"Now I Can Be Completely Honest": Keith Jesperson Calls a Podcaster About His Book, 2024

Name: "Now I Can Be Completely Honest": Keith Jesperson Calls a Podcaster About His Book, 2024
Uploaded: 2024-11-27
Duration: 53 min 29 s
Description: Calling a podcaster from an Oregon prison in late 2024, Keith Jesperson promoted a book he said he had written, saying that with no cases left pending he could finally tell the truth.

Calling a podcaster from an Oregon prison in late 2024, Keith Jesperson promoted a book he said he had written, saying that with no cases left pending he could finally tell the truth.

Subject: Keith Hunter Jesperson
Recorded: about November 27, 2024
Runtime: 53:29

Content warning: Jesperson describes how he dragged a murdered woman's body under his truck, discusses strangulation in detail, and describes wanting to kill four men as a teenager. The host jokes about the murders.

The Interview

Late in November 2024, Keith Jesperson telephoned the podcaster Keith Rovere from prison in Oregon on a prepaid inmate line. Rovere, who hosts "The Lighter Side of Serial Killers", says Jesperson had by then been on his show ten to twelve times. This call was about a book Jesperson said he had written by hand and that a published author named Nicole had typed up and taken to her publisher. For most of the 48-minute conversation Jesperson describes the book and what is in it, and says it will be released on January 21, 2025.

Historical Context

Jesperson, a long-haul truck driver, killed eight women in Oregon, Washington, California, Florida and Wyoming between 1990 and 1995. His first known victim, Taunja Bennett, was killed near Portland in January 1990; Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske were convicted of her murder, and were freed after Jesperson confessed. He was arrested in March 1995 and is serving life sentences in Oregon. One of his victims, found near Crestview, Florida, in 1994, was identified as Suzanne L. Kjellenberg in October 2023; in April 2024 he pleaded guilty in Okaloosa County, Florida, to second-degree murder in her death and was sentenced to life. The book he discusses in this call was published in January 2025 as "Happy Face: A Family of Monsters", credited to Nicole D. Phoenix with Jesperson's collaboration (Crimson Cult Media).

Circumstances of the Interview

Rovere introduces the call by saying that all of Jesperson's cases are now closed. He recalls that Jesperson had earlier told a Florida detective, on body-camera video, that he had written to Rex Heuermann, then charged in the Gilgo Beach murders, using an address Rovere supplied. Jesperson says he decided to write the book after a serious illness in December 2023 and that he had refused to write one while any case was still open, because anything he wrote would become evidence. The call appears to drop once and resume.

What the Interview Covers

Jesperson says the book opens with a disclaimer: after 29 years his cases are settled, so he can now be "completely honest". He says the legal system required him to lie, that his lawyers told him never to describe any killing as premeditated, and that what he told the Florida detective "really isn't what really happened". He describes the book's structure, from the Bennett case and his childhood to the murders and his convictions, and tells stories from it: a teenage hunting trip on which he says he thought of killing four men, a dispute at a Chicago steel warehouse that he says sent him to Spokane, where he met Angela Subrize, and how he dragged her body along a Nebraska highway to prevent identification. He discusses strangulation, says he will make no money from the book, disputes Jack Olsen's book about him and his daughter's accounts, and talks at length about television, including Yellowstone.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The call records Jesperson's own description of the memoir he wrote after his last case was closed, and his claim that the accounts he gave in court and to investigators for nearly three decades were shaped by legal advice rather than by the facts. It also shows how he presented himself to a sympathetic audience at the end of his court cases: joking, eager to be thought of as a "nice guy", and keen to correct what others have written about him.

Archival Importance

Jesperson has spoken to the press since 1995, when he confessed to a Portland television reporter by telephone (see the related KATU video page). This 2024 call, nearly thirty years later, adds his own account of why he wrote a book about his crimes.

Important Caveats

Everything Jesperson says about his crimes, his legal strategy, the investigators and his book is his own account and has not been verified. Retail and library listings confirm the book as "Happy Face: A Family of Monsters" by Nicole D. Phoenix (Crimson Cult Media) and give its release date as January 20, 2025, a day earlier than the date Jesperson gives in the call. His claims that he wrote it himself and makes no money from it are his own. The Florida plea is confirmed (guilty plea to second-degree murder, April 2024, life sentence, per WKRG); his description of it as "25 years to life, running concurrent with Oregon" is his account, and the name of the Florida detective is not verified here. Rovere's remarks about Heuermann's letter and the body-camera video are the host's account. Jesperson's daughter, Melissa Moore, has published her own account, which he disputes. The host treats some of the murders as material for jokes; the page should not.

Automated Operator: Hello, you have a prepaid call from...

Recorded Caller Names: Keith Jesperson. [unclear: "Bruce Gavers" / "Bruce Davis"]. [unclear: "Andy Clark" / "Clark"]. [unclear: "Robert Barno" / "Robert"].

Unidentified Voice: [unclear: "What's with your other friend?"] [Music, 00:10 to about 00:30]

Keith Rovere: Hey everybody, welcome to another edition of The Lighter Side of Serial Killers. I'm your host, Keith Rovere. Today we are going to have back on the program, this is my, I don't know, 10th or 11th time, maybe 12th time, the Happy Face Killer, Keith Jesperson's going to join us to talk about his new book. Now, we did one, two, sometimes three podcasts per victim for all of his victims to really get the truth out there of what really went down, what he was thinking, how he met the victim, how he killed the victim, usually he strangled the victim, how to dispose of the body. I mean, really gory details. Usually it's The Lighter Side of Serial Killers; it wasn't always the lighter side. Now, we did some podcasts that were funny, and you'll see Keith does have a dark sense of humor, but a very good sense of humor. We talked about some of the funny stories of growing up in his childhood. But when we talked about the cases, you know, they were pretty dark. First time he's ever done that, to really break it down on the podcast for him, everything that happened. And some of it's not an easy listen. I mean, some of it is, you know, pretty brutal to hear.

Keith Rovere: But he decided to write a book. Now, all his cases are closed. The last victim was finally identified. You probably saw that he went viral, along with me, with the Rex Heuermann, because as he was getting interviewed by one of the detectives out of Florida who came up to Oregon to see him about the victim that was finally identified, what her name was. Now, they had a body cam on, and at the end of that interview he said how he sent a letter to Rex Heuermann. I gave him Rex's address. We talked about this before too, that he's written many serial killers in the past, and sometimes they even write back, like Arthur Shawcross, Wayne Adam Ford, even Charles Manson. And Rex wrote him back, and that just, you know, the whole world blew up in the true crime universe: a serial killer is talking to another serial killer. Well, then I kind of went viral, because, you know, he's done my podcast so many times, he sent me that letter, and I talked about that letter on, and, you know, gave me permission to talk about the letter and share it with everybody. And everybody wanted to interview me. Then they found out what I do: I talk to serial killers who call my show, some of them never spoke publicly before.

