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Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to Libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. This is Jeppa Roberts with 20 20. For more than four decades, 2020 has brought you an incredible variety of compelling stories. Well, now we're going to bring you back to some of the most heart stopping ones from the 2020 True Crime Vault. And we're going to give you what happened to the people involved. Thanks for listening. I avoid this place since 1990. My sister Tanya Bennett was murdered here. It was the most jumbled up case I've ever seen in my life. It's beginning to become very bizarre to me. Laverne Pavlonak says she hurt her boyfri. Talking about killing a woman. She was a character, I can tell you that. A decade long relationship that can only be described as dysfunctional, to put it mildly. The police start to zero in on John Sosnowski. No, no, no. Who's trying to put this on me? I don't remember going to no courts, getting no body, for God's sake. She says, I know he did it because I was there. She points out. Exactly. Had been placed. She couldn't have missed it by 10ft. I thought, my God, this woman was actually here. This was sort of like Laverne. Are you telling stories again? I always believed that the truth would come out eventually. I just didn't think the truth would come out of the mouth of a serial killer. It's like shoplifting. It is nothing like shoplifting. You're killing somebody. Portland is located in Multnomah County. It's basically northwest Oregon. It's a rather large metropolitan area. Interstate 5 goes right on through the city of Portland. A lot of trucking. If you get on the freeway, you will see a lot of trucks. It's a trucking hub. It's also a shipping hub. It used to Be that thousands of containers would come in on ships, land in Portland, be taken off and put onto trucks and trains headed elsewhere in America. Portland is divided by i5 and the river. Downtown businesses and the wealth were on the west side, and then you had more of an underclass on the east side. Back in the early 90s, Portland was a bit on the gritty side. Definitely working class. No question about it. Portland was like any other large urban area. We had our fair share of violent crimes. Murders would really get big news coverage because we didn't have that many murders. So when big crimes happened, people paid attention in a big way. Portland, especially back in those days, was known mostly as a beautiful place. One of the most beautiful and impressive features of Oregon is the Columbia Gorge. It's a place where God just decided to gouge out a big, long ditch in the earth and the Columbia river runs down this gouge, but we call it the gorge. The Gorge is a place where people come to enjoy the outdoors. There's hunting, fishing, boating, hiking, Just lots of fun activities to do. The area is on all the postcards for the state of Oregon everywhere. And it's also a very common location for the dumping of bodies, unfortunately. I worked for the Multnomah county sheriff's office in Portland, Oregon. I retired as a sergeant in January of 1990. I was working homicide. It was a Monday, of course, everything was basically routine, you know, for about an hour. And then maybe around 9, 9:30, we got notified that a body had been found in the Columbia Gorge. A community college student taking a drive along the old scenic highway discovers a body and immediately alerts the authorities. We're facing eastbound on the old scenic highway. This here is the crime scene. The body of an unidentified woman was found in the Columbia gorge, But it was off of this twisting road through a very lush, forested area. When we got there, you know, I looked up the hill and I could see this ravine and that there was a body there. It was a female. Her clothing was lifted up above her breasts, and her jeans were down around between her knees and her ankles. And as I got to the body, I could see that she had been severely beaten and that there was a rope around her neck, and she was obviously deceased. She had been strangled. And it was evident that there had probably been some kind of sexual assault. Authorities begin to process the scene for clues. They need to find out who this woman was, how she got there, and who done this horrible thing. There was a head hair found on the body. The fly of her jeans had been torn away that was missing. There was nothing there that would have indicated who this person was. There was no identification. The only items that we found were a small red, like Swiss army knife and a set of headphones for like a Sony Walkman, which were real popular back then. When she had still not been identified, the police had a sketch made up and circulated that in the local media looking for suggestions about who she might be. A great deal of time elapsed, probably seven or eight days. Michelle White's younger sister hadn't been home for a week. No one knew where she was. And then one night a neighbor told her to watch the news. This is a Channel 2 news brief. Good evening, everybody. I'm Steve Dunn. Here are some of the stories we're working on in the Channel 2 newsroom tonight. We had a young woman who was dumped in the forest and brutally murdered. Right off the bat, they showed a sketch of the person. I thought to myself, well, that don't look like her. But once they showed her clothes and her shirt, you know, all I could think about, oh my God, my sister. At that point, the family recognized her as Tonya Bennett. She's a 23 year old woman. She's described by her family as super friendly, but maybe a little bit naive. Tanya Bennett was intellectually disabled. She was coping, though, and had apparently some social life. She's a little bit slow, but she's the only one that graduated from high school. She read a lot instead of watching tv. It was music. Madonna. That's what she listened to all day. Tanya Bennett had a history of some troubling behavior due to her lack of impulse control. We tried to retrace Tanya Bennett's steps from when she was last seen on 21 January, the day that she left the house. I do remember she said, I'm gonna go see my friends. I said, it's Sunday. The bus only runs once an hour. Where are you gonna go? She says, yeah, I'm gonna go see my friend. I said, okay, well, you know, take the movies back on the way. She had left her home, according to her mother, and she had some videotape she was gonna return. And she had her Sony Walkman with her in her purse. She was carrying her Soul to Soul cassette tape, listening to her favorite song, back to Life. Not far from where Tonya Bennett lived was a neighborhood town called the bni. And she was kind of a semi regular there. A waitress at the bar remembered Tanya being in there. She walked in, just happy go lucky and was hugging people. She was there Playing pool with two guys. And then later, during her shift, why, she noticed that Tanya had left and the two men had gone. But she didn't know anything more about whether she left with them or who the men were. It wasn't unusual for her to leave the house and not come home for a few days. Never found out what she was doing, how she was doing it, because she kept everything a secret. We need to check out who she's been with, who might have a motive to do something like this. Police spend days trying to track down these two guys who were playing pool where she'd been hanging around. Not only did we go to the BNI Tavern, we went to, oh, gosh, I don't know how many bars. There was one down in southeast Portland at 92nd Foster that she liked to go to also. They tried everything they could to figure out what had happened to Tanya and who had done this to her. They were all dead ends. They opened an anonymous tip line on Crime Stoppers. And one of the phone calls that came in was from a woman he's mouthed off a couple times, talking about some. Some dead girl. And I shouldn't be telling all this, but I can't protect him anymore. I call it a diary of cases I worked