Keith

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Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Tamiris, the widow of the king of the Massenghetti people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead.
Turns out, that was a big mistake. Listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now.
Listen to Noble Blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're in Raising Cane's with the man that started it all.
Wait, are you the Yes Chef guy? We got chicken fingers, crinkle cut fries, Texas toast, and their world famous cane sauce. I'm going to shed a tear right now.
Raising Cane's chicken fingers, one love. Hey everyone.
I'm Lucas. And I'm Lee.
And we're with the Lucas and Lee podcast. We invite you to listen in every week as we talk about life, relationships, dating, and of course, sports from the perspective of two middle-aged guys living their best lives.
Catch the Lucas and Lee podcast here on iHeart Podcasts. Previously on Happy Face.
I got a phone call and this guy says, I know where you're at. You're in the kitchen And you're wearing this.
Keith states that he hired someone. My mom had just said that her and my dad were separating, which I didn't believe.
I wanted to keep, like, you guys' baby pictures. And he chucked that all out.
He wasn't exactly a faithful husband. Oh, absolutely not.
Tell me about your wedding day. They were doing pictures of me, and I guess he was outside kissing the bridesmaids, my best friend.
After the second murder, the happy-faced killer says, he realized he liked what he was doing. This triggered something in me, he says.
It was getting easy, real easy. The first year with Melissa had went through two fires.
Keith taped the vent. I had a little toilet cover, and it caught it on fire, and the whole bathroom was engulfed.
Then, shortly after that, we go camping, and then I heard a bear. He cleaned fish in front of the cabin, and he was sleeping in the car.
He started killing

in 1990, and he stopped in 95. The Five Years is not an isolated event.
It was an escalation.

I think he was groomed to be who he is. In the pines where the sun don't ever shine, I would shiver the whole night through.
One of the biggest questions you're faced with when looking at the lives of serial killers is, where did it all begin?

What makes a person become a killer?

Is it something that's passed down through generations?

Or is there a single moment that can turn someone from a normal human being with a job and a family into a monster?

Are serial killers made, or are they born? I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is Happy Face. I remember the first time I saw my father in prison, and the first thing he said to me was, Missy, do you want to know why?

And at the time, I couldn't handle the answer

and honestly, I thought whatever he was going to tell me

would be just him trying to justify what he's done

or to minimize what he's done.

And so I didn't want some pacifying answer.

So I said no.

And I've regretted that moment for so many years now

because I want to become a police officer in Canada. He wanted to be a Mountie.
And he was declined from becoming that because of an injury he sustained in high school. What he told me is that in gym class, they do this rope exercise where they climb the rope to the ceiling of the gym, which is quite high.
They say now, when they interview killers, people who have been perpetually in jail, they have found that a large percentage of them had damaged their frontal lobe before they were 22, changes their whole personality. Keith fell in high school.
I believe it was 25 feet. He was on the very top of the rope and not let go.
He fell to the gym floor. He sustained a head injury and broke his hip, and this impacted his ability to join the force.
I don't believe my dad ever got over that. It was something that he carried on in conversations, but there was a sense of resentment that he was now a long-haul truck driver when he could have had this other life that was just out of his grasp.
But as Melissa's mom Rose told us, she really thinks that Keith was conditioned to be a killer, groomed to be one by his own father, Les. And that's something we felt we had to explore.
From I, The Creation of a Serial Killer, by Jack Olson. The Jesperson children grew up in a rural atmosphere.
First in Chilliwack, British Columbia, later 250 miles south in Salo, Washington, an apple-scented orchard community of 10,000. Keith's perpetually mobile father built the family's Chilliwack home on land his ancestors homesteaded in 1909, moved the house from the city to a pastoral area outside of town,

cleared five acres with a borrowed bulldozer, built a barn with a loft for his children,

and a wooden bridge big enough for the family horses to cross the little creek that rose from

the springs above the property line. Later, he dammed the creek and built a water wheel to trap

Chinook and Silver Salmon as they swam up from the Vedder River to spawn. If you read Jack Olson's biography of Keith, the way in which he describes Keith's father, Les, it's very clear that Les was a very resourceful, ingenious man, the kind of guy who could build a barn from scratch or create a water wheel to catch fish for dinner.
But what also is clear is that he could be a monster. We decided that we didn't want to live near your grandfather anymore.
Why? He was horrible. I hated him.
Really? Mm-hmm. Yeah.
He would, without warning, open up the door to our house, and he goes, would you sleep with me? To you? To me. I had no idea.
Yeah. Your father-in-law? Yes.
Your father-in-law hit on you. Yes.

