The trucker's anonymous letters that named his own victims

The letters arrived unsigned, except for a circle with two dots and a curve.

A smiley face.

They were sent to the Oregonian and to police, typed and anonymous, claiming responsibility for the murder of Taunja Bennett.

The case file records the claim.

The letters were not general. They named the victim. They described the act. They offered details that had not been released to the public.

Investigation notes say the letters contained details only the killer would know.

A stranger wrote to the paper to say he had strangled a woman and left her body along the Columbia River Gorge.

Then he drew a happy face.

The smiley face became a signature. It was a taunt, a return address for a man who wanted credit for the killing.

Who signs a confession with a smiley face?

Who writes to a newspaper to claim a murder?

Who knows the details that only the killer would know?

The record does not yet say.

The identity of the letter writer is not established in this section.

But the handwriting was kept.

The letters were kept.

And a long-haul trucker's route would eventually cross the paper trail.

THE FIRST KILLING

Taunja Bennett was 23 years old.

She was killed in January 1990 near Portland, Oregon.

The case file says she was strangled.

Her body was dumped along the Columbia River Gorge.

Jesperson was a long-haul truck driver.

His routes crossed the country, and they carried him through Oregon that winter.

He met women in bars or on the road.

He targeted the vulnerable: sex workers, hitchhikers, women who would not be missed quickly.

The investigation into Bennett's death did not find him.

Two people confessed to her murder.

Both were convicted in 1991.

They served years for a killing the case file says Jesperson committed.

Not because the evidence pointed to them.

Because the confessions were there, and the real killer was still driving.

Jesperson kept moving.

His truck took him through states, through years, through more killings.

The letters he would later send were still unwritten.

The smiley face had not yet appeared.

But the pattern was already set: a man on a route, a woman alone, a body left behind.

The two people convicted were later found to have been wrongfully convicted.

The names of those two people are not in the record for this section.

What the record does establish: they confessed, they were convicted, and they were cleared after Jesperson's own words caught up with him.

That would take five more years.