Final victim of 'Happy Face' serial killer identified. How the public helped crack the case

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Set us as preferred For decades, Brenda Burks wondered what happened after her little sister disappeared in Texas in the 1990s, and this week she finally learned the tragic truth.Her sister, Lydia McWhorter, was revealed to be the final unidentified victim of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, known as the “Happy Face Killer,” according to the Riverside County district attorney’s office.Jesperson, who is currently serving multiple life sentences in Oregon, has confessed to killing eight women between 1990 and 1995.He gained his moniker from sending letters to media outlets bragging about his murderous feats and signing them with a smiley face.

California Authorities are close to identifying a victim of a serial killer who signed letters with a smiling face.DNA evidence has helped, but the public could provide clues.Lydia’s remains were found along U.S.

Route 95 in Riverside County, around seven miles north of Blythe, in August 1995.Jesperson later confessed to killing the unidentified young woman, whom he referred to only as “Claudia,” while he was working as a truck driver and she was hitchhiking.

He pleaded guilty to her murder in Riverside County in January 2010, by which time he had already been convicted of murdering five other people.He received a sentence of 25 years to life for “Claudia’s” murder, but investigators remained unable to determine her true identity.

In 2022, advances in DNA technology led investigators with the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office to identify the remains of another one of Jesperson’s victims as Patricia Skiple.Her body was found on the side of State Route 152 in an unincorporated area near Gilroy in 1993.The following year, Riverside County cold-case homicide investigators paid Jesperson a visit at the Oregon State Penitentiary to interview him about “Claudia�...