Misdirection

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.

Speaker 2 Black Friday Savings are here at the Home Depot, which means it's time to add new cordless power to your collection.

Speaker 2 Right now, when you buy a select battery kit from one of our top brands like Ryobi or Milwaukee, you'll get a select tool from that same brand for free.

Speaker 2 Click into one of our best deals of the season and stock up on tools for all your upcoming projects. Get Black Friday Savings happening now at the Home Depot.

Speaker 2 Limit one per transaction, exclusion supply, full eligible tool list in-store and online.

Speaker 4 Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your husband, who fidgets through the night like he's sending Morse code with his toes.

Speaker 4 Get him a weighted blanket and save big with Amazon early holiday deals. Sleep tight, Dave.

Speaker 5 Here's something good on women's health and longevity, a new podcast on iHeart. Join us for groundbreaking conversations with renowned medical experts.

Speaker 5 They'll share the latest breakthroughs, the good news about women's health, and the simple steps women can take to help them live healthier and happier every day.

Speaker 5 Be sure to listen to our episode, Perimenopause and Menopause, From Taboo to Transformation.

Speaker 5 We explore what's happening in the body, why awareness matters, and practical tips to help women manage symptoms with confidence and comfort.

Speaker 5 Brought to you by Always Discreet, offering products that can support you in your daily life. Found at Walgreens, the women's well-being destination.

Speaker 5 Listen to hear something good on women's health and longevity on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your favorite shows.

Speaker 7 Delta Airlines just turned 100 and is already shaping the next century of flight with the Delta Sustainable Skies Lab. Here, they're building the future of flight.

Speaker 7 Think electric air taxis and next-gen aircraft aiming to cut fuel burns significantly. And this isn't just future talk.

Speaker 7 Today, their fleet of Boeing 737s have marine-like marine-like finlets designed to reshape airflow that reduces drag. The future of travel is more sustainable, and Delta's leading the way.

Speaker 7 Learn more at delta.com slash sustainability.

Speaker 9 Previously on Happy Face.

Speaker 9 Keith H. Jesperson, 40, made his admission Friday to Detective Rick Buckner in a telephone conversation.

Speaker 10 In 1995, when I heard the news about my dad, I was dating a guy named Nick.

Speaker 10 It was a very dysfunctional relationship. When things were good, they were good.
When things were bad, they were extremely bad.

Speaker 11 Physical.

Speaker 9 There was something about your dad you wanted to tell me, and you weren't sure what to believe, and it was shocking, and I didn't know what to think either.

Speaker 10 Yeah, we were just young.

Speaker 9 I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies I planned to tell when I was arrested. What made me cross the line into murder? Maybe it was my nature.

Speaker 10 There was a statement from the son of Julie Winningham, the victim. Obviously, he was torn up and devastated, rightfully so, and wanted my dad to be killed.

Speaker 11 I got pregnant my freshman year.

Speaker 10 So, right after I found out, is when the news hit about my dad. So, I felt like the only option for me to break out of this was to not have the baby.
A couple months later, I got a letter from my dad.

Speaker 10 He said, You deserve to be in prison with me. You're a killer just like me.

Speaker 14 The biggest fear is that I can be like my father. I look like my father.

Speaker 14 I wonder about DNA.

Speaker 15 In the pines,

Speaker 15 in the pines,

Speaker 15 where the sun don't ever shine,

Speaker 15 I would shiver

Speaker 15 the whole night through.

Speaker 1 One of the things people ask is:

Speaker 1 How did Keith get away with it for so long?

Speaker 1 And people offer a variety of reasons. Some say he was smart or careful in many ways.

Speaker 1 But when you look at the case of his first victim, Tanya Bennett, he really just got lucky for a few years at least.

Speaker 1 I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco.

Speaker 1 This is Happy Face.

Speaker 9 From I, The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olson.

Speaker 9 On a chilly winter day in Portland, Oregon, Tanya Bennett kissed her mother goodbye and said she was off to meet a boyfriend.

