He later described attempting suicide.
Then he called investigators.
He wanted to confess.
Before authorities took him into custody, he wrote to his brother Brad.
That letter became one of the most important documents in the entire Happy Face investigation.
Jesperson admitted killing Julie.
Then he went further.
He wrote that he had been a killer for five years.
Eight people.
The letter transformed a single Washington homicide investigation into a potential serial-murder case.
Police now had:
A truck driver.
A confession to Julie Winningham.
A claim of eight murders beginning around 1990.
And somewhere in Oregon's files were anonymous Happy Face letters from a self-described long-haul trucker claiming multiple killings beginning with Taunja Bennett in 1990.
The pieces were finally close enough to touch.
The Handwriting
The authorities compared the documents.
Jesperson's letter to his brother.
The anonymous Happy Face letters.
The handwriting matched.
Then forensic evidence strengthened the connection dramatically.
A 1995 Oregon crime-lab report compared physical evidence from the anonymous correspondence with Jesperson.
Fingerprints associated with the Happy Face letters matched him.
Saliva from an envelope produced a DNA type consistent with Jesperson.
The handwriting matched as well.
The anonymous author was no longer anonymous.
Keith Hunter Jesperson was the Happy Face writer.
The man in custody for Julie Winningham's murder was the same man who had spent years claiming responsibility for Taunja Bennett.
Now prosecutors faced a nightmare.
If Jesperson was telling the truth about Taunja, then Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske had spent more than four years imprisoned for a murder committed by someone else.
But Jesperson Was a Liar
There was still a problem.
Keith Jesperson wanted attention.
That made his confession both important and dangerous.
He could tell the truth.
He could also exaggerate.
Later he would claim numbers far beyond the eight murders that could actually be confirmed.
At various times he suggested he had killed dozens, even more than a hundred people.
Investigators could not assume that because he was definitely a murderer, every murder he claimed belonged to him.
Serial killers sometimes inflate their totals.
Some enjoy manipulating police.
Some attach themselves to cases they learned about through the media.
Jesperson's obsession with attention made corroboration especially important.
So Oregon prosecutors did not immediately open the prison gates for Pavlinac and Sosnovske.
They interrogated Jesperson.
They compared his story with the evidence.
And they found something frustrating.
Some of his details were correct.
Some were wrong.
He accurately described the position of Taunja's body in certain respects.
But he misstated clothing details.
He made errors about the rope.
He described aspects of the scene that did not match the original investigation.
For prosecutor Jim McIntyre, those mistakes suggested Jesperson might be another false confessor.
The case now contained something almost absurd.
First Laverne Pavlinac falsely confessed to the murder.
Now Keith Jesperson, a genuine serial killer, claimed he had committed it.
Police had to determine which confession was false.
The Evidence That Wasn't There
Investigators searched for a physical connection between Jesperson and Taunja Bennett.
Initially they found none.
No DNA.
No blood.
No fingerprint placing him with her.
Dozens of laboratory hours produced nothing conclusive.
McIntyre remained skeptical.
The anonymous letter connection proved Jesperson wrote the Happy Face material.
It did not automatically prove he killed Taunja.
He could have learned details.
He could have been obsessed with the case.
He could be inserting himself into a famous murder.
Prosecutors had already experienced one astonishing false confession.
They were not eager to replace it with another.
Jesperson's defense lawyer, however, was pressing them.
He insisted his client had killed Taunja.
It was a bizarre position for a defense attorney.
Ordinarily, counsel tries to reduce a client's criminal exposure.
Here, Jesperson's lawyer was effectively trying to convince prosecutors that his own client was guilty of an additional murder.
That alone made the situation feel surreal.
But there was one detail in Jesperson's story that could be tested.
Taunja's purse.
The Sandy River
Jesperson said that after leaving Taunja's body in the gorge, he had returned later and thrown items from her purse near the Sandy River.
Police had never located them.
The precise place had not been publicly revealed because police themselves did not know it.
Investigators searched the area Jesperson described.
The first effort found nothing.
Dense blackberry bushes covered the ground.
Vegetation made a complete search difficult.
For a prosecutor already suspicious of Jesperson, the failure seemed significant.
Maybe the serial killer was inventing the entire story.
Then Detective Chris Peterson decided the search had not been thorough enough.
On October 14, 1995, searchers returned.
This time they cut through the blackberry growth.
They cleared the ground.
And then someone found identification belonging to Taunja Bennett.
Other contents from her missing purse were nearby.
Mud-covered.
Weathered.
Apparently sitting there for years.
This changed everything.
Jesperson had directed investigators to evidence no journalist could have told him about.
No public article had disclosed its location.
Pavlinac did not know.
Sosnovske did not know.
The real killer did.
Jesperson had just proved that, whatever inaccuracies existed in his recollection, he possessed knowledge from the crime itself.
Roberta Ellis
Then investigators found another witness.
Roberta Ellis had been Jesperson's girlfriend at the time of Taunja's death.
She had been away on a trucking haul.
When she returned home in late January 1990, something in the house had changed.
The mattress had been moved.
Later, Jesperson told her an alarming story.
According to Ellis, he said he had met a woman at the B&I Tavern while she was away.
He had brought the woman home.
He had killed her.
At the time, Ellis apparently hoped the story was some grotesque invention or nightmare.
Years later, investigators heard it differently.
The timing matched.
The bar matched.
The circumstances matched.
The mattress detail fit Jesperson's own account.
The evidence had changed from an anonymous serial killer making claims to a specific man connected to the victim's last known bar, the hidden purse location and a contemporaneous confession to his girlfriend.
McIntyre finally reached the conclusion he had resisted.
Pavlinac's story was false.
Sosnovske was innocent.
Oregon had imprisoned the wrong people.
The Most Difficult Phone Call
A prosecutor's job is adversarial.
Once charges are filed, the state argues guilt.
McIntyre had argued passionately.
He had told a jury that Pavlinac's emotional confession revealed a murderer.
He had believed it.
Now he had to tell his boss the opposite.
They had made a mistake.
That admission is one of the most remarkable parts of the case.
Wrongful convictions sometimes survive because institutions resist acknowledging error.
Here, once prosecutors became convinced Jesperson was the true killer, they moved to undo the convictions they themselves had obtained.
It was not simple.
A jury verdict does not disappear merely because a prosecutor changes his mind.
Judges must follow legal procedures.