November 9, 2018 • 30 mins
Though Jesperson has clearly left his mark on both of their lives, Don and Melissa manage to find solace in their shared experiences.
Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco: www.LaurenBrightPacheco.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Don Finley is the son of Julie Winniham, my father's
last victim. I had heard that he wanted to do
the things that my dad did to his mom to me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I want him to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Know how sorry I am for what my father did.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
I think he's behind me.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
He looks, he looks tense.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
She walks up to down and without saying anything, he
opens up his arms and they embrace.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
She was a kind hearted, good soul, and he broke
every rule that he ever had set for victims. That
he was going to do this too, right right, My
mom broke every rule because of her soul. He felt
something different with her.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
The detectives came up to Spokane and they questioned my
mom that she said, of your dad's jail for Bruder,
I want to know what you saw.
Speaker 7 (00:59):
No one knows this. I haven't told anybody. They open
up a room, white walls, silver table. My mom has
a sheet covered up to her neck. That's the last
time I saw that all.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
This was a multi year relationship. And if he could
do that to her, he could do that to anybody.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Julie was found when a local resident stopped to take
a scenic picture.
Speaker 7 (01:22):
Why did the universe tell that person to stop right here?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
If your mom's body wasn't found, he would.
Speaker 7 (01:29):
Still be out there today, the pies, the.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Pies with the sun. I don't know, shine O shi, Oh, what.
Speaker 7 (01:59):
Did you think about doing to keep it? You really
want to know that?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I do.
Speaker 7 (02:08):
I mean I've had I wanted to torture him. I've
thought of burying him up. J you know what I mean,
just cutting little cuts and like animals, you know, all
kinds of sick and twisted thoughts. Those aren't normal thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
What do you think when you had those thoughts?
Speaker 7 (02:31):
They were wrong? It's not right, but it was Yeah,
I've had wild, wild, wild thoughts.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Gandhi once said, the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is
the attribute of the strong. But how do some find
the strength to forgive the unforgivable. I'm Lauren Bright Checko
and this is happy face.
Speaker 8 (03:10):
From The Oregonian, December twentieth, nineteen ninety five by John
Painter Junior. The last of Keith Hunter Jesperson's sentences for
three Northwest murders was handed down Tuesday, when a Clark
County judge ordered him to serve a minimum of thirty
four and a half years in prison for killing a
Cavas woman last March. He earlier had admitted strangling Julie Winningham,
(03:31):
forty three, and the sleeper of his long haul truck.
The sentence will be served consecutively to two consecutive Oregon
murder sentences, guaranteeing that Jesperson forty will die in prison.
At the sentencing, Winningham's son Don Finley, described the mother
as a kind person willing to help others. Quote, you
(03:52):
killed her, putting her family in darkness.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Melissa, Noel and I had spent an emotional few hours
with Don. We'd had him walk us through what he'd
gone through after Keith had brutally murdered his mom, Julianne Winningham,
How hard it was to be surrounded by the things
that reminded him of his mom and the tails spin
it had put his life in. But the thing that
Melissa wanted to truly understand was after carrying such anger,
(04:24):
how did Don come to a place where he truly
felt healed and how did he learn to forgive? Did
you think about bringing a gun into the Oh?
Speaker 7 (04:34):
Yeah, they didn't have mental detectors every day of the trial.
They didn't have metal detectors. One day I walked out
of the court. I was from me to your father.
There was nothing stopping me. He was full of shackles,
nothing stopping me from just going at him. I didn't
know then, but I know now why I didn't do it,
(04:58):
because he would have won. We are not here to
take another life. Okay, it would have been over. He
would have won because I went to his level of
killing another human being. And now I am happy he's
in there because your life has been miserable. My life
(05:19):
has been miserable. I have healed. Your father will never heal,
and that is no longer your burden, no longer your burden.
(05:39):
Do you know about the two people that were convicted
for the crime.
Speaker 9 (05:45):
I know that Laverne was assisted, that her boyfriend friend
John was guilty of this crime, and that she manufactured
evidence to got him convicted and ultimately got her convicted
as well. But they were found guilty, that they serve
some prison time.
Speaker 7 (06:01):
And can I ask you a question, do you think
they deserve to stay in prison for what they said
they did or do you think they should have been released?
Speaker 5 (06:08):
They should have been released.
Speaker 7 (06:11):
Okay, well, my opinion is he should have been released
and she should have stayed in because she's the one
who made the accusations. But they get out. As soon
as they get out, they make a movie about it instantly,
within a month, about their life story. Who are they
to bring this up? I was really pissed off because
(06:31):
if they wouldn't have confessed, they may have caught your
father before my mom. But no, and it screwed everything up.
He could have been caught, It may have never happened
to my mom. It could have saved four or five women.
Because this lady confessed to a crime she didn't commit
to get out of an abusive relationship. I've had to
(06:52):
forgive her also to be able to move on. I
have to forgive the detectives for not doing a thorough investigation.
I had to forgive all these people for not doing
their job. And then I had to truly forgive your father.
