Rotten Mango - #178: The Happy Face Serial Killer

Episode Date: July 6, 2022

The community was relieved. The killer couple was put behind bars and finally, they could relax. Thankfully the police were able to catch them after their first victim… the thought of having a serial killer on the loose was spine-chilling. They all felt safe. But many many miles away in a public restroom were the scribbles… “I killed Tanya. Yes, I’m sick, but I enjoyed myself. People took the blame and I’m free :)” A happy face. The happy face serial killer was free and ready to kill again. Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rambles. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it, download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier, or pay to description starting at $12.99 per month. A better being better boop.

Welcome to this week's main episode of Run Mango. I'm your host, Stephanie Sue. And the whole town was outraged. They were pissed. Was it like one of those other sadistic sexually perverted couples? Lever and the girlfriend? She probably lured the victim in. She probably was like, hey, get in the car, it's gonna be okay. We're just gonna go for a ride. Let's buy you dinner. Making the victim feel safe. And maybe the boyfriend had big, big plans for the three of them. That's how it always is, isn't it? Well thank God they were caught and thrown in prison for the rest of their lives. Because what if they struck again?

What if they planned to kill more girls? What if they only awakened their appetite? The community could sleep in peace again, knowing that the bad guys were locked up and the good justice prevailed. There would not be another victim, but at a public restroom many, many miles away. You know one of those rest stops

hidden amongst the grime and the families coming in and out. You've got the truckers, the roadtrippers, just passing through. It's not a destination. It's a pit stop. But on one of those bathroom walls, there was a little scribbled note. I killed Tanya Bennett, January 21st. Yes, I'm sick, but I enjoyed myself. People took the blame, and now I'm free. And next to those terrifying words that sent a chill down people's spines was a tiny little happy

face. The two little dots for the eyes and an upturned smile. As always, full show notes are available at RottenminglePodcast.com, but there is an incredible book on this case. It's actually one of my favorite authors of all time, Jack Olson. I talk about him all the time. May he rest in peace. But the book is called, I, the creation of a serial killer. Now this is about the happy face serial killer.

One of the most notorious, sick and twisted Zero Killers to date, the book was based on countless interviews, diaries, court records, interviews with the killer himself. The killer was very eager to share all of his thought processes behind the killings. So we have great detail, not great in the sense like in-depth detail, of all of the killings. Every little intimate detail about himself, he's shared it with the author. He even tried to write a book. I mean, to be honest, the killer is a bit of a letter center. He wrote letters to his family, the author, to fellow serial killers, to his admirers. Yeah, he had admirers. He

even wrote his own manuscript for an autobiography that was 60,000 words, as well as a minifictional novel that was 1,200 pages. So he really want to be a writer? Yeah, so the author had a ton of material to work with, and he didn't just regurgitate the material. He really put it together in a comprehensive deep dive into the mind of the happy face killer. I think a large portion of this book, I think he chose to write it in first-person perspective. But honestly, I didn't like it in the sense that it feels weird, but in the sense that it does keep you hooked, the book takes you on this emotional rollercoaster

and there's just a lot of feelings that'll surface. So with that being said, let's talk about the highway fears. When you're on the highway and you see those big trucks, there's a lot that goes through your mind now. Like those big trucking trucks, the ones with maybe your Amazon purchases, maybe your weird purchase from AliExpress. Like human trafficking trucks? Exactly.

Okay, so the first thought you might have is like, oh my gosh, maybe I don't want to drive next to this truck because what if it doesn't see me and it rams into my car? Another thing is, what if the brakes on this truck don't work? Maybe you're thinking, is that my package in there is that way it's so late? Or maybe you're wondering, wow, I can't imagine how hard that job is. To be driving all day on the highway, that's honestly side note so much respect to truckers. It's insane.

So, so much respect. But maybe you'll let your mind wander to the scary thoughts. The ones I keep you up at night. I'm sure you've thought this once or twice. Or if there's a girl in there. Maybe in one truck there's a man and he's eating his McDonald's, truckling to himself, laughing, giggling. And he says that lad, if you had just behaved, then you could be eating with me right now. And he looked sober and behind. And in the back, there's naked woman's corpse. Maybe in another truck, it's less about what's inside the truck, but what's under.

The trucker had tied up a woman underneath the truck, face down, so that she was lying face down on the pavement between the tires, and for 12 miles, he would drive and drive. And when he went to check up on the woman, her shoulder was gone, a thigh, her chest was broken, her intestines were gone, her arms and her hands were gone up to the shoulders, her face was ground off to the ears, and all the remnants you might see on the highway. Well you could easily mistake it as roadkill. These all sound like urban legends, right?

That is until you've heard of the Happy Face Killer. One of the biggest newspapers in the Northwest received a letter. It was a very detailed precise letter. It was written by an alleged murderer. He wrote that he killed a woman named Tanya and a couple was taking the blame for him. He wrote, I felt bad and afraid that I might be caught, but a couple are getting blamed for it now. My conscious is starting to get to me.

