In His Own Words
Review by Kim Cantrell
True crime master Jack Olsen‘s final book of crime journalism is explosive from beginning to end.
In I: The Creation of a Serial Killer, Olsen allows Keith Jesperson, best known as The Happy Face Killer, to tell his story in his own words; words that will infuriate and disgust even the most jaded of true crime readers.
While reading this book, I often found myself making statements out loud to the tune of, “Oh boo freakin’ who!”, “Get over yourself!” and other statements that I’m too polite to list here.
Jesperson has an ego that would twice fill the land mass of Texas, with no particular good reason.
He thinks he’s good looking. He’s not.
He thinks he’s smart. He’s not. (The parts where Jesperson claims from his prison cell that people are imprisoned because they aren’t smart is actually quite humorous.)
And, lastly, he thinks his crimes were somehow the result of his father’s discipline. He’s wrong. (I’ll save my rantings on how many people were spanked by their parents and suffered “middle child syndrome” yet still became fine, upstanding citizens for another day.)
To take a look into the pathetic, self-centered mind of a serial killer is interesting. And Olsen did an excellent job of letting this egotistical bastard ramble on while making a fool of himself; not to mention a tidy profit for the author whose name is the front cover.
As is the case with any book from Jack Olsen, I highly recommend I: The Creation of a Serial Killer.
And when you’re done, follow it up with some truth from Jesperson’s sole surviving victim, Daun Richert-Slagle with her article titled Who I Am Today at In Cold Blog.
Updates on Keith Jesperson: On January 10, 2010, Jesperson received his fourth life sentence for the first degree murder of an unidentified woman found near Blythe, California.
As of this writing, it would appear that Jesperson’s father and stepmother, Leslie “Les” and Betty, are still alive and living in Yakima, Washington.
After appearing on the Dr. Phil show in 2008, Jesperson’s oldest daughter, Melissa, decided to lay her childhood demons to rest with the recent release of her book titled Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.
