Credit: Riverside County Sheriff’s Office
For 33 years, Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter was known only as “Claudia,” an unidentified victim of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, also known as the “Happy Face Killer.”
Now, just days before the 34th anniversary of the discovery of her body on Aug. 30, 1992, McWhorter has her name back. She is the final unidentified victim of Jesperson’s killing spree.
Fathers, mothers and sisters
McWhorter’s body was found on Aug. 30, 1992, along Highway 95, approximately seven miles north of Blythe, California.
After his arrest in another case, Jesperson confessed to a news reporter and later to Riverside County Sheriff’s Office deputies that he killed her and seven other women while working as a long-haul truck driver. However, he referred to the woman as “Claudia,” and her identity could not be confirmed at the time.
There were incremental advancements, though.
In 2022, Othram, working with the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team, developed a comprehensive SNP profile from submitted DNA evidence. The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office used the profiled for a forensic genetic genealogy search—eventually leading them to a handful of relatives on the victim’s paternal side.
The victim’s father was from Cameron County, Texas, but traveled all over the country, including Texas; Santa Barbara County, California; Washington state and Oregon. A maternal connection was still needed to confirm “Claudia’s” identity.
In late 2023, cold case investigators interviewed Jesperson again about “Claudia” at the Oregon State Penitentiary. The serial killer revealed more information, although nothing that directly furthered identification.
Jesperson said he met the victim at a brake check area on the I-15 south of the Victorville area around August 1992. She asked to be taken to the Los Angeles area, but due to his planned truck route to Arizona, he took her to Cabazon, California instead. After stopping in Cabazon, she continued traveling with Jesperson until they arrived at the Indio/Coachella Burns Brothers rest stop.
The two then argued about money and Jesperson claims he killed “Claudia” in his truck, then drove his purple semi-trailer from Coachella to Blythe, where he dumped her body.
Even with these details and subsequent sketches using a combination of DNA, the victim’s remains and a description by Jesperson, “Claudia” remained unidentified. Still, the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide Team kept investigating.
During the course of the investigation, a lead received by the team led to a direct maternal relative. A DNA sample was collected from the potential family member for comparison. Last week, that DNA sample confirmed the connection—allowing investigators to positively identify Jesperson’s second victim as Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter, previously known as “Claudia.”
McWhorter disappeared from Texas in the 1990s, and her sisters grew up not knowing what happened to her. With her identification, the final case associated with the murders for which Jesperson was convicted is closed.
The victims
Jesperson's first known victim was Taunja Bennett on Jan. 21, 1990, near Portland. He introduced himself to her at a bar and invited her to a house he was renting. After getting into an argument, Jesperson strangled Bennett to death and disposed of her body.
After the discovery of Bennett’s body, all media attention went to Laverne Pavlinac, a woman who falsely confessed to Bennett's murder with the help of her abusive boyfriend. Presumably upset he was not getting any attention for the murder, Jesperson wrote a confession on the bathroom wall of a truck stop and signed it with a smiley face. He then wrote letters to media outlets and police departments confessing to the murders, signing each one with a smiley face—giving him his “Happy Face Killer” moniker.
McWhorter was Jesperson's second victim, also raped and strangled. Her body was found two years after Bennett’s. A month after McWhorter, in September 1992, the body of Cynthia Lyn Rose was discovered. Jesperson claims she was a sex worker. In November, the body of another sex worker was found—Laurie Ann Pentland of Salem, Oregon.
Jesperson killed his next victim in June 1993 in Santa Nella, California. She was previously unidentified until the DNA Doe Project identified her as Patricia Skiple in April 2022. Police originally considered her death a drug overdose.
In September 1994, another Jane Doe was found in Crestview, Florida. Jesperson had previously said her name was Suzanne, and in 2023, Othram confirmed her identity as Suzanne Kjellenberg.
Jesperson's seventh victim was Angela Subrize, who was killed in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Jan. 27, 1995.
Julie Winningham’s was Jesperson’s last victim, killed in March 1995. After her murder, Jesperson was questioned by police but they had no grounds to arrest him. Still, over the next few days, Jesperson became convinced he was going to be arrested, and after two suicide attempts, he turned himself in hoping for leniency.
While in custody, Jesperson began revealing details of his killings and making claims of many others—up to 160 victims—most of which he later recanted.
A few days before his arrest, he wrote a letter to his brother in which he confessed to having killed eight woman over the course of five years. They have now all been identified.
Jesperson pleaded guilty to McWhorter’s murder in Riverside County on Jan. 8, 2010, and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He is currently serving multiple life sentences in Oregon.