She was my first victim and I thought I wouldn't do it again, but I was wrong. The paper ignored the spine-chilling letter, and then another letter came. The same author was writing about his fifth kill. Wait, so you're like, the last letter was after he killed his first alleged victim, and now he's killed four more? Like, what did the letter say? He wrote, It's getting harder to trust my and herself.

I keep arguing with my conscious. I try to get away from long haul trucking because victims are so easy to find. I quit my job, I took a new one, I don't want to kill again. I want to protect my family from the grief. This would tear them apart if they found out. I feel bad. But I'm not going to turn myself in. I'm not stupid.

I know what will happen to me if I turn myself in. And a lot of people's minds I should be killed. And even I feel like I deserve it sometimes. But the responsibility is mine. And God will judge me when I die. I'm telling you this because I want to be responsible for these crimes and no one else. It all started when I wondered what it would be like to kill someone. And I found out, look over your shoulder.

I may be closer than you think. We need to go all the way back to the beginning to when Keith, a boy named Keith, was born in Canada as a middle child. He wasn't your true middle child in the sense that he was second child out of three kids. He was actually the third child out of five kids. He had two brothers, two sisters, and for some reason, his dad less favored Keith's two brothers. They just kind of fit his toxic masculinity vibe

better than Keith did. And his mom glad is favored the daughters. So he really was nobody's favorite. He was a middle child in every other meaning of the stereotype. Even Keith's grandparents would go out of their way to spoil Keith when they saw him because it was that obvious that he was nobody's favorite.

I mean, how obvious does the favoritism have to be for your grandparents to notice it? No, there is speculation on why Keith was the hated kid. He wasn't particularly a mean kid. He wasn't difficult, but there was this one incident. He was young, maybe two or three years old, and one of his brothers had just slipped down a slide. And I guess he was like laying at the bottom of the slide,

looking up at this guy, like, ooh, so pretty. And Keith is like, let me just roll down a rock. So he gets a big old rock and rolls it down, and you know what, it's gonna bonk the kid on the head, isn't it? So it bonked his brother on the head and he starts bleeding. And so a lot of people speculate, this is why his parents just think he's like this horrible kid. Listen, I mean, the kid is like two or three years old. I don't think he did it with ill intent, but who knows? And you know, in that sense, it's unfair and other than that one incident growing up, Keith was actually okay to his siblings.

In fact, his siblings bullied him. At home, at school, anywhere. Everyone at school would point in laugh at Keith, calling him names like Igor, Igor, which was a really bad nickname back in the day. And probably now, I've never heard it, but it's used to call someone ugly, hunchbacked, and cross-eyed. It's like a triple whammy. It's like, so mean. It's like kind of calling someone a brainless beast. And everybody thought it was hilarious, because Keith would grow up to be 6'6". Yeah.

And when he was young, he didn't even know how tall and strong he was. The first time he realized his own strength was when he accidentally grabbed his friend's wrist and broke it. Just a side note, I think it's terrifying on all levels when serial killers are super tall. I know it's like such a non-valid, you know, argument, but Ed Kemper was six-nine, and I don't know if it's because I'm short, but it just makes me shiver at the thought of someone that tall and that evil existing, just towering over people non-stop. Yeah, they're physically intimidating. Just so scary. I think any tall person kind of scares me. Yeah. Anyway, they would stand around

pointing at him, calling him Igor, and guess who started this little spectacle of insults? There's one of Keith Siblings. It wasn't even a school bully. It'd be his brother being like, hey guys, let's come over here and bully my brother in a little circle. It's just kind of bizarre. And it really didn't have that Keith was struggling in school for a while. He didn't even write words on his papers.

He thought writing words were just scribbles. So he would scribble on every single assignment, thinking the teacher would understand the scribbles. He thought that's what writing was. It was just waves on a paper. Turns out he wasn't dumb, he just needed some really thick glasses, and suddenly he could see the letters on his papers.

They were distinct and they were not scribbles. So at first he's bullied for being tall and dumb, and then he gets glasses and his grades pick up and he's bullied for being tall and four eyes. Keith had no friends. The only one that he could call a true friend was Duke. His gets glasses and his grades pick up and he's bullied for being tall and for eyes. Keith had no friends. The only one that he could call a true friend was Duke. Duke was the family dog, and he was this cute brown lab and Keith loved Duke and Duke

loved Keith. They had this insane bond. One time Keith and his dad went fishing on a little boat, right? And they were so shocked because they hear this like, waddling behind them in the water. I mean, they're like half a mile out into the river or the lake or whatever And they see Duke had run out of the house followed them to the lake Swam half a mile nearly drowned just to be near Keith just to be near his favorite human Wow, but like all depressing stories that involved dogs eventually Duke got old and he started suffering from arthritis.