Keith Rovere: So Keith's been on numerous times, but he wanted to write a book. We'll talk; I won't give everything away, but we're going to talk about the reason why he wrote this book, what was in the book, and it's, as always, you're always going to have a good time talking to Keith. You never know what he's going to say. So without further ado, here is the Happy Face Killer, Keith Jesperson.

Keith Rovere: All right. So now what I hear is there is a new book coming out, and what is actually, what is the title of the book going to be?

Keith Jesperson: Well, it's a family of monsters. And, you know, my sister, I wrote my sister and told her that I had this book coming out and it's called the family of monsters, and she writes me back, she said, "Our family's not monster-skis." And I'm like, it's a metaphor. I had to write her back: it's a metaphor. I have a picture of me on the cover. It's a picture taken back in 1998 when I came back from Wyoming. I had a full beard, my hair wasn't gray, and I had a blue prison shirt on. And I put the pictures of, you know, Ted Bundy and, uh, Rex Heuermann, who isn't a serial killer now, [unclear: "he isn't a convicted killer at this time" / "he is a convicted serial killer this time"], but Gary Ridgway and Jeffrey Dahmer, they're kind of around me. That's where the family of monsters come into play. We're all monsters in the public eye.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: And that's why I wanted to bring this in. Now, it's also a spin-off of my daughter's show, A Monster in My Family.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah, for sure.

Keith Jesperson: I thought, well, why not use that? Because it's, uh, you know, she's made it clear that I'm the monster.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: So yeah, I just figured I'd just run with it and put that out. Now, after my scare, my death scare back in December of 2023 with that cellulitis in my leg, and I still kind of have it, but it's not infectious right now. I could have died last December. And I was talking to a woman named Nicole. She lived in North Carolina, really nice girl, and she is a published author. And I ran the question by her as well: if I wrote a book and I sent it to you, can you type up the book in my words? And then I'll have a disclaimer and so forth on it, but all she's going to do is make sure that the spelling is correct. I don't want any of these little "sic"s all the way through the book that I spelled wrong.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: But I just wanted to have everything right, and it is properly formatted, the commas and the periods in the right place and so forth. So that's all she basically did. She typed it up for me...

Keith Rovere: Nice.

Keith Jesperson: ...and she presented it to her publisher, who was on board from day one, and they run with it. I took, what, two months to write it out, and sent her, what, 900 plus pages, every other line on notebook paper. It came out to 304 pages typed.

Keith Rovere: Wow.

Keith Jesperson: And it's a good book. The format of the book is, I start with a disclaimer, and the disclaimer is: after 29 years of settling my cases, I finally do not have any more cases pending, which means that there's no more, I do not have any trials pending or anything like that. So now I can be completely honest with everybody. And so that's where this book comes from. I'm completely honest with everyone on how every case developed. Now, I tell how the system works and so forth, how the legal system required me to be a liar. And I had to basically come with the idea of blaming the victim in order to settle all my cases, and that's what I did. And this kind of like lays out what exactly happened.

Keith Rovere: Oh, wow.

Keith Jesperson: And I start off with the book, I write about how my first murder, with Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske being arrested and convicted of this murder. I go down in great detail on how they were convicted and so forth. And then I start off with my history, my childhood, when I was born and raised up and went along with, and some little stories about childhood and dealing with my brothers and so forth.

Keith Jesperson: I talk about my first thought about murder: the very first time I thought I was going to kill someone, and that was like when I was 16 years old. My brother Brad and I and a friend of his went hunting in Bickleton, Washington, for deer. And this is a Friday night. We got down and we set up camp. We had our fire going and everything. And at about 10 o'clock that night, a couple pickups showed up. Four guys stepped out with guns blazing, and they're pointing at us: "This is our camping spot."

Keith Rovere: Wow.

Keith Jesperson: And I wanted to dispute it, but my brother Brad and his friend were like, "Let's get the fuck out of here." So we get in my car and we drive up about half a mile from where they were, and we set up another camp, set up another fire going. I really contemplated going back and cutting every one of their throats. I really did. I was going to, but I knew if I did that, that I'd get caught. And the reason why I'd get caught: my brother would tell on me.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, sure.

Keith Jesperson: And the reason why my brother would tell, because he would go home, and as it turned out, of course, when we got home, you know, he went straight to Dad and told him that these guys pulled the guns on us and told us we had to get out of this camp spot. And then, as it turns out, these guys worked for the same company my father was a design engineer for.

Keith Rovere: Oh, wow.

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah. So it kind of runs right into play here. That next day, while I was hunting up there, I always had my .30-06 with a nine-power scope, and I had my crosshairs right on every one of their skulls. I was going to blow them fuckers away.

Keith Rovere: Wow. Wow.

Keith Jesperson: I was just, I don't know, I was just... There was a canyon. There was nobody around. But I knew that if I did that, you know, my brother would go tell my dad that we had this confrontation, and I can't do it. You know, can't do that.

Keith Rovere: Wow.

Keith Jesperson: But anyway. So then I move on. You know, I tell the other stories of childhood, and then moving to Canada and back down, and different things. And then I start with, you know, the Bennett murder, and I go to the different murders along the way, and then on to my convictions. And at the end of the book, I have a postscript chapter, chapters, where I, you know, I didn't want to clutter my book with little stories like, you know, my other hunting stories and driving stories and things. I wanted to keep it clean, so everybody knew where the murders and stuff like happened. But these are like questions like a lot of people ask: what's my favorite color? You know, who's my favorite actor? Dennis Quaid, right? Or who's my favorite singer? Willie Nelson.

Keith Jesperson: You know, I met Willie Nelson back in 1987, along with Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson. They stopped in in Mead, Washington, while I was there at our [unclear: "Muppets and Sons of Pipe Place" / "muffin son's pip place"] I worked at.

Keith Rovere: Oh, wow.

Keith Jesperson: They pulled in. He pulled in with a bus and he stopped. They asked if they could park it there. Willie had a relative a couple houses down from us, and he in passing asked, "Man, I need a bus driver. You want a job?" And I was like, "I don't smoke pot. Sorry, I'm not going to drive your bus." But Kris Kristofferson and Burt Reynolds came with him, and I kind of recognized who they were, and I didn't even faze me. I was like, you know. But that's, but, you know, he's 91 years old now. He's still kicking.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah.

