Authorities: Help Us ID Last of the 'Happy Face Killer' Victims

Woman known only as 'Claudia' was murdered in 1992
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 10, 2024 3:00 AM CST

Authorities say they've identified all the victims of the "Happy Face Killer" except one, and they need the public's help to determine who the final woman was. Keith Hunter Jesperson, dubbed the Happy Face Killer because of drawings he left on anonymous letters sent to media and police, pleaded guilty to the woman's 1992 murder in 2010 and told authorities her name was Claudia, but authorities say that may or may not be accurate, NBC News reports. Jesperson says he picked the woman up after she hitchhiked out of Las Vegas, Fox 5 Vegas reports. He dumped her body on the side of the road in California's Riverside County.

Jesperson, a long-haul trucker who tortured and killed women in his truck's cab, ultimately confessed to a total of eight murders across the US and is serving multiple life sentences. Investigators believe "Claudia" was from southern California; she was a 25- to 35-year-old white woman with a fair complexion and brown or dyed blond hair, 5'7" with a medium build and a tattoo of two dots on the side of her right thumb. "Our goal is to identify this victim and provide closure to her family, wherever they may be," says the Riverside County district attorney. "We are hopeful someone hearing any of these details may remember anything that could help us reunite this woman with the family who may have been looking for her for over three decades." (A bizarre false confession allowed the serial killings to continue.)

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