And Les, the patriarch, the dad, decided to put Duke out of his misery. So what does he do? Does he take the kids, sit them down, hey, this is what happens, this is the cycle of life, he's in pain. We want him to be in a better place, right? We want him to be in heaven, yeah. Let's take him to the vet and then maybe we can do a little funeral in the backyard No, let's just take stoop out to the back and shoot him and When Keith comes home, he's like you notice something your favorite kid is missing your favorite doggo That's right Duke is gone. I killed him. It was for the best. I did him a favor. I shot him That's how his dad broke the news time. That was like his only friend in life, and now he was gone. But what more can you expect from a man like Laz?

Laz was a tough man. He's the type of dad that would call himself the perc leader, the alpha male of the house, the head of the house. The type of guys that would say woman belong in the kitchen. It's just a joke, take a joke. What's self-funny Laz? It It's just a joke. Take a joke. What's so funny, Les? It's not even a joke. He was just an overall toxic human. He saw everything in terms of money. That's how he calculated the value of everything and everyone. And honestly, Les probably got it from his family, which was just a long family tree of toxic, toxic men. They all had some things going on.

For example, Keith's uncle was a piece of work. He was confined to a mental hospital for incessant masturbation. He can't stop won't stop. And he's thinking, I don't want to spend the rest of my life here. I can't even masturbate here. They don't want me to.

So I'm just going to take my life. But obviously, mental hospitals, they do their best to make sure you can't hurt yourself. But Keith's uncle was an overachiever by nature. It kind of ran in the family. He found a three and a half inch nail and said, that's the one. And he drilled the nail into his own skull bit by bit. Slowly, he got about three inches deep before he died from brain hemorrhaging, and I can't even imagine the pain and Let alone to be able to do that to yourself. I I don't know

Les would later say that Keith did all of these perverted nasty things because his crazy uncle was perverted and he probably got it from him But we're not here to talk about his uncle right now. We have to talk about Les the dad Les was a one man powerhouse. There is no denying it. As sh**ty of a dad he was, he was a brilliant. He was a brilliant businessman. When he was just 16, he started working. He tried everything, plumbing, welding, black smithing, and in his free time, he's learning

advanced math, hydraulic engineering, industrial design. I'm sorry, what? He even taught himself Morse code because he was bored. He was an opportunity seeker, a capitalist at heart. Let me explain. When a local indigenous tribe experienced an epidemic, what does Les do? He goes to that area and opens up a coffin manufacturing business.

Yeah. Okay. Very capitalistic, just no heart. Right after that, he gets into agriculture. He builds a machine to help pull logs apart. Les was just the type of guy that needed constant stimulation. If he stayed on one project for too long, or even just one industry for too long, he would get bored.

He would drive himself crazy. So he's constantly switching things up. He's keeping his schedule full to the brim And when that wasn't enough, the guy starts running for political positions and opening up boxing clubs I mean, he kind of did it all outside the house But when he came home, he was not a present father. He would just smoke and drink nonstop I mean this guy was going to a political campaigns drunk off his ass stop. I mean this guy was going to political campaigns drunk off his ass. He smoked so much and the only reason that he stopped was not for his kids, not for his health, but he broke his ribs

from coughing so much. Eventually, Les would have a defining moment in his life where he decided to stop being an evil dad, but it's kind of too late. I mean Keith had the worst childhood, you can imagine, it was just like all the other serial killers. Les would beat Keith and Inch of his life with a belt, and he would say things like, my father did this to me when I was young. And look how great I turned out. You'll be fine. I got worse than this. So his exact words were, when I was a kid, oh, this is after Keith came out as a serial killer, like he was exposed. He said, um, exposed, arrested. He said, when I was a kid, I was hit harder than any of them.

And I didn't grow up to be a serial killer. A lot of kids could use a beating nowadays. I was a strict but a good father. I raised my kids like I was raised. So like yeah, we kind of feel bad for baby Keith, but not really because we're going to hate him more than anything. He is just a complete monster, even as a kid. Just wait.

Now apparently, Les would electrocute Keith for giggles. Les would claim that it was only 12 volts. It was only 12 volts. Keith said it was 220 volts. Listen, I don't care if it's one volt. Who knowingly electrocute someone, including their own kids. Especially when they're younger. I mean, I don't get it. Keith said that they had this electric fence

around their house, and his dad would always say, you think it's cool? You know, it'd be cooler. If you walk over there and you piss on it. Keith was a kid, but even he knew that was dangerous. So he's like, dad, that doesn't sound right? That seems like it'd be a very bad idea. Let's just shrugged and said,

well, if you try it, consider it a learning experience. Yeah, that was Les's catchphrase in life. He would beat you for something. Consider it a learning experience. He beat you for something that you didn't do, and later he finds out that you didn't do it. He would just say consider it a learning experience. And none of it was a learning experience.

It was a traumatizing experience. For example, one time Keith found a raven with a broken wing. Just dead on the floor. What dying on the floor? So he's trying to nurse the bird back to health. He splinted the wing with a little popsicle stick. He felt really good helping. He made a bed for the bird.