on. Of course, this is just one year, and it's got a lot of stuff about Tanya Bennett's homicide in here. There's 800 pages of reports on this. Here it says, follow up on homicide. See file number blah, blah, blah. So I. I didn't go into detail. It was the most jumbled up case I've ever seen in my life. I wish that had never drawn it, to be honest with you. Just might turn in the mural, I guess. Several weeks go by after Tanya's body is discovered, and the police really are trying to solve the case. They're working around the clock, but to no avail. The two men she was last seen playing pool with at the bar were eliminated as suspects. So it was back to the drawing board for the detectives. They put out more information in the media, asking for tips. We also canvassed Tanya's neighborhood. That's basic. You go from door to door and ask people, hey, when was the last time you saw Tanya? Blah, blah, blah. Uneventful. No fruit there. Time stoppers off the hill. The anonymous tip line starts blowing up. And it was one caller who provided the break in the case they were looking for. He said that him and his. This guy did it. And they took her up near a vista. One of them strangled her to death. A Phone call came in that was a woman claiming anonymously that a guy named John Sosnowski had been heard at a bar, almost boasting that he had strangled a girl. By day John worked at a lumber yard, but at night he drank. John was an alcoholic. He was only on probation for dui. No criminal history other than that. They learned that John Sosnowski had a girlfriend, an older woman named Laverne Pavlanok. Laverne Pavlanak and John Sosnovsky were involved in a codependent dysfunctional relationship, the details of which were never made real clear. But she was really wanting to be out of the relationship. Laverne would repeatedly call the probation officer, kind of claiming that he was drinking too much, he was not pleasant to live with. He's real paranoid. He does his drinking after about eight at night. He waits till he knows nobody's gonna come around. And he's so unpredictable. And I know he's capable of being violent. Uh huh. I've went through many rages with him through the years. Laverne eventually admits to the probation officer that she's the one who's been making anonymous calls to the police. This is typical behavior for her. They had a volatile relationship. Earlier she tried to pin other things on Sosnovsky. There was a bank robbery where they published a picture and she reported him as the likely suspect in the bank robbery. And the FBI investigated that case and found out that John couldn't be responsible for it. She agrees to meet with police to talk with them about the possible involvement of John Sosnowski in the murder. We were greeted at the door by Mrs. Pavlonak, and she invited us in. She was very cordial, offered us coffee, and she struck me as just a really nice older lady. I thought, wow, this is going to be interesting. It was my first impression. When police go to visit Laverne Pavlanik, they find a 57 year old woman. She used to work at a state mental hospital. She was alone until she kind of latched into this relationship with Sosnowski, who was 18 years her junior. I found it an odd relationship. Now why she was attracted to him, I have no idea. Laverne stated that she had been with Sostoski at JB's Lounge and she had overheard him tell a man that he had killed a girl and left her body in the gorge and that he had sex with her. She then describes. He's talked about tying me up. He plays with rope. Implicating him further in what's gone on with Tonya Bennett? Laverne then says that on the night of Tonya's disappearance, John came home at about 1 or 2 in the morning, immediately took off all his clothes, she says, and jumped in the shower, which Laverne told police was a very unusual thing for him to do. The police believed her. She was credible. She was a grandmotherly type person, you know, very accommodating. I forgot about a lot of these. Here's us right here. Here's when you were born. She was like a best friend. That's how I felt about her. Tell her anything. She's caring, she's naive, wants to help anybody that she can help. She was a character, I can tell you that. She was funny. There's a good picture of mom and dad. We were so normal. And then when their marriage ended after 26 years, because my dad kind of looked elsewhere, that's when things fell apart for her, horribly fell apart for her. She had gone through a lot of difficult steps in her life. She had been divorced, remarried. The new husband had died of cancer. Before he died, he had a farmhand and his name was John Sosnowski. They begin a decade long relationship that can only be described as dysfunctional, to put it mildly. They were an unlikely romantic couple. I don't think she was in love with him. I think that she was at a bad place in her life. She was lonely and she didn't have anyone to take care of anymore because everybody was gone. Police were able to get a search warrant to search the home that the two of them shared together. We were looking for a purse. A section of Tanya Bennett's jeans had been cut away, a fly section. We were looking for that. They're able to get into the house and they search and they find basically nothing except for a piece of paper that has T Bennett dash good piece written on it. T liken the initial T for Tanya Bennett. Good piece that I thought was amazing. A good piece. The expression used to be a good piece of ass. Was that a reference to a woman or he had just murdered and raped? They're not able to identify who that handwriting is, but it moves the investigation somewhat forward. The police decide to question John Sosnowski. They bring him in. Do you have any knowledge of the death of Tanya Bennett? Then they discover something that will turn this entire case on its head. It's beginning to become very bizarre to me. Marketing is hard. But I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point Something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to Libsyn ads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. I've drove in this road at least a thousand times when I was a kid. I avoid this place since 1990 when my sister Tanya Bennett was murdered here. This is the area where Tanya Bennett's body was dumped. The homicide investigation is finally picking up speed. Laverne Pavlanac says she heard her boyfriend talking about killing a woman. After searching Laverne and John's apartment and finding that note with Tanya Bennett's name on it, the police start to zero in on John Sosnowski. On the strength of statements from Laverne Pavlanik, detectives have got John Sosnowski to come down to the station. He agreed to accompany us to a substation located in Wilsonville. At that point, we interviewed John. Today is Friday, February 16, 1990. Time now is 6:40pm Mr. John Allen Sosnowski. John, you realize that this conversation is being recorded? Yes, it is, sir. You understand we're investigating the homicide of Tanya and Bennett? Yes, sir. He was cooperative. He was willing to speak with them and talk with them. We've shown you a Polaroid photograph of Tanya Ann Bennett, do you recognize this person? No, I do not, sir. Do you recall ever having seen this person before in your life? No, sir. Did you have a conversation with an individual In a lounge JB's, regarding the murder of Tania Bennett? No, sir. Do you have any knowledge of the death of Tanya Bennett? No, sir. John Sosnowski was adamant that he had never met Tanya Bennett and that he definitely didn't kill Tonya Bennett. That, of course, was flying in the face of what Pavlonak was saying. One of them is lying. Anything else you'd like to say, sir? Yes, if I may. I'm more than willing to help in any way that I can and. And clear myself and. And to help you people, because I have nothing to hide. We'll conclude the interview time now is 6:58pm they took a hair sample from John Sosnowski to try to match that up to evidence from the crime scene. The interview