I had to truly forgive my own father. I've had
a lot of forgiving, and you have to forgive, not forget,
(07:16):
to be able to move on.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
For all of Don's words about forgiveness, it was apparent
that jessperson had very much gotten into his head.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
Do you know who Sondra London is?
Speaker 5 (07:34):
No, I've never heard the name.
Speaker 7 (07:36):
This is what your father did. Sondra London, who was
in love with a serial killer named Van Rawlings in Florida.
He executed seven women with the machete. She wrote a
book about him. Your father wrote Sondra London to ask
her to write a book. She said no, but I
(07:57):
will create a computer book, diary or whatever. So your
father proceeds to write her telling her how great it
is to be in jail, how to get away with murder,
how to do this. It's still on the internet today.
It's like twenty two pages.
Speaker 8 (08:18):
From The Oregonian, September tenth, nineteen ninety seven by J.
Todd Foster. Last year from prison, Jesperson wrote a Jacksonville,
Florida woman who's fascinated with serial killers and thinks society
should have unfettered access to their minds. Sondra London, fifty
then posted Jesperson's letters word for word on the internet,
(08:40):
as she has other killers letters. On Jesperson's page, which
features a rotating skull, he compares his victims to garbage
he discarded along America's roadways as a long haul truck driver.
His most disturbing writings, however, are contained in the Self
Start Serial Killer Kit, which offers web browsers a line
life size blow up doll named for one of his victims,
(09:03):
Julianne Winningham. Winningham's son Don Findley, twenty five, of Vancouver, Washington,
read Jessperson's website Tuesday and was appalled.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
He put in part of this stuff that he wrote
Get yourself Start Serial Killer Kit. It comes with a
two hour VHS tape of life and death situations that
are guaranteed to scare the piss or, arouse you or both.
Take your Julie Winningham blow up doll with an extra
spring back neck, take her mouth, put it over the
(09:38):
head of your cock, and you'll soon have the living
strength to squeeze the shit out of anybody. Why did
he pick my mom?
Speaker 10 (09:58):
Your mother calls, don't wink at me in court? It
was fucking funny as I jumped over the fucking barrier
and was grabbed because this man.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
You could see how much down was affected by Keith.
He still carries that hurt. But perhaps what's most impressive is,
even in that emotional state, how he handled himself on the.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
Stand Tanya's brother and sister. You know didn't really do
in court like I did. Yeah, you know you didn't
see the whole thing on court. You know I had to.
I did the rebuttal to your father, and I told
him this is the last thing I told him. I said,
as Christians, I forgive you, and God will punish you
(10:58):
in the way you deserve to be punished. Your father
put his head down. The judge had a tear coming
out of his eye. The only reason your father is
not dead is because he didn't kill two women in
the state of Washington. But he did kill one right
over there and right over there, just a mile and
a half difference. What are your triggers like?
Speaker 11 (11:28):
What triggers you? Even now, having done all the work
and feeling like you've healed, you were saying that it's everywhere,
It's like Emuji's, it's Walmart.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
Why?
Speaker 7 (11:40):
Oh, it was because only because of the simple fact
of the title they gave him on the Happy Face Killer. Psychologically,
that messed with my head. Everywhere I saw it would
be a reminder of him. Now that I'm healed, I'm
over it. But it was his thing. He's not I
can't let that beat me up because he'll still win.
As long as I have something going in me that
(12:01):
he did, I'm never gonna hear. So I have to
release it, no matter how much it hurts. So you
would you saw it everywhere everywhere, everywhere, back of jeeps, Walmart,
people's clothes. How many people walk around with the happy
face with the bullet in the head, You know how
many people walk You know what I'm saying. All that
stuff goes through my head, you know, and I'm like
(12:23):
just a flashback everywhere I go. I see this guy.
Now many years it took me to get past that.
I don't even know.
Speaker 11 (12:30):
God, it's like it's literally like being haunted by a
real life boogieman like it.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
And I am an overthinker, and I believe your father
did that on purpose. But then on the other hand,
I think that he was just being mischievous and smart
ass and signing it with the happy face, not realizing why.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It's exactly why he winked at you in court. It's
his taking something so sinister and heinous and spinning it
to the polar opposite of like putting. It's his sixth
sense of humor. It's his way of mocking people's pain.
It's he gets pleasure from that, and this smiley face
is as a mockery.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
I get it. Yeah, But why do you feel that
your dad used my mom's name in the thing I
told you about that you never knew about and didn't
use Tanya Bennett or one of the other six victims.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
She was not his typical victim. I mean, he broke
all of his rules with her.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
I think it's because she stopped him. She's the reason
he got caught, and so.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
He resents her.
Speaker 8 (13:46):
From I the creation of a serial killer by Jack Olson.
From his County jail cell, his curly brownish Maine shorn
by an inmate barber, Keith Jesperson continued his campaign to
muddy the legal waters. Most of his confessional letters were
sent after his own lawyer told him to shut up.