But his older brother Bruce noticed Keith was invested in this bird emotionally. So when Keith wasn't looking, he crept up, took the bird, threw it into a tiny little cage, put it on the other side of the field, they lived on a farm, and started throwing little knives at the bird until it died. It was one of the coolest ways he could have killed that bird. And when Keith found out he flew into a rage and threw all of Bruce's plastic airplane models out the window. So when the parents get home, Keith gets beaten up,

but Bruce is not punished for killing the bird and Keith is confused like, why am I getting in trouble and not Bruce, he literally killed a bird. And his dad tells him, get over its son, it's just a dumb bird. Consider it a learning experience. So Les liked his other son's more, but he still wasn't the best to them. Okay, Les considered all kids useless,

till they were working age. Because like I said, money is everything to Les. He never went to the school kids school events because time is money, that's a waste of time. He's the type of parent that expected his kids to be full-fledged adults that knew everything, even when he taught them nothing. So you're like, where's Gladys? Where's the mom? Surely she wants to protect her kids. She was definitely the nicer of the two.

Keith loved her more than Les, I'm sure, but Gladys quote, new her place in the house. You don't marriage is all about compromise, right? Let me share with you some of the parents' compromises. Gladys wanted her kids to go to church. Les thought church was a waste of time, so they're compromise, the kids didn't go to church. Gladys thought Les was too hard on the kids.

She didn't like physical punishment, but Les said the beatings helped them learn. The compromise Les beat the kids even harder. Okay, so she compromised everything? Yeah, so there's no compromise. She just let him do whatever he wanted because her wants and needs just didn't matter to the guy. Later when Gladys would die from cancer, the dad would remarry within a year. And he would brag to his full grown kids who love their mom and they're grieving the loss of their mom and he would say, I only stayed with your mom for that long because she was

a good cook. Now you would think that Keith would hate his dad, right? Now, this is where the brain makes no sense and this is why I think, misogyny and patriarchy run so deep and it's so terrifying. Gladys, yeah, she should have protected her kids just like any parent, regardless of gender, should have done. But at the end of the day, Gladys was a victim she should have protected her kids just like any parent regardless of gender should have done But at the end of the day Gladys was a victim too of lies Keith felt like his mom was the glue of the family

He loved her but at the same time he kind of hated her for sleeping with the enemy Meanwhile his dad the abuser if that's the enemy you should just hate him right but Keith almost Almost looked up to him in a sense. He said that his dad was brilliant So he had to respect him. Keith would actually yearn for the affection and approval of his dad more than anything. So it's like a weird parental relationship where even though his dad is the source of all of his problems

and the source of all of his abuse, it's almost like he hates his mom more for not protecting him versus just hating the abuser. And it kind of, I think later on, develops this weird hatred towards women. It's just really bizarre. It's like, I don't understand why. So weird relationship.

It's no wonder that Keith grows up to have some concerning behaviors. Like when he was young, he really liked seeing things yelp in pain. Oh yeah, we're getting there to the first flag. He loved throwing rocks at ducklings till they were dead. Little ducklings. And when Les bought the kids BB guns, this drives me crazy, by the way. And maybe I'm ignorant on this topic. Why do parents buy their kids BB guns? I just

need to know. I haven't been able to find a valid reason. I remember growing up because I grew up in the South with a ton of random kids that had BB guns in middle school and they would shoot it at girls in the neighborhood and you would have this big pelt on your leg and if you told anyone the parents the adults would just say, oh he likes you but he's too shy to talk to you so he just can shoot you instead. Like can you believe that this is something that they were teaching us? Yeah but please if someone can give me a really good rational reason why parents buy their kids BB guns, because I've yet to this day hear a reason that makes me go, oh my god, I'm so dumb.

I didn't think of that. That makes sense now. But no, it doesn't make sense. I have BB gun trauma. So anyway, Keith loved his BB gun. Of course he did. So one time he sees a neighbor peeing outside into his yard, not into Keith's yard, but into his own neighbor's yard.

So like, let him be, that's his own grass. But Keith aimed straight at the man's penis and boom, he saw the guy scream in utter pain. And the piece started splattering everywhere. And he thought it was frickin hilarious. Best thing he's ever done. Later, he said that there was like two sides to his personality, which I don't agree with. Okay, I don't agree with this whole thing. I think he's just making it up if I'm being honest with you. I think he's trying to get sympathy and like a reason for what he did, but there's no reason you're evil.

So Keith tries to make it out that he was split down the middle and torn between his two sides. You know, like one side was good and one side was bad. This is so dumb because everybody has the capacity to be good or bad. You don't have two personalities because you're good sometimes and bad sometimes. If the bad outweighs the good, you're just a bad person. Moments of goodness doesn't mean you have two personalities.

