Almost 40 years after her death, a woman from Oregon was identified as a victim of the serial killer “Happy Face Killer”

Almost 40 years have passed since the death of Patricia Skiple, a mother from the state of Oregon, in the United States, whose body was found on the side of a California highway, to identify her killer: Keith Jesperson, nicknamed “Happy face killer”, who has confessed have committed more than 150 murders, of which only eight have been proven.

On June 3, 1994, a truck driver encountered the body of Patricia, who would be about 45 years old, on the side of California State Route 152, near Gilroy, south of San Francisco. It was later confirmed that she had been strangled. However, all these years it had only been identified as “Blue Pacheco”, which has to do with the color of the clothes with which it was found.

Thus, as announced by the Sheriff's Office of Santa Clara County (California) through its Facebook account, it was until last week that the woman was finally identified through a genetic genealogy program called DNA Doe Project, an American non-profit organization composed of volunteers in 2017 in order to identify people with forensic genealogy to fatalities of car accidents, homicides and unusual circumstances.

Patricia's is one of many cases dating back decades and still to be solved, which are beginning to be clarified with this technique that combines DNA analysis, genealogical detective work and ancestry databases.

Originally from Canada, Keith Jesperson is a serial murderer nicknamed “happy face killer”, since all his victims were drawn precisely happy faces. He had an almost established pattern for murdering them: he tortured, raped and killed them, almost all of them in the cargo truck he drove.

“In 1994, an Oregon newspaper published a five-part series 'The Serial Killer with the Happy Face'. An anonymous letter writer claimed to have committed five murders across the West Coast. Four of the five cases remained unsolved. The person behind the writing of anonymous letters was later identified as suspect Keith Hunter Jesperson, also known as the 'Happy Face Killer', who signed his anonymous letters with the symbol of a happy face,” notes the Facebook message from the Santa Clara Sheriff's office.

It would have been in 2006 that Keith confessed to Skiple's murder in July 2006. At some point he would have confessed that his homicides numbered 160. However, he has only been proven to have killed seven other women during five years in six US states during the 1990s, so he is currently serving four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole in Oregon.

“In 2006, Jesperson sent a letter to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office admitting he sexually assaulted and murdered an unknown woman along a dirt detour on Highway 152,” the authority adds.

It was in 2019 that detectives from that office requested the help of the DNA program to identify the body of they asked the group for help in identifying his body, the department said. Until last April 13, Skiple, known as Patsy, was identified as a mother from Colton, Oregon, a rural community southeast of Portland, the sheriff's office said.

“Although this criminal case was adjudicated, detectives never gave up as they worked diligently throughout this investigation to close Patricia Skiple's family,” the authorities' statement said.

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