Keith Jesperson: You know, his birthday's like April 29th, and I always like his shows and stuff, but he's really kicking along. He's doing really good.

Keith Rovere: I like that.

Keith Jesperson: I listen to his daughter on Sirius, on Willie's Roadhouse, on the FM, Sirius. Yeah, I keep track of all that.

Keith Rovere: But he's still smoking. The rapper Snoop Dogg, who's known to outsmoke everybody, was asked, you know, could anybody ever outsmoke you, marijuana? He's like, "Yes, only one person could outsmoke me: Willie Nelson." He's like, "Willie put me to bed." He's like, "I had to tap out to Willie Nelson," of all people.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah. Well, that's... Now, I also bring in this account, that one time when I was in Castle Metals in Chicago, and I bring up this story about how when I got loaded there, this guy was screwing with me. And I bring that into play. And I think what's really neat about this story is that it brings in this major big company, steel company, up there out of Chicago and Los Angeles. And this whole point will come into play, and everyone that works for that company are going to go like, "I know this guy, right? I knew that incident." Because I made, you know, I was dealing with a bully, right?

Keith Jesperson: This is basically the story: we show up at six o'clock for a seven o'clock appointment to pick up, and we're two different drivers, myself and another guy. At 10 o'clock, I get a little knock on the door, and the other driver gets pulled into this big old warehouse. About two o'clock in the morning I get knocked on the door and I get pulled into this warehouse. They drive me all the way through, and there's three lanes going through this warehouse, and I'm on the very far end on the left-hand side, right before the next door. Well, I pull in front and I back in, and there's a yellow painted area where you park where you get loaded. And as soon as I get out of the truck, the guy who's going to load me says, "You're going to have to move over six more inches or I'm not going to load you." I said, "What?" That's half the width of my tire. He wants me to move over half the width of my tire or he's not going to load me. That's [unclear: "going to bullshit" / "point of bullshit"].

Keith Rovere: Wow.

Keith Jesperson: So he's going to go on break, and he said, "When you come back, I better be moved over." Well, I go back, and the truck behind me is the guy that came in at 10 o'clock. There was nothing on his trailer. Nothing. And I just told him, I said, "This guy's screwing with us." You know, they had him move about three different places to get, you know, and they had nothing on it. I was like, no way. I'm going to... And this guy's a bully. What he is, he's just a bully. Now, realistically, I wanted to punch him in the nose, right? [unclear: "I don't want to" / "I don't wanted to"] drop him on the ground, beat him senseless, but that'd make him a victim.

Keith Jesperson: So what I ended up doing was, when he came back off break, he come up and he said, "You're going to move over?" And I said no. He said, "Well, I'm not going to load you." And I said, "Well, why don't you just go open that door for me?" And he said, "Why?" "So I can leave. You're not going to load me, I'm going to go." And he says, "No, I'm not going to open the door." He says, "Just move over." And I said no. I said, "Well, you have a phone?" He says, "Why?" And I said, "So I can call the cops. You're kidnapping me, man. Holding me against my will. I'm not, you can't keep me here. That's kidnapping, technically. Open that door." So he reluctantly says, well, then he says, "Well, I'll just load you, then." I said, "No, we're past all that. Just open the door. Let me out of here."

Keith Jesperson: So I go, the door's open. I go out to the shipping receiving office. I rip up the paperwork I had and I threw it at them. I said, "You people need to change your attitude." That's exactly what I told her. I got back in the truck and I drove to Lake Station, Indiana, where our office was. The next morning they wake me up, and I come into the office there, and there's a phone call, a conference call, with the head of Castle Metals, the head of [unclear: "System Struck" / "System Trucking"] [unclear: "and I spoke" / "at Spokane"], and myself and the guy there, and the other driver happened to show up, and we had this conversation. I told what happened, and then I said, "We're doing you a service, and we're under a timeline to get your product to where you need it to go. And if you're screwing with us for 24 hours, you can't expect us to be there on time."

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: So I can only imagine this guy, this bully, was called into the boss's office, and he probably said, "You're in here because of six inches." That's horrible. But that was the start of the Angela Subrize case.

Keith Rovere: Okay.

Keith Jesperson: The reason I bring that in is because, because he didn't load me, I would have went to LA, but instead I went to Spokane.

Keith Rovere: Ah, okay. Okay.

Keith Jesperson: So it's a chain, a chain of commands on this book, where any little thing moved me in a different direction. Had I had this guy not been a prick and loaded me, I would have been in LA, and I would not have met Angela Subrize, and she would not be dead. Well, I would not have killed her. Maybe someone else would have.

Keith Rovere: Wow. That's still one of the favorite lines that people keep saying, people who listen to our podcast, and we did, you know, a podcast or two per victim. And especially the Angela Subrize case, where you said a line in passing. It's a funny line, you know, when you said it, but, you know, people are in shock, but they laughed too, when you said, you know, when you tied up the body under the truck and you drove her along, nothing was left of her. And the line you said was, "Well, if nothing else, it's a great weight-loss program." Everybody laughs their ass off when they hear it. Then they think about what they're laughing at. Like, wait a minute, what the hell did I just laugh at? But it was a funny line. I get more comments about that. He does have a good sense of humor, if nothing else. You know, that's crazy.

Keith Jesperson: Well, the reality of the thing was, it was meant for a reason. You know, I dragged her for a reason: to get rid of identification.

Keith Rovere: Of course. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: And there was a purpose to this. Now, of course, in the legal sense, they get me for destroying the body.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: But, you know, a lot of murderers destroy the body in different ways. I just, it would just happen to be there at that point of going like, well, gee, how am I going to do this?

Keith Rovere: Yeah. Well, hey, you know, I remember that little dog being dragged in behind, on that one show where this cop goes up and says, "That poor little dog was running until it couldn't run no more."

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith Rovere: He said you timed the traffic. You said by when a certain amount of cars passed by, there's like three miles or something like that. Wait till the next...

Keith Jesperson: Well, yeah, there's a... This is late, at two or three o'clock in the morning.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: And in that area in Nebraska, the traffic clutters up. They get like 10 or 12 vehicles together, and they're running around 70 miles an hour. Well, I can't do 70; I can only do like 64. So I get in behind these guys, and they're getting ahead of me, and the other ones are catching me, and it took 12 miles to catch me. And that's how long I determined I'd drag her on the highway. That's what I did.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, it worked.