You're still a bad person. So he tried to claim it was like the good side of him and the bad side of him. Get out of here. Anyway, he claims that his violent side would come out and his gentle side could only stand by and watch. And like so many future serial killers, he started taking it out on animals. Which side note, the FBI has this national incident-based reporting system, and a rude and

originally animal cruelty was just lumped under other offenses, but now the FBI is collecting data on those that commit animal cruelty, because it's such a big benchmark on serial killers. Yes. Such a big one. It's just like the world's biggest red flag. So if you have a neighborhood kid

or someone in your life torturing animals, report them for the safety of the animals for one But also they need to be in the system because you don't know what's gonna happen when they get older. I bet there's psychology That there's some connection there like yeah, so normal kids don't nobody wants their hurt animals. It's yeah because normal kids You when I was younger, I was even more sensitive to animals. Yeah, or some people kids are scared of animals, like not hurt animals. Apparently they need to start with things that are easier to capture. So I think the want for pain and the want of power is there. They just can't test it out on humans yet.

So that's why they'll go for like stray cats, dogs. So, less the dad hated cats because they were on a farm and I guess cats, if they run rampage, it gets a little wild. So whenever Lai saw a cat on their farm, this is the dad, not even the serial killer, the dad. He would throw it in a sack and drown the cat in front of his kids.

He wouldn't even like throw the cat off the farm. Okay, and I'm not saying he should have done this, but he wouldn't even like throw the cat off the farm. Okay, and I'm not saying he should have done this, but he wouldn't even like kill the cat in a way that the cat didn't feel pain. Like he's drowning, that's like one of the worst ways to kill something. And he would tell Keith, hey, you go find if this one had any kittens.

We need to kill those two. Or else they'll grow up and run around our farm acting like they own it. Oh, and the snakes, we gotta get the snakes. Why would you break into these apartments? For money, for drugs, whatever was in there. Why aren't you afraid of getting caught at doing this? No.

Who's gonna catch us? What a police. It was the height of the crack era. And instead of locking up drug dealers, some New York City cops had become them. I would suit up in my uniform and we're going to want some drug dealers, and I know how to do it really well. This is the inside story of the biggest police corruption scandal in NYPD history and the investigation that uncovered it all. Did you consider yourself a rat?

100%. I saved my soul just like everybody else does. Listen to and follow the set, an Odyssey originals documentary podcast series, available now in the Odyssey app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your shows. I'm not a bad guy, man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. I'm not a big guy man, but I love being that dirty mother f***er. So Keith would later become in charge of ridding the farm of cats and snakes. He would drown the cats like his dad. And trigger warning, this is some of the most graphic descriptions of animal abuse that I've ever read in my entire freaking life.

So if you are gonna start bawling in the car, just be careful. Sometimes, Keith would stuff the cats with firecrackers on both ends, like fireworks. Tie the cat and watch them blow up the cat from the inside. Keith would trap larger birds and cut off their legs and then blow them off with firecrackers. He started nailing bigger birds to wooden boards and throwing knives at them. He once, well, multiple times, fed alkyceltzer to seagulls until their stomachs literally exploded. Alkyceltzer is like that fubbly super carbonated drink. Then they started working on doing the same thing with stray cats and dogs. Keith also, like a lot of serial killers,

would tie the cats by their tails with wires and hang them over a rope. Now, when they're suspended in the air and feeling pain from their tail being tied up, they all think that the other cat is holding them in the air, so they claw at each other until they die. And the winning cat would be the last to die, but he would just be left to die hanging from his wounds. Keith would inject birds with bleach, he would shoot a BB gun into a cat's private parts, he used rocks to smash cat's paws and then forced it to jump or threw it out a window. And when that wasn't enough for him, he found some joy in arson. Listen, I'm just so angry because the feeling that I got from Keith's childhood is like,

yeah, yeah, sad, sad. Abuse is sad, right? But I'm just so angry because Keith is one of those people and I'm sure you've read about these types of people that all they do is cause destruction in this world. The ones that contribute absolutely nothing into this world, they just cause pain and you're like, why are you even here? That is what T&A, your Keith and adult Keith was. Sure, yeah, we feel sad because he was abused, but like, he's just a here? That is what teenager Keith and adult Keith was.

Sure, yeah, we feel sad because he was abused, but like he's just a vile person, he's a monster. Keith would throw hairspray cans into fires and watch them explode. He thought it was like a mini atomic bomb, the way that it mushroomed. He started little bonfires and he would collect any bugs

or any smaller animals and toss them in the fire. He said he loved the sound of their skin crackling in the heat. He even burned a neighbor's entire house down at one point. I mean, the neighbor did get insurance for the house, but think of the sentimental items, the trauma, the shock, the inconvenience, and less didn't care, as long as Keith could still work on the farm

or go out to work. Keith said he was really happy during this time. And any happiness that he felt came crumbling down when his parents decided to move from British Columbia, Canada to the United States. Keith freaking hated it. Keith was bullied in Canada, but it was only going to be worse in the US. The kids made fun of his accent, the way he dressed everything. Since Keith was tall in a bit overweight they called him Slawth Fattie Hulk Tubby Monster Man and confusingly even more insulting was tiny. So Keith, being only 13 years old, he starts throwing his entire

soul into working. Yeah, the kid is working nonstop with his dad. He's welding, driving heavy equipment, installing drainage pumps. He actually loved the work because he felt like he was bonding with his dad. He would even proudly say, my dad is so gifted, he just knew so much. Honestly, he taught me just about everything I know today. Just a really weird twisted relationship. Now, one of these jobs that Keith had was helping out on a neighbor's dairy farm. And one of the workmen approached Keith and all the other little boys and said, do you guys want to learn about sex?

