Keith Hunter Jesperson

Keith Hunter Jesperson (born April 6, 1955) is a Canadian-American serial killer known as the Happy Face Killer. He worked as a truck driver and murdered at least eight women between January 1990 and March 1995, later mailing many taunting letters to the media and authorities that he marked with smiley faces. Many of Jesperson's victims were sex workers and transients whom he preferred to kill via strangulation.

After the body of Jesperson's first victim, Taunja Bennett, was found, media attention surrounded Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to Bennett's murder with the help of her abusive boyfriend, John Sosnovske. Upset that he was not getting any media attention, Jesperson drew a smiley face on a bathroom wall hundreds of miles from the scene of the Bennett killing and wrote an anonymous letter confessing to the murder, providing proof. When that did not elicit a response, he began writing letters to the media and authorities.

Jesperson's last murder was the crime that ultimately led to his capture. While he has claimed to have killed as many as 160 people, only eight murders have been confirmed. Jesperson is currently serving a life sentence at the Oregon State Penitentiary. He will not be eligible for parole until 2063.

Jesperson's daughter, Melissa, wrote a 2009 memoir, Shattered Silence, about growing up with a serial killer as a father. In 2018, she adapted her book into a podcast entitled Happy Face: A Family of Monsters, which formed the basis of a TV series starring Dennis Quaid as Jesperson.