ends, but John is sent home. The police decide they just don't have enough evidence to arrest or detain him. The interesting part is that right after he gets released, Pavlonak contacts detectives again. And she's very concerned about why things aren't going her way. She was now engaged in this process. In fact, she was showering them with calls at all times and kind of escalating the situation. Over the weekend. Laverne had contacted me and said that John had told her he may have written that note that was found in the dresser drawer that said, T. Bennett. Good peace. Laverne contacts law enforcement again and says, oh, I have even more for you. She had found a strange purse in her trunk of her car, and it contains news clippings about Tonya Bennett's murder and also contained a cutaway piece of Denon from a pair of girls jeans. Remember when Tanya's body was found, the fly had been cut out of the jeans. Now, police think this is a huge break because this appears to be that missing piece of denim. I'm thinking this is really amazing. Killers will often take a little trophy. They'll take a little memento. They'll keep something from the victim. And there's more good news for police. There's physical evidence that seems to corroborate Laverne's claims to the police. There was a head hair found on Tanya's body that was consistent with John Sosnowski. I can't say it is for sure John's. I can't say it isn't John's, but it's A distinct possibility. It wasn't like a fingerprint. It was just a corroborating piece of evidence. Armed with new evidence, detectives go back to John Sosnowski. They ask him to take a lie detector test. Took a polygraph, flunked it. The examiner informs Corson that in his opinion, John Sznovsky has direct knowledge of the death of Tanya Bennett. After he is told that he was deceptive, Sosnowski begins to modify his version. John writes out a seven page statement and reads it out on tape. I have seen T. Bennett at JB's Truck Stop on several occasions. The last time was the 21st of January, 1990. I was visiting with Chuck Riley, who was playing darts. He says that, yes, they were in the bar and that Tanya left with another guy. They went to a nearby truck stop supposedly to have sex with each other. Later that evening, I saw Chuck Riley and asked him for a ride home. I believe I saw a body in the back of the car. The body was wrapped in a blanket. The body was one of a white female adult. I had not known how she was killed. John Sisnovsky has moved from never knowing or seeing Tanya Bennett all the way through to seeing her dead in the back of Chuck Riley's car. We go and try to talk to Chuck Riley. He says, you're crazy. No, that didn't happen at all. Do you have any knowledge in the death of Tonya and Bennett? None. Do you have any responsibility? Were you involved in that personally? No. You know anything about this gal at all? No. Do you have any idea why Mr. Sosnowski would tell the police that you were involved in that? No, I do not know why he would do something like that. Chuck Riley voluntarily says, hey, look, he says, you guys can search my car. Fully cooperative with the examination of the car. It's fully processed. There isn't one item of evidence in there to indicate that Tanya Bennett had ever been in that car. No blood, no hair, nothing. There was no indication at the truck stop that any room had been rented either by that man or by Tanya Bennett. He passed his polygraph. The Chuck Riley story in the analysis of the investigation becomes a deflection by Sosnowski, who we believe is responsible for the murder. Police really need something much more concrete to be able to arrest him for Tonya's murder. So they get a warrant and they install a wiretap in John's apartment. I just think about that girl's mother. Just makes me sick. We were outside in an unmarked van and we had Asked Laverne to try to get John to volunteer information regarding the homicide of Tanya Bennett. Oh, I. On the body of the gourd. He carried it. No, no, no. Who's trying to put this on me? I don't remember going no court. There ain't no body, for God's sake. I don't. And he raises his voice and says, I don't know what you're talking about. Are you trying to frame me, Juan, about the worst thing you've ever got yourself? In the month since Tanya was murdered, so much is happening in the world. Politics, sports, super bowl envy. Joe Montana threw those five touchdowns to win the Super bowl for the 49ers. Good evening. This was Nelson Mandela's first full day of freedom. Nelson Mandela walking free in South Africa after spending decades in prison. I have lost a great deal over this 27 years. And Tanya's favorite song, back to Life. It won the Grammy. For the detectives, their investigation hits a major roadblock when they examine evidence found in Laverne Pavlonak's trunk. One of the items that she provided for them was a piece of cloth from a pair of jeans. She hands them a purse that is of similar description to what Tonya Bennett would have lost. Tanya Bennett's mother said, no, that's not her purse. I've never seen that purse before. We'd send a section of jeans down to the crime lab to have them compared to Tanya's jeans that she was wearing when she was found. And it doesn't matter. So that tells you that Laverne is fabricating evidence. We confronted Laverne with that fact, and Laverne admitted that she had planted those items in the trunk of the car. Trying to convince us that John Sosnowski had been involved in the homicide of Tanya Bennett. She wanted him out of her life. He thought, this is the way to get this man away from me. When they confront her, she then implicates herself. She says, I know he did it because I was there. Laverne tells police a news story that she got a call from John in the middle of the night and that he had a request. Phone rang. It was John Sosnowski. Okay. Calling to tell me he was in trouble and to come fast. What do you want you to bring? Bring something large to wrap something in. Okay. And what did you take with you when you went to see John at the JMB lounge? Blue shower curtain. She stated also that she had met John Sosnowski at JB's Lounge and brought along a Shower curtain. When she pulled into the parking lot, there was a body laying on the pavement. As you drove closer, what did you find? That something the ground to be a female. She was lying on her side, very prone, very quiet. Verne Pavlanak says she immediately recognized the woman to be Tanya Bennett, a former patient at the mental hospital where Pavlonak herself once worked. She asked John, is she okay? And she said, it's worse than that. She's dead. I said, why is she dead? He says, because I choked her. I said, I think we need to take her to a hospital. We need to report this job. No, no, I'll go to the pen. I'll go to death row. He made her wrap up the body and hide the body in the trunk of a car and that they drove out to the gorge to dispose of the body. He opened the back door on the passenger side and pulled her out. And he went off into the woods with him. After dumping the body into the woods, do you recall any conversation he might have said to you? Just that I better not open my mouth. This never happened or I will cause trouble for your family. I'll hurt your mouth. At that point, she's implicating herself. She's saying, okay, I help. But was only after he had murdered Tanya Bennett. Laverne has changed her story multiple times. Police start to be skeptical of whether or not she's telling the truth. So at this point, the police need to really test the credibility of Laverne. So they say to her, okay, take us to where you disposed of Tanya's body. Detective Ingerman. Corson, take her out to see whether or not they could make sense of the physical locations versus what her statements were. They drove her up to the gorge. There's a place called Vista House that's kind of an identifiable spot. A well known place to local people can see up the gorge all the way to the horizon. But that's not where the body was found. It was more in the surrounding areas. Now, as Corson and I are proceeding on the Columbia highway, kind of this twisting, winding road where everything sort of looks the same. They drove the distance from the Vista House to Lateral Falls. We drive past where the body had been deposited and she says, oh, we've gone too far. Turn around and we're driving back. She says, this here bugs me. Stop. She got out and said, this is it. This is where the spot was. This is where we dropped the body. She points out exactly where that body had been placed. She couldn't have missed it by 10ft. And that absolutely astounded me. I thought, my God, this woman was actually here. We have a photograph. She is standing in the forest pointing. And the detectives swore to me they had not in any way given her a clue. They brought that information back and we said, you need to go arrest him and put him in jail. John Sosnowski has been charged with the murder of Tanya Bennett based on Laverne's account. But now Laverne tells police she has something new to share. What she said was correction time. I thought, okay, what do we got now? This was sort of like Laverne. Are you telling stories again? Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsyn ads.com that's lib s y n ads.com today. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads, choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com Today, Multnomah county detectives believe they have finally solved the murder of Tanya Bennett. They arrest John Sosnowski. We had enough probable cause to arrest John Sosnowski and took him into custody and transported him to the booking facility. And a few days later they get another call from Laverne Pavlonak and she has more to talk about. So myself And Detective Corson go out to her condominium. She says, it's correction time. Correction time. That's what she said to them. Correction time. I mean, those two detectives, their heads must have been spinning because this was a constantly evolving story. I thought, okay, what do we got now? And in this conversation, Laverne tells them that she needs to tell them what really happened with Sosnowski and Bennett. Then we asked her if she'd be willing to make a statement on tape. And she said, yes, she would like to do that. So they then turn on the tape recorder. Today is Monday, February 26, 1990, and she now revisits her trip to JB's Truck Stop. She went there to pick up Sosnowski. You pulled into the lot. What did you see, if anything? I seen John standing with a young lady. That young lady we're talking about is Tanya Bennett, is that right? Correct. Sosnowski was there with Tanya Bennett, and Tanya Bennett was alive. Sosnowski tells Laverne that they're gonna give Bennett a ride home. Bennett and Sosnowski both get in the car. They're leaving JB's Lounge. John and Tanya are in the car. They're playfully fighting with one another. She slapped him. He slapped her, punched her, slapped her. And they were laughing. Did it progress into something where there wasn't laughter any longer? Yes. Then it became serious, a serious argument. As we went further down the freeway, he said, I'm going to take her. Did he tell you that he was going to have sex with her? Yes. He told us there was a point where John said, quote, she's not going home, end of quote. Is that his words to the best of your memory? Yes, it is. And they drive up to the Columbia Gorge. They get to Vista House, Crown Point on the Scenic Highway. He tells Laverne to pull into the parking area. He went to the trunk, and there was rope in there. He says, I'm going to tie her up. It's more of a thrill this way. Laverne says she gets out of the car and she goes to this stairwell. And Tanya Bennett's laying there in the stairwell. She's alive. And John wanted her to get behind her head and to pull the rope, tighten. Tighten it around her neck while he was having sex with her. And what were you doing while he was having sex with her? I was holding the rope outward. He says, draw the rope tight. Laverne says she continues to draw the rope tight and looks away. And he kept saying, hang on, hang on. I Must have tightened it. As I was hanging on, she said Tanya Bennett was moving. Suddenly, Tanya Bennett ceases to move. And it's the process of pulling that rope tight when her body went limp. Yeah, dude. Okay, Ms. Pavanek, let me ask you a question. Do you believe staying here today that by pulling that rope tight that you caused the death of Tanya and Bennett? Yeah. You do? I feel like it's my fault. Laverne said at that point, they put Tanya Bennett back in the car, they transport her to where her body was located, and then they drive home. Moments after telling her to the police, she turned in front of the two detectives and confessed to the daughter to have her tell me this story. And I looked at her again and I said, mom, are you sure? And she goes, well, they told me I had to tell you this because if I told you, then they would believe me. Now I'm thinking she's pointed out the dump site. She's confessed to us on tape. She's told her own daughter the same story very convincingly. I'm thinking, my God, she is actually involved in this. In this final version of what happened to Tanya Bennett, she has implicated herself in the murder and she gets arrested. I'm told to place her into a holding cell. I said, okay, Kaylor, you need to go into that room right there. She turned around and she looked at me, and she gave me a hug. I thought, oh, my God. I felt like I put my mother in jail. They slammed that metal door on you. That's when I started to realize what I had done. Like it woke me up. So once behind bars, alone with her thoughts, Laverne Pavlonak has a stunning about face. She says her dying grandson pleads with her to finally come clean. I finally told my attorney, what would you say if I told you I didn't? That I made all this up. I lied. He said he wouldn't believe me, but I says, well, I did. I lied. And she told me that she wasn't going to plead guilty. And I warned her that she was likely to be convicted, but she still wanted to go to trial. Her trial defense was that she had made this up. She recants her confession and says, I made it all up just to get rid of this guy. She says, I just wanted to get out of this abusive relationship. So you're gonna frame him for murder and incriminate yourself? Who does that? She did say that she was sorry about it all. It was kind of weak compared to what she had been saying in the closing arguments. I Argued for eight or nine hours, all of the defects in the confession, all the things that were incorrect. I was convinced that she was innocent. But the prosecution only had to hit the play button on the recorder and say, listen to her words. And did you pull it tight, the rope tight? Yes, I did. And that's what causes you to believe that maybe she died during that incident, at that time, the tape did the argument for him. We heard a lot of tapes of her making these accusations of what took place and all. She really just convicted herself. We all found her guilty, all 12 jurors. The jury finds her guilty of felony murder and sentences her to life. Now, John, he's up next for trial, but he sees this is bad. She got convicted. He believes he's gonna go down. He takes a plea. John pled no contest to the charge of first degree murder to avoid the possibility of a death sentence and wound up getting life imprisonment. Laverne Pavlanak was so convincing that I think people will tell you that Johnson himself came to believe. Like, I guess that must be what happened. Because he blacks out so often, he wasn't really able to account for where he would have been or to provide a more aggressive defense. Something like an alibi, you know? The night before Laverne's trial was to start, I told Jim, I said, you know, I don't feel right about this. I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was. Just before the trial started, there were writings that were made on a bathroom stall door, on a truck stop or a rest area. These