Speaker 9 She disappeared from sight in the direction of a bus stop, her walkman plugged into her ears. Tanya was mildly retarded from oxygen deprivation at birth.
She'd been a difficult child.

Speaker 9 In a cooking class at Cleveland High School, she assaulted a classmate in a quarrel over a piece of cake. Addicted to alcohol and drugs, she hustled drinks, shot pool, and got into trouble with men.

Speaker 9 Recently, she'd complained to her mother that a man had taken her home from the BNI tavern, beaten her, and quote, pimped me out, end quote.

Speaker 9 She said she was afraid to go back to the same bar, but her memory had always been short.

Speaker 1 When you read the Jack Olson book or the news articles from the time, it's apparent why Tanya Bennett was chosen as prey.

Speaker 1 She comes across as pretty and sweet, but also naive and troubled. What happened to her is tragic.
But what's strange about the crime is that there's so many people who wanted to take credit for it.

Speaker 1 There is a couple, Laverne Pavlanak and John Zwesnovsky, who come forward and get arrested.

Speaker 9 The Oregonian, January 17th, 1991, by Fred Leeson.

Speaker 9 Laverne A. Pavlanak is accused of four counts of aggravated murder, rape, sex abuse, kidnapping, and felony murder for the death of Tanya A.

Speaker 9 Bennett, a 23-year-old woman whose nude body was found last January in the Columbia Gorge.

Speaker 9 Deputy District Attorney James McIntyre told a Multnomah County Circuit Court that Pavlanak fed police anonymous tips that led to the arrest of her longtime boyfriend, John A. Soznovsky.

Speaker 9 Then, McIntyre said, Pavlanak later told police that she had tied and held a rope around Bennett's neck while Soznovsky beat the woman and sexually assaulted her.

Speaker 1 But Laverne and her boyfriend John weren't the only ones trying to claim credit for this case. When they were arrested for the Bennett murder, Keith wanted credit for his crime.

Speaker 1 So he started sending anonymous letters to the Oregonian and graffitiing truck-stop bathrooms for attention.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, Keith gets so many of the details wrong, and you can start to wonder: did he really do it?

Speaker 1 We wanted to hear the details from Phil Stanford, the Oregon journalist who received those letters and covered the case.

Speaker 18 Quote, on or about January 20th, 1990, I picked up Sonia Bennett and took her home. I raped her and beat her real bad.
Her face was all broke up.

Speaker 18 Then I ended her life by pushing my fist into her throat. Unquote.

Speaker 18 Right away, something doesn't fit.

Speaker 18 In the first place, as you already know, if you follow local crime news, the name is Tanya, not Sonia Bennett.

Speaker 18 And she was killed, according to the experts who examined the body on the night of January 21st, not the 20th.

Speaker 18 But that's not the biggest problem here.

Speaker 18 The problem, if that's the word for it, is that two people are already serving time in prison for the crime.

Speaker 1 After her dad's arrest, Melissa started reading Phil Stamford's articles in the Oregonian at her local library.

Speaker 1 It's how she learned the horrific details of her dad's crimes and who her father really was. So naturally, she had a lot of questions for Phil about why her dad wasn't caught earlier.

Speaker 14 Could you tell me who these people are, these strangers and how they're associated with my dad's case?

Speaker 14 Well,

Speaker 11 the reason Laverne, Pavlimak, and John Soznovsky ended up in prison for the Tanya Bennett murder is that Laverne, who was this 63-year-old ding bat, was trying to get rid of her boyfriend, who was actually much younger, a barfly.

Speaker 11 He'd get off, work at the sawmill every day and head for the bar. And she'd have to go pick him up at the truck stop bar and bring him home, put him to bed.
And

Speaker 11 at least he was working. But she wanted to get him out of the house.
And she had tried before, several times, called in his parole officer, try to get him at least taken out of the house.

Speaker 11 It didn't work.