Keith Jesperson: It worked. Yeah. But they still identified her, because when she was 12 years old she had a broken hip, and apparently she had a pin in her hip with a serial number.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, that's, I remember you saying that.

Keith Jesperson: But I wouldn't know that.

Keith Rovere: Of course.

Keith Jesperson: I wouldn't know that, so that's a problem. That's the problem with murderers getting away with it, and there's so many little things that can come up.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: That's one of them. But anyway, the other side, one of my favorite singers, I was kind of caught between two of them. I like Shania Twain, but I also like Taylor Swift. I don't know. I just love her songs. I just like the way she sings. Very talented. But now I'm a Swiftie, right?

Keith Rovere: There you go. Keith's a Swiftie.

Keith Jesperson: Okay, great. Whatever.

Keith Rovere: That's going to be the headline. That's the headline right there.

Keith Jesperson: I mentioned Dennis Quaid, right?

Keith Rovere: Mm-hmm.

Keith Jesperson: Now, he had a movie a long time ago called Tough Enough, and he's a boxer in a boxing arena, and he's boxing this guy named [unclear: "Gay Bob" / "Gab Bob"], right? He's told, one of his corner guys said, "Watch out for [unclear: "Gay Bob" / "Gab Bob"] in the clutches," right?

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: But I kind of threw that in the book, and there's other stories. Now, I talk about the stories after I came to prison: my dealing with [unclear: "Lynn Massengale" / "Lyn Massingale"] and Dave, down in Columbus, Mississippi, and different things that I think I've told you about.

Keith Rovere: Sure.

Keith Jesperson: You know, these little stories that we have to occupy our time when we're in prison.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: And so that's what I do, is I occupy my time, and things happen, different things. And that's the way the book comes. I've had other people that have read the book already, because they put them out to people to make a blurb on it. And the biggest idea that they come up with is that it's raw. It's raw because the way I write it out, I don't pull any punches. It's a raw expression of myself. And the book is probably really a must-read for criminologists. Yeah, and that's pretty much what they're talking about. So it's a good book. You know, it's coming out, well, you can buy it in December at most major bookstores.

Keith Rovere: Nice.

Keith Jesperson: And you can go to Tennessee, to the [unclear: "CrimeCon" / "crime con"], and they're going to, she's going to be there signing it...

Keith Rovere: Oh, good, good.

Keith Jesperson: ...on January 10th of 2025.

Keith Rovere: Oh, good. Okay.

Keith Jesperson: The book release is going to be the 21st of January, 2025.

Keith Rovere: Nice. Not too far off. Pretty soon.

Keith Jesperson: Not too far off. You know, the day after, well, the day Trump starts doing things.

Keith Rovere: There you go. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I actually mentioned Trump. I also mentioned Yellowstone, the movie, the series that everybody talks about, because I think they're a family of monsters too.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, they're just a bunch of killers. They have a train station where they just throw the bodies in.

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah. "Take him to the train station." Throw him down the canyon.

Keith Rovere: Right. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, this is just, and the new series they got right now, I've been watching that. Everyone's watching that.

Keith Jesperson: And I can see... [the call appears to break off] I'll call you right back.

Keith Rovere: Okay. Good, good, good. [Apparent break in the call]

Keith Rovere: All right, I'm back. All right, so we're talking about Yellowstone.

Keith Jesperson: So we're talking about Yellowstone. So I'm watching this series, and just this last Sunday, Sarah Atwood got shot, which I thought was a mistake in their writing of the storyline, because these are the people that killed the governor, Dutton. They're now cleaning up, you know, whoever did it. And it's kind of like scripted. I know it's scripted; this is what Hollywood is. But I think the only way that the Yellowstone gets back to being the Yellowstone is that they proved that the company that was going to build the airport was behind the murder of the governor. And then that way, their deal for purchasing the land for the airport goes away, and now Yellowstone is reenacted to itself. So that's how they get all the land back. That's the only way I can think it'll happen.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, you don't know. It's a good point. I think you're going to [see] a spin-off. I think this is the last season, but then...

Keith Jesperson: You think it's the last season?

Keith Rovere: I think it's, because Costner said he's not doing it anymore. It was it for him.

Keith Jesperson: Well, Costner's done, but he's dead.

Keith Rovere: Yeah. And then that's why. That's why, since they told him it's the last season.

Keith Jesperson: He's dead. They shot him. They killed him. They homicided him.

Keith Rovere: Well, that's why, because he said...

Keith Jesperson: As far as the rest of it is going along, I mean, I know he didn't want to do it anymore. But, you know, it sent a wrong message. I think he was mad, because it was a good series, don't get me wrong, but it made him out to be a criminal. In the series, it made him out to be a monster, a serial killer like myself.

Keith Rovere: It's a hell of a series.

Keith Jesperson: Because he's taking care of business, even though he's taking care of business, but he openly allowed murder is okay. As far as he's concerned, it's okay as long as the business keeps running.

Keith Rovere: Oh, definitely. No thought of [unclear: "branding" / "bringing people"] and everything else.

Keith Jesperson: Where's his ethics? All his ethics is moralist. His moral stance, as one defining moment, is that his company stays whole and intact. That's all that matters to him. I mean, his land and everything is his. He doesn't want to give it up. And that's why he kills everybody that comes in to try to take it.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I believe that his daughter and her husband, the ranch hand, I think they're the ones getting the spin-off. I think it's going to go follow them from now on. That's going to be the new series.

Keith Jesperson: And then, well, he's another brutal mother. He's a brutal mother.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah. Yeah, remember they're in a bar, and they listen to the guy playing his guitar, and the one guy turns around, says, "He's supposed to be dead."

Keith Jesperson: Yeah. They know, you know, this is the whole thing: America loves this kind of stuff. And so they'll like my book. They will like this book. The one thing about my book is, it's going to raise the price of all the artwork I do.

Keith Rovere: There you go.

Keith Jesperson: It's going to blow it up, because this is like the defining moment of who I am, because I have no more trials. I'm not going to court anymore, tried anymore. I have seven murder convictions. I'm going to do my time, and this is the defining moment of who Keith Jesperson is.

Keith Rovere: Yeah. Do you get into the cases in this? Like, when we did a podcast, we broke down each case. Do you also break down the cases one by one, or is it more about kind of...

Keith Jesperson: More, break down all the cases like it is.

Keith Rovere: Good, good, good.

Keith Jesperson: So it's a little different than your podcast, let's just say.

Keith Rovere: Sure.