cryptic messages were found hundreds of miles away from the courthouse. One in Montana and one in eastern Oregon. I killed Tanya Bennett. The people took the blame, so I can kill again. We don't know who wrote it, don't know when it was written, why it was written. It was classic hearsay, not admissible in evidence, so we never heard about it in the jury. There's somebody who's claiming credit for the murder of Tanya Bennett. Who's doing this and why? Is the real killer still out there, or is it some sort of creepy prank? It's the strangest case I'll have ever worked on. Too many people confessing to this same crime. I always believed that the truth would come out eventually. I just didn't think the truth would come out of the mouth of a serial killer. Seems like my luck has run out. I have been a killer for five years and have killed eight people. We thought that our case is closed, and it now it looks like it's anything but closed this handwritten letter with a happy face scrawled on the top. Smile and two eyes. I thought, he's teasing the police, like, hahaha, here I am. See if you can find me. And then he started confessing to other murders. Because the recovery of a body that was located. Located over the bank. It's Tanya Bennett all over again. Gosh, maybe this guy did do it. And maybe these people are innocent. Now remember, Laverne had implicated her boyfriend John in the murder of Tanya Bennett. She even claimed that she was involved. But now there's a whole new suspect. They now had not just an anonymous letter writer drawing a happy face. They had a real person he'd tell anybody who'd listen, I'm the happy faced killer. She sent us from prison. Says, love mother. Got a lot of these. Here's us right here. For more than 25 years, Bonnie and Darlene have literally saved everything related to their mother's case airtight, except for a lot of leaks. Here we are visiting mom at the women's prison in her prison photo, pokey picture, pokey pictures. She was very giving. She'd give you the shirt off her back. I mean, she was that kind of woman. That's why all of this doesn't make sense. Their mother, Laverne, told police a series of stories that implicated not only herself, but her boyfriend, John Sosnowski, in the murder of Tanya Bennett. She confessed to not only putting a rope around Tanya's neck, she pointed out the exact spot where they found Tanya's body. I think what happened to mother was she was in an abusive relationship and she was desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. People are like, who would do that? She must have really been desperate, though. She must have been. These two sisters knew that their mother was not guilty in their hearts, but nobody would listen to them. And then in the spring of 1994, they discovered that there was at least one other person who believed Laverne was not guilty. Got a call on my cell phone and it was Phil Stanford from the Oregonian. And he said, darlene, I think we know who's done all this. I think we can get your mom out every morning if you are going in. There would be a stack of mail. It was mostly letters and news tips, complaints. Remember that day we got a really sick one. This handwritten letter, several pages with a, you know, happy face scrawled on the top and, you know, smile and two eyes. And these were anonymous letters. About halfway through the first page, the writer confessed to a murder. He Named the victim Tanya Bennett. But we already have two people locked up in prison. Laverne Pavlanek and then John Sznowski. So it looked like a hoax. But the letter just went on for several pages, all handwritten. And then he started confessing to other murders and another murder and another. I went to truck driving school and learned to drive while driving. I learned a lot and heard of people that have gotten away with such a crime because of our nomad life. Here's a guy who's on the move constantly. He's a long haul trucker, so he pulls into one place one night, he's there for a few hours, maybe sleeps in his cab, and he's gone. Who even knew he was there? I had to decide whether I was going to recycle it or do something with it. I decided I would give it to a reporter, a guy named Phil Stanford. Phil Sanford, who was sort of a muckraker in many respects, but he could be pretty thorough. The letter said five of five, sort of cryptic. Turned out to be five murders he was talking about. And the first one was the local murder, Tanya Bennett. Two people were already in prison for that. I figured, okay, I'll check out the other four. This person says that he killed five women in the past four years in two different states in Oregon and California. I called the authorities in these other locations where the writer claims to have killed women and dumped their bodies, and there were bodies in it, every one of those cases. We first got a copy of a letter from a reporter in Portland and signed with a smiley face. And he claimed responsibility for a Jane Doe homicide that we had. And we had no other leads at that point. I killed her, dumped her body about seven miles north of Blythe on 95. He described the location, which was correct. We did find duct tape at the scene. He knew things that no one would have known unless they were the killer or an investigator. Stanford's a journalist, so he decides to go back and take another look at Tanya Bennett's police file. Pretty soon it became clear to me that these people didn't do it. Even though they confessed, they didn't do it. I went over everything that he wanted to report and double checked it, triple checked it, and it all checked out. We decided that he would report it in a series. Now, at that point, they didn't know who had written the anonymous letters. Phil Stanford Zone came up with the nickname Happy Face Killer. The letter was of keen interest to the newspaper, but authorities looked at it with skepticism. They weren't going to put much stock in it unless they knew who wrote it. I thought, he's teasing the police, like, ha, ha ha, here I am. See if you can find me. Look over your shoulder. I might be right behind you. Obviously, the guy was mentally ill, to say the least. I read all the information Stanford was putting out in his columns. There really wasn't anything in those letters about Tanya Bennett that hadn't been widely discussed at the trial. It was very good reading, but it was really nothing we could deal with criminally on our case. Nothing ever really came of the happy face letter. Think about it. Detectives in Multnomah county weren't about to reopen a murder case just because of anonymous letter. Especially because they already had two people in prison serving time for the murder of Tanya Bennett. Then In March of 19, another dead body in the Columbia Gorge, but this time on the other side of the river in Skamania County, Washington. We're about a quarter mile, maybe a little less, into Skamania county from the Clark county side on State Route 14, which is also known as the Evergreen Highway. This is where the motorist pulled over to urinate. He had walked across the guardrail and walked over closer to the bank where it's a more wooded area where you could be a little bit more concealed from the traffic. 911, how can I help you? I think I found a body alongside the road. It looks like a female. I can see a hand, fingernail polish. So looking just down over the bank, about 20ft down, there's a little vine maple, broadleaf tree that comes up right there. Her body was found just next to that and a little bit uphill from that. This is the recovery of a body that was located over the bank. As. As we approached the scene where she was located, the first thing that I was struck by was that she was completely nude. There was no purse, There was no jacket. There was no anything nearby that could possibly give us an identity to who this person was. There appeared to be some adhesive on her cheeks and over her mouth that appeared consistent with maybe the adhesive from duct tape. I noticed that there's a dark discoloration on her shoulders and neck area. It could have been consistent with strangulation. It's Tanya Bennett all over again. Another woman found dead with no id A naked body found in the Columbia River Gorge. Death by strangulation. And another phone call to police confessing. I checked my voicemail and I received a telephone message from him recording on my enter machine. I was very surprised by it. And you're all right. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements, or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn ads, go to LibSynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com today. God will be my judge when I die. I am telling you this because I will be responsible for these crimes and no one else. But I will not turn myself in. I am not stupid. It's been a year since the Happy Face articles appeared in the Oregonian. Laverne's daughters are trying in vain to clear their mother's name in the murder of Tanya Bennett. But the news cycle has already moved. On March of 1995, I received a telephone call from my supervisor saying that they had recovered a body of a female that was over the embankment on Highway 14. There was no identification on her. We had no idea who she was. The medical examiner ruled that the cause of death was due to manual strangulation. During the autopsy, the fingerprints were lifted of the victim. We were able to identify her as Julie Winningham. Then this is Julie with my son Joshua. And then this is Julie with Jeff. This was in 78. This was taken. She was my best friend. I Called her jules. She was 5 foot 2, blonde hair, blue eyes, weighed about 98 pounds and adorable. Always wore her hair very short. Did not like long hair. Always loved hoop earrings. She was just cute. Yeah. Wasn't she beautiful? She truly was. She was beautiful inside as well as outside, and that's how I remember her. She was a free spirit. And. And she would go here or there, and she would go to work at a place and wouldn't work for very long because she would always go out on the road. But, you know, she would pop in and pop out, and over the years, she was that type of person. But Melissa says the last time she saw Julie, they had this really big blowout fight about Julie's partying and her drinking. And then she never saw her again. I told her to get out, and then she went back out on the road. I knew we would make up, because you can't be friends for 20 years and not make up. So I felt very guilty for a number of years because I feel that if I hadn't had that fight with her, she would never have left town and she might be alive today. We showed her photograph to other residents of the area that we were able to identify who she might have been hanging out with. As the investigators were going out, those interviews were being audio recorded on there. It was a little micro cassette player. This is Detective Joe Levo, Clark County Sheriff's Office. The date is March 16, 1995. Investigators talked with several people who hung out with Julie just two days before her body was discovered. Where do you know Julie from? I know her from down on D Street. When she came on the list of death, was Julie here with someone else? Yes, she was. Okay, can you tell me a little bit, how'd they get here? A blue semi truck. Interviewing other friends of Julie Winningham. And we're getting a picture that she had been seen with a very large man. Long haul truck driver. Drove a big blue semi truck. What do you look like? He's tall built, round head. He's about six foot six, good. £300. Police learned that Julie was in a relationship with a very tall, large trucker that they were talking about moving in together. And Julie had even told some people that they were engaged to be married. So it's something that it was a close relationship with whoever this man was. Unfortunately, the friends couldn't remember what his name was. You know the guy's name? No. Who was that person? I don't know. And I think his name was Chris. I recall either Rich or Chris. Those Are the two names? I couldn't say for sure, though. Julie entered, introduced me to this guy, and I can't for the life of me remember if his name was Chris or Keith. Well, from an investigative standpoint, we obviously wanted to talk to him. We wanted to find out if he knew what happened to Julie Winningham. Because as far as we knew, he was probably the last person to be with her. There were several names. Nobody actually recalled what his name was until we met with Bonnie Valenstein. How do you know Julie? We met in the restaurant that I used to work at. She used to come in coffee with him. And Bonnie tells us that, that she had bought a car from Julie Winningham recently. I don't, I don't remember personally what his name was, but everybody said it was Jerry. So somebody mentioned you? It was Jerry. Yeah. New fiance. How she introduced. Okay, then what happened? He wrote out the bill of sale. She signed it. So obviously we asked to see this bill of sale. She did show it to us. And you know, at the very bottom, not only is there a signature of this very large long haul truck driver, but there's a printed name above it. Keith Hunter Jesperson. And that was our first knowledge of who this long haul truck driver was that she had been seeing. We're starting to hear these things about this long haul truck driver, Keith Jefferson, that was really starting to concern us. These were people that possibly were getting married. It was a pretty significant relationship as being described to us yet. Where's Keith Jesperson? This person's just gone. Where's this person at? And why aren't they here asking questions? It was hard to pin down any information. But all of their research around trucking and truck stops and truck companies led them to an important clue. He drove a blue rig just like the kind that the TWT truckers drove. And that was a really huge key detail. So we just traveled to Spokane, been asked to speak with the management, just ask a little bit of questions about Keith Jesperson. They admitted that he was a driver for them. So then the trucking company told Buer that Jesperson was actually due to make a delivery in Las Cruces, New Mexico in just two days. And we flew down ahead of him. We were able to sit up there, wait for him to show up. We identified ourselves as detectives and asked if he'd come to the sheriff's office to talk to us. He said he'd absolutely go there, no problem. And that was our first insight into Keith Jesperson because Keith Jesperson thoroughly enjoyed talking about how great Keith is. Can you state your full name, please? My name is Keith Hunter Jesperson. And your date of birth? April 6, 1955. I got introduced to Truck with my father in Jesperson Contracting in 1972 when I was still in school. How did you get the nickname the Happy Face Killer? I had the opportunity to speak with Keith jesperson back in 2010, and I found him to be polite, and yet he spent a lot of time talking about himself. What was your childhood like? Well, I considered it a good childhood. You know, my. My father and mother were good people. We had tough love in our family. And my. My father used his belt, and he. My mother used a wooden spoon. That's, you know, he. That's the way he punished us. These photos and videos, licensed from his daughter Melissa, provide a glimpse into Keith Jesperson's life. He didn't have close relationships with other kids in the neighborhood, was picked on because he was bigger than the rest of the kids. Yeah, I brought a yearbook. This is Keith's senior picture. And his song he picked, which I thought was kind of ironic, is Born to be Wild. Born to be Wild. He was really awkward. I don't know if it was his size or what, but he just seemed really out of place and awkward. Some of us called him, unfortunately, Baby Huey, and that wasn't very nice. Baby Huey, which is a cartoon character of, I think it's like a big chicken or something. Huey going swimming. Huey's going swimming. I got married August 2, 1975, in Moxie, Washington. Okay. And you got