Keith Hunter Jesperson

Keith Hunter Jesperson (born 6 April 1955) is a Canadian American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the "Happy Face Killer" because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and prosecutors. Many of his victims were prostitutes and transients who had no connection to him.

Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.

After the body of his first victim, Taunja Bennett, was found, media attention surrounded Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to having killed Bennett with the help of her abusive boyfriend, John Sosnovske.

Jesperson was upset that he was not getting any media attention. He first drew a smiley face on a bathroom wall (hundreds of miles away from the scene of the crime), on which he anonymously confessed to killing Bennett.

When that did not elicit a response, he began writing letters to the media and prosecutors.