I can teach you. So of course, these are 13-year-old boys and they're thinking, hell yeah, I want to show off my knowledge to my friends later, you know. Let's go. So the workman is like, well, we all need to get naked. And he tells them, sex means we all touch our penises together. And we do other things. Now, Keith in this moment said he felt panic.

He grabbed his clothes and ran off, but later he heard that one of his friends was satamized and forced to perform phalacial. He would say that this was a defining moment for him, a moment that he would never forget. Now, not too long after, a family relative had fought in Vietnam, and they thought that Keith was old enough to now share war stories with. The kid is 13. He's not old enough. The stories were incredibly gruesome.

This relative was telling Keith how he would take war prisoners and pull out their teeth with pliers for fun, or about how the US troops would use prisoners as target practice. The relative also mentioned how the screams of innocent Vietnamese women gave him erections. He even showed Keith Polaroids of some of these women that were, well, taken hostage and assaulted. So these violent stories of women being assaulted, Keith realized that he was turned on, and he just became this sexually frustrated angry kid. He spent most of his time working with his two brothers,

and there was just so much tension with them, with work, with his dad. He just felt like he needed to blow off steam. So he continues to commit arsems. One time he made his teacher's house explode, literally explode. He would get arrows and make these make-shift explosives.

Attach them to the arrows, shoot them into the people's houses, and water blow up. Can you guess what gender his teacher was? And around the same time, he starts experimenting with girls. Now, he's 14 years old, and he meets a girl who's about 18. They're making out and he starts fondling her through her shirt, and when she takes off her shirt, he feels disgusted. He said actually seeing

her boobs was a turn-off. They were too pale. They had blue veins running through them. So it's like, okay. Anyway, later that year, he loses his virginity to another 18-year-old. So in the beginning, he was very happy about it, but for some reason, and I'm not saying that this doesn't happen because men are sexually assaulted as well. I just don't really believe a word that comes out of Keith's mouth. Keith said it was rape. I mean, maybe it was because she was 18

and he was like 15 at the time, but he said she laid me on my back and climbed on top of me and popped my cherry and ripped me over and over until I couldn't get it up anymore. I don't know if this is true, because I feel like up until this point, Keith still has a lot of aggression towards women. And this is yes. And this is kind of his reasoning. Almost it's like, you know, I'm just traumatized from my sexual assault. That's why I kill women. Either way, I'm sure his toxic masculinity dad lies was proud of him. And to really complete the manly son ideal for his dad, Keith joined his high school football team. I mean it made sense the guy is big and the coach is so excited. He would constantly call Keith his little killing machine.

He would tell Keith, you get out there and you kill him, Keith. Coach, I'm not going to go out there and try to kill someone. Will he give me 100% effort? Hit him with everything you got. I just don't think that would be fair coach with my size. Well, if you don't do what I say, you don't play, okay? So Keith charged head first into the opposing team. And he broke two of the guy's ribs, and he was thrown out of the game, where the coach was excited. He's like nearly drooling on the sidelines.

Good job, Keith, great job, actually. What? And Keith said he was confused, like, how is that a good job? But again, this is where it gets me, like, everybody that's bullying Keith so far has been a male, right? But I guess they're just ingraining into his mind the ideals of toxic masculinity and just misogyny that he takes it out on women. Instead of men.

Every abuser so far has been male. Even in his friend groups, Keith realized that he never really was a part of the group. He was just kept around to be used. Keith was extremely gullible and generous. If a friend asked borrow money, he would just hand it to him. To literally anyone that said, hey friend, hey bud, can I get a dollar? Since Keith had a car, and he could work, his friends used him to drive them to bars, get drunk. Keith would be the D.D. since he didn't like drinking. Sometimes they would ask him to drive him to the movies, and then they would lie and say, oh we forgot our wallets,

why don't you pay for the movie tickets and the movie snacks and we'll pay back. Again, a lot of these were guys too. I mean sure there were girls involved, but a lot of them were guys. Eventually Keith said that girls started using him too. He uses this and he talks about it in length. Keith just goes on and on and on and on about how women used him. So he said that girls would smile and be nice to him and ask him for favors. So he was really mad about it. Which I don't get it.

He's almost trying to use this as like, I just can't stand it when women use men. But like, they just asked you for a ride and your dad has been beating you to an inch of your life every day. I don't understand. And not only that, I think a lot of girls were kind of scared of him. Like, he was so tall, he was very big,

and he was a little bit unpredictable in his social patterns. Meaning, he would meet a girl at a party and would just announce that he would like to marry her one day. And she'd be like, oh, we just met today. And he would say, no, I meant someday. Okay. One time he asked a girl to be his girlfriend and she said, well, we haven't even gone out on a date yet. To which he responded, oh, I didn't know you had to go on a date first. like gone out on a date yet, to which he responded, oh, I didn't know you had to go on a date first.