More than once?

Oh, yeah.

I would be sitting right next to Keith, and he would come and he would pinch me,

and I was thinking, Keith, what are you doing?

And then I'd see his hand, and they'd start giggling.

I don't know who I was more angry with, Keith for not protecting me,

or for less for doing it.

So you think Keith knew his father would make passes at you?

Well, he was right there.

And they thought it was a joke. And the only time I was saved is.
I mean, I knew that Les beat the kids a lot. I don't know if he beat Gladys or not, but I know that there was problems between Gladys and Les because when we were first married, Keith goes, I have to go down to the house.
And I go, okay. So he went down to the house, came back, and he was really visibly upset.
I said, so what went on? He goes, yeah, mom and dad got in a fight. And I guess dad cut every telephone wire in the house.

Was less a drinker. He was a heavy alcoholic.
For a limited time at Verizon, you can get our best price ever for a single line. We'll see you next time.
per month with auto pay plus taxes and fees visit your local san jose verizon store today 20 monthly promo credits applied over 36 months with a new line on unlimited welcome in times of congestion unlimited 5g and 4g lte may be temporarily slower than other traffic domestic data roaming at 2g speeds additional terms apply something unexpected happened after jeremy scott confessed to killing michelle scofield in bone valley season one i knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.
And he was just staring at me. And they had secrets of their own to share.
Gilbert King, I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott. I was no longer just telling the story.
I was part of it.

Every time I hear about my dad, it's, oh, he's a killer.

He's just straight evil.

I was becoming the bridge between a killer and the son he'd never known.

If the cops and everything would have done their job properly,

my dad would have been in jail.

I would have never existed.

I never expected to find myself in this place.

Now, I need to tell you how I got here. At the end of the day, I'm literally a son of a killer.
Bone Valley, Season 2. Jeremy.
Jeremy, I want to tell you something. Listen to new episodes of Bone Valley, Season 2, starting April 9th on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And to hear the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear

the entire new season ad-free with exclusive content starting April 9th, subscribe to Lava

for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Claro, un vaso gigante lleno de azúcar.
¿Algo más? No, eso no fue lo que pedí.

Sí, me pediste un vaso enorme de azúcar.

No, no dije eso.

Dijiste un té helado sin azúcar.

Ok, esa opción suena más saludable.

Las bebidas azucaradas vienen con riesgos no tan dulces para la salud.

Busca mejores opciones en destapalgo mejor punto com.

Un mensaje del Departamento de Salud Pública de California, financiado por USDA SNAP. One of the few people that Keith opened up to about his childhood was a true crime author and psychologist named Al Carlyle.
Melissa met him almost completely by chance. I was invited to go to CrimeCon, and this gentleman approached the booth, and he said, hey, you know, I've got this author who's working on serial killers, and he said, well, his name is Al Carlisle, and he studied Ted Bundy, and he's working on a chapter of the serial killer named Keith Hunter Jesperson.
So when I got back home, I called him immediately, and I loved his perspective. He had stories that I've never even heard of before about the man I thought I knew.
Unfortunately, the night before we were supposed to interview Al Carlyle, he passed away in his sleep. And it was heartbreaking.
He was such a fascinating, brilliant man. But we were able to reach out to Stephen Booth, his publisher, and also to Carrie Ann Keller, who was his researcher and writing assistant.

Keith felt that Al had a real mission to understand violent behavior,

so that was their common ground.

They each felt the other could provide valuable information.

Once Al was up there interviewing Keith, and Keith said to Al,

I could reach over this table and snap your head before the guard would even notice. I don't because I don't want to lose my privileges.
He wasn't threatening Al. He was just making a point about his size.
Okay, so that's how you have to understand how Keith could talk. So it's like being in a room with a loaded gun.
Oh yeah, for sure. Definitely.
You feel it. My name is Stephen Booth.
I have been the publisher at Genius Book Publishing since 2011. Keith Jessperson was in a situation where he had a very manipulative father.
The father, by the way, freaks me out. He had a very manipulative father.
He was required to be obedient at all times. He was given conflicting information about what ethical standards were and how to behave, and he was isolated from his family even by his own siblings.
What's incredible, though, is that Al

Carlisle's family gave us the

tapes of his interviews

with Jesperson in prison.

