Where Is Keith Hunter Jesperson Now? Inside the Happy Face Killer's Life Decades After His 5-Year Murder Spree

Keith Hunter Jesperson wanted the world to know he was a killer — and now, his story will be told on the small screen.

Jesperson is at the center of the Paramount+ show Happy Face, starring Dennis Quaid as the serial killer and Annaleigh Ashford as his daughter Melissa Reed (who goes by Melissa Moore in real life).

The hulking, 6'6" Jesperson is confirmed to have killed at least eight women across California, Florida, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming between 1990 and 1995, boasting about the slayings in letters on bathroom walls and to local newspapers. He would sign the confessions with smiley faces, earning him the moniker of the Happy Face Killer.

For more than half a decade, Jesperson got away with murder until one slaying hit too close to home, leading him to turn himself in as the Happy Face Killer.

So where Keith Hunter Jesperson is now? Here's everything to know about how he turned into the Happy Face Killer and what his life looks like today.

Who is Keith Hunter Jesperson?

Jesperson was born on April 6, 1955, in Chilliwack, British Columbia, Canada. He was a middle child with two sisters and two brothers, and recalled his alcoholic father often beating him with a belt, per I: The Creation of a Serial Killer.

At a young age, Jesperson began abusing, torturing and killing animals. His aggression intensified when he was 12 years old, and his family moved to Selah, Wash., where he had trouble adjusting at school.

Jesperson nearly beat one of his bullies to death, later describing the experience as akin to a dissociative one, in which he felt like he'd stepped out of his own body and watched someone else pummel the boy. He later attempted to drown another bully and only stopped after a lifeguard intervened.

After graduating from high school in 1973, Jesperson opted not to go to college and instead pumped gas and worked for his father, pursuing a developing passion for long-haul trucking.

When Jesperson was 20, he married a local student named Rose on her 18th birthday. They had two daughters, Melissa and Carrie, and a son named Jason.

Decades later, Melissa recalled to BBC News that her father had tortured kittens in front of her and her siblings as a child. Jesperson and Rose eventually divorced, finalizing their split in 1990. That same year, Jesperson's murder spree began, and it spanned over the next five years, according to ABC News.

What did Keith Hunter Jesperson do?

Jesperson committed his first known murder in January 1990 when he brutally sexually assaulted, beat and strangled 23-year-old Taunja Bennett to death, according to 20/20.

After meeting Bennett at a bar in Portland, Ore., Jesperson brought her back to his house and killed her. Afterward, he left her body near Columbia Gorge, where a college student later discovered it.

"Comments were made and different things and an altercation happened, and I struck her. I actually had hit her in the face and for some reason I just kept hitting her in the face and because of that," Jesperson told 20/20 in 2010. "I feared going to prison for slugging her in the face and causing her bodily injury and so I killed her."

Jesperson got away with the murder initially after Laverne Pavlinac told authorities that she witnessed her then-boyfriend, John Sosnovske, rape and kill Bennett. Pavlinac later recanted her confession, but Sosnovske pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty, per The New York Times. They both went to prison for the slaying, and investigators closed the case.

While Sosnovske and Pavlinac were incarcerated, Jesperson continued meeting, raping and murdering women for another four years. He became known as the Happy Face Killer after he wrote an anonymous letter on a bathroom wall in a Montana bus terminal, confessing to the murder and signing it with a smiley face, according to the New York Daily News.

In the years that followed, Jesperson sent more letters to newspapers confessing to other murders, including The Oregonian, signing each with a happy face.

"It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it," Jesperson told ABC News in 2010. "It is everything like shoplifting. You're breaking the law but you're getting away with it. And so, there's a thrill of getting away with it."

He killed three women in 1992, then four more between 1993 and March 1995 — when he turned himself in for murdering his girlfriend, Julie Ann Winningham. Jesperson had strangled Winningham and left her body by the side of a state road, after which investigators got involved and came across his name.

Jesperson also admitted to killing Bennett, saying at the time that he wanted "to come clean ... get it all over [with], the record straight. I had been worried about this for a long time. I wanted to get those two people out of prison."

Aside from Bennett and Winningham, Jesperson's other known victims include Cynthia Lyn Rose in Turlock, Calif.; Patricia Skiple in Gilroy, Calif.; Suzanne Kjellenberg near Holt, Fla.; Laurie Ann Pentland in Salem, Ore. and Angela May Subrize in Laramie County, Wyo., as well as at least one other Jane Doe he referred to as "Claudia" near Blythe, Calif., according to the Riverside County district attorney's office.

What was Keith Hunter Jesperson's sentence?

Jesperson is currently serving several life sentences for the slayings of Bennett, Pentland and other victims. According to the local news station KPTV, he was given three consecutive life sentences.

Where is Keith Hunter Jesperson now?

Jesperson is serving his life sentences at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

In a podcast interview in November 2023, he claimed to be pen pals with the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann. Jesperson has also tried to stay in contact with other media personalities by sharing his artwork.

He is estranged from daughter Moore, who says she doesn't want a relationship with him — or her kids to get to know him.

"I don't want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath," she told ABC News. "He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words."

For his part, Jesperson told The Independent in February 2024 that he's still being investigated for several other murders and offers his DNA whenever he can to rule himself out as a suspect in open cases.

"I don't need murders I didn't commit being pinned to me just because," he explained. "I don't need to be made to be even more of a monster than I already am."

This article was written independently by PEOPLE’s editorial team and meets our editorial standards. Paramount+ is a paid advertising partner with PEOPLE.