Dead Men Talking (16 page)
Authors: Christopher Berry-Dee
In his prison journal, Jesperson alleges that it was in his early childhood that his aggression towards animals began when his father witnessed him throwing a cat against a pavement to finish it off. ‘My father was very proud of how I dealt with the cat, and he boasted to others about how I cleared the neighborhood of any stray cats and dogs in the mobile park where we lived,’ he wrote. When Les Jesperson was asked to confirm this, he categorically denied his son’s allegation: ‘If I had seen any of that I would have thrashed Keith until he couldn’t stand up.’
More recently, Keith has said:
All this
[animal torture and killing]
did was to spawn me in the urge to kill again. I began to think of what it would be like to kill a human being. The thought stayed with me for years, until one night it happened. I killed Taunja Bennett by almost beating her to death and finished her off by strangulation. No longer did I search for animals to mistreat, I now looked for people to kill. And I did. I killed over and over again until I was caught. Now I’m paying for it with the rest of my life behind bars. We should stop the cruelty to anything before it develops into a bigger problem, like ME!
* * *
Here we now find a young man who says he was immensely proud of his family’s venerable history, and although he probably didn’t realise it at that time, there was a monster hiding deep inside his psyche just waiting to be unleashed. At some point he decided, either consciously, or unconsciously, that he would release the monster, ultimately leaving a trail of female bodies in his wake.
Gary C King, American author, on Keith Hunter Jesperson
In 1967, when Keith was 12, his family upped sticks and moved to Selah, Washington State, where Les Jesperson started several business ventures, including building a mobile home park called the Silver Spur. Every one of these ventures subsequently failed but not for lack of stint for hard labour. For his part, Keith’s employment history was never permanent. He changed jobs frequently, and, on 2 August 1975 he married Rose, an 18-year-old who he had been dating. They went on to have three children before splitting up and acrimoniously divorcing in 1990.
Home Park, with him trading a wage for a place to live on-site. Thereafter, he was a backhoe operator, a welder and took work as a truck driver, until May 1989, when he started as an equipment operator with Copenhagen Construction, in Clackamas, Oregon. He hoped that this would be a permanent job, but in November, that same year, he was laid off. But here I am obliged to say that Keith Jesperson, like his father, always worked his heart out, so a lazy man he was not.
* * *
Keith and Rose separated in 1988 and he met Roberta Ellis, a somewhat scrawny woman who lived in a small, brown house at 18343 N E Everett Street, in Camas, a city in Clark County. He was now reduced to living off state benefits and, subsequently, he was at the beck and call of a woman whose legs, by all accounts, sprang open faster than a mousetrap snaps shut. And things stayed pretty calm until the night of Thursday, 11 January 1990, when Roberta failed to return home from her shift at a Burns Brothers truck stop in Troutdale, Oregon. She worked in the B-Bar-B restaurant and should have finished at 10pm. It was now almost midnight, and Jesperson was rightly worried. He drove to the restaurant to find Roberta’s 1977 Ford Pinto parked close to a McDonald’s, but she was nowhere to be seen.
Later I’d get a call from McDonald’s telling me that Roberta’s car was still there. Could I come and get it? So, I got my neighbor to drive me there so I could bring her car home,
which was just across the Columbia River. The distance was about 21 miles. It would take me about 30 minutes, but that night was icy, so maybe it took a bit longer.
So, there I was driving along, just wondering…like anyone wonders about someone you love and that someone has suddenly gone missing. Sooner or later she will call to tell me what is up. This was normal behaviour for her though. Ever since I had met her in 1988, she was flighty – off at a moment’s notice and gone till she felt a need to talk to me again. So easily distracted was Roberta. I had once distracted her and we became an item. Now, it was my turn to wait to see what will happen next. That wait wasn’t long.
Well, late on Friday, 12 January, I picked up the phone and heard the operator ask me: “Will you accept a collect call from Roberta Ellis?” I took the call.
Roberta told me she had found a new man. He worked for Countrywide Trucking out of Knoxville. He told her she could be his co-driver. Of course this also meant they would sleep together and enjoy sexual fulfilment all the way back to the company’s main office. She was done with me. Told me she needed money. Start paying her rent for living at her home. “Bitch!” I called her, and then I hung up the phone.