And you can hear

the intimate details

and how much

Keith opened up to him.

Brad was the younger.

Bruce was the oldest.

When did they start calling you Igor? Igor was my junior high. I was in eighth grade and then Brad was in seventh grade.
And he wanted to be big with his friends. So he started calling me Igor because of the monster movies.
And I figured I was his sidekick. Physically at that time? I was big physically at the time and slow.
Slow physically? Well, I was big and I was not very well coordinated. Any learning problems? No, not really.
So you're intelligent? I'm very intelligent, but I just didn't adapt myself to it. Keith was made to pay his own room and board when the other kids were not made to do that, so he would be an example to the other siblings.
And this was when he was 12, 13 years old. Precisely, yes.
You know, the father forced him to work. He got paid a pittance.
Most of that money went back to room and board, and whatever was left over, the father basically took out of the bank account. And whenever he got into trouble, everybody pointed

the finger at Keith. His siblings did, his father did, his friends did.
He was isolated, harboring

a lot of resentment, violent, rage-like resentment towards his father. I mean, what was that story

about him, the boy when he was about eight years old, who kept blaming him for things, and then

Thank you. rage-like resentment towards his father.
I mean, what was that story about him,

the boy when he was about eight years old who kept blaming him for things

and then Keith let loose and tried to beat him to death?

Oh, I have a memory of that kid.

When you were very young?

Yeah.

He was just, he was,

every time he'd say,

well, Keith did this and Keith did that

and I'd get the belt and I'd get nailed and I'd get punished and so forth. He'd sit back, laugh, ha, ha, ha, this is funny.
And one day I caught him off the back there when he was ready to scream, Keith did it. And I was beating him damn near to death.
You were how old? And I was about eight years old at the time. When you were beating the kid, did you feel you're in control? Did you just

lose it with his soul? I just lost it. I didn't, I don't think it had anything to do with control.
It just had paybacks to bitch, you know. And I just grabbed him and just started wailing on him.
Of course, I didn't know him to stop. I was going to beat him to death.
He was put in a position where he could not win and he could not take his rage out on his father because his father had him dialed in. So he took his rage out on the closest person to him who was embarrassing him.
You know, I sure taught him a lesson. So even by the age of eight, there was a lot of anger.

Yeah, there was anger there.

Anger.

Yeah, you do me wrong, it was like, yeah, you do me wrong, I was bound and determined to get even. From I, the creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olson

Sometimes the Jesperson males prowled the creek banks for muskrats.

I'd yank one out of the water by its tail and throw it up on the bank.

Then Dad or one of my brothers would club it to death.

We also killed gophers, hundreds of them. They were a farm pest and nobody missed them.
Dad has films of us boys blood splattered from killing gophers and other varmints. It was our form of recreation.
After we grew up and got married, Dad liked to show the film to our wives. He would joke, watch my natural-born killers

as they dispense of their victims. You don't want to run into them in a dark alley.

Based on their jailhouse interview, what did Al make of my dad's childhood? He was fascinated by his passivity, you know, Keith's passivity as a child. This dichotomous behavior of a shy and passive child who becomes fully the opposite as an adult was very interesting to him.
He understood how Keith was bitter about the control his father had over him. He knew he wasn't able to stand up to his father's dominance, but Keith accepted it, you know, as his lot in life.
And he kind of liked it because, well, he did feel trapped by his father.

He was afraid of his father.

He also had a strong desire to have his dad love him.

I feared my grandfather.