Speaker 11 So when she read the story inside of the Oregonian about how a body had been found in the gorge, she made an anonymous call to the sheriff's office saying she thought it was this guy, John Sesnowski.

Speaker 11 And when that didn't work, she made another call like that. They eventually figured out who it was coming from.
So the sheriff's office went out and talked to her.

Speaker 11 And she said, yeah, she was at the bar and she heard him bragging about wasting

Speaker 11 a woman in the gorge. And they came back the next day with a search warrant.
And she didn't have anything more to say.

Speaker 11 But on the search warrant, they said they were looking for that fly that had been cut off her jeans and her purse that was missing.

Speaker 15 Right.

Speaker 11 Next day, Laverne called in and said she had the fly and the purse. She found them in the trunk of John's car.
So they said, oh boy. So they came out and got them.
Well, they analyzed them.

Speaker 11 and they realized it wasn't the fly from her jeans and it wasn't her purse.

Speaker 14 I wasn't aware of that.

Speaker 11 And without telling the whole story, she kept lying again and they'd find out the next lie was wrong.

Speaker 11 And so she upped it and after about five visits, she convinced them by saying she had participated in the murder with John Sosnowski. In fact, had held the rope around her neck while he raped her.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 11 Which was nonsense. And they said, thank you very much.

Speaker 11 So she wasn't any longer a witness who might be making up stories. She was an accomplice.
They charged her and the boyfriend she was trying to get out of the house.

Speaker 11 Of course, by the time the case came to trial, she said, no, I was just making it up. But the videotape they'd made of her false confession convinced the jury they convicted her.

Speaker 11 And when Slesnovsky saw what was happening, he took a plea because he realized that if he went to trial and they convicted, had already convicted Laverne, he'd probably end up getting executed.

Speaker 11 So he pled guilty.

Speaker 11 That's Laverne, Count Lanak, and John Cesnowski.

Speaker 1 So this is all intriguing, but we wanted to know, how did the police get this so wrong?

Speaker 1 We spoke with private investigator Chris Peterson, who worked as a detective for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department at the time of Tanya Bennett's murder.

Speaker 1 So they were already tried and found guilty and sent to prison. That's correct.

Speaker 11 When I got involved, they had been in prison for some time.

Speaker 1 What was the police's reaction to the letters and the graffiti claiming the actual killer was still at large?

Speaker 11 You know, I really don't have a good answer for that.

Speaker 18 Detective Ingram wrote the report on the night bartender Ann Wilson. Quote, Ms.
Wilson was asked specifically about January 21st, 1990, and she recalled Tanya Bennett being in the tavern at 5 p.m.

Speaker 18 when she arrived for work. Ms.
Wilson said Tanya Bennett seemed to hang around with two guys who were playing pool at a table at the east end of the tavern, unquote.

Speaker 18 Wilson described one of the men as being about 30 years old, about 6'2 ⁇ , with short blonde hair. All she could remember about the second one is that he was somewhat shorter.

Speaker 18 Although the detectives never did succeed in identifying the two young men seen playing pool with Tanya on the night of the murder, at the time they could have been excused for thinking that they were on the right track.

Speaker 18 Before the day was over, though, they would have reason to change their minds.

Speaker 1 It's like a sick

Speaker 1 comedy of error. I mean, it's.

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah, it's a very dark, dark comedy.

Speaker 18 The caller, a woman, said she had overheard a man in JB's, a restaurant at the Burns Brothers truck stop in Wilsonville, bragging that he had killed Tanya Bennett.

Speaker 18 A week later, February 12th, the same woman called the Clackamas County Sheriff's Department and gave them the same information.

Speaker 18 As she reminded them, the man, his name she said was John Cesnovsky, was on probation in Clackamas County. Maybe they could check him out.

Speaker 18 Ingram called Soznovsky's parole officer, Steve Bracey, and together they figured out who was probably making the calls. Her name was Laverne Pavlinak.