So, I mean, just kind of, I think with his size and maybe the way he was carrying himself, I'm sure maybe some girls were unsettled, right? Maybe they're like, oh, I don't know, this is like kind of weird, but they would say to their friends, I think it's just because he's so tall in big, he just kind of intimidates me, and Keith would get upset, like what the fuck am I supposed to do?

Shrink, he said he was angry at the assumption that he would ever force himself on a woman without their consent. He said he would never do that. Woody? And that is when he started thinking. Maybe it would. Maybe it would be easier. So that's how Keith starts fantasizing about vaping woman. But then what? He didn't know what to do after that. Murder was not part of the dream yet, not part of the fantasy. The death game wasn't a thing yet. Eventually Keith would lose interest in his fantasy because he started dating a girl named Kristi,

and he just gave her all of his attention. Now, at this point, he's in the wrestling club, no longer in football, and he climbs up those ropes. You know how in gym class they used to have that rope hanging from the ceiling? Please tell me they don't do this anymore because that is just not okay. But Keith being like 200 something pounds, he was the last one to make it up to the top. In fact he was made fun of because he never made it to the top. So that day he's determined, I'm afraid I'm gonna make it to

the top. When he gets to the top he falls 25 feet down and he breaks his foot. Like literally the arch of his foot collapsed. He would require three surgeries to fix it. He had to get bones from his hip to fuse it with his foot joints is really bad. And during this time his girlfriend ghosted him. So he just like really uses this to get more angry at women. It's like all that anger that he had, I don't know from his genetics, from his personality, from maybe a personality disorder that we don't know from his genetics, from his personality, from maybe a personality disorder that we don't know about.

And also from his dad's abuse to how things and life are turning out, the bullying of his siblings, all of that he's just like, aw, now I have a reason. And so after that, he goes to a local restaurant and runs into a way Trist named Rose. Now this is not one of those dramatic love stories. In fact, it's not even Luke Warm. It's like a soup sitting out on the counter all day. Not great, but somewhat edible. It wasn't long before Keith found himself engaged to rose. Like the kid is only 20 years old and even at the wedding he was telling his dad, I don't think I want to marry her. I don't think I really love her. But the wedding

went on. Rose didn't really want to marry him either. Of course there's gonna be some hiccups and as a wedding does when both parties don't want to be there, there was drama. For one, all Keith would think about was how much he wanted to run away with the maid of honor. Rose's best friend. Keith even kissed Rose's best friend at the wedding, and when Rose found out, she demanded to know, why the hell did you do that? His response? Well, she kissed us better than you. And when Rose found out she demanded to know why the hell did you do that? His response? Well, she kisses better than you. Wow.

So I would say they're not off to a great start. They decide to purchase a mobile home after getting married. Parked in Lezz's trailer park right behind Lezz's house, because Keith was going to help manage the place. He was fixing lakes replacing heatersers and he was also peeping little Keith. He would watch women undressed and shower in their homes. Then he would run back to his little mobile home and have sex with Rose while he envisioned that his wife was the woman he was just stalking. And he went back to killing cats.

He would get stray cats, throw them alive into an incinerator, he would set them on fire, sometimes he would catch a stray dog, heat up a knife, and just cut their heads off while they were still alive. He said he liked to throw dogs out of his car going 30 miles an hour. Keith said it gave him a perverted sexual pleasure. It gave him an erection, the feeling of power. He said I knew it was wrong to hurt dumb animals, but I just did it anyway. It was an urge.

And then more innocent lives were brought into the mix, because Keith and Rose had three children. Now it said that Keith loved his kids, in the sense that he started showering them with gifts. That was his way of showing love. He even picked up a truck driving job, fell in love with trucks, he thought they were like sports car, right? And he was passionate. Sure, the job was lonely at times, but he thought it was perfect. It had tied him away from his family, time to think.

So I feel like Keith showered his kids with love and gifts, but he didn't really like being around them too much. Like he would be around them for a day and be like, oh, I'm such a good dad because I love being around the kids for a day. But like, you got to be around your kid every day, and then you'll realize that they're kind of annoying. Pretty soon, he was only spending five, six days out of the entire month with his family

and his relationship with Rose, his wife, is already not great, but now it's a disaster. He would come home for two minutes and start berating Rose about how he liked his woman thin. And after giving him three children, she wasn't stick thin. And right after that, he was so confused. Why Rose was no longer enthusiastic to have sex with him.