Like, even though he never hit me,

I was terrified of my grandfather being angry with me because I don't know what he would do. Maybe even know about the motorcycle story.
I do. I do.
So he has this motorcycle, Keith, that he saved up money for. A brand new motorcycle.
Okay, it's not a piece of junk like from cobbled together junkyard and i had bought in a 750 honda motorcycle it was a 74 brand new gold and metallic orange you know like bright orange color it was a beautiful bike and uh it came hunting season and i was working for dad at the time and brad and i wanted to go hunting over on the coast by Kalama. Of course, we needed a four-wheel drive, and I was going to use the company pickup.
Well, I said, Dad, can I use the company pickup? He says, sure, Keith, but one stipulation, and I knew it was coming. He said, you leave me your motorcycle on so I can go on a motorcycle ride with that, and I said, no, because you're going to get drunk get on it you're gonna wreck the bike.
Well I probably ain't gonna drink and I said no. False promises you know.
Well in order for me to get the pickup I had to give him the bike. So I get the pickup and I load up the hunting supplies, and we take off over to Clamon.
We have a hell of a nice time all weekend long. I wake up in the morning.
On Monday morning, I go back to the dump truck in the backyard. We have a swimming pool to dig that day.
And I walk through the back door, and I say, where the hell's dad at? We got this swimming pool to dig over here.

And mom said, oh, you don't know.

She says, he wrecked the motorcycle.

He's in the hospital.

And I guess Keith was on a hunting trip or something?

What happened when he came back?

Do you know?

Well, then Keith had to run the businesses.

He had to do everything. He was the sole provider for two families, his dad and mine, ours.
And so I call up the company. The people that were going to do the swimming pool told them I wouldn't be there because my dad's in the hospital and I have to go take care of business.
So I go to St. E's Hospital, and there is his dad up there on the floor,, they operated on a ruptured spleen and his face is all bandaged up, cut his nose and damner off.

He hit a barbed wire and cut up his intestines. He has a big scar.
He had a big scar on his face.

I get up there and he's like looking at me and I said, well, what happened, Dad? He gotta you gotta get back to that motorcycle you gotta you gotta take care of all the evidence Keith you gotta take care of it. I said what? What do you mean take care of it? He says go get rid of it.
I said you've been drinking. He said just take care of it.
He said we don't want that insurance company knowing that I was riding drunk right? Did Keith drink? No. No it was absolutely like no alcohol.
He was the only one out of all my aunts and uncles that didn't drink at all. I grew up, you didn't drink either.
You and Dad didn't drink at all growing up. No, because my father was an alcoholic too, and so you either choose it or you don't, and I chose not to.
And your dad chose not to drink either.

But I get up to my dad and I sit up at the hospital and my mom's there and I say,

well, dad, I got rid of all that.

And he said, good, good, good, good.

And I said, now, why were you drinking on my motorcycle?

My motorcycle says, I wasn't drinking on your motorcycle.

Yes, you were.

And he says, prove it.

You can't prove it.

You got rid of all the evidence. You can't prove shit.
I'll give you a nickel for your quarter More liquor for your water I'll leave you drunk up on the rooftop Whoa And that's basically how it all ends up. Everything is, I was covering up everything.
How old covering up everything. Like I said, I was like 18 at that time.
Les basically made Keith go hide the evidence so that he could get insurance money. that it didn't look good.
You know, it wouldn't surprise me because Les was very famous for that. His business ethics of that was that the boss was always right and the employees were always wrong.
Which meant the employee took the heat. Yes, it did, and I'm just getting to that.
His idea was that if there's any problems that occurred on the job that I would get shit on and he would get the glory of saying I'm sorry or whatever like that. It'll never happen, you know.
I'll just make sure my son never does this stuff again. So I was like the bloating idiot, you know, doing doing all that and i kind of laughed one day because my dad was on the backhoe and he was digging next to this house and he put the bucket right through the side of the house he has no depth perception that was one of his problems that he stuck the bucket to the side of the house and the people were in the house and they were looking out they saw him running the backhoe right and right? And they come running out of the corner, but by the time they got around

to where the backhoe was, he'd already stopped the machine and he'd gotten me on that.

And they were looking at him and they looked at me and I said,

I did it. And they were like, why do you put up with that?

And I said, that's the way it is. I am the shit on it.

Les told him, this is the way what you're going to say in court.

And Keith did.

In order for them to win a court case for the mobile part.

So he lied in court.

Absolutely he did.

It seems like he wasn't the most honest man.

No, no, he wasn't.

He'd swindle people.

I called him a swindler.

And he had a really good lawyer.

My understanding is that, how do I say this?

Left to his own devices, Keith would have been a pretty happy kid.

He described his childhood as being fairly happy.