Keith Jesperson: Because, you know, it's like in the Florida case: if I told them the truth... You know, I've had to lie to a point. I had to blame the victim for 29 years, until they finally got me in court on April 4th. I did six minutes in front of a judge to pick up 25 years to life, running concurrent with Oregon. And finally, when that is done, that was it. Now, and then, of course, the detective, [unclear: "Kelly Henderson"], she wants me to be part of her life for some reason, given, you know, she's doing talks on this case. And I wrote her, I said, "Maybe you probably should have waited till after the book comes out."

Keith Rovere: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Keith Jesperson: Because what I told you really isn't what really happened. I mean, because I couldn't... My lawyer told me this, one of the things in my disclaimer, is that my lawyer told me that I cannot tell a story of premeditation in any of my cases.

Keith Rovere: Gotcha.

Keith Jesperson: See, so if I showed, if I ever told Florida that it was a premeditated murder, I'd be sitting on death row in Florida right now.

Keith Rovere: Oh, wow.

Keith Jesperson: That's right.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I mean, this is where, this is how it all ended up, and basically it comes down to: serial killers do what serial killers do.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: That's what it comes down to, is that our ethics and our moral compass falls under a certain line, and they basically would charge me and convict me of what serial killers do, and not exactly what they could prove I did.

Keith Rovere: Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: But I told a certain storyline for 29-plus years, because my lawyer says, "Don't give them a premeditated story."

Keith Rovere: Of course. Yeah, it makes sense. Definitely.

Keith Jesperson: And that's how, that's how come, in dealing with the legal system, this is how you have to deal with it. And, of course, now, and another thing I want to really reiterate here on this book: I do not make a dime on this book.

Keith Rovere: Definitely. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I have not, I will not make a dime. All the money goes to Nicole and the publisher. They're the ones that are going to get the money off this, and none of the money comes to me in any way.

Keith Rovere: Sure.

Keith Jesperson: So that it doesn't destroy, that people don't want to buy the book because I'm going to get some money. I'm not. So I want to make sure it's perfectly clear that I am... there's nothing; this is all done free in hand, gets handed to them. And this is what pisses off a lot of guys in here. They're going like, "You're not making any money on it?" No. "Well, that's not right." Well, to an inmate it's not right, but to the victims' family, it isn't, it is.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I don't make anything. Now, my daughter's probably mad, because she didn't get, she didn't get the book to which she'd make money on.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, you're right.

Keith Jesperson: Other than that, she'll find a way. You know, she wants more, she wants more information on how to enhance her life. Well, I guess she can read the book.

Keith Rovere: There you go. Yeah, that's funny. Did you ever think, like when you had mentioned serial killers do what serial killers do, do you ever think about how your brain is maybe a little different than everybody else's? Like, there's a lot of us who, where somebody would piss us off, that we want to strangle them, literally, but we don't.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, but...

Keith Rovere: That's not... But then there's other people who are like, "I'm going to strangle them," and they do strangle them. You think, maybe just like the hard wiring is a little different? Like, we hear about the psychopathy, we hear about the brains, the frontal lobe cortex and the amygdala, and some people don't have fear.

Keith Jesperson: Well, what they did, they took Gacy's brain and they cut it open, sliced it, a little slice. I remember seeing that on TV, on Discovery Channel one time. They took his brain and sliced it open so they could decide what the hell was wrong with it. They said, well, apparently the dead brain doesn't do anything, so now they need a live brain to go after. Well, they're not going to get mine.

Keith Rovere: Is there, is there a...

Keith Jesperson: You know, I would donate my body to science if it would mean something. But the problem is, it's on the moral side. It's not whether your brain is a problem; it's how you were raised, and religiously-wise and so forth. There's a moral compass along that comes on. Now, once you kill someone and have gotten away with it, the legal system has not caught you, then you have a tendency to believe that you can get away with it again. And that's just general; that's a general look on how people think.

Keith Jesperson: Look at the guy that goes to shoplift. He picks up a, you know, he steals a chocolate bar one day. You know, two days later, if he hasn't got caught, he's going to steal two chocolate bars. And then, of course, it goes the next thing, you know, he's stealing cars and robbing people and stuff like that, because he hasn't got caught. He'll keep doing that, because that's the whole basis behind a serial criminal: once they've got away with that, they believe they [can] keep doing it. Look at all the people shoplifting in California. They're giving them a $950 limit, where you can go in and just, you don't even have to hide it.

Keith Rovere: It's amazing.

Keith Jesperson: You can walk in there, pick up with a calculator how much money you're stealing. As long as it's below $950, you can walk out the damn door, go straight to your car and drop it off in your car, and go back and get another helping.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, running wild. It's amazing.

Keith Jesperson: And that's just how the system works, and they're not going to stop those people unless they throw them in jail and make them accountable for their actions.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah. Oh, it's wild.

Keith Jesperson: That's generally... You know, it's like in my book I talk about how, when I got caught shoplifting, my dad made a big issue of it. But I find out later my dad's the biggest thief of all.

Keith Rovere: Oh, really?

Keith Jesperson: He was more concerned about me getting caught than being, actually, you know, stealing. Because later, when I was working for another company, he'd want me to bring the backhoe home so he could use the backhoe on the weekend. And I tried to explain to him, "Yeah, well, that's stealing from my boss." He said, "Well, as long as he doesn't find out about it, it's okay." You know, this is my dad's idea. So he's a bigger thief than I am.

Keith Rovere: Did you see the movie Black Mass, there, about the Whitey Bulger, the Irish gang? Did you have that movie available to you?

Keith Jesperson: No, I did not.

Keith Rovere: You remind me of one scene: his son, who was a little kid at the time, got in trouble because he punched another kid who was bullying him. So he punched him. He's like, "I'm not mad at you that you got caught..." What'd he say? He's like, "I'm mad because, you know, you let people see it." He's like, "If nobody sees it, it didn't happen." You know, just like that, like in this real cold voice: "No one sees it, it didn't happen."

Keith Jesperson: Well, that falls under: if a tree falls in the woods, does it make any sound?

Keith Rovere: Exactly. Right, exactly, because nobody was there to hear it.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, it didn't happen.

Keith Rovere: So I think that's also one of the reasons we don't have too many serial killers today. I mean, we probably do, but they get caught right away. You know, like the Kohbergers of the world, you know, the Idaho guy. And you just can't get away with it anymore. There's cameras everywhere, there's cell phones everywhere. They can track you everywhere.

Keith Jesperson: And, well, very difficult. Well, Ted Bundy would have only killed one person...

Keith Rovere: Exactly.

Keith Jesperson: ...if it happened today.

