Keith Jesperson Tells Florida Investigators About His Last Unidentified Victim, 2023

Name: Keith Jesperson Tells Florida Investigators About His Last Unidentified Victim, 2023
Uploaded: 2023-10-03
Duration: 7 min 17 s
Description: Body-camera footage from an Oregon prison, where Keith Jesperson walked Florida investigators through the 1994 killing of a woman identified only in 2023.

Body-camera footage from an Oregon prison, where Keith Jesperson walked Florida investigators through the 1994 killing of a woman identified only in 2023.

Subject: Keith Hunter Jesperson
Interviewer: Okaloosa County investigators and a representative of the State Attorney's Office
Recorded: September 2023
Broadcaster: Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office, Florida
Runtime: 7:17

Content warning: in this recording the speaker talks about his own violent crimes.

The Interview

In September 2023, investigators from Florida traveled to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem to interview Keith Hunter Jesperson about a woman whose body had been found beside Interstate 10 in Okaloosa County almost three decades earlier. The visit was recorded on a body camera. The Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office later released this seven-minute edit of the recording when it announced that the woman had been identified.

According to the sheriff's office, the visit was made by two of its investigators, Kelly Henderson and Aaron Pitman, with Mark Zagar of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and Assistant State Attorney Michelle Sandler. The recording opens with a representative of the State Attorney's Office presenting Jesperson with an agreement that Florida would not seek the death penalty in the case. He says he will sign it and does not need to read it.

Historical Context

Jesperson, a long-haul truck driver, killed eight women between 1990 and 1995 in cases spread across several states. He became known as the "Happy Face Killer" after signing anonymous letters to the press with a smiley face. After his arrest in March 1995 his confessions led to the release of two people who had been wrongly convicted of one of his murders in Oregon.

On September 14, 1994, an inmate work crew found a woman's remains in the woods near the Holt exit of Interstate 10 in the Florida Panhandle. In February 1996 Jesperson told an Okaloosa County investigator that he had killed her in August 1994. He knew her only as "Susan" or "Suzette". She remained unidentified for decades, despite facial reconstructions, DNA testing and other work. In 2023, genetic genealogy carried out by Othram for the District One Medical Examiner's Office identified her as Suzanne Kjellenberg, who was 34 when she died.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview was part of the effort to close the case after the identification. Florida prosecutors offered to take the death penalty off the table in exchange for his cooperation, and Jesperson, already serving multiple life sentences, agreed. He was charged with her murder in October 2023 and in April 2024 pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

What the Interview Covers

After signing the agreement, Jesperson talks about advising other accused killers who write to him, telling them to admit what they have done, and mentions a recent letter from the man accused in the Long Island serial killings. He then gives a step-by-step account of meeting the woman at a truck stop, where she told him she was headed to Lake Tahoe, of driving her north to Cairo, Georgia, where he picked up a load, and of heading back into Florida on Interstate 10. He describes stopping at a rest area, killing her when she screamed, and leaving her body in a tree line near a later exit. Investigators interject only briefly.

What Makes the Recording Significant

This is investigative footage, not a broadcast interview. It shows how a cold case is closed in practice: the formal agreement, the investigators' brief questions, and a killer's detailed recollection of events nearly 30 years old. Jesperson's account is calm and specific. Unlike the television interviews Jesperson has given over the years, this is law enforcement's own record of him describing a killing.

Archival Importance

The recording was made and published by a government agency, which gives it unusually clear provenance. It documents the identification of the last victim investigators had been unable to name, and preserves his own account alongside the agency's record. Because it is a public record, its full transcript can be presented here.

Important Caveats

The video is an edited set of excerpts chosen by the sheriff's office; the full body-camera recording has not been released. What Jesperson says about the killing and the woman's travels is his own account. The court outcome is his 2024 guilty plea to second-degree murder. Individual investigators' voices are not identified in the transcript. The transcript was prepared from the agency's video by machine and has not yet been checked word for word by a human listener.

State Attorney's representative: Since you mentioned that about wanting to settle it, I'm with the State Attorney's Office, like I said, and I have a [proffer] agreement that says we won't seek the death penalty with me today. So, um, if you want to take a second and read it, it basically, you know, I can't give any legal advice because I represent the state, but

Jesperson: I understand.

State Attorney's representative: but I can tell you that participation in this proffer doesn't guarantee that we won't prosecute, but it does guarantee that the State of Florida will not file a notice of intent to seek death penalty in any proceedings [on] this one. So I, I

Jesperson: I'll sign it. I don't have to read it.

Edit: [cut in the released video]

Jesperson: Like I tried to explain to other killers that are [unclear] arrested, and I write to them, I tell them how the system works. I said, the system is, uh, when you deal with serial crime, there's a difference, and with a single murder, that you're, you're open yourself up for litigation all across the board. You don't have no say in the matter. It just continues and continues and continues. So I always try to tell people to own it. Just admit you're caught. The only, really, you're caught if you're arrested, means that the prosecutor has enough evidence to take you to court and prove you guilty. They wouldn't have arrested him if they didn't.

Investigator: Right.