(14:07):
The notes were uniformly upbeat quote have a nice day
from happy face.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
Regardless of how Don defines the relationship between Keith and Julie,
Melissa saw her as a woman who could have been
her stepmother, that in some parallel universe Melissa and Don
could have been would have been step siblings instead. There
now forever linked by the emotional scars of Keith's crimes.
Speaker 7 (14:49):
This is a.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
I don't I have my own answer to it. But
do you think justice was served at first?
Speaker 7 (14:58):
No?
Speaker 10 (15:01):
Now?
Speaker 7 (15:03):
Yeah, because he loses I told you he has a miserable,
horrible life. Me and you, we still have the opportunity
to have this open freedom, positivity. He's around, No, he's
around nothing but negative energy all day as his daughter,
(15:25):
take back your power, take back that guilt and turn
it into a positive, which you've tried to do by
helping and reaching out and doing what you do for people.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Melissa has tried throughout her adult life to use her
career to connect the families of victims with the families
of perpetrators in order to bring about closure and healing
and ultimately forgiveness.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I think you're right, yeah, that there is some sort
of divine intervention. But this is what I struggle with,
don I struggle with this, like, if there is divine intervention,
why didn't that divine intervention intervene and save your mom?
If the universe was telling this man to come and
take a picture, couldn't the universe have told your mom
(16:16):
to not be with my dad?
Speaker 7 (16:20):
Like I said, there's a plan. We are supposed to
help the screw the world that's out there. We need
to show them that it doesn't. The evil doesn't always win,
the villain doesn't always get away. We are here, we
are survivors. We did this. It's been twenty two years.
(16:40):
We're done, We're over it. Let's do us. The only
animosity you have is something that you had no control over,
and I had no control over. So why should we
let it control us any longer. It wasn't your choice
to do what he did. It wasn't my choice. But
yet we're letting his choices control ourselves.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Melissa's most deeply rooted fear is that she is somehow
like her father, capable of terrible things. Don almost immediately
sensed the opposite. He didn't see the capacity for evil
in her at all.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
You obviously are not him. Okay, obviously you're not, So
that needs to be the first thing. I'm scared, though,
That's the first thing you need to get out. You're nothing.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
But I'm scared I look like him.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
No, I have no from him. That's okay, because my
heart is so turned off.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I'm afraid I've built like him that I don't know
I don't hurt people, but I'm scared.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
You're not like him because of that. You're like blocking
feelings and being cold, whatever you think it may be.
Because this has been damaged so bad, all it did
was get covered up and covered up and covered up
and covered up a scar. You can bring this up
one hundred more times on television and that scab wouldn't reopen.
(18:30):
It is a scar. I am okay. I am convinced
that he is where he deserves to be. My mom's
in a better place, and he gave this to me
and you to pass on to people, and no matter
what we go through in life, we can make it.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Don also believed there was nothing accidental about the in
which his mother's body was found.
Speaker 7 (19:04):
Life leads us in a weird path, and we are
the ying and the yang of one in three point
one million. Did you know that the odds of what
your dad did to my mom is one in three
point one million. Have you met that many people in
(19:24):
your life? No. I have traveled to the United States.
I have gone as far as the Caribbean to run away,
and I still the universe brings.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Me back here.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
I moved all the way to Saint Thomas to the
top of an island. Leave me alone. No one will
know anything about me unless I won't tell them. But
I still end up right back here. I worked in
the town for six years as a local bartender, heard
stories about my mom. People come across me every day
and say, your name's not Leeroy, or people call me
(19:57):
up out of the blue, I've seen her on television again,
I saw you on television, so out of the blue,
I would get random calls. People would be facebooking me
from all around the country, thinking I can help them,
you know. So there was a lot going on. But
to be able to heal, I told myself that your
father needed to be put away. My mom lived a fulfilled,
(20:26):
happy life. It was her time to go to a
better place. Yes, no, because God has a plan. Okay, no,
God has Yes, he does. Well, let's not call it God.
Let's call it the universe. Our universe has a plan
(20:46):
for each and every one of us, and it isn't
a kind world.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
I can't believe you see it so nice.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I wish I could see this. I want to help
you feel it. You gotta have to let me because
otherwise you're gonna end up the old cat lady.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 6 (21:19):
Don Lee Roy, whomever he believed himself to be at
that moment. Also believed that the universe kept putting people
in his path for a reason, including a man in
the back seat of his cab.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
I drive taxi and the weirdest stuff happens. I met
a gentleman who was about seventy two years old. He
proceeds to tell me that he had a family, and
after raising his family, he got got tired of working
for the man, so he decided to start robbing banks. Well,
he ended up getting eighteen years. He ended up in
(21:58):
osp We proceed to talk. It's a five hour journey.
Come to find out he's been locked up the whole time.
Your dad's been locked up. So this man proceeds to
tell me what I already knew, how bad life was
in prison, but how bad your father his life is.
(22:19):
The stuff he told me made me happy because I
am able to eat a steak, see a beautiful lady,
go out and fish. You are still able to do that.
