Paperback: In February 1990, police arrested John Sosnovske and Laverne Pavlinac for the vicious rape and murder of 23-year-old Taunja Bennett. Pavlinac had come forth and confessed, implicating her boyfriend and producing physical evidence that linked them to the crime. Authorities closed the case. There was just one problem. They were not the killers. They were innocent. The police had the wrong people.
Keith Hunter Jesperson was a long haul truck driver and the murderer of eight women, including Taunja Bennett. He began a twisted one-man campaign to win the release of Sosnovske and Pavlinac.
To the editors of newspapers and on the walls of bus stops, Jesperson scribbled out a series of taunting confessions. At the end of each, he drew a happy face, earning for himself the grisly nickname 'The Happy Face Killer'.
Based on access to interviews, diaries, court records, and the criminal himself, this is Jesperson's horrific, repelling and chilling story. It chronicles his evolution from angry child to sociopathic murderer, from tormentor of animals to torturer of women. Jack Olsen lets the killer tell his story in his own words, offering unprecedented insight into the twisted thought process of a self-admitted serial/degenerate murderer.
The Happy Face Killer started three consecutive life (without parole) sentences in 1996 as inmate number 11620304 at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem. He would become eligible for parole on 1 March 2063, a month before his 108th birthday. He never explained why he had allowed Sosnovske and Pavlinac to serve four years for his crimes.
In 2001, Keith Hunter Jesperson wrote to a friend: Ever since I was arrested in Arizona in 1995, I've been denying responsibility for what I did. I blamed everybody else. Now I'm beginning to realize I had choices, and I chose wrong. Me: not others. I guess I'm where I belong.
The Happy Face Killer aka "I": The Creation of Serial Killer was first published in 2002 and is one of the most significant piece of crime reporting ever published.
About the author: Jack Olsen (1925-2002) is the author of thirty-three books published in fifteen countries and eleven languages, including the highly acclaimed Predator: Rape, Madness and Injustice in Seattle (1991) which won the American Mystery Award for Best True Crime and his most notable work, "Son": A Psychopath and His Victims (1983), which won a Special Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. Most of Olsen's books investigated the life histories of violent career criminals including studies of serial rapists.
A former bureau chief for Time, Olsen has won the National Headliners Award, citations for excellence from Indiana and Columbia universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award, among others, and was listed in Who's Who in America since 1968 and in Who's Who in the World since 1967. He was named to the Mystery Writers of America's fact-crime committee in 1996 and appointed chair in 1997.
The Philadelphia Inquirer described him as "an American treasure", the Washington Post described him as "the dean of true crime authors" and the New York Daily News lauded him as "the master of true crime". His studies of crime are required reading in university criminology courses and have been cited in the New York Times Notable Books of the Year. In a page-one review, the Times described his work as "a genuine contribution to criminology and journalism alike".
A nationally respected expert on the psychology of criminals, Olsen appeared on Good Morning America, Sally Jessy Raphael, Donahue, Geraldo, Larry King Live, and other network interview shows. He was the father of eight, a native of Philadelphia, a fishing fanatic and lived on an island in Puget Sound, Washington, where he passed away at the age of seventy-seven on 16 July 2002.
No comments:
Post a Comment