I’d been drawing unemployment insurance since getting laid off work from Copenhagen Construction in Clackamas, late November 1989. Roberta begged me to go back on the road with her as a team, but I loved running heavy equipment for Copenhagen and didn’t want to give it up. I reckoned that in the spring work would resume. If we were out on the road I felt we would never be able to get away from it. This sort of sealed my own fate when I refused to bow down to her wants. Now she had moved on, so I felt a need to do so myself. Around the area are several taverns and bars…it was time to check out other women who may want me in their lives.
Keith Jesperson, in a letter to the author.
Jesperson’s first known murder was that of pretty 23-year-old Taunja ‘Tanya’ Ann Bennett, on 21 January 1990, and it was committed during the time he was still seething with rage over losing Roberta Ellis. He spotted Taunja playing pool with two men at the B&I Tavern, one of a number of similar seedy joints in Gresham, the fourth largest city in Oregon, and this is how he related what took place next. It makes for a shocking read:
The fog rolled in during that night. I would wake up about nine that Saturday morning, the 21st of January 1990. Make a pot of coffee and watch TV till about eleven. Then, locking the door behind me, I walked south towards the Fred Meyer mall, between Burnside and Stark Avenues. Like every weekend, even with Roberta at home, I went strolling through the malls just looking to look…to pass the time.
Eventually, I would go to the Jeep dealership to check out the new vehicles…then to the Fred Meyer building center and by 1pm that afternoon I walked into the B&I Tavern on Stark Avenue.
It was still early and the place was empty – void of the Saturday crowd that would soon arrive by five. Placing a quarter into a pool table, I pushed it in and released the balls and set up for the break. Staring about the Tavern there were just three customers and the lady bartender and me. Wandering over to the bar, I spotted a woman from the other table walking over to me. Without hesitation, she reached around me and pulled me close in a hug. This sort of caught me off guard. Didn’t really expect this. Looking over at the bartender, I saw her twirling her index finger around her ear. I took it as the girl was nuts, so I refused her offer to join her and the two men at their pool table. From the looks of the men she was with, they didn’t need more competition at their table in their attempt of bedding her. I felt better at leaving it alone…ordered a cup of coffee and went back to my game.
I guess an hour passed and I left the tavern. My mind did take in the thought of bedding her as I watched her tease those two guys she was with. A pretty girl… about ten years younger than me. But she couldn’t be expected to walk home with me… and I had walked that morning, with nothing really going on, I walked home to hang around hoping Roberta would call to tell me she wanted me again. I missed her company and the sex.
By 5:00 pm, I decided to either go to the Burns Brothers truck stop to hang out with other truckers, or return to the B&I Tavern to play pool in the 1974 Chevy Nova I’d borrowed from Jerry Day six months back. It sort of steered itself over to the B&I Tavern parking lot, which was now full of afternoon customers, and to park out by Stark Avenue and walk past the fifty other cars and trucks to enter the bar.
Inside, I soon saw all six pool tables had several coins on the side of them, meaning it could be hours before I could expect to play pool, so I turned around and left the building
and walked to the car.
I could see over at the closed restaurant, east of the parking lot, the pretty young woman that had hugged me earlier that day. She was now alone and trying to open the door to the locked restaurant. She gave up and she walked back to the B&I Tavern parking lot. I watched her. Then I yelled at her: ‘Remember me?’ and she looked over at me.
It was at this precise moment that a thought came to me. Why not take her to dinner and possibly we could party later – maybe even end up in bed at home. Her name was Taunja Bennett, and she would become my first kill.
‘How would you like to go to dinner and can find a place to play pool after?’ I said. She studied me. ‘Remember, you hugged me earlier in the day,’ I added.
‘Oh, yeah, I remember,’ I heard her say. ‘Okay,’ she said, and I pointed to my car.
We got in and drove across Stark Avenue to the east side of the Fred Meyer mall and parked in front of small restaurant. As we sat there, I pulled out my wallet. I realized I had left the bulk of my cash at home and would have to drive home to get it. Told her my situation…that if she waited for me in the restaurant, I would be just a few minutes, or she could come with me back to my home and we could decide where to go from there. It was her choice. She told me she would ride along.