He will never be able to do any of the
pleasures in life.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Again, what did he say that his life is like
in prison?
Speaker 7 (22:42):
Well, basically, your dad lives in one building. He's not
allowed to go out of the building. He isn't outside,
can't go outside. He is in PC's protective custody.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
From I The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
Most of the cops and detectives who'd worked the case
were pissed that I'd gotten two people out of prison
and beat the death penalty myself, but some of them
still had a morbid interest and happy face. When we
pulled into the intake center and Clacamus, one guard asked
if I would pose with him for a picture. I
was put in solitary confinement in D Block to keep
(23:27):
me safe from other prisoners. Lady killers and rapists ranked
near the bottom of the food chain in the prison system,
barely above child molesters and crooked cops. I was allowed
one hour of yard time of day, no books, no cards,
no nothing. Wherever I went, the pointy fingers came out.
(23:48):
Everyone wanted a piece of the celebrity.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
So I'm telling this guy the whole story, and he
proceeds to tell me how he's seen your dad get
beat up many of times. Your dad is known as
a snitch. Your dad is locked in his cell. He
comes out like an hour or two hours a day.
How big is he now? I can just imagine with
no exercise in a cage that's as big as he
(24:17):
is a foot wide. Think about he's six foot eight,
the sale six by nine. And if all you do
is put on wait, you gotta be uncomfortable. He never
gets interaction with anybody. So this guy proceeds to tell
me that he's even met your dad and had controversy
with him. And I have every right to believe this
(24:38):
guy because I feel it. I've seen the tattoos and
this is too odd. And this man told me that
he wanted me to stop at a bank so he
could rob it and go back in to shank this
guy because he deserves.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
To die because he knew you explained who you were to.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Him, and the whole time in the case, Abrady kept
calling me the last victim's son instead of by my name.
He's like the new generation of inmates aren't willing to
do like the old school. Some up a long story.
He told me that he talks to someone inside once
a month. He said. The next ass whipping j just
(25:19):
personal notes from me.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did it happened?
Speaker 7 (25:24):
How am I going to know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This was just a few months ago. Don't you find
that kind of odd?
Speaker 7 (25:31):
That added the blue? A guy like this gets in
my taxi.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Yeah, all of Melissa's fears about confrontation, about Gon's hatred,
(26:00):
anger about her father and what he'd done to Don's mother, everything,
it was just finally over and there was peace. In
a sort of strange, if not slightly broken way, there
was love.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
I'm glad it's not the word. I'm thankful that you
were willing to take me out here and show me.
I know this isn't I can tell that after this
much's time, you you know this is a place you
can go to. But my mind is just racing. I'm
(26:40):
thinking of a million of things. I'm thinking about, thinking
about my dad and my picturing it in my mind. I've
been in that cab of the truck. I'm picturing exactly
what he said, what he must have done, like how
quickly I would have taken off. I mean, it's it's
(27:04):
definitely I can I can visualize it.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
But how has healing on your own? How has it
shaped you as a person? How is it shaped like
you didn't ask to.
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Become this person? How's it shaped me? Well, people will
tell you now that you've healed, are you going to
find Donald or are you going to stay Leroy? Well,
I'm not sure yet Donald. When Donald was the victim,
(27:41):
Leroy was the survivor. So in my story would go
how it went from Donald, Bernard Finley to le Roy
because of the traumatic events that have happened in my life.
And then at the end, when we're all done with this,
(28:04):
we will see Donald. We got a beginning, a middle,
and an end, and Donald came out because we hit
the final piece, the puzzles complete, two people that have
no answers from anybody else, we can now answer ourselves.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
After all of this, what is Jessperson to you?
Speaker 7 (28:39):
Now? What is Jessperson to me?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Now?
Speaker 7 (28:44):
Just a tax penny at waste?
Speaker 6 (28:55):
Meeting one another was so therapeutic for both Melissa and
Don was really a testament to human resiliency and the
triumph of good over evil. When we left with Shugel,
it was with the feeling that ultimately Jessperson had lost
because two of his residual victims had used the power
(29:17):
of forgiveness to transcend the horror and hopelessness he'd foisted
upon them.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Happy Faces, a production of How Stuff Works.
Speaker 8 (29:47):
Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, Mangesha Tikedur
and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by
Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Story editor is Matt Riddle, Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicoigne. Special thanks
(30:08):
to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian Newspaper, and
the Carlisle family.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Oh is love Place where they catch you when you fall.
O his love Place where they catch you when you fall.
(30:44):
And we are
Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Don Finley is the son of Julie Winniham, my father's
last victim. I had heard that he wanted to do
the things that my dad did to his mom to me.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
I want him to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Know how sorry I am for what my father did.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
I think he's behind me.
Speaker 5 (00:23):
He looks, he looks tense.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
She walks up to down and without saying anything, he
opens up his arms and they embrace.
Speaker 7 (00:34):
She was a kind hearted, good soul, and he broke
every rule that he ever had set for victims. That
he was going to do this too, right right, My
mom broke every rule because of her soul. He felt
something different with her.
