The trailer for Paramount+’s new crime drama, Happy Face, includes a line that alludes to American serial killer Keith Jesperson’s past. Read More
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Happy Face is inspired by the true story of Keith Jesperson and his relationship with his daughter.
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The trailer for Paramount+’s new crime drama, Happy Face, includes a line that alludes to American serial killer Keith Jesperson’s past.
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“He wasn’t always a monster, he became one,” says the actress who plays the daughter of the so-called Happy Face Killer. “Before that, he was just my dad.”
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Going back even further, Jesperson was a kid who grew up on an acreage in Chilliwack, a few hundred metres from the Vedder River. The former long-haul trucker, who murdered eight women between 1990 and 1995 across six states, has previously spoken about growing up in B.C., where he attended elementary school, swam in Cultus Lake and dreamed of becoming an RCMP officer.
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It’s unclear if the eight-episode series, which began March 20 on Paramount+, will delve into Jesperson’s childhood. The drama focuses on the killer’s daughter Melissa, played by Annaleigh Ashford, and her relationship with her father, played by Dennis Quaid.
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“After decades of no contact, Keith forces his way back into his daughter’s life, and Melissa must find out if an innocent man is going to be put to death for a crime her father committed,” reads the promotional material for the Vancouver-shot series. “In the process, she must face a reckoning of her own identity.”
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Postmedia interviewed Melissa Moore, as well as Jesperson’s father Les Jesperson, for a story in 2010, shortly after the serial killer received his fourth life sentence.
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Here is the true story behind Happy Face and Keith Jesperson’s connection to B.C.
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Is Happy Face based on a true story?
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Yes. The drama is based on Moore’s relationship with her father, who was convicted of killing eight women in the early 1990s, luring them to his truck at rest stops and bars across the western United States.
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In the TV show, the character based on Moore, Melissa Reed, lives a normal life, hiding her connection to the Happy Face Killer from her children and coworkers. That changes when the killer calls her boss, the host of a true crime TV show, claiming he wants to confess to an another murder, but will only tell Melissa.
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Although the present-day plot is fictional, Moore did conceal her father’s history from her children until she began writing a memoir in 2009 called Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter. The book talks about her childhood in Washington State, where the family moved in 1983 after her father was fired from a job at a coal company in Elkford, B.C.
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In an interview about the book in 2010, Moore recalled finding kittens in the cellar of the family’s home.
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“I pretended I was their mom,” she told Postmedia. “My dad asked if he could see them. I knew he had bad intentions, but I had no control. He hung them by their tails on the clothesline.”
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Moore’s parents eventually divorced. Jesperson’s killing spree began soon after. She recalled feeling anxious every time her father visited between jobs as a long-haul trucker. She said he would take her to a restaurant, where he sometimes talked openly about his sex life.
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Moore learned about her father’s crimes when she was 15, coming home from school as news of his arrest was on TV. She went on to finish high school and college and have kids of her own.
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“I wanted to prove to myself that I was better than what I’d been given,” she told Postmedia. “I saw all the negative, and I vowed I would not let that have power over me.”
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How many people did Keith Jesperson kill?
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Jesperson killed eight women, although he has made unsubstantiated claims of killing more.
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His first known victim was Taunja Bennett in January 1990. He met her at a bar near Portland. After an argument, he strangled her and dumped her body in a ravine.
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A woman reading the news reports confessed to the crime, seeing it as an opportunity to get out of an abusive relationship. Both she and her boyfriend were convicted of the murder, but were eventually released five years later.
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Upset by the attention the couple received, Jesperson wrote a confession on the wall of a truck stop bathroom and signed it the Happy Face Killer. He also wrote letters to police and newspapers, signing them with a happy face.
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Jesperson was finally arrested in 1995 in connection with the murder of his girlfriend, Julie Winningham. While in custody, he began to confess to more killings. A letter, written to his brother a few days before his arrest, mentioned eight murders, leading police in several states to reopen cold cases.
