Smiley Face Killer

579 Words3 Pages
Capstone | Smiley Face Killer | Unit 5 Assignment 2 | | Cristina Barton | 4/24/2014 | | Keith Hunter Jeperson Born on April 6, 1955, is a Canadian serial killer known as the “Smiley Face Killer” (The serial killer hit list). He is known as the Smiley face killer for the smiley face he drew on many of his letters to the media and prosecutors. He embarked on a murderous spree in the United States during the early 1990’s. He had a violent and troubled childhood under a domineering, alcoholic father. His family treated him like an outcast, and he got teased by other children because of his big size at a young age. Jesperson was a lonely child who showed a propensity for torturing and killing animals. Despite consistently getting into trouble while he was young, including the two times he attempted to kill children who he believed crossed him. He was able to graduate from high school, he got a job as a truck driver, got married and had three children (Olsen, J., & Jesperson, K. H.). In 1990, after fifteen years of marriage, Jesperson got divorced and saw his dream to become a Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman. He was unable to follow his dreams due to an injury during training. That same year he returned to truck driving and began to kill. Jesperson is known to have killed eight women over the course of five years. Strangulation was his preferred method, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child. After the body of his first victim, Taunja Bennett was found, the media’s attention surrounded Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to killing Bennett with her abusive boyfriend (The serial killer hit list). Jesperson was then upset the he was not getting the attention, so he first drew the smiley face on the bathroom wall where he wrote an anonymous confession for the murder, hundreds of miles away from

More about Smiley Face Killer

Open Document