Keith Rovere: Yeah. I mean, [unclear: "the Golden State Killer" / "the golden he"] would have got caught. He walked with her all the way around... It's amazing, you think of all the cameras that would have saw him walking to the house. Oh yeah, the [unclear: "Golden State Killer" / "golden he"] wouldn't have made it. You know, he would have made one murder and that would have been the end of that. They said the heyday, or the golden era, the golden era of serial killers is over, you know, and [unclear: "MFC everything" / "that may everything get better"].

Keith Jesperson: Well, pretty much, unless you're a truck driver.

Keith Rovere: That's it. Yeah, you could be a truck driver.

Keith Jesperson: But even then. Even then, look at all the trucks now. They have, which probably happened because of me, to some degree, a lot of the trucks have cameras, not just pointing out front, but also pointing back at the driver.

Keith Rovere: Oh, they do?

Keith Jesperson: To make sure the guy's driving by himself and hasn't picked up any [unclear: "go away" / "doorway"] or anything.

Keith Rovere: I didn't know that. I guess that makes sense.

Keith Jesperson: If you're the company, they're not just taking pictures of the guys up front, the traffic coming at you, so if they have an accident or something like that, they can prove it. But they also have the camera pointing back, showing that this guy's driving and what kind of habits he has.

Keith Rovere: That's true. Or she has.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, yeah. So this is probably a product of, you know, the serial killer guys like myself in a truck.

Keith Rovere: It's all your fault.

Keith Jesperson: They want to stop that. "I don't care how good you sound and everything, how good you sound and you're such a great guy, but we don't trust you. We'll put the camera, take a picture, make sure you don't have no girls in the truck with you, or guys in there, or something like that." Not allowed to pick up hitchhikers.

Keith Rovere: Oh, for sure. That makes sense. Now, what was the main motivation of, you know, why you wanted to write the book? And is there like one main thing?

Keith Jesperson: The main idea to this is that I had that scare in December with the cellulitis, and I thought, you know, I can wait for so long, but I wanted to make sure my story is told. There's been so many books written about me. I mean, I had people coming, "I want to write a book," and I said, "It's too early." He said, "What do you mean, it's too early? You know, that was 20 years ago." "Yeah, yeah, but I'm not done yet. I'm not done in court. When I'm done in court, that's the time to write the book."

Keith Rovere: Yeah, that makes sense.

Keith Jesperson: I can't, I mean, because whatever I write before every case is settled will become evidence in the next case.

Keith Rovere: Mm-hmm.

Keith Jesperson: I can't allow that to happen. I've got it, I've got it now. Once my case in Florida was done, was done, I have no more cases, and I felt it was a need to tell the truth, so that it's out there. I could have just told a lie forever and ever, and that'd be the end of that, and no one would be the wiser. And I'll probably take some heat from people in here, and others, they won't get it in here, but they'll get it in other prisons and so forth. I'll probably get some hate mail and other stuff; they'll call me all kinds of names. But that's okay.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: But the story is out there. You know, I've been down for almost 30 years now. Sooner or later I'm going to die, and this is going to be there. Everyone's going to wonder why all this happened. Of course, they can go to that book and they can read it, and they'll know why.

Keith Rovere: Oh, definitely. Good.

Keith Jesperson: There's not going to be, there's no... I did not leave any avenue or any opening spot for questions to be asked.

Keith Rovere: Oh, good.

Keith Jesperson: It's going to cover everything. I don't want everyone to come all of a sudden and have 100 questions they want to ask about things. I want to make sure that the whole story is covered, and all my cases are covered, and to put a stop to the people thinking I have more cases out there.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I think it's ridiculous. They'll still think I have more cases out there.

Keith Rovere: Well, yeah, yeah. In general, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: People, it's just natural. I explained the 166 number, when the [unclear: "Texan" / "text of" / "Tex with"] [unclear: "Michael Coles" / "Michael Coach"] comes in and flies in and talks to me, and he straight up lies to me, and I tell him back... I explain all this stuff, why and when all this stuff comes into play.

Keith Rovere: Yeah. You still see it online once in a while: "Keith Jesperson has..."

Keith Jesperson: I'm sure you do.

Keith Rovere: That, or the self-start serial killer kit. You always get some wild stories coming in.

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah, well, that's in there. I put that, that's in the book.

Keith Rovere: Oh, that's great. The self-start serial killer kit.

Keith Jesperson: I wrote that out for her somewhat, you know what it is.

Keith Rovere: That's one of my favorites.

Keith Jesperson: I wrote the fact that Governor James Geringer got involved, on Larry King Live, on discussing that very fact. I mean, there's a whole lot of little things. When I was dealing with getting those people out of prison, the very first thing they asked me, Multnomah County asked me, would I take responsibility for two other murders instead of reopening that case. You know, they had two unsolved murders they wanted to give me. And they said, "We'll prove these are yours if you just leave that Bennett case alone," and so they could leave those two people in prison.

Keith Rovere: It's amazing. Justice.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, this is how they were. I mean, they knew they were innocent.

Keith Rovere: Mm-hmm.

Keith Jesperson: You know, this is the way they wanted their record to stand: that they put people in prison and they don't let people out. So my biggest push on this was, I wanted to get the facts out there. So, I'm sure Wikipedia is still going to have people running up and down and screaming and hollering about different things.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah. Has it been, what's been like the most, like the biggest misconception that you think you're going to straighten out in this book? I guess we talked about it in our podcasts, other podcasts that you've done, but for those who haven't really heard all the podcasts, is there things out there in the public, obviously aside from, you know, the hundreds of bodies that you've, you know, taken, hundreds of lives, obviously not true. Is there any other misconceptions that you really were hoping the public can learn about you, that you think maybe had a different...

Keith Jesperson: Well, yeah. I'm a nice guy. What can I say? [Laughter] I do have a sense of humor. I'm just misunderstood, right?

Keith Rovere: That's it. You love women.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah.

Keith Rovere: You love them to death.

Keith Jesperson: I love them. I love them to death, right?

Keith Rovere: That's everybody else's favorite line too, you say. I hear that all the time. "I love them to death."

Keith Jesperson: Yeah. Well, you know, that's the issue. There's people that work around death all the time, and they come up with stories and jokes, and that may be morbid to some people, but other people, they find it humorous. And it's just being human, is what it is. I mean, you run across someone... I watch movies and I pick them apart. And when I watch someone, they've got a gun on somebody and they're talking them to death, right? I'm yelling at them, "Don't talk to them. Just shoot them."

Keith Rovere: Yeah, I guess that's...