Speaker 1 As we heard the details of the story, there is a little doubt that creeps in. Keith got the names and dates wrong.
And as Melissa realized, there's one detail Laverne got right.

Speaker 14 She did come up with one really critical piece of evidence, and I don't know how she manufactured this, but

Speaker 14 she brought the detectives to where Tanya Bennett's body was found.

Speaker 11 Well, they drove her out to the

Speaker 11 place along this old scenic highway,

Speaker 11 and one of the things that the detectives thought was so convincing was that she said, oh, it was over there.

Speaker 11 Well, they'd already marked the place with red dye or some sort of red marker along the highway.

Speaker 14 So Laverne saw the marker on the highway and realized that's probably where the body was.

Speaker 11 Yeah, there's obviously a crime scene.

Speaker 18 On the strength of Pavlinak's confession, which she tried to explain away at trial, a jury convicted her.

Speaker 18 To avoid a possible death sentence for aggravated murder, Soznovsky then pleaded no contest to felony murder and rape.

Speaker 18 Three years later, Soznovsky has exhausted all his appeals.

Speaker 18 Pavlinak's plea for a new trial was rejected this month by the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Speaker 18 Never a high-profile case to begin with, the murder of Tanya Bennett became a closed one.

Speaker 18 And quite likely, if it weren't for the anonymous letter that arrived at the Oregonian earlier this month from a man claiming to have killed five women in Oregon and California, including Tanya Bennett, the case might well have remained forgotten.

Speaker 20 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.

Speaker 22 The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him?

Speaker 23 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer.

Speaker 24 The investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam.

Speaker 19 Available now.

Speaker 23 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative names like The Path of Worry, Dump Road, and Fear Creek.

Speaker 13 Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence and new suspects.

Speaker 26 We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to the grave with nightmarish secrets.

Speaker 13 From Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, this is Le Mansre season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now.

Speaker 13 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 27 I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place.
It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't.

Speaker 27 We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork. in solving these crazy crimes.

Speaker 27 Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members.

Speaker 27 Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 28 From the studio who brought you the Piketon Massacre and Murder 101,

Speaker 16 this is Incels.

Speaker 3 I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

Speaker 28 From the dark corners of the web,

Speaker 16 an emerging mindset.

Speaker 12 If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you.

Speaker 29 A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women.

Speaker 16 A seed of loneliness explodes.

Speaker 2 I just hate myself.

Speaker 12 I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

Speaker 16 At a deadly tipping point.

Speaker 6 Incels will be added to the terrorism guide.

Speaker 30 Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people.

Speaker 29 Tomorrow is the day of retribution.

Speaker 12 I will have my revenge.

Speaker 16 This is Incels.

Speaker 17 Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 As reporter Phil Stanford told us, had Keith not started writing the newspaper, police might never have found him.

Speaker 1 But to hear more about that, Melissa and I reached out to Jim McNeely, a retired detective from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department.

Speaker 1 I got involved when we started getting the letters sent to us from your dad.

Speaker 11 Somebody sent us some pictures of some writing on the wall in the restroom in Montana, where they said some two people are in jail for something idea.

Speaker 11 And that was followed up by a letter that came to the

Speaker 11 Washington County courts or something and they forwarded it to us. And then another letter came to a Phil Stanford, a reporter in the Oregonian, and that letter eventually came to us.

Speaker 11 And then, when we followed up on the case when your dad came, there was a lot of talk around the department that we still had the right people, and

Speaker 11 whoever was writing these letters was making this stuff up.

Speaker 11 So, that's when I got involved with it, and my partner, Chris Peterson, and we followed up on it from there.

Speaker 18 In an interview this week at the Oregon State Prison, Soznovsky, once the passive barfly, bristled with anger when asked whether he was guilty of killing Tonya Bennett. I never met the girl, he said.

Speaker 18 I never killed anybody in my life.

Speaker 18 He blames everything, he said in a rambling diatribe, on a conspiracy.