I don't know, maybe just because you berated her for not being skinny after giving birth, you think that she's ready to hop in, but you think you're attractive right now? So let's just say that Keith's sexual appetite was not being met. And who's fault is that? Not the wife's, not roses, it's Keith's fault. Like, that's his fault. Nobody else is. Nobody is responsible for your own sexual appetite, not being fulfilled. So what does Keith do? He starts picking up female hitchhikers, dropping them off where they want to go, and he would pull over to vigorously

masturbate while thinking about them. But oddly enough, Keith said that he felt really guilty about mentally cheating on his wife. So in order to pull himself away from this, this is so strange because the guy's not religious and he's not a good person, so I don't know why he felt so guilty. Maybe he's lying, who knows? He decided to prevent further mental affairs, and he wanted to move his family back to Canada. And they go, and this was like the best two years of Keith's life. He lost weight, picked up boxing, he was approached by women, his self-confidence went up, he never thought about abusing animals or setting fire to anything in two years. So he says his life in Canada was great for

two years, which side note he almost uses this as his way to be like, hey, see, I was really normal when I was happy and everything was going my way. But that's just not how life works buddy. And again, it's not an excuse. Just because life deals you shitty cards, you don't go sticking firecrackers into stray cats. Ever. But he keeps using this as like a sea when I was happy and everything was going exactly my way. I didn't hurt animals. So while Keith is having a blast, Rose is not. She hates it there. She hates the winters, she hates being away from her family, she hated everything. So she convinces Keith to move back to the US with the family. So here Keith was, back in the US, trucking again, and he just became emotionally withdrawn.

He was irritable, short tempered. I mean, maybe it had to do with the fact that he was living off coffee and slim fast. He was barely sleeping, dieting hardcore, his road rage was insane. If another driver, even in like a tiny car, so much has cut him off or even blocked him, he would literally slam his 12 ton truck into that car. Luckily, he never killed anybody. But clearly, the guy was unstable, he was losing his cool.

And he just had this resentment building, a lot of it was towards his wife. She forced him to move back here where he hated it, where he was miserable. This is the place that made him want to rape woman. So yeah, it's another woman's fault that he wanted to rape other woman. So he's feeling resentful. And when he would come home from days of being on the road, Rose would act like sex was a chore, something she just wanted to get over with. She even told him oral sex was for perverts. And that just made him furious, which like side note. I don't know why those male podcasters do this, but they make it seem like women hate sex. Women love sex, you're just not good at it. That's just what it is. And soon Keith's fantasies of cheating on his wife with someone who actually wanted to

have sex, who liked having sex with him, or just having sex with someone in general, was occupying his brain. Every second that he was on the road by himself with a long stretch of highway in front of him, he would think, how fun would it be to rape someone? How easy would it be? And this marked the start of the death games. The first time Keith witnessed a one die was not by his own hands. It's rather a strange experience.

One of Les's hunting buddies was suffering from lung cancer. And for some reason, the dad just drags Keith to the nursing home and tells him, hey, my buddy ain't doing too well. So keep him company because nobody likes to die alone. And he just left Keith. Just straight up left him with this man that's dying that he just met. And Keith is sitting there and holding onto this man's hand until it went limp.

They didn't talk. Keith just listened to the man's rattling breathing and watched the life drain out of his body. And on the way home he so traumatized and he asks his dad, like, what the hell is that for? Oh, Keith, someday you'll thank me for putting you through this. Consider it a learning experience. But this time Keith agreed. He thought so too.

Because that was the moment Keith stopped being afraid of death and watching people die. Later after killing his victims, Keith would talk to them as if they were still alive. And he said he wanted to thank his dad for that. Now the moments leading up to the start of the death games were moments filled with tension. Keith and Rose's marriage was truly falling apart. Keith was fired from his job, forced to file bankruptcy. He's angry, upset, he's punching holes through the walls. And that Christmas, instead of spending it with his wife and kids, Keith goes out to meet

some old friends of his. A couple called, let's call him, Adam and Ashley. Now, Keith thought that he was catching up with old friends, but in reality, he was a Christmas present. Adam and Ashley were swingers, and for Christmas, Ashley asked Adam if she could sleep with Keith. So when they first approached Keith with their jingle ball plan, Keith is freaking out, like, like no I can't do this.

I've never been unfaithful to my wife or you kidding no way. But he kind of nap himself. He wanted to sleep with Ashley. So he did. And his mind was blown. Ashley was playful, she liked it, she was into it, she didn't treat sex like a chore. Keith just sounds like every alpha male guy. I'm just saying.

So anyway, cheating on Rose for the first time it opened the flood gates for Keith. He started regularly cheating on his wife after that. And he was sad, but he felt free. At least now, he knew that he could get over the guilt of cheating on his wife. And he starts getting more ballsy with it. While driving on the highway, he spotted a 15-year-old girl

walking her bicycle on the right. He stops and is like, hey, get in! It's gonna start pouring soon, I'll give you a ride. And Keith was so excited because the 15 year old girl was indigenous. And Keith had a thing for indigenous women. I'm sorry. Can we hate him even more like is that even possible? I guess it is. In the minute the poor 15 year old girl gets into the car he starts thinking about raping her.

He drives to a secluded area surrounded by woods and the girl starts getting nervous