Keith Jesperson: They're not... You're going to tell them why you're killing them, and they're not going to care in a second.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, that's funny. You don't really think about that, that someone who actually knows how to kill somebody, and has multiple times... Does that happen a lot when you're watching a TV show and you see somebody die, or killing somebody, you'd be like, "No, that's not right, that doesn't happen like that"?

Keith Jesperson: That's not right. That doesn't work. Yeah. You know, they go, like, they're strangling, you watch them strangle them in the movie. If they actually had to show the timeline, how long it takes to strangle somebody, I think there'd be less murder in America.

Keith Rovere: Oh, really?

Keith Jesperson: Because people would say, "Well, shit, that takes four minutes to kill someone." That's not 15 seconds or less.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: They show them strangling, it only takes them like 10 seconds or something like that on TV.

Keith Rovere: Sure, yeah, yeah, because they don't have so much time to have a movie.

Keith Jesperson: But all of a sudden they're dead in 10 seconds. It doesn't work that way. It's like four, four minutes. It's three and a half, four minutes when the body shuts down.

Keith Rovere: Oh, wow.

Keith Jesperson: And if you hang on... That's why they say there's premeditation when you strangle someone, because it takes you that long to strangle them. You always have... You can strangle for two minutes and they can come back.

Keith Rovere: Right. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: There's different ways of strangling. If you cut off their air, that's one thing. You cut off the blood to the brain is another. If the brain doesn't have blood going to the brain, then the brain becomes dead after so many minutes. So you'd actually kill them by cutting off the circulation to the brain before you, before you take the airway away. There's different ways of bringing somebody down.

Keith Rovere: Oh, makes sense. And that's like, you'll also have, like, when someone is strangling someone, like there's a little bone in their neck that breaks.

Keith Jesperson: Oh, really?

Keith Rovere: If you're pushing too much pressure on it.

Keith Jesperson: Well, if that bone doesn't break, then there's another reason why that person died: maybe because the carotid arteries were pushed against and no blood went to the brain.

Keith Rovere: It's kind of like a learning... Go ahead.

Keith Jesperson: You learn a lot when you watch, like, forensics. They have these shows on about this coroner that goes through and tells you how the body died; he does autopsies. You watch those and you're like, "Oh, okay, all right, that makes sense." We're getting smarter as time goes on, the criminal is.

Keith Rovere: And whose fault is that?

Keith Jesperson: Well, because everyone has this infatuation for murder and mayhem and everything, and so we want to know what CSI and all these crime shows are about, and we dive into these full head-on, and we learn a lot. Of course, DNA doesn't happen overnight. It's usually a two- or three-week process.

Keith Rovere: Yeah. Does that kind of, you had to kind of wing it as you were going along? Like, do you have...

Keith Jesperson: I had, this is what my book talks about. There's a couple of chapters in there where I'm experimenting.

Keith Rovere: Nice.

Keith Jesperson: This is my, it's a process, a learning curve. I think that's what I kind of called it, was the learning curve, on each murder, different in a certain way, because I'm trying different things and finding out which works, what doesn't.

Keith Rovere: Oh, good, good. We don't have to give it all away here. We're going to have to buy the book to get all the details.

Keith Jesperson: You have to buy the book, and you're not going to get all of it.

Keith Rovere: Now, once again, as we kind of wrap up, once again, when is the book going to be released, and what was that date about the CrimeCon?

Keith Jesperson: The book is going to be released on the, it's going to be available on the 21st of January, 2025.

Keith Rovere: I'm sure that'll be on...

Keith Jesperson: And you can go to a book signing. You can go to a book signing in Tennessee at the [unclear: "CrimeCon" / "Crime-a-Con"] on January 10th, 2025. And you can probably purchase a book in December at all major bookstores, like, you know, Barnes and Noble and different things like that.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, Amazon.com probably gets it. Yeah, probably Amazon for sure. And what I'll do...

Keith Jesperson: And you're going to, and this book is hardcover as well as softcover and e-book.

Keith Rovere: Oh, you're doing them all three. All right. Oh, that's great.

Keith Jesperson: Got all three.

Keith Rovere: What I'll do...

Keith Jesperson: You're going to get all three if you want, so.

Keith Rovere: What I'll do, on this link here, especially when I post it on YouTube and all the other pages, I'll post the link directly when it's available. I'll post the link underneath here, so all you have to do is click on it and it'll take you right there. I'll post a link to the CrimeCon, you know, where to get tickets and where to sign up for that, if you're going to be in that area. We'll take care of that for you, guide you right there. I'm looking forward to it. This is going to be really good. Obviously I've heard most of the stories, but I'm sure you're going to go much into different detail, and some things we haven't talked about before. So I think it's going to be a juicy book, and especially now, the true crime genre that we live in, everybody wants it. You know, everybody's looking for something crazy. Think about Court TV. I mean, I'm sure that these people out there are going to just, going to read the book and they're going to want, "Oh man, I've got to talk to the guy again."

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah.

Keith Rovere: That's going to be wild.

Keith Jesperson: I don't think I'll do any interviews after. I'll just let the book do what it's supposed to do: tell it all.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah, yeah, definitely.

Keith Jesperson: And leave it going. And not, you know, don't do Crime Watch Daily or anything like that. Just let them, if they want to talk about it, let them talk about it. But as far as the promoter, you know, fine. It'd be great. You know, like I said, I don't make any money on it. The book comes out, and Nicole is going to run with it. She's hoping it makes a lot, but, you know, I expect it to sell a bunch, but you never know.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, definitely. No, I'm sure it will. I'm sure it'll be good, definitely.

Keith Jesperson: That's always, got to get the word out. There's such a big push on crime nowadays. You can't get away from it. Every time you turn a channel on, you've got Law and Order, you've got Court TV and the crime network and all this.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, you got everything. Yeah, there's apps.

Keith Jesperson: And they're not talking about new cases so much as they do old cases.

Keith Rovere: Everything. Exactly. There's not a shortage of things to talk about. All the cold cases out there. I mean, there's a show called Cold Case. Now, especially with podcasts that are out there, like mine, where people were calling into the show, they're hearing from them. That's what I think was eye-opening when we did our list of podcasts together: whereas people have the impression of what a serial killer is like, this boogeyman that lives under the cave and the rocks, and they come on my show and they have a sense of humor, and they're intelligent, and they're like, "Well, I wasn't expecting that," and they're funny. You know, it's completely different, because the documentary...

Keith Jesperson: We're like, you know, we're like the boy or the girl next door, right? We're always that, the characters next door that we like to talk to all the time, and not realize that the guy's deviant, or the woman, you know, is off doing something else she shouldn't be doing.