Speaker 18 that includes the Oregon State Bar, the Multnomah County District Attorney's Office, the detectives who investigated the case, and of course, his former housemate, Laverne Pavlanak.

Speaker 18 She framed me, he said.

Speaker 14 So then when you get this letter from my dad and he said, I killed Tanya Bennett, Did you instantly believe this letter was true? What did you think about this letter?

Speaker 11 Well, there was something very believable about it. He knew what he was talking about, and he had information on those murders that hadn't been in the papers down wherever the bodies were found.

Speaker 11 So there was something to it. And it was a matter then of going back and analyzing the Tanya Bennett case, the investigation.

Speaker 11 And what I contributed really was a sort of a deconstruction of the case showing that they'd manufactured the case. They'd manufactured the confession.

Speaker 14 So when you got that letter, that was one letter, but you ultimately received more letters. Is that correct?

Speaker 11 Yeah. After he was captured, we corresponded.

Speaker 14 Okay.

Speaker 11 We were trying together to prove

Speaker 11 that the DA was wrong and he was guilty of the Tanya Bennett murder.

Speaker 14 Which is interesting that he's trying to prove his guilt.

Speaker 1 He wanted credit.

Speaker 14 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 Did you ever meet my dad in person?

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 11 After he was arrested, I talked to him in the Clark County Jail, and they just let him out. There was a big folding picnic table, and here I was sitting across from this hulking guy.

Speaker 11 I mean, he's very big, I guess 6'7 ⁇ , something like that.

Speaker 11 And talking to him about the Tanya Bennett murder. And as the conversation quickly developed, how we were going to prove that he was guilty of the Tanya Bennett Bennett murder.

Speaker 1 What was he saying to you?

Speaker 11 He,

Speaker 11 I'm not sure to this day how to read

Speaker 11 him

Speaker 11 at that point.

Speaker 11 At the time, I thought he was sort of unburdening his soul if he wanted to confess. Another way of looking at it, of course, would be that he wanted to get credit for this.

Speaker 11 And it was his way of sort of proving that he was establishing his identity.

Speaker 1 Did he come across as wanting your help?

Speaker 11 Well, he wanted my help. And of course, I wanted his.
You know,

Speaker 11 what I needed was some way to prove that he was telling the truth about Tanya Bennett. And so he offered two ways of proving it.
One was that when he killed her, He said blood was everywhere.

Speaker 11 It even splattered on the ceiling.

Speaker 14 Oh my gosh. I actually stayed in the house where Tanya Bennett was murdered.
And there was a night that I went and slept in the living room on the couch.

Speaker 14 And I remember looking up at the ceiling and seeing splatter on the ceiling, thinking it was spaghetti sauce and just staring at it as I was trying to go to sleep.

Speaker 14 And when you just said that, I wonder if I was looking at

Speaker 14 blood.

Speaker 11 Oh my,

Speaker 11 yeah, yeah.

Speaker 11 So

Speaker 11 I went back to the house it had been bought and sold and they had the new owners had painted that room the bedroom Including the ceiling I went to the DA with that and I said you could scrape the paint off and do a DNA analysis and he said no we don't want to do that the other thing he said that Keith said was After he dropped off Tanya's body in the gorge, driving back, he threw her purse out at a certain place, and he remembered where it was, as a field.

Speaker 11 And in fact, that is eventually how it was proved to the DA's satisfaction, to the court's satisfaction, that he was telling the truth and that he killed Tanya Bennett because one of the sheriff's deputies, Jim McNelly, who's really the...

Speaker 11 the hero in this, took a troop of Boy Scouts out to that field and for two or three days cut cut away the blackberry bushes that had grown up there. I mean

Speaker 11 they grow fast in Oregon and it's four years growth.

Speaker 14 Yeah, but up there it's it gets dense.

Speaker 11 And they found the purse with her ID.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 20 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.

Speaker 22 The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him?

Speaker 23 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam.

Speaker 19 Available now.