Jesperson: Right. Yeah. So I've recently got a letter from [Heuermann], from the Long Island serial killer, and I, I told him the same thing, and he wrote me back a while ago.

Investigator: Okay. Thank you.

Edit: [cut in the released video]

Jesperson: So when I picked her up, she was headed to Lake Tahoe, Nevada.

Investigator: Yeah. We, do you know, did she have ties there? Did she say anything about that?

Jesperson: All I know is that's what she said she was heading. I said, told her, I said, I'm not going to Nevada. However, I don't even know where I'm headed. I've got to pick up a load, and I don't even know what load I was gonna pick up, but when I do, I'm headed to Washington State, so I'll be in the area, I could take you so far. And she was out standing out there at the truck stop, and I parked in the, near the restaurant, and I just walked out to her and I said, well, [unclear]. She said, I said, oh, well, I pointed to my truck and I said, well, there I am. I may be going to Washington State, because I'm out of Washington State, and I'll head that way. I don't know where exactly I'm at, but probably in an hour, an hour or so, I'll be headed that way.

Jesperson: So I just walked off, left, and I went in the truck stop and waited for my boss to give me a load going somewhere. And then within, well, probably an hour, a little after that, she got impatient, walked into the truck stop where I was sitting, and said, I thought we're going to be leaving in an hour. And I'm like, excuse me, um, have a, have an iced tea, sit down and relax. This is trucking. Then we have to wait.

Jesperson: And finally I get a load going to Cairo, Georgia. I had to pick up a load of conduit, and I had a two-drop, one in Boise and one in Spokane. And I said, well, I got to get going. And so I packed up her stuff, and I already had a bunch of blue Samsonite luggage, a bunch of it, with a luggage tote that she dragged behind her. And I put that in. The moment she sat in the truck, she looked at all the room in the truck and said, hey, can we go back to Miami so I can pick up the rest of my stuff? And I said, no, I've got to get to Cairo before midnight Eastern time to get this load on. So we got to head north.

Jesperson: So we headed up, and we got up to [unclear: a Unocal 76] truck stop about 80 miles north, and I fueled up there, went in, and I got a shower for her or myself. We didn't share the same shower, we showered separately. I told her, meet me in the restaurant and we'll have something to eat before we head north. And so she sits down and she orders all-you-can-eat spaghetti, and she was on her second plate, you know, if she wanted, you know. And she tried to offer me some of her spaghetti. I said, no, no. Get the hell out of here. No more. And she sat over here. I was driving, so I didn't see much of her.

Jesperson: We got, uh, we got up to Cairo, my [unclear] got loaded, and I went looking for, I didn't know where the hell she took off to. So I went into the drivers' lounge, and she looked like she was on the phone, okay, or, you know, like, found a pay phone. And I imagine Susan, Suzanne, or whatever her name is, I said something. The moment I, I imagine, she let out a bloodcurdling scream, like she caught her, right, just panicked. And, uh, shut up, man. I just need, we need to get going. Right. So she gets in the truck, we take off.

Jesperson: Now, I backtrack about, I don't know, 20 miles, maybe, and drop down into Florida.

Investigator: Okay.

Jesperson: So we can get on an interstate.

Investigator: Yes, sir.

Jesperson: And we're heading, we're heading, uh, west on Interstate 10, and at Exit 18, at the rest area, and you pull down off the exit, you go underneath the overpass and you come to a frontage road and go past some convenience stores, and the rest area's back in here. And I park right behind the security. In Florida they always have security trucks with people in there; they watch over for panhandling and all that kind of stuff. They really monitored very [...] I parked right behind the security guy.

Jesperson: And, uh, I sat up, and, uh, once I got stopped, I, I sat and sat on the edge of the bed, and I wanted to know whether she wanted to use the restroom, because that's what I was going to do. And then she started screaming. I said, just shut up. And she started screaming. Shut up. The more I told her to shut up, the more she screamed. And I don't need that, because I wasn't supposed to [unclear], I wasn't supposed to have people in my truck anyway, so [unclear] and all that. So I just killed [unclear: captions read "it"].

Investigator: Okay.

Jesperson: You got to consider, after so many, after murdering too many people, that it was just an easy thing to do. And, uh, I was fearful, because she ate all that spaghetti and stuff, that she would, you know, when I moved her, that maybe it would come up. I wasn't quite sure. But I took two plastic ties that I had and put around her neck and secured it, and figured that when I moved her, then nothing would come out. And that's why I did that.

Jesperson: And then I had to get out and ask the security guy to move so I could get out of the rest area. When he moved out of the way, he's driving a, a red small pickup with a canopy on it.

Investigator: Okay.

Jesperson: And I moved out of the way, I pulled on out, I went down to Exit 11, and there's, uh, at the University exit, I believe. I think that was on one of the signs.

Investigator: Okay.

Jesperson: I pulled down across the road and came up on the other side and pulled up as far as the wide shoulder was, parked, and I walked over to what would be the north side, walked to the north, and there's some tree, there's a tree row there, and then on the other side of the tree row was a fence. And I knew, so I figured I'd put her in the tree row. I carried her over and put her in the tree row, and, uh, I left. And that's, that's the story.