve been able to determine some of Claudia’s family members via forensics, but they’ve led to dead ends.
Jesperson, now 68, has confessed to eight killings in his spree, spanning California, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Florida. Some of the women were drifters or sex workers, making identifying them more difficult. In 2022, the Calgary Police Service was credited with helping identify one of his victims — a woman by the name of Patricia Skiple of Colton, Ore., whose body was found on the side of a California highway in 1993. California investigators partnered with a U.S.-based non-profit organization that helps identify “Jane Does” and “John Does” using genetic genealogy services, leading to a breakthrough in identifying Skiple.
A year after Skiple’s body was found, an Oregon newspaper ran a five-part series where an anonymous letter writer claimed to have committed five murders throughout the west coast. Investigators later identified the writer as Jesperson, who was arrested in 1995 on suspicion of murder in Washington state. Recent advances in forensic genetic genealogy have helped piece together the identities of some of his victims by connecting investigators to their living relatives.