Dead Men Talking

by Christopher Berry-Dee

  By Wednesday, 22 March, Buckner had located Jesperson in Las Cruces, New Mexico, a city in the southern part of the state near the Mexican border. With the help of local law enforcement, Jesperson was detained and questioned for six hours about the murder of Julie Winningham. He wouldn’t talk, and since the law didn’t have any concrete evidence to arrest him, Buckner had no other option but to release him. With his work completed down south, Jesperson headed for Arizona, while Buckner returned to Washington. Shortly afterwards, Jesperson was arrested and charged with murder.

  * * *

  In October 1995, just before his trial was due to start, Keith pleaded guilty to the murder of Julie Winningham before Clark County Washington Superior Court Judge Robert L Harris, the same judge who had presided over the notorious Westley Allan Dodd case. Dodd was a serial murderer from Washington state, executed by hanging in 1993. This was the first legal hanging (at Dodd’s own request) in the United States since 1965. Because Jesperson had pleaded guilty, he avoided the death sentence, and, in December 1995, he was sentenced to life in prison.

  Risking his life, Jesperson waived extradition from Clark County and was transferred to Oregon, which also has the death sentence. On Thursday, 2 November 1995, he entered a ‘No Contest Plea’ before Multnomah County Presiding Judge Donald H Londer, for the murder of Taunja Bennett. He was immediately sentenced to life in prison, setting a minimum 30-year tariff before becoming eligible for parole.

  This deal was a nifty piece of footwork by Keith, and it gave him exactly what he wanted. He had spent much of his time in jail studying law books and was able to run rings around most prosecutors when it came down to working a deal. With prison time in Oregon, proceedings elsewhere would require further extradition, meaning considerable expense and a lot of red tape. ‘I had them by the nuts,’ says Keith in a letter. And the Oregon sentence made potential death penalties in other States less likely, and he knew that too. Here was a man who had given first-rate advice to several other killers, and for which he received letters of thanks from their attorneys for spotting loopholes the ‘legal eagles’ never knew existed.

  However, there was another Oregon case involving Jesperson that had to be dealt with in the meantime. This was the killing of 23-year-old Laurie Ann Pentland, through which he was linked by DNA. In a letter, he wrote, ‘I felt so much power. I then told her she was going to die and I slowly strangled her.’

  For this murder, Keith was sentenced to another life term in Oregon, with minimum 30 years to serve. If he is still alive after all of this, he’ll be sent back to Washington to complete his life sentence there.

  Two years later, and despite considerable legal wrangling, the state of Wyoming finally extradited Jesperson for the murder of Angela Subrize. And, if any state had the determined will to execute Jesperson, it was Wyoming. For the next few months, as prosecutors prepared for trial, he taunted the authorities and threatened to force a costly trial by changing his story regarding the jurisdiction in which he had killed Subrize. At one point he said that he had killed her in Wyoming, and at another point he said that he had killed her in Nebraska. After going back and forth for some time, and by surrounding his deliberately misleading statements in his attempts to confuse the authorities on who had jurisdiction to prosecute him, our Keith worked yet another deal – he would admit to the Subrize killing, in Wyoming, if the now ‘mentally fragged’ Laramie County prosecutors would agree not to seek the death penalty against him.

  As the result of this ‘deal’, on Wednesday, 3 June 1998, district judge Nicholas Kalokathis sentenced Jesperson to life in prison, and ordered that the sentence run consecutive to the two life sentences in Oregon and the natural life sentence in Washington, leaving us all with little doubt that Keith will die in prison. It remains to be seen whether any other jurisdictions, such as the states of Florida or California, will prosecute Jesperson for the murders that he has confessed to in those states.

  * * *

  Keith Hunter Jesperson has admitted committing eight murders, but the author believes that this is only the tip of a homicidal iceberg. Keith has claimed responsibility for some 160 kills, and he was perfectly equipped to do so. But, as the reader will now appreciate, Keith is a ‘games player’. He recanted his claims of 160 murders, which suited his purpose at the time. Nevertheless, he was an interstate trucker with a grudge, and his correspondence suggests that this man could well have been the most prolific serial killer in US history, making the number of crimes committed by Ted Bundy pale by comparison. In terms of a body count, he could wipe Henry Lee Lucas, and Harvey Carignan, off the map.