Speaker 4 (00:47):
The detectives came up to Spokane and they questioned my
mom that she said, of your dad's jail for Bruder,
I want to know what you saw.
Speaker 7 (00:59):
No one knows this. I haven't told anybody. They open
up a room, white walls, silver table. My mom has
a sheet covered up to her neck. That's the last
time I saw that all.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
This was a multi year relationship. And if he could
do that to her, he could do that to anybody.
Speaker 6 (01:18):
Julie was found when a local resident stopped to take
a scenic picture.
Speaker 7 (01:22):
Why did the universe tell that person to stop right here?
Speaker 4 (01:26):
If your mom's body wasn't found, he would.
Speaker 7 (01:29):
Still be out there today, the pies, the.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Pies with the sun. I don't know, shine O shi, Oh, what.
Speaker 7 (01:59):
Did you think about doing to keep it? You really
want to know that?
Speaker 5 (02:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (02:06):
I do.
Speaker 7 (02:08):
I mean I've had I wanted to torture him. I've
thought of burying him up. J you know what I mean,
just cutting little cuts and like animals, you know, all
kinds of sick and twisted thoughts. Those aren't normal thoughts.
Speaker 4 (02:27):
What do you think when you had those thoughts?
Speaker 7 (02:31):
They were wrong? It's not right, but it was Yeah,
I've had wild, wild, wild thoughts.
Speaker 6 (02:45):
Gandhi once said, the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is
the attribute of the strong. But how do some find
the strength to forgive the unforgivable. I'm Lauren Bright Checko
and this is happy face.
Speaker 8 (03:10):
From The Oregonian, December twentieth, nineteen ninety five by John
Painter Junior. The last of Keith Hunter Jesperson's sentences for
three Northwest murders was handed down Tuesday, when a Clark
County judge ordered him to serve a minimum of thirty
four and a half years in prison for killing a
Cavas woman last March. He earlier had admitted strangling Julie Winningham,
(03:31):
forty three, and the sleeper of his long haul truck.
The sentence will be served consecutively to two consecutive Oregon
murder sentences, guaranteeing that Jesperson forty will die in prison.
At the sentencing, Winningham's son Don Finley, described the mother
as a kind person willing to help others. Quote, you
(03:52):
killed her, putting her family in darkness.
Speaker 6 (04:00):
Melissa, Noel and I had spent an emotional few hours
with Don. We'd had him walk us through what he'd
gone through after Keith had brutally murdered his mom, Julianne Winningham,
How hard it was to be surrounded by the things
that reminded him of his mom and the tails spin
it had put his life in. But the thing that
Melissa wanted to truly understand was after carrying such anger,
(04:24):
how did Don come to a place where he truly
felt healed and how did he learn to forgive? Did
you think about bringing a gun into the Oh?
Speaker 7 (04:34):
Yeah, they didn't have mental detectors every day of the trial.
They didn't have metal detectors. One day I walked out
of the court. I was from me to your father.
There was nothing stopping me. He was full of shackles,
nothing stopping me from just going at him. I didn't
know then, but I know now why I didn't do it,
(04:58):
because he would have won. We are not here to
take another life. Okay, it would have been over. He
would have won because I went to his level of
killing another human being. And now I am happy he's
in there because your life has been miserable. My life
(05:19):
has been miserable. I have healed. Your father will never heal,
and that is no longer your burden, no longer your burden.
(05:39):
Do you know about the two people that were convicted
for the crime.
Speaker 9 (05:45):
I know that Laverne was assisted, that her boyfriend friend
John was guilty of this crime, and that she manufactured
evidence to got him convicted and ultimately got her convicted
as well. But they were found guilty, that they serve
some prison time.
Speaker 7 (06:01):
And can I ask you a question, do you think
they deserve to stay in prison for what they said
they did or do you think they should have been released?
Speaker 5 (06:08):
They should have been released.
Speaker 7 (06:11):
Okay, well, my opinion is he should have been released
and she should have stayed in because she's the one
who made the accusations. But they get out. As soon
as they get out, they make a movie about it instantly,
within a month, about their life story. Who are they
to bring this up? I was really pissed off because
(06:31):
if they wouldn't have confessed, they may have caught your
father before my mom. But no, and it screwed everything up.
He could have been caught, It may have never happened
to my mom. It could have saved four or five women.
Because this lady confessed to a crime she didn't commit
to get out of an abusive relationship. I've had to
(06:52):
forgive her also to be able to move on. I
have to forgive the detectives for not doing a thorough investigation.
I had to forgive all these people for not doing
their job. And then I had to truly forgive your father.
I had to truly forgive my own father. I've had
a lot of forgiving, and you have to forgive, not forget,
(07:16):
to be able to move on.
Speaker 6 (07:23):
For all of Don's words about forgiveness, it was apparent
that jessperson had very much gotten into his head.
Speaker 7 (07:32):
Do you know who Sondra London is?
Speaker 5 (07:34):
No, I've never heard the name.