Keith Rovere: Exactly.

Keith Jesperson: Exactly, right. We have secret lives that we carry on. We don't want everyone else to know what's going on. We have skeletons in our closet, pardon the pun.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah. I don't have any skeletons in any closet; they're all out in the open in the book.

Keith Rovere: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah. I guess it's easier for some people. Some people like living a life of secrecy; it can't be easy to compartmentalize it and still put that facade on, live day to day, whereas you have, like, everything out in the open. Hey, you know, everything's out there.

Keith Jesperson: Well, I had to have it. One of the things I push in the book is that, towards the end with the Florida case, I pushed the narrative of not having a defense but an offense, when I got [unclear: "Briarly Mitchell" / "Bri Le Mitchell"] to pay for DNA testing for Florida and Riverside County and other cases. The unsolved; I was pushing to get it solved. And, of course, the police didn't want her to pay for it, because they didn't understand it.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: They didn't understand how come the killer wants this solved so quickly.

Keith Rovere: Sure.

Keith Jesperson: Of course, they were like, wonder what the hell's going on here? What's really going on here? And so what they did is they went, stepped forward, and they paid for the DNA testing, and, of course, they identified my victim, you know, in March of 2023, and then they came after me to settle the case.

Keith Rovere: Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: And that only pushed it further and further ahead, and we got that settled. If I hadn't gotten [unclear: "Briar" / "Brier"] to push that along, I think we would have been two or three more years down the road.

Keith Rovere: It could have been. Definitely could have been.

Keith Jesperson: And so, I came with the idea, ever since I've been in here, I've pushed my guilt down everyone's throat. When I realized that I was going to do the rest of my life in prison, there's nothing I can do about it, I just wanted to get rid of it. I just wanted to make it go away as fast as possible, and that's why I did. Now, after all the cases are done, the book, you know, I decided I better, I better write this book before I die and everything just goes away.

Keith Rovere: It's good, because some people don't listen to podcasts, or haven't heard of my podcast or other ones that you've done. Everybody knows where the book's at. You know, it's going to be out there, it's going to be open. Everybody's going to be able to have it, e-book, paperback, hard copy, like you were saying. So yeah, I think it's good.

Keith Jesperson: So be out there for... I had a guy tell me, he said the Jack Olsen's book was the Bible on Keith Jesperson. I said, "No, no. I've read the book. It's not the Bible on me." It's just, when he told me, when he told me that he had to enliven the book a little bit, make it a little [unclear: "greasier" / "juicier"] than what it was. I said, "Really?" "You know, I mean, I have to do that to make the book sell." He said, "It's too dry the way it is. We've got to make it juicier." I'm like... And then I read the death game, where you bring, you kill them and bring them back, kill them. Really? What the hell is that all about?

Keith Rovere: Yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah, it's juicy enough. It's like with your daughter's book.

Keith Jesperson: Well, I can understand where he came up with that. I know where he came up with it, because when I tried to strangle my first one, for a couple of minutes, I released the pressure and found out that two minutes wasn't enough.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, yeah.

Keith Jesperson: Then we had to reapply.

Keith Rovere: Yeah, a whole different story.

Keith Jesperson: He just made it into a game, kind of like, and I was like, well, I didn't say that.

Keith Rovere: No. Like I said, it's like with your daughter's book. There's plenty of truth and juiciness in your life and your story to have a great book. You don't have to make up things to make it juicier.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, I also discuss my daughter's book too. I bring up the fact, okay, my daughter says, you know, in 1984 I went into the basement and took her box of kittens out of the basement. Well, in 1984 I lived in a double-wide mobile home.

Keith Rovere: I know. Yeah.

Keith Jesperson: I had no basement.

Keith Rovere: Sometimes it's puppies, sometimes it's kittens. You know, you never know what story is going to come out.

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, you never know. Every time she changes where she put them. I remember the one, one couple, she said, "Well, we're going to go up there and give them a proper burial." Then she changed the story: "Oh no, Dad took them in a gunny sack and threw them in the river."

Keith Rovere: Crazy.

Keith Jesperson: Just so that [unclear: "I couldn't get them" / "couldn't get them"]. I mean, this is how it plays out.

Keith Rovere: Silliness.

Keith Rovere: Well, we've got about 30 seconds left.

Keith Jesperson: Oh yeah. All right.

Keith Rovere: I was going to say, it was great catching up with you, and I can't wait for the book to come out. And once it comes out...

Keith Jesperson: Yeah, I can't wait either. I think it'll be a good push. Everything'll be fine. And yeah, I'll be waiting on pins and needles, waiting for you to give me an idea of what you think of it.

Keith Rovere: Oh, definitely.

Keith Rovere: Well, there you have it. It's never a dull moment talking to Keith Jesperson, that's for sure. I'm sure not just this podcast, but, you know, the book coming out is going to open many people's eyes to those cases in the past. There's, again, so many documentaries out there. At the end we're talking about another book that was written about Keith. There's been a few out there. People just make stuff up. He said they make it juicy. It's just silliness. I think we covered most of that in our podcasts that we've done, our multiple podcasts that we did for each victim, to really explain the why, behind the scenes, so to speak, to get rid of all the myths out there. No, he didn't kill 160-some bodies. You know, the self-start serial killer kit, you know, it's all just to get attention out there. And no, he didn't write happy faces on the victims' bodies; only one or two letters he actually wrote that on. So all the myths, we kind of debunked out there, and even some lies that his daughter had said in her book about him.

Keith Rovere: You can go back and watch all my podcasts on Spotify, or anywhere podcasts are hosted, to see all of them. This YouTube one's a little bit new; some of these aren't on here yet. But Spotify, go back, you'll see at least 10 or 12 appearances that Keith has done on my podcast, which is pretty wild. I'll put the links below when I have them, as far as the CrimeCon, when the author, or co-author I guess you can say, of his book is going to be signing copies, where that's going to be specifically. He mentioned the time and the date; I'll put them down below. And when the book is available, I'll come back to this, I'll edit it, and I'll put the, I'm sorry, put the links, you know, for Amazon or Barnes and Noble, wherever the book is going to be sold. Probably Amazon is probably the most popular one, especially if they do an e-book. You can check that out when it comes out. I'll probably do another podcast when it does, or have Keith back on to talk about it, the release party, so to speak, in a couple months. That'd be good. So anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. It's always an adventure talking to Keith Jesperson. It's pretty wild. Actually, you know, the face of my podcast is one of his pieces back there, the Melting Mickey. And I hope you enjoyed it. And until next time, see ya. ---