Speaker 23 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 In 1997, in Belgium, 37 female body parts placed in 15 trash bags were found at dump sites with evocative names like like The Path of Worry, Dump Road, and Fear Creek.

Speaker 25 Investigators believe it is the work of a serial killer.

Speaker 13 Despite a sprawling investigation, including assistance from the American FBI, the murders have never been solved. Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence.
and new suspects.

Speaker 26 We felt like we were in the presence of someone who was going to to the grave with nightmarish secrets.

Speaker 13 From Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts, this is Le Mansre Season 2, The Butcher of Moss, available now. Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 27 I'm Cheryl McCollum, host of the podcast Zone 7. Zone 7 ain't a place.
It's a way of life. I've worked hundreds of cold cases you've heard of and thousands you haven't.

Speaker 27 We started this podcast to teach the importance of teamwork in solving these crazy crimes.

Speaker 27 Come join us in learning from detectives, prosecutors, authors, canine handlers, forensic experts, and most importantly, victims' family members.

Speaker 27 Listen to Zone 7 with Cheryl McCollum on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

Speaker 28 From the studio who brought brought you the Piketon Massacre and Murder 101,

Speaker 16 this is Incels.

Speaker 3 I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either.

Speaker 28 From the dark corners of the web,

Speaker 16 an emerging mindset.

Speaker 12 If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you.

Speaker 29 A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women.

Speaker 16 A seed of loneliness explodes.

Speaker 2 I just hate myself.

Speaker 12 I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.

Speaker 6 At a deadly tipping point, Incels will be added to the terrorism guide.

Speaker 30 Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd, killing 10 people.

Speaker 11 Tomorrow is the day of retribution.

Speaker 12 I will have my revenge.

Speaker 16 This is Incels.

Speaker 17 Listen to season one of Incels on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 1 So, Jesperson kind of saw you as a partner in this.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it was very strange. We were conspiring together.

Speaker 11 Here we were. I was working for a newspaper, and he was...
trying to confess to a murder. We both knew that two people were in prison for a crime he'd committed.

Speaker 11 But the authorities, the Sheriff's Department and the DA's office, certainly weren't going to admit they'd made a mistake like that.

Speaker 11 And basically, what develops is that we were conspiring to prove that he was guilty.

Speaker 1 Now, you have to remember, this is Phil's opinion on the way the investigation was handled. Police have their own story.

Speaker 11 I got word from a friend of mine at the sheriff's office that the detective who'd been the leader in getting the false confession from Laverne Pavlanak in the Tanya Bennett case had been down in the state prison talking to Jesperson, encouraging him to say that I had given him the information that he had given to the police to prove that he killed Tanya Bennett.

Speaker 11 In other words, he's trying to get Jesperson to frame me.

Speaker 11 And to his eternal credit, as far as I'm concerned, he did not lie about it. He said, no, it didn't happen.
And it would have been very easy for him to lie. And after all, it wouldn't hurt him at all.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 he might have even been able to bargain it into

Speaker 11 extra privileges for helping out this detective, but he didn't. And

Speaker 11 I

Speaker 11 have to say, I honor him for that.

Speaker 1 Keith's code of honor is more than a bit twisted here. He wouldn't tolerate dishonest cops, thought himself above them, and yet he was a brutal rapist and murderer.

Speaker 14 So when my dad was ultimately convicted for Tanya Bennett's murder, what happened to John and Laverne?

Speaker 11 Well, they were released, of course.

Speaker 14 And how much time did they serve in prison before they were released?

Speaker 11 I think about a couple years. Wow.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I don't know anything about Laverne's experience in prison, but it was particularly hard on John Suznofsky, who was not a very strong person to begin with. I mean, he was an alcoholic, and

Speaker 11 he was

Speaker 11 sort of he sort of lost it. They put him in

Speaker 11 a room in prison for the people who were

Speaker 11 mentally disturbed. It's called the Thunderdome.

Speaker 14 What? A Thunderdome?

