“I didn’t want to give them a chance to mess with the evidence. That night I smuggled a diagram to Phil Stanford, a reporter I’d talked to before I was arrested…Phil and some other journalists were on hand as witnesses. They found the purse exactly where I said they would.”
(Keith Hunter Jesperson)
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a serial killer who was active in the United States between 1990 and 1995 and was known as the “Happy Face Killer.”
He is confirmed as being responsible for the murders of eight women, but claims to have murdered up to 120 women during his lifetime.
His job as a long distance truck driver provided both the opportunity to kill, and the means to flee the scene with a degree of anonymity.
A prolific writer of communications, the first of which was a note scrawled on a truck stop bathroom wall which he signed with the smiley face which was soon to become his trademark, he soon progressed to letters addressed to the police and local media outlets. His most important was a six page letter to Phil Stanford of The Oregonian, the man who christened him the “Happy Face Killer.”
Phil Stanford kindly agreed to a brief interview.
1) Did you have any ethical concerns regarding the handling and publication of letters received from Jesperson?
Beyond the obvious questions of whether the letter seemed to be authentic and whether the writer, in this case obviously anonymous, seemed to be telling the truth, I didn’t see any ethical problems. You have to remember, this was not an exercise in sensationalism. The main reason for writing the series was that two people were serving time for a murder he said he’d committed here in Portland. Once I’d concluded that he was a likely candidate for four other unsolved murders up and down the west coast, it seemed warranted to examine his claims for the murder here.
2) Did you at any point choose to ignore advice, or consider doing so, from police or your editor when it came to the publication of these letters?
No. The police and the district attorney weren’t happy about the series, but that was after it was printed.
3) What advice would you give to a Journalist in a similar situation?
Maintain an open mind when considering the evidence. Evaluate carefully and don’t jump to any conclusions. (Although that’s so general, It might apply to any investigation.)
4) Did you “compare notes” with other media outlets, or did The Oregonian keep its information from them?
In the course of checking out the Happy Face Killer’s claims to other murders, I checked with law enforcement agencies in the jurisdictions where he said they occurred. That, however, was to determine whether the killer’s information went beyond what they had released to the press and the public. However, as I recall, I didn’t contact other media. There was really no worry about other media getting the story first because the Oregonian (which happened at the time to be the only paper in Portland) was the only one that got the letter.
5) Do you think that the procedure in dealing with, and publishing these letters would be any different if a similar situation arose today?
I’d do the same today.
6) What were your feelings as the reporter assigned to this case? were you apprehensive? or were you excited by the sheer gravity of the case?
I was excited, of course: A chance to unravel a complicated puzzle, prove local law enforcement wrong, and free two wrongly convicted people from prison. What more could a journalist want? Eventually, the two got out, too – although not primarily because of anything I wrote. Several years later, after the killer was caught for another murder and confessed all over again. Even then the DA’s office didn’t want to admit its mistake. However, when he showed them where he’d thrown the girl’s purse, they had to let them go.
Keith Hunter Jesperson still likes to keep in touch with the media, check out this video.
Red Ink Letters 