Speaker 7 (07:36):
This is what your father did. Sondra London, who was
in love with a serial killer named Van Rawlings in Florida.
He executed seven women with the machete. She wrote a
book about him. Your father wrote Sondra London to ask
her to write a book. She said no, but I
(07:57):
will create a computer book, diary or whatever. So your
father proceeds to write her telling her how great it
is to be in jail, how to get away with murder,
how to do this. It's still on the internet today.
It's like twenty two pages.
Speaker 8 (08:18):
From The Oregonian, September tenth, nineteen ninety seven by J.
Todd Foster. Last year from prison, Jesperson wrote a Jacksonville,
Florida woman who's fascinated with serial killers and thinks society
should have unfettered access to their minds. Sondra London, fifty
then posted Jesperson's letters word for word on the internet,
(08:40):
as she has other killers letters. On Jesperson's page, which
features a rotating skull, he compares his victims to garbage
he discarded along America's roadways as a long haul truck driver.
His most disturbing writings, however, are contained in the Self
Start Serial Killer Kit, which offers web browsers a line
life size blow up doll named for one of his victims,
(09:03):
Julianne Winningham. Winningham's son Don Findley, twenty five, of Vancouver, Washington,
read Jessperson's website Tuesday and was appalled.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
He put in part of this stuff that he wrote
Get yourself Start Serial Killer Kit. It comes with a
two hour VHS tape of life and death situations that
are guaranteed to scare the piss or, arouse you or both.
Take your Julie Winningham blow up doll with an extra
spring back neck, take her mouth, put it over the
(09:38):
head of your cock, and you'll soon have the living
strength to squeeze the shit out of anybody. Why did
he pick my mom?
Speaker 10 (09:58):
Your mother calls, don't wink at me in court? It
was fucking funny as I jumped over the fucking barrier
and was grabbed because this man.
Speaker 6 (10:23):
You could see how much down was affected by Keith.
He still carries that hurt. But perhaps what's most impressive is,
even in that emotional state, how he handled himself on the.
Speaker 7 (10:37):
Stand Tanya's brother and sister. You know didn't really do
in court like I did. Yeah, you know you didn't
see the whole thing on court. You know I had to.
I did the rebuttal to your father, and I told
him this is the last thing I told him. I said,
as Christians, I forgive you, and God will punish you
(10:58):
in the way you deserve to be punished. Your father
put his head down. The judge had a tear coming
out of his eye. The only reason your father is
not dead is because he didn't kill two women in
the state of Washington. But he did kill one right
over there and right over there, just a mile and
a half difference. What are your triggers like?
Speaker 11 (11:28):
What triggers you? Even now, having done all the work
and feeling like you've healed, you were saying that it's everywhere,
It's like Emuji's, it's Walmart.
Speaker 10 (11:39):
Why?
Speaker 7 (11:40):
Oh, it was because only because of the simple fact
of the title they gave him on the Happy Face Killer. Psychologically,
that messed with my head. Everywhere I saw it would
be a reminder of him. Now that I'm healed, I'm
over it. But it was his thing. He's not I
can't let that beat me up because he'll still win.
As long as I have something going in me that
(12:01):
he did, I'm never gonna hear. So I have to
release it, no matter how much it hurts. So you
would you saw it everywhere everywhere, everywhere, back of jeeps, Walmart,
people's clothes. How many people walk around with the happy
face with the bullet in the head, You know how
many people walk You know what I'm saying. All that
stuff goes through my head, you know, and I'm like
(12:23):
just a flashback everywhere I go. I see this guy.
Now many years it took me to get past that.
I don't even know.
Speaker 11 (12:30):
God, it's like it's literally like being haunted by a
real life boogieman like it.
Speaker 7 (12:35):
And I am an overthinker, and I believe your father
did that on purpose. But then on the other hand,
I think that he was just being mischievous and smart
ass and signing it with the happy face, not realizing why.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It's exactly why he winked at you in court. It's
his taking something so sinister and heinous and spinning it
to the polar opposite of like putting. It's his sixth
sense of humor. It's his way of mocking people's pain.
It's he gets pleasure from that, and this smiley face
is as a mockery.
Speaker 7 (13:13):
I get it. Yeah, But why do you feel that
your dad used my mom's name in the thing I
told you about that you never knew about and didn't
use Tanya Bennett or one of the other six victims.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
She was not his typical victim. I mean, he broke
all of his rules with her.
Speaker 6 (13:33):
I think it's because she stopped him. She's the reason
he got caught, and so.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
He resents her.
Speaker 8 (13:46):
From I the creation of a serial killer by Jack Olson.
From his County jail cell, his curly brownish Maine shorn
by an inmate barber, Keith Jesperson continued his campaign to
muddy the legal waters. Most of his confessional letters were
sent after his own lawyer told him to shut up.
(14:07):
The notes were uniformly upbeat quote have a nice day
from happy face.
Speaker 6 (14:26):
Regardless of how Don defines the relationship between Keith and Julie,
Melissa saw her as a woman who could have been
her stepmother, that in some parallel universe Melissa and Don
could have been would have been step siblings instead. There
now forever linked by the emotional scars of Keith's crimes.