And he would have probably not harbored as much rage. He probably would have been somebody who got along with people.
But from Al to me, from Keith to Tal to me, his childhood was more a matter of he was the target. He was the scapegoat, for lack of a better word, of everybody's need to avoid Les' rage or manipulation or whatever it is.
He had nobody backing him up and he didn't even know how to back himself up. So all he could do was absorb all this negative energy about everything that was going on.
One, two, three, one, two. There's an interview with your dad about your grandfather made him go visit a friend of your grandfather's who was dying.

And your dad was really resentful because he had to go sit and make conversation with this dying man.

Because your grandfather said nobody should have to die alone.

And your dad was talking to the guy before he realized he had already passed away.

I had no idea about this. Dad still treated me like the run of the litter, Daddy's little helper.
He dragged me to a nursing home to visit one of his hunting buddies. He said, Smitty goes limp.
I'm holding his hand for 10 or 15 minutes before I realize he's dead.

On our way home, he said,

Keith, someday you'll thank me for putting you through this.

I never feared a dead person after that.

When I was killing, I talked to my victims as if they were still alive.

It was something to thank Dad for. My dad was really good about telling his story, his narrative, and he beat everybody to the punch.
And it would just, when his story came forward, people always judged everybody else's tale against what he had to say. My dad had ownership.
Like, the truth was his. He owned the truth.
And it was not debatable. His air of certainty definitely played a part in other people believing in him.
And why probably his victims believed in him and trusted him over their own voices he exuded confidence and certainty and and whatever he said was truth and you can rely

upon it and and you could trust it but not really May I ask a question? Yes. Why is it that when Rose left Keith and took the kids, she went over to Les' house? What do you mean? The story that I got was when she left and emptied the house, the first place she went was Les' house.
That is a direct quote from the history that I was reading this morning, and I can share that with you if you need me to. From Keith? Yeah.
Oh. That's the story that I got.
It could be wrong, but that's the story that Al got. That's interesting that he would say that.
I was there. That didn't happen.
Okay. I was there the day that they left.
That would make sense that my dad would share that story to shame my mother and put her into that frame of light. Oh.
I actually remember play by play, minute by minute of that day that they separated, and there was not one single time that we went over to my grandparents' house. Matter of fact, they were gone, and there was not anything that we cleaned out on that property because we left in the Fort Topaz, which is just a little family sedan.
We didn't take a single item from that house other than the clothes that we needed for like a couple days. Wow.
That is not the story that I got from, from Keith. Yeah.
That's fascinating. So that's interesting that he came up with this new story, a new spin.
What happened? Well, I'm glad I asked because honestly, I bought the story that Keith gave Al. You know, I mean, it seemed reasonable.
She left, she took everything with her, she went over to the father's house.

Some of this is fantasy.

Some of this is making Keith feel better about himself.

So how truthful was he with Al?

Now it's all right to lie.

It's all right to be conniving and so forth.

You can do that because you're an adult.

You can do that.

But when you're a kid, you can't lie to your parents. Because, you know, he called.
He would call and talk to us, and I remember you comforting me after one particular phone call where we were living on A Street over here, and he called and said he was suicidal because of having paid child support and then he because it was such a burden for him and it made me upset because I felt blamed he's blaming me for having to pay child support but then it went another step further he said um you know I drove past the prison today the Oregon State Prison I just like tooted my horn and said, I'll be there soon.

That's what I said in the call.

But I remember crying and going to my room and you came after me.

You're like, what's wrong, Melissa?

And I said, you know, dad said he's going to kill himself.

And you got so mad.

You got so bad.

You stormed out of my room. You called him back up and you said you you son of a bitch I heard you like that was the first time I ever saw you mad you're like because I really felt the whole time he was playing on us you know I got paid child support so you guys separated in 1990 and then then how did you find out in 1995?

Didn't you receive a letter from him?

I received a letter maybe a week before he got arrested.

And in this letter, it said, Rose, what I did is bigger than O.J. Simpson.

He said, I'll probably be in hell forever.

Keith.

And I thought, you are so full of crap.

I mean, like, what's this supposed to mean, right?

Shredded to pieces, threw in the trash.

It was directly to you.

It was directly to me.

It didn't say anything about us kids.

It just was like...

I did something bigger than O.J. Simpson.

Thank you. Like, I did something bigger than O.J.
Simpson. Gentle women, don't you know God is a man?

Gentle men, don't you know God is a woman?

And like any good poet, God lets the song write itself. God sits back.
Gentle people

We must rely