At the house we sat in the driveway and I offered her the idea of coming inside. ‘Okay’, she replied, ‘I’ll leave my Walkman and purse out here in the car.’ We got out and went inside. She hung out in the living room–kitchen area, while I went into my bedroom to retrieve a couple of $20 bills. When I came out of the hallway, Taunja was standing with her back to me in the kitchen looking at some artwork on the wall. I felt this was a good time to hug her. I slid my arm in behind her and wrapped my arms around her, kissing the back of her neck. She felt good in my arms and she responded by turning around and kissing my lips. Felt we were clicking as we kept kissing and holding each other close. Slowly, my feet moved towards the mattress on the floor a few feet away. We dropped to it and continued to make out…our hands moving to unbutton clothing or slip it off.
Looking back, I understand how this looks. I met Taunja Bennett earlier in the day when she was with two men. Returning to the tavern later, I see her alone, searching for something to eat, and I jump on the subject and play her into coming with me to the restaurant and then my home to do what?
Taunja was now in my home and under my spell. Makes me look like a predator stalking
my victim, doesn’t it? She is reported by the press to be mildly retarded. What exactly does that mean? Could I have picked up on that and used it against her, or would it not be noticeable only knowing her for five minutes? It goes a long way to explain her actions in the next few moments. Her pillow talk seemed weird. It could be just her demeanor…a mild nut case not really thinking about what she is doing, like hugging a total stranger into thinking there is an attraction there.
So, there we were mugging on each other on the mattress on the floor…my hands on the buttons of her jeans and I just couldn’t get them undone. I stare down at the problem. Taunja Bennett looks at me and says, ‘Why don’t you just hurry up and get it over with? I’m hungry.’
This just struck me as wrong, if you understand my way of thinking? Told her: ‘I’m taking my time, girl.’
Taunja slapped at me, saying, ‘Get the hell off me then.’
That slap struck a nerve. And, it gave me permission to hit back. Hit me – I’ll hit back, and my fist hit her hard. And, one blow was not enough…I hit here again and again, over and over again and again.
Let me explain that it wasn’t an angry hit. Hard to explain. I had never hit a woman before. It was like I was now allowed to hit her for all the wrongs in my life done by women. Just going through the motions of punching her face. Each time I hit her I hit her harder and harder until her voice stopped me cold…like a child crying out for help. Taunja cried not to me – but to her mother: ‘Mommy, make him stop! Mommy make him stop…Mommy!’
Sitting on top of her, I stared at the bloody mess I had done. I was sick over it. My mind raced over my options; take her to the hospital, I’d go to jail. Drop her off someplace and call for help; she knows where I live and I’d go to jail. Third option; kill her and get rid of her body; hoping I’ll get away with it and not go to jail or prison.
How to kill her? The television shows all depict strangulation as the cleanest and quickest way…just hold onto their necks for a minute or so and it was over. My hands went to her throat and I squeezed with all of my might. After a minute my hands were aching and turning white, and you’ve got to remember that I am one heck of a BIG man, with a lot of strength. At about two minutes I had to let go. When I did, she breathed in. She was still alive.
Reasoning it out, this next attempt I would place my fist into her throat and lock my elbow and lean into her neck with my upper body weight. After a little over four minutes, I smelled urine as Bennett peed into her jeans. I believed she was dead and stood up over her, staring
down at her lifeless body. My thoughts went to making sure she was dead, and stayed dead.
I went into the garage to get a length of nylon rope to securely tie around her neck. This took me several minutes to do. I remember using a lighter to melt the ends of the rope to keep them from unravelling when I initially purchased the rope, so I reasoned that after I cut the rope after tying it on her, that one end was cut with a knife and burned off. What was really the case was I had cut both ends.
Remembering I had tried to unbutton her jeans, I also cut the buttons from the fly area and tossed them into the fireplace to destroy them. Didn’t know if I could wipe off my fingerprints from them and feared that in the course of disposing the body I might leave my fingerprints on anything metal. That’s why I cut off the fly on her jeans. It wasn’t a trophy, so don’t hang that dumb notion on me, okay!
Not really sure if it was before, or after I put the rope around Taunja’s neck, when the phone rang, and I answered it. It was a collect call from Roberta. I accepted the call again. The trucker had got to Tennessee and went straight home to his wife. It was predictable. Me and Roberta talked awhile, and I used that time to wash and dry the blood-spattered clothes I had been wearing. Call it efficient time management.
