Oregon woman murdered by ‘Happy Face Killer’ identified nearly 30 years later
An Oregon woman murdered nearly 30 years ago by the notorious “Happy Face Killer” has been identified.
On June 3, 1993, a truck driver spotted a body on the side of California State Route 152, about a half hour south of San Jose. Dressed in denim at the time, the victim was known only as “Blue Pacheco” until just last week, when genetic genealogy was used to identify her as Patricia Skiple.
The Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office reopened the case in 2019 with help from the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to identifying “John and Jane Does.” The agency also confirmed the identity of her killer as Keith Hunter Jesperson, a California criminal nicknamed the “Happy Face Killer” because of the smiley doodles he scribbled on notes to the media and authorities.
“This case was exceptionally challenging due to recent Norwegian ancestry which resulted in very distant DNA matches on GEDmatch and FamilyTreeDNA,” DNA Doe Project team leader Cairenn Binder told the Salem Statesman Journal.
Jesperson was arrested in 1995 on suspicion of killing a woman in Washington state and ultimately confessed to to killing eight women across California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Nebraska, and Wyoming. His deadly spree unfolded between 1990 and 1995, according to authorities.
He currently is serving four life sentences without possibility of parole in Oregon.
In 2006, Jesperson wrote a note to the county district attorney’s office, claiming he had sexually assaulted and killed a woman near the highway. Investigators now believe that to be Skiple, a mother known to friends and family as “Patsy.” She would have been about 45 years old when she was killed.
Her cause of death was listed as undetermined.
With News Wire Services