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What is the Happy Face Killer’s connection to B.C.?
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Jesperson has said that if he ever gets out of prison, he wants to return to Chilliwack.
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“My night times in prison are spent dreaming of seeing my kids one more time,” he told journalist and true-crime author Jack Olsen.
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“Would I escape if I was let out by accident? Damn right I would. Back to Canada, to Chilliwack. I should have gone there 30 years ago.”
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Olsen’s 2002 book, I: The Creation of a Serial Killer, says Jesperson grew up on a rural property in Greendale in a two-storey house his dad, Les, built for his wife Gladys and their five children. Les was an alderman, Master of the Fraser River Dikes, and a founding member of Chilliwack Search and Rescue. In the 1950s, there were several stories in the Chilliwack Progress newspaper about his inventions, including a clip to hold hop plants upright.
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The Jesperson property was paradise for a young boy. There was a barn with a hayloft, a wooden bridge over a creek, and a water wheel to trap fish. Strung in a tree was a rope swing.
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In 2010, Postmedia visited the property, where the owner, a retired fisherman, said he learned about Jesperson when he was watching a documentary about serial killers and saw his front yard. Today, the property, a few hundred metres from the popular Vedder Rotary Loop Trail, is almost completely obscured by a thick hedge.
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Keith Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955, a middle child with two sisters and two brothers. He was a big, quiet kid. In the 2010 interview with Postmedia, Moore remembered watching an old home video of her father on a hike with his family. He lagged far behind the others, staring up at the trees.
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Jesperson attended Unsworth Elementary in Chillwack. In interviews with Olsen, he talked about being teased by other kids. He recalled swimming in Cultus Lake with a classmate who tried to drown him by holding his head underwater.
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The future killer was also excited by animal abuse, and he tortured and killed gophers, crows and cats. He claimed to have started small fires.
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Jesperson told Olsen his relationship with his father was twisted and accused him of abuse.
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In 2010, Postmedia also spoke to Les Jesperson, who said his son blamed him for being a tough father.
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“Keith is a different person. I’m ashamed of what he did, but he’s paying the price,” he said.
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Jesperson was 12 when his family moved to Washington.
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“I didn’t want to leave Canada,” he told Olsen. “I knew every tree in our woods, every ripple in our creek … Chilliwack was the greenest place on earth.”
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Has Keith Jesperson been connected to any murders in Canada?
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No. Jesperson spent several years in B.C. as a child, and later, as a young man, but police have never linked him to any murders north of the border.
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The killer told Olsen he dreamed of becoming a RCMP officer, but a bad fall ended his aspirations. He was running a trailer park with his father in Washington when he met and married Moore’s mother.
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Financial trouble forced the sale of the trailer park, and Jesperson moved his family to Elkford, B.C., to take a job at a coal company. He was fired for theft and began trucking, making runs between Lethbridge and Calgary. The job didn’t last long, and he returned to the U.S.
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Asked in 2010 whether police in B.C. had ever investigated Jesperson in connection with any unsolved murders, RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said police on both sides of the border share information, but could not comment on specific cases.
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Where is the Happy Face Killer now?
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Jesperson is currently serving a sentence of life without parole at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
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In 2023, Florida police announced they had identified one of his previously unknown victims as Suzanne Kjellenberg.
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Landscapers found her remains along Interstate 10 in 1994. They had been unsuccessful in identifying her until advanced DNA testing and genome sequencing provided a match.
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Jesperson had confessed to killing a woman named “Susan” or “Suzette” after his arrest, but her identity remained unknown for decades. In a prison interview with police 29 years later, he confirmed he had killed Kjellenberg.
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Jesperson was charged with one count of homicide in Florida.
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Where can I watch Happy Face?
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The true crime drama is available to watch in Canada on Paramount Plus Canada.
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When is the next episode of Happy Face?
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New episodes of Happy Face are available every Thursday. The series began March 20 and runs eight episodes.
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