A case in point to the evidence in this case. I never had sex with Bennett. The beating of her body would show up in the blood spatter on her clothes. Hey! The lack of blood on certain areas will also tell any crime scene investigators that the person doing it was positioned a certain way for it to happen, and death soon followed.
Was the rope the reason she died? The crime scene people and the coroner should have the cause of death as the fist to the throat. That the rope was put on Bennett after she was already dead…don’t snow me. I know what happened and what you read here is the truth, period. And, any other writer, or prosecutor, or even the FBI, who says otherwise, is lying through their back teeth. Sex never played any part in the motive for killing Bennett, so I am not gonna say this again. FULL STOP!
There, on the living room floor laid the dead body of Taunja Bennett, as I talked to Roberta Ellis on the phone. One real reason I had the rope tied around Bennett’s neck was to secure her stomach contents should my moving of the body cause what she drank to move out of her – like post-mortem vomit. Had no real idea on if it would, or not. You must understand that it was a precaution to it. This is why I argue with myself on when I tied the rope around her neck…before, or after the long conversation with Roberta on the phone.
After the phone call I knew I had to set up an alibi, so the people at the B&I Tavern wouldn’t identify me as someone last seen with Taunja Bennett. You know, like the hug she gave me earlier in the day meant nothing at all. So, with the same clothes on when we met both times at, and near the tavern, I drove back to the place and put myself in there…to alert the staff when I left the place, I left all by myself.
In leaving the tavern, an hour or so later, I drove up to Crown point, and the Vista House, to search out a secure area to drop off Bennett’s body without being seen. Being seen was my biggest worry. Transporting the body up there and placing it in a place would be nerve wracking to say the least, but it had to be done.
At the Vista House monument that night, every parking space was occupied with couples in cars making out. Why choose a popular make-out space? The answer is that lots of traffic would sort of guarantee no one would remember one car with Washington State license plates on it. A popular tourist’s spot – my car would fit in nicely.
When I drove home, I stopped at the all-night deli-gas station close to my place on 181 Street. Checked out all the lights on the car: didn’t want a traffic stop. Fuelled up to be sure there was enough gas in the tank to get the job done, then drove back to my driveway and backed in. Removed the dome lights and opened the passenger door against Roberta’s Ford Pinto to get ready to place Bennett’s body into the front seat.
In the house I examined Bennett’s body. I wanted to see what I hadn’t had. I exposed her breasts and vaginal area – noticed she had shaved her pubic hair to fit bikini underwear. Her flesh seemed cool to the touch. She had been dead since about 6 pm, and now it was near midnight. The house was 70 degrees inside, maybe a little warmer. The cooling of her body would be slower in these six hours than after being placed in the wet-cold leaves of the ravine, where I intended to dump her body. And, you know, this fact could also hinder the diagnosis in the precise time of death. The Crime Scene Forensics would probably not consider her lying dead in a warm home for six or seven hours before being transferred to the final resting place…just something to be considered later.
Remember the fly area? Well, with that cut away, there was nothing to hold Bennett’s pants on her hips. A fact I never thought of until I moved her into the car, then drove her to the ravine. Thus, it is why when she would be found that her jeans were pulled down to her ankles…suggesting she was posed that way. So, don’t hang it on me that I posed her body to offend people when I dropped her off. It just happened that way.
Before moving Bennett to my car I searched the quiet neighborhood for movement from behind the curtains in the living room with the lights all turned off. Why? So often people go for walks late at night. Cars drive through from time to time. Lots of things could still go wrong.
I decided to wear bicycle riding shoes to the area I would drop off her body. These Cannondale shoes have a rigid sole and offer a flat print. Also, lots of people bicycle the area. Hard to determine who made the tracks up there…would a cyclist drop off a body that was killed elsewhere?
I guess, about 00:30 Sunday morning, I carried Taunja Bennett’s body out to the car and sat her in the front passenger seat, shut the door, and her bloodied head, with the rope still tied around her neck, slid up against the window in plain view, she would ride that way, is if asleep, as I drove to the Vista House monument, and further east down to discovering a dark-looking ravine to toss her away.
Now, you may all be thinking how cold-blooded I may seem to be. But, put yourself in my position where a woman has given me permission to hit her, and the hitting continues until death comes to her. Your options are limited, period. You go to jail for the rest of your life or you try to stay out of prison.