Speaker 14 What happens in the Thunderdome?

Speaker 11 It was a big holding tank with a guard sort of suspended in the middle on a grate.

Speaker 11 And what I remember about the story is that Soznovsky would

Speaker 11 just howl.

Speaker 11 Here he was locked up for life for something he had pled guilty to, but even at the time he pled guilty, he knew he was not guilty of.

Speaker 11 He was completely innocent of.

Speaker 1 That would drive me crazy.

Speaker 14 Yeah, that would drive me crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 14 What else could you do but scream?

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 14 Did you ever talk to Laverne or John? Do you think that they regretted this?

Speaker 11 I talked with Laverne.

Speaker 11 And

Speaker 11 I don't think she really,

Speaker 11 I'm sure she regretted it, but I'm not convinced she ever really understood

Speaker 11 how wrong what she did was.

Speaker 11 She was emotionally dulled herself. I mean, she was taking a lot of pills,

Speaker 11 fantasized a lot, read a lot of cheap detective stories, which is probably how she got the idea. that she could turn someone in for a murder and it would just

Speaker 11 all go away.

Speaker 1 melissa and i were curious though how did john and laverne react to being freed here's detective chris peterson again

Speaker 1 john sostnovsky when i went down to interview him in the prison with with the prosecutor a prosecutor uh he was incoherent he was babbling

Speaker 1 it was actually a little bit scary

Speaker 1 Laverne acted like a grandmother when we were working with her. I mean, she was pretty calm, collected,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 she did her very best to convince me that she wasn't responsible for the murder, which was true.

Speaker 1 I think we had her take a polygraph.

Speaker 11 I don't think we had Sostnowski take a polygraph because of his mental state.

Speaker 1 It sounds like he was another one of Jesperson's victims indirectly.

Speaker 11 John Sosnowski was definitely a victim of Jesperson and Laverne. I mean,

Speaker 11 those people, people, particularly Laverne, had no place in an institution. She created a space, an institution for herself by confessing on a tape and it was played to a jury and they convicted her.

Speaker 11 But

Speaker 11 he victimized those two and as well as a lot of victims that didn't survive.

Speaker 1 Did she ever thank you?

Speaker 1 She was very unappreciative of our efforts to get her out. The family never really spoke to us.
They were critical, I think, of the police. And

Speaker 1 I think the district attorney's office in Multnomah County and the Sheriff's Office in Portland did a great job in terms of getting to the bottom of this case and admitting that a mistake had been made.

Speaker 1 And the district attorney and the sheriff both told me that we don't want you doing anything else until this matter gets resolved to our satisfaction.

Speaker 14 And just because I'm curious, with Laverne and John, were they immediately released after my dad was sentenced that day?

Speaker 15 No, no, they weren't.

Speaker 11 Post-conviction relief is a very complicated legal procedure, and there's really no remedy for reversing a jury's decision in the state of Oregon. If a jury finds you guilty of homicide,

Speaker 11 it's kind of chipped in stone.

Speaker 11 So they were not released immediately. It took a while to get them out of prison.
It wasn't like your dad gets convicted and the doors open.

Speaker 11 My understanding is that John Sisnowski, I'm assuming John's still alive, still has a murder conviction on his record because post-conviction relief, meaning changing a verdict's opinion of a jury is very difficult to do in the state of Oregon.

Speaker 14 And most states for that matter. Horrible.
How horrible for John that he would have this still potentially on his record, even though he was completely innocent.

Speaker 14 That must have impacted his employment, his life after this.

Speaker 14 That's really surprising, though, you know, that it would be like that.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it is, but

Speaker 11 that was the state of the law 25 years ago, and I don't know that it's changed.

Speaker 9 From I, The Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olson.

Speaker 9 In jail, awaiting transport to the state penitentiary, he continued to play the lead role in his own dramatic production.