  Unlike the sociopathic morons such as Bundy, Shawcross and Bianchi, Keith Jesperson stands out as being one of the most heinous, yet lucid serial killers of all time. Yet, he is also a very quiet man. A guy who thinks deep. And, if you think that the Green River killer (Gary Leon Ridgway) or the BTK killer (Dennis Rader) are bad news, you may have seen nothing yet.

  At this point I had intended to close Keith’s chapter – frankly, if you haven’t had enough of Keith Hunter Jesperson by now, I have – but something had always bugged me about this guy. It was this: throughout all of his correspondence with me, Keith insisted that he had never raped anyone; he had never stalked a woman in his life; he had never gone out looking for a woman to kill. Guess what? I actually started to believe him. I truly, truly started to believe that maybe Jack Olsen had read Keith Hunter Jesperson all wrong. As the months passed by, I grew to accept his criticisms of me, my silly grammatical errors, the occasional misspelling of a place name, a route number. In a nutshell, and this may seem sad, I actually started to like this big guy, and his sharing with me of his life and crimes – he had almost convinced me that he had killed women just because they had pissed him off.

  But it bothered me somehow, because that would mean he was the only serial killer in history who trawled for woman and killed them without any sexual motive… that just didn’t sit right with me.

  I pressed Keith on this issue, and then he made a fatal error. Perhaps it was a throwaway statement, or maybe he simply could not resist getting it off his chest, but in a letter, he explained that after several of his victims were dead, he completely undressed them and looked at their bodies. This statement of Jesperson’s sent up a red flag, because, as we now know, he had said the same thing when he recounted the horrific murder of Taunja Bennett, which was a complete lie. Here is what he wrote, here is that red flag:

  The sexual element was/is, they were female and I am a male. I was curious on what I had missed out on. Much like a schoolboy trying to sneak a peek at what was up a girl’s skirt. When we look at a magazine and see beautiful girls dressed up, we don’t say to ourselves, ‘nice dress’, we stare at the breasts and that spot between their legs. We say, ‘nice tits’, ‘great ass’, ‘gee – her legs go all the way up’… We undress them in our minds. When I killed them, I undressed them to check out what was really under their clothes. I was curious.

  Of course, Keith was ignorant of the fact that I had read Jack Olsen’s book and that I had read all of the statements he had given to the police. He was ignorant that I already knew about the terrible pain and suffering, the torture that he had inflicted on his living victims. How he had played his sickening ‘murder game’, like the cat playing with a mouse, the shark circling a raft, and how he had lied and lied to me, and just about everyone who has crossed his path. In effect, Keith Jesperson, who has also admitted to being a serial arsonist, is a necrophile who enjoys sexual relations with the dead, and he even masturbated over their corpses; if the truth were known, he probably had sex with them in his cab, after they were dead.

  Omitted, somewhat conveniently from his new autobiography, is any reference to his fantasies of raping his victims. This ‘Mr Clean Cut Con’, who sends me photos of him surrounded by the prison’s ‘shot-callers’ during yard time. Black, white, heavily tattooed guys…mean looking ‘mothers’ who would stick you in a heartbeat. Here is Mr Jesper
son, all-coloured photos of him surrounded by his artwork, standing by a shiny car during a prison-sponsored auto-meet. Here is the man who viciously murdered so many innocent women.

  And, it was when I received further information about Keith that I urgently called back this chapter from my publisher, a week before going to final edit. I learned that notably absent in his writings to me were any reference to the replies he sends to the women who are keen enough to want to write to and pledge their love to him. He actually draws an outline of his penis to impress them. In one letter he writes: ‘When you touch and stroke the page, please get wet for me.’ One woman who wrote to Keith because of her interest of serial killers, and who was studying for a Criminal Justice degree, broke off the correspondence on the insistence of her extremely agitated tutor, who went into even more grey-hair-inducing palpitations when he read: ‘We can touch hands…and I will slip my fingers down to the crack of your tight ass and finger you when the guards are not looking,’ he wrote. ‘I will taste you for hours afterwards.’ When I asked Keith about this matter, he replied: ‘She [name omitted for legal reasons] wanted to marry me. She was too possessive. She was a nut case so I dumped her and she kicked up a storm.’ It makes one’s heart bleed, doesn’t it?