two kids? Three. Three. He was a long haul truck driver, had been doing it for a long time. He would be gone during the week, and then come Friday, he'd be rolling down the dirt road with his semi truck and pull in, and we would have a glorious, fun weekend together. And then he'd be off on the road again. I got divorced in around the year 1988. She packed up, moved to Spokane with the kids. You see him at age 26, being fired from a very important job that he had. Dr. Robert Shug is a forensic psychologist, and he evaluated Jesperson by speaking with him multiple times. Keith mentions this period of his marriage when things really went south. So all of this really starts creating a very turbulent emotional period for the entire family, to be sure, but particularly for Keith. Once my parents divorced, my father's behavior became more erratic and creepy. It was like he was free and unfiltered to say whatever disturbing thing he wanted. To say or do. Once Jesperson is tracked down in New Mexico, the police go and get him and they question him. But he denies having anything to do with Winningham's death. The interesting part about it is after we told him that Julie Winningham was killed, he never asked how she died, what happened to her. We spent probably six or seven hours interviewing him. In regards to his last contacts with Julie Winningham, he emphatically denied killing her. Rick Buckner and I, we all were very concerned that at that stage we felt that he had killed Julie Winningham and that we just weren't able to make the arrest yet. His story was that he had consensual sex with her. So we had no physical evidence. So how do we prove different? We were going to let this guy drive away, and we're a couple miles away from the Mexican border. And so we were pretty convinced that he was going to hightail it into Mexico and that would be the end of that. What the detectives don't know is that Jesperson is desperate to cover his own tracks. I called my brother Brad, and I said, you really need to get rid of this. Go flush it down the toilet. The plane ride back was. Was pretty quiet from all of us just racing through our mind what the next step's going to be. Once we got off the plane in Portland, I turned on my phone and I did have a voicemail. This is Keith here for the time I turned myself in in the morning. I decided that's the best way. After playing phone tag for a tense two days, Detective Buckner finally gets the nomadic truck driver on the telephone for a critically important phone call. Okay, Keith, tell me what happened. Where are you at right now? Right now I'm at the 4D truck stop, exit 378 in I10 in Arizona. I told him, I said, I think you killed Julie Whittingham. You know, all the evidence points in your direction, but he was never hostile, he was never aggressive. Okay, keep busy. Tell me what happened. She came in about 12 o'clock and she came and ate some pizza. Told Rick that she had came to his truck, they had sex, and that he wanted to have sex again, and she didn't. And so he strangled her. I had to get rid of his body somewhere. Parked in a white spot and took her over to the side, tossed her off their side. Okay, at this point, what I'm gonna do is I'm call the local sheriff's department and have them come down and contact you. All right? All right. When the officers Got there. He followed all of their orders. He was secured and transported back to the sheriff's office. I flew down to Arizona with another investigator and we took him into custody. She was my friend, she was my sister, and I would stand and defend her to this day because if I would have met Jess Person, I would have pulled her away from him immediately because I wouldn't have liked him. That confession was the key to the whole investigation. Without his confession, we didn't have a case. We couldn't prove that he killed her. Police almost didn't get the confession. Jesperson admitted that before he gave himself up, he had tried to end his life. I remember him saying, there's not enough pills in this damn world that would kill me. He felt his back was up against the wall, you know, doesn't want to go to prison at all, obviously. But when I spoke on the phone, he had described the letter that he had written to his brother. I started realizing that by sending the note to my brother Brad that I had shot myself in the foot. Seems like my luck has run out. I have been a killer for five years and have killed eight people. I guess I haven't learned anything. I didn't know anything about the letter. We get back to my office and he wanted to make a. He said, can I call my brother? I said, sure. I said, obviously, you're in custody. I can't let you out of my sight. But if you want to use my phone in my office, go right ahead. You have to remember, Jesperson was in jail for only one murder and he did not want police to find out about the other seven murders. He confessed to his brother in that letter. So he told him to flush the letter down the toilet, but his brother pretended like he threw it out, pretended as if he flushed it down the toilet, but he handed it over to the police. The letter described basically that he had been killing for the past five years. He actually said he had killed eight people. At that point in time, we only knew that he had killed Julie Winningham. We thought that our case is closed. And it now it looks like it's anything but. Close. Close. Reporters covering Jesperson's arrest remember the happy face letters. And they start putting two and two together when they start seeing the similarities between the Bennett case and the Winningham case. When we compared the two letters, you can easily see the similarities in the handwriting. And that matched the DNA. The fingerprints. The saliva on that letter also matched the Happy face anonymous happy face letters. So clearly they now had not just an Anonymous letter writer drawing a happy face. They had a real person, Keith Jesperson. Defense attorney Tom Phelan was appointed to the case. And at that point, there was only one murder, the Winningham murder. But it didn't take long for Tom Phelan to learn that there was a lot more to his client, Keith Jesperson. The prosecutor called me. He said, listen, we got this letter, we're looking into it, and I look at it and I go, okay. So I took that and went and had a conversation with Mr. Jesperson about it. My lawyer comes in with a copy of the letter, asks me if there's any truth to it. And I realized then that, you know, that the detective, Rick Buckner, had kind of put two and two together with the 1994 letter that dubbed me the happy place going. He told me that, yeah, this is, this is all true. I had killed, you know, he said, I killed eight women. You, you ask yourself, what do I do with this? How do I handle this? This person just told me he's committed multiple murders. Meanwhile, Jesperson is still behind bars, seemingly enjoying his notoriety. He'd tell anybody who'd listen, I'm the Happy Faced Killer. He was talking to the media, and that upset me. It upset the prosecutor and upset the judge. This is where it had gotten to sort of a circus level. I mean, I had to wake up each day and see what my case was doing. He just loves the attention. When I interviewed Jesperson, he told me step by step what led him to murder. You're breaking the law, but you're getting away with it. And so there's a thrill of getting away with it. After Keith Jesperson was arrested, he was almost like running a media campaign from the prison, wanting everybody to know that he was the Happy Face Killer. He reached out to our television station and said, I want to talk. There are eight total victims in the following states of Washington, Oregon, California, Florida and Wyoming. You're saying that you're the Happy Face Killer? I am. The Happy Face Killer was just stunning to listen to. To accept this call, dial 5 now. Hello? Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, Keith, one of your lawyers says you were a difficult client because you liked the spotlight so much. I needed the press to help get the evidence up front to show that they had the wrong people in prison. You say it's because you wanted to help the innocent victims behind bars, but there are other people who suggest that maybe you just wanted to take for those murders. Well, I understand the point of that. His demeanor's very soft spoken, he engages in humor. You can have a good conversation with him. Aside from the fact that he's responsible for eight murders, a lot of people describe you as a funny, charming guy and yet you committed cold blooded murders. How do you reconcile those two personalities? It's just a moment in time when situations present themselves and you become what you are. These were women who were simply at risk. He looked for victims of opportunity. He chose women, it seems, who were not likely to be found and if they were found, difficult to identify these women. They were daughters, they were mothers, they were sisters. They did not deserve what he did to them. She was found on August 30, 1992. The body at that point was badly decomposed. And to this date she has not been identified. Jesperson says a month later he killed another woman. Her body was found behind a local cafe in Turlock, California. What about Lorianne Pentland? Yes, I did kill her. Yeah. What happened? Well, she was a prostitute. I used her services. Jesperson said she tried to make him pay her more money and he didn't like that and he choked her. In April of 2022, victim number five is finally identified as 45 year old Patricia Skiple of Colton, Oregon. Thanks to cutting edge DNA research, victim number six is still unidentified. What about Angela Cerbres? Is she the victim that you tied under the truck? Yes, she is. Yeah. He killed her and then he tied her body underneath his truck and dragged it for a number of miles. Why did you do that? I felt that by dragging her under the truck that I would destroy all evidence of who her identity was. They had not even found the body yet. So his confession to that homicide actually led the police to the body and the details lined up with what he had described. It was shocking to hear him describe these victims so callously, with no regard for their lives, for their humanity. Did it occur to you that you were taking somebody's life? It became a nonchalant type thing because I got away with it. It was like. It's like shoplifting. It is nothing like shoplifting. You're killing somebody. It is everything like shoplifting. You're breaking the law, but you're getting away with it. And so there's a thrill of getting away with it. It is so gruesome, Keith, what you're describing. I mean, there's a possibility that these people's family members might be listening to you describing this. I'm sorry it happened. Wish it never happened. It. It's done. It's over with. It was just heartbreaking. The women he murdered were human beings, and they all deserve to live. Remember victim number one, Tanya Bennett Jesperson finally revealed after all these years, her final moments. I interviewed him five or six times, and we got along. Detective Chris Peterson from the Multnomah County Sheriff's Office and Keith Hunter Jesperson. You want to talk to us about a homicide that occurred in 1990? Keith told me that he had gone to the BNI Tavern to play pool. This gal walked over and gave me a hug, like I was. Like I was somebody she knew. Describe this female to me. Well, I. I guess she'd be five, six, dark hair, blue jeans, plaid shirt, tennis shoes, and a purse. A lot of those details did line up, but he got some items of the clothing wrong. They decided to go back to his house. She made some comment to him that made him angry, so he started to hit her. He ended up up brutally beating her before strangling her and ultimately tied a rope around her neck. He was worried about his fingerprints, so he cut off the button on her jeans, got rid of it, loaded her in the car, and drove her out to the Columbia Gorge. We found no forensic evidence that linked Jesperson to the crime. None. The detectives brought Keith Jesperson to the Columbia River Gorge. It was heavy brushes, like you see to my right, he said, this is where I threw the contents of her purse. Once we found the id, we felt like we had solved the case. Jesperson's not able to point out the right spot for the location of the body. He couldn't remember where the body was, but Laverne Pavanek did. She knew details that only the killer would know. But if Laverne is not the killer, how did she know the exact area where Tanya Bennett was found? Tell me how you picked the spot where this victim's body was dumped. In the fall of 1995, Keith Jesperson finally pleads guilty to killing Julie Winningham and Tonya Bennett. While we were in the courtroom, he turned around and winked at me. So, you know, he had no remorse. None. You could see it in his eyes. His eyes were cold as ice. We had to sit there and listen to what he did. You know, it's not an easy thing to listen to. I washed the blood off the walls what I could and eventually painted the walls of the house I was in and tried to forget about it. I. I think there may very well have been more victims had he not killed his girlfriend. I had 40 good years, and I had eight days of insanity. And I'm being held responsible for the rest of my life on these eight days of insanity. The greatest human tragedy is that Laverne Pavlon act derailed the investigation in 1990. And in four years, Keith Jesperson killed all women. The number one question on everyone's mind is how in the world did Laverne Pavlanak manage to dupe the authorities? It was easy. So did you just remember what they said? I just did it from the papers and the search warrant. Oh, so you got to read the search warrant? I read it when they were busy doing something else. But what about that photo, which really, really was the coup de grace that sealed John Sostenowski's fate? How did she know the exact area where Tanya Bennett was found? Just tell me how you picked the spot where this victim's body was dumped, seeing all these tracks and all this and that knew it had to be around there, someplace you can tell where people have been in and out with vehicles and everything else. Limbs broke. I just said this. Close enough. Why in the world would she put herself in the middle of that and get herself in a position to be convicted for something she didn't do? The way Laverne Pavlonak incriminated herself, it's like it was a real head scratcher. I use the term disturbed. I was very disturbed person back then. I didn't. I didn't think of it as lying, even. It was just a way to get him out of my home. On November 28, 1995, Laverne Pavlanak and John Sosnowski were freed from prison. We were all outside the door, and she hugged everybody, kissed everybody, just real happy. Go ahead and hit the door. But I really felt sorry for John. He sat there for four years in prison for nothing that he was accused of doing. As for Keith Jesperson, I had to ask him the ultimate question. Does he have any remorse? What, if anything, are your biggest regrets? Sorry to the world. I'm sorry. I am who I am. If I could go back and change everything, world would be better place. However, we all know that ain't gonna happen. Actually feeling sorry for the people that he caused pain to. He said he doesn't. And it's just something that I guess he's really not wired to feel. Sadly, we forget the names of the victims, and I would rather remind people of the people who died than the people who did it. Everybody has the right to be who they want to be, to be. Julie was young, beautiful, silly. I didn't know that anything was going to happen to her. She didn't know either. But she comes in my dreams. I'm good. She makes me happy. You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault Friday nights at 9 on ABC. You can also find all new broadcast episodes of 2020. Thanks for listening. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? 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