Speaker 7 (14:49):
This is a.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
I don't I have my own answer to it. But
do you think justice was served at first?
Speaker 7 (14:58):
No?
Speaker 10 (15:01):
Now?
Speaker 7 (15:03):
Yeah, because he loses I told you he has a miserable,
horrible life. Me and you, we still have the opportunity
to have this open freedom, positivity. He's around, No, he's
around nothing but negative energy all day as his daughter,
(15:25):
take back your power, take back that guilt and turn
it into a positive, which you've tried to do by
helping and reaching out and doing what you do for people.
Speaker 6 (15:36):
Melissa has tried throughout her adult life to use her
career to connect the families of victims with the families
of perpetrators in order to bring about closure and healing
and ultimately forgiveness.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I think you're right, yeah, that there is some sort
of divine intervention. But this is what I struggle with,
don I struggle with this, like, if there is divine intervention,
why didn't that divine intervention intervene and save your mom?
If the universe was telling this man to come and
take a picture, couldn't the universe have told your mom
(16:16):
to not be with my dad?
Speaker 7 (16:20):
Like I said, there's a plan. We are supposed to
help the screw the world that's out there. We need
to show them that it doesn't. The evil doesn't always win,
the villain doesn't always get away. We are here, we
are survivors. We did this. It's been twenty two years.
(16:40):
We're done, We're over it. Let's do us. The only
animosity you have is something that you had no control over,
and I had no control over. So why should we
let it control us any longer. It wasn't your choice
to do what he did. It wasn't my choice. But
yet we're letting his choices control ourselves.
Speaker 6 (17:14):
Melissa's most deeply rooted fear is that she is somehow
like her father, capable of terrible things. Don almost immediately
sensed the opposite. He didn't see the capacity for evil
in her at all.
Speaker 7 (17:34):
You obviously are not him. Okay, obviously you're not, So
that needs to be the first thing. I'm scared, though,
That's the first thing you need to get out. You're nothing.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
But I'm scared I look like him.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
No, I have no from him. That's okay, because my
heart is so turned off.
Speaker 4 (18:00):
I'm afraid I've built like him that I don't know
I don't hurt people, but I'm scared.
Speaker 7 (18:06):
You're not like him because of that. You're like blocking
feelings and being cold, whatever you think it may be.
Because this has been damaged so bad, all it did
was get covered up and covered up and covered up
and covered up a scar. You can bring this up
one hundred more times on television and that scab wouldn't reopen.
(18:30):
It is a scar. I am okay. I am convinced
that he is where he deserves to be. My mom's
in a better place, and he gave this to me
and you to pass on to people, and no matter
what we go through in life, we can make it.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Don also believed there was nothing accidental about the in
which his mother's body was found.
Speaker 7 (19:04):
Life leads us in a weird path, and we are
the ying and the yang of one in three point
one million. Did you know that the odds of what
your dad did to my mom is one in three
point one million. Have you met that many people in
(19:24):
your life? No. I have traveled to the United States.
I have gone as far as the Caribbean to run away,
and I still the universe brings.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Me back here.
Speaker 7 (19:34):
I moved all the way to Saint Thomas to the
top of an island. Leave me alone. No one will
know anything about me unless I won't tell them. But
I still end up right back here. I worked in
the town for six years as a local bartender, heard
stories about my mom. People come across me every day
and say, your name's not Leeroy, or people call me
(19:57):
up out of the blue, I've seen her on television again,
I saw you on television, so out of the blue,
I would get random calls. People would be facebooking me
from all around the country, thinking I can help them,
you know. So there was a lot going on. But
to be able to heal, I told myself that your
father needed to be put away. My mom lived a fulfilled,
(20:26):
happy life. It was her time to go to a
better place. Yes, no, because God has a plan. Okay, no,
God has Yes, he does. Well, let's not call it God.
Let's call it the universe. Our universe has a plan
(20:46):
for each and every one of us, and it isn't
a kind world.
Speaker 5 (20:51):
I can't believe you see it so nice.
Speaker 7 (20:53):
I wish I could see this. I want to help
you feel it. You gotta have to let me because
otherwise you're gonna end up the old cat lady.
Speaker 5 (21:09):
Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 6 (21:19):
Don Lee Roy, whomever he believed himself to be at
that moment. Also believed that the universe kept putting people
in his path for a reason, including a man in
the back seat of his cab.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
I drive taxi and the weirdest stuff happens. I met
a gentleman who was about seventy two years old. He
proceeds to tell me that he had a family, and
after raising his family, he got got tired of working
for the man, so he decided to start robbing banks. Well,
he ended up getting eighteen years. He ended up in
(21:58):
osp We proceed to talk. It's a five hour journey.
Come to find out he's been locked up the whole time.
Your dad's been locked up. So this man proceeds to
tell me what I already knew, how bad life was
in prison, but how bad your father his life is.
