Victim of 'Happy Face' serial killer who left smiley faces on letters ID'd after 29 years
A victim of the "Happy Face" serial killer was identified by police 29 years after her murder, police announced on Thursday.
Suzanne Kjellenberg was identified through genetic testing nearly 30 years after she was slain, the Okaloosa County Sheriff's Office in Florida said.
She was one of at least eight women in the U.S. and Canada who were murdered by Keith Jesperson before his arrest in February of 1996. He was dubbed the "Happy Face Killer" because he put smiley faces on letters he sent to the media detailing his murders.
Although Jesperson confessed to the August 1994 murder of the woman now identified as Kjellenberg, he did not reveal her name, telling the sheriff's office at the time that he believed her name was “Susan” or "Suzette."
The breakthrough came this year after genetic samples of the victim were sent to Othram, a company specializing in "Forensic-Grade Genome Sequencing," which matched them to her genetic profile.
Jesperson admits to gruesome strangling
When investigators visited Jesperson in prison to ask about the newly identified victim, he drew a picture of her when asked. "He's pretty forthright about what he did, how he did it, and why he did it," said Michelle Nicholson, spokesperson for the sheriff's office.
Jesperson told investigators that he picked up Kjellenberg, 34 at the time, at a truck stop near Tampa and drove with her to a rest area in the Florida Panhandle and parked next to a security guard.
When he sat next to her, he said, she started to scream and wouldn't stop. Jesperson said he choked her by pressing his fist down on her throat and tightening zip ties around her neck so the security guard would not hear her screams.
"He was concerned because he was not allowed to have authorized riders, and so he used zip ties – electrical zip ties – to cut off her airway," Okaloosa Sheriff Eric Aden said at a press conference, "and then further used his fist forcibly to cut off her airway to the point where she was deceased."
Jesperson drove away from the area and disposed of her body near an exit on Interstate 10. An inmate work crew found it on Sept. 14th, 1994.
Nearly three-decade investigation
Investigators had previously sent samples from Kjellenberg's body for DNA and isotope analysis, and even enlisted a forensic artist to create a new facial recognition of the victim in 2007, but to no avail.
“Thanks to the tireless efforts of so many over so long, the remains of Suzanne Kjellenberg, the final unidentified victim of Jesperson’s cross country murder sprees, can finally leave the Medical Examiner’s Office, and return home,” Aden said.
In April 2022, investigators identified another victim of Jesperson, Patricia Skiple, nearly 30 years after her death, with the help of DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that provides investigative genetic genealogy services.
Jesperson is currently serving out seven life sentences for strangling eight women between 1990 and 1995, according to police. He worked as a long-haul trucker and targeted victims in California, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, and Florida.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Happy Face Killer victim identified after 29 years with genetic test