Speaker 9 On the day that John Sesnovsky and Laverne Pavlanak were freed for good, He described his reaction to the Associated Press. Quote, I started crying.
I couldn't help myself for about 10 minutes.

Speaker 9 I lost total composure. I was just very overjoyed.
Basically, my feeling is,

Speaker 9 God bless them.

Speaker 9 End quote. He didn't explain why he'd allowed them to serve four years for his crimes.

Speaker 1 So, Don Fendley, who is the son of Jesperson's last known victim, Julianne Winningham, he has a lot of anger towards Laverne, who is now deceased, but he believes that if she hadn't lied, if she hadn't tried to frame John, that there is a chance that Jesperson could have been stopped before he murdered seven more women, including his own mother.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 I understand his concern. And

Speaker 1 of course, he didn't murder anybody after he murdered Julie because he was arrested.

Speaker 1 But,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I don't want to speculate that

Speaker 1 this thing would have been solved any earlier. But it's hard to for me.

Speaker 1 I can't say that if it hadn't been for Laverne, that Keith would have been arrested because he was not on anybody's radar in Multnomah County over the Tonya Bennett case.

Speaker 1 There's always been one person Melissa has been afraid to meet. The son of Jesperson's last victim, Don Fendli.

Speaker 14 I'm terrified that he's going to

Speaker 14 lash out on me and

Speaker 14 blame me

Speaker 14 for his mom's murder.

Speaker 1 I texted him for weeks.

Speaker 1 And when he finally returned my text, he didn't want to meet you in person. He had a lot of anger.
You know, from his point of view, you're the daughter of the man who murdered his mother.

Speaker 1 But we spoke for a couple of hours, and I was finally able to convince him

Speaker 1 to meet you.

Speaker 9 Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright Pacheco, Mangesha Ticketer, and Will Pearson.
Supervising producer is Noel Brown.

Speaker 9 Music by Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell, and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor is Matt Riddle.
Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chacoin.

Speaker 9 Special thanks to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian newspaper and KATU News in Portland, Oregon.

Speaker 20 A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers. But it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught.

Speaker 22 The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him?

Speaker 23 I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, Hunting the Long Island Serial Killer.

Speaker 24 The investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now.

Speaker 19 Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 13 A new true crime podcast from Tenderfoot TV in the city of Mons in Belgium. Women began to go missing.

Speaker 13 It was only after their dismembered remains began turning up in various places that residents realized a sadistic serial killer was lurking among them. The murders have never been solved.

Speaker 13 Three decades later, we've unearthed new evidence. Le Monstre, Season 2, is available now.
Listen for free on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 Hi, listeners. I'm M.
William Phelps, host of Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murders podcast. And I'm excited to share Paper Ghosts, the Texas Teen Murder Story with you.

Speaker 3 And want to let you know that you can get access to all episodes of Paper Ghosts and every single episode of Paper Ghosts, 100% ad-free with an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription available exclusively on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 3 Plus, you'll get access to all episodes of Paper Ghosts, The Texas Teen Murders, one week ahead of everyone else, available only to iHeart True Crime Plus subscribers.

Speaker 3 You'll get access to other chart-topping true crime shows you love, like Betrayal, The Girlfriends, The Turning, River Road, Pikedon Massacre, Murder Homes, Unrestorable, Camp Shame, and more.

Speaker 3 So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts.
Search for iHeart True Crime Plus and subscribe today.

Speaker 8 Season one of Crying Wolf is here. We're thrilled to keep sharing these jaw-dropping stories with you.
And now there's even more to discover.

Speaker 8 With an iHeart True Crime Plus subscription, only on Apple Podcasts, you'll unlock 100% ad-free listening.

Speaker 8 on Crying Wolf and other fan favorites like Atlanta Monster, What Happened to Sandy Beal, and Sympathy Paints. Don't wait.
New episodes are ready for you now.

Speaker 8 Open Apple Podcasts, search iHeart True Crime Plus, and subscribe today.

Speaker 1 This is an iHeart podcast.