(22:19):
The stuff he told me made me happy because I
am able to eat a steak, see a beautiful lady,
go out and fish. You are still able to do that.
He will never be able to do any of the
pleasures in life.
Speaker 5 (22:37):
Again, what did he say that his life is like
in prison?
Speaker 7 (22:42):
Well, basically, your dad lives in one building. He's not
allowed to go out of the building. He isn't outside,
can't go outside. He is in PC's protective custody.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
From I The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen.
Speaker 8 (23:07):
Most of the cops and detectives who'd worked the case
were pissed that I'd gotten two people out of prison
and beat the death penalty myself, but some of them
still had a morbid interest and happy face. When we
pulled into the intake center and Clacamus, one guard asked
if I would pose with him for a picture. I
was put in solitary confinement in D Block to keep
(23:27):
me safe from other prisoners. Lady killers and rapists ranked
near the bottom of the food chain in the prison system,
barely above child molesters and crooked cops. I was allowed
one hour of yard time of day, no books, no cards,
no nothing. Wherever I went, the pointy fingers came out.
(23:48):
Everyone wanted a piece of the celebrity.
Speaker 7 (23:55):
So I'm telling this guy the whole story, and he
proceeds to tell me how he's seen your dad get
beat up many of times. Your dad is known as
a snitch. Your dad is locked in his cell. He
comes out like an hour or two hours a day.
How big is he now? I can just imagine with
no exercise in a cage that's as big as he
(24:17):
is a foot wide. Think about he's six foot eight,
the sale six by nine. And if all you do
is put on wait, you gotta be uncomfortable. He never
gets interaction with anybody. So this guy proceeds to tell
me that he's even met your dad and had controversy
with him. And I have every right to believe this
(24:38):
guy because I feel it. I've seen the tattoos and
this is too odd. And this man told me that
he wanted me to stop at a bank so he
could rob it and go back in to shank this
guy because he deserves.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
To die because he knew you explained who you were to.
Speaker 7 (24:58):
Him, and the whole time in the case, Abrady kept
calling me the last victim's son instead of by my name.
He's like the new generation of inmates aren't willing to
do like the old school. Some up a long story.
He told me that he talks to someone inside once
a month. He said. The next ass whipping j just
(25:19):
personal notes from me.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Did it happened?
Speaker 7 (25:24):
How am I going to know. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
This was just a few months ago. Don't you find
that kind of odd?
Speaker 7 (25:31):
That added the blue? A guy like this gets in
my taxi.
Speaker 6 (25:34):
Yeah, all of Melissa's fears about confrontation, about Gon's hatred,
(26:00):
anger about her father and what he'd done to Don's mother, everything,
it was just finally over and there was peace. In
a sort of strange, if not slightly broken way, there
was love.
Speaker 4 (26:19):
I'm glad it's not the word. I'm thankful that you
were willing to take me out here and show me.
I know this isn't I can tell that after this
much's time, you you know this is a place you
can go to. But my mind is just racing. I'm
(26:40):
thinking of a million of things. I'm thinking about, thinking
about my dad and my picturing it in my mind. I've
been in that cab of the truck. I'm picturing exactly
what he said, what he must have done, like how
quickly I would have taken off. I mean, it's it's
(27:04):
definitely I can I can visualize it.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
But how has healing on your own? How has it
shaped you as a person? How is it shaped like
you didn't ask to.
Speaker 7 (27:17):
Become this person? How's it shaped me? Well, people will
tell you now that you've healed, are you going to
find Donald or are you going to stay Leroy? Well,
I'm not sure yet Donald. When Donald was the victim,
(27:41):
Leroy was the survivor. So in my story would go
how it went from Donald, Bernard Finley to le Roy
because of the traumatic events that have happened in my life.
And then at the end, when we're all done with this,
(28:04):
we will see Donald. We got a beginning, a middle,
and an end, and Donald came out because we hit
the final piece, the puzzles complete, two people that have
no answers from anybody else, we can now answer ourselves.
Speaker 6 (28:37):
After all of this, what is Jessperson to you?
Speaker 7 (28:39):
Now? What is Jessperson to me?
Speaker 5 (28:43):
Now?
Speaker 7 (28:44):
Just a tax penny at waste?
Speaker 6 (28:55):
Meeting one another was so therapeutic for both Melissa and
Don was really a testament to human resiliency and the
triumph of good over evil. When we left with Shugel,
it was with the feeling that ultimately Jessperson had lost
because two of his residual victims had used the power
(29:17):
of forgiveness to transcend the horror and hopelessness he'd foisted
upon them.
Speaker 1 (29:44):
Happy Faces, a production of How Stuff Works.
Speaker 8 (29:47):
Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, Mangesha Tikedur
and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by
Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Story editor is Matt Riddle, Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicoigne. Special thanks
(30:08):
to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian Newspaper, and
the Carlisle family.
Speaker 5 (30:16):
Oh is love Place where they catch you when you fall.
O his love Place where they catch you when you fall.
(30:44):
And we are
Happy Face News
Hosts And Creators
Melissa Moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco
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