  Although the story of Keith Hunter Jesperson is, by its very nature, a sordid and gruesome one, I would like to end on a couple of more positive aspects of the case.

  The first, and perhaps the most important, is the fact that Jesperson does have a remarkable insight into the minds of his serial killer breed and thinks outside the box, so to speak. He has provided me with perspectives on other serial killers and how their warped minds work; when one analyses Keith’s mindset, one comes to the conclusion that only the serial killer himself knows what makes him tick. I have since passed all of my research, his correspondence, and my findings onto the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, Quantico, VA. They replied saying that it was, ‘of much interest, could be of immense value in the study of serial homicide. Can we move this one on?’ Whether Keith will seize this opportunity to work with the professionals is a matter for his own conscience. It would be a tragedy if he didn’t.

  Secondly, Keith’s daughter, Melissa: here we find a young woman who, for years, has been trying to come to terms with the disgrace of knowing that her father was a brutal serial killer. I make no bones about this, and I speak here for Melissa, but as a little kid she loved her dad to bits. She tells me that, from her perspective, he was generally a good father and a hard worker who, on the whole, treated his family well. When Keith had money he spoiled his kids and they were denied nothing. However, when cash was in short supply, he felt that he had let them all down and family arguments were frequent. Melissa recalls that her father did torture animals, maybe as a child she’d understandably not dwelt on that aspect of her father’s life. If nothing else has come from my relationship with Keith Hunter Jesperson, at least I have gone some way to reunite him with Melissa, who had not written to Keith for years. But, of course, where they go from here is a personal matter between father and daughter.

  There is something else, too: despite her struggle to comprehend how her beloved father become the Happy Face Killer, Melissa has married. She has found a quite wonderful man, and she now has children of her own. In the years to come, we will hear a lot more of her as, through the support of ‘responsible’ US TV, she is already an inspiration to all those who have been forced to endure the trauma of knowing that a father has become a monster.

  * * *

  This chapter is based on hundreds of letters from Keith Jesperson, documents, photos, correspondence from those close to him, and Keith’s ‘new’ autobiography… which, I can majestically assure you, will not be published any time soon.

  CHAPTER 5

  VIVA LEROY NASH

  THE OLDEST MAN ON

  DEATH ROW

  Viva LeRoy Nash is an example to us all. A total, heroic superstar. I love the guy. Even if they gas him, inject him or fry him, they can’t kill the man.

  Charles Bronson, Britain’s most dangerous prisoner.

  As my regular readers will already know, I speak as I find, so I make no exception here, and pushing the boat out even more, I love the old rascal to bits. Sure, LeRoy (as he likes to be called) is a silly old fool these days, and a tad inventive when the mood takes him, but decades on Death Row will only serve to further unhinge even the most fragmented of minds, as I am sure you would agree.

  Sadly, the door to LeRoy’s mind has long fallen from its rusty hinges and his sanity has all but bolted. It is absolute fact that he killed a cop, and shot to death a jewellery store clerk during a bungled robbery, and it is a tragedy that two lives were lost, with the pain and suffering heaped upon the next of kin, a sin. However, Mr Nash should never be on Death Row…he has done his time in spades, and if there is any forgiveness and compassion left in this world, LeRoy should be at the front of the queue when it is handed out.

  Maybe I am being presumptuous here, but compared with JR Robinson, or the British sex-killer Ian Huntley, LeRoy is saintly. Actually, when you have read his story, you might want to write to him…even have him home for tea and give the old codger a big hug.

  You could say that I’m on the Green Mile. This is my home, and it’s kinda like a downmarket condo unit bordered not by flowers and the fancy trimmings of upscale USA. Hey, no! I shit you not, for the address is Death Row, Eyman Complex, ADC. My house is small, like a concrete box, all of 8 feet long, 6 feet wide, and maybe, at a guess, 8 feet high. Three concrete walls, ceiling and floor. My front door? Solid steel with a food hatch. Outside is another door enclosed by a brick wall. Like a submarine hatch, only my inner door can be opened when the outer door is locked. They built the cell especially for me.

  LeRoy Nash, to the author.

  Born as long ago as 1915, only five years later than Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde, Nash was already serving two consecutive life sentences for murder and robbery in Utah, when, at the astonishing age of sixty-seven, he escaped from prison in October 1982. Three weeks later, on Wednesday, 3 November, he entered a coin shop in north Phoenix, Arizona, and demanded money from store employee, Gregory West. Mr West bravely refused and pulled a gun, firing off a shot at the elderly robber. West’s bullet missed Nash, who returned his fire and shot him with a .357 calibre Colt Trooper revolver, killing him.

  In a letter to the author, dated 25 December 2001, the lively old jailbird gives his own account of the gunfight. He says: ‘I saw the flash from his gun and instantly jerked my torso aside so his bullet would not hit me. It went past me and ploughed through the wall into a beauty salon next door. Four women ran aside and watched. But my bullet not only knocked his gun aside, so he couldn’t shoot a second time, but the damned bullet bounced off his gun, entered his flank and went through his body, killing him.’

  As LeRoy fled the scene, the proprietor of a nearby shop pointed a gun at him. The veteran hoodlum, despite his age, grabbed the weapon and struggled with the younger man. Police officers soon arrived and arrested LeRoy Nash.

  Offering nothing in mitigation, Nash pleaded guilty at his trial, which was over in one day. Now, 26 years on, at the ripe old age of 93, he is seeing his days out on Death Row, Arizona State Prison at Eyman. One thing is certain, Nash, a survivor from a bygone era who has no sense of fear, will go to his execution – if that day ever happens – without a whimper. Having said that, the author nurses the hope that common sense will prevail and that he will be allowed to see out his days in better surroundings than ‘the green mile’.

  Correspondence between the author and Mr Nash has shown him to be an intelligent and articulate man. Despite a heart condition and a partially crippled right hand, he produces copious amounts of carefully worded information, using just the refill of a biro – the condemned are not allowed the plastic outers for fear of them being used as weapons – he reveals that he has led a full and interesting life. His account of his beginnings as a bank robber during the Grea
t Depression is a wonderful piece of social history, but are all of his accounts of his days on the lam and his crimes really true?

  This six-foot-tall, life’s-chewed-upon-faced Nordic man describes himself as ‘a natural explorer who has travelled both the American continents, looking at everything, especially Mexico City’. He says that he was formerly ‘an Olympic-class athlete in the disciplines of swimming, tennis and running’.

  For some reason, best known to the authorities, Viva Le Roy Nash, disabled and elderly with a heart condition, more recently enduring a major hip operation, is considered to be so dangerous that he lives in an escape-proof cell within a cell. Under lockdown, he is not allowed exercise privileges, media interviews or any visitors such as other inmates might have – or, that’s what he says.

  In his own words, he says, ‘I am in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, every day,’ adding, almost humorously, ‘and I am partially hard of hearing.’

  My pa went to war when I was six. He went off to fight the Russians, and he came home when I was twelve. Walked straight in and beat the shit outa me. See, you can take it from me what people want now’s a good time, and they want it with a vengeance.

  LeRoy Nash to the author.

  On an overcast Friday, 10 September 1915, three months before Francis ‘Frank’ Albert Sinatra came into this world, Mrs Nash had a breech birth, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, producing a howling son whom she named ‘Viva’ on account of her release from the suffering. ‘That was me,’ says Nash.

  LeRoy’s father was Wilbur Roy Nash, an uneducated man, but a professional auto mechanic and amateur home-builder. His mother, LeRoy describes as: ‘Marie K. Nash, a beautiful, brainwashed control-freak, who had two children from a previous marriage; a son, Fred, born 1907, and a daughter: Elva, born 1905. LeRoy also had a true sister in Louise M. Nash, who was born in 1917. ‘All of these people,’ LeRoy adds, ‘died of natural causes years ago. I married, had a son, and was divorced in 1960. She does not want to be mentioned in this book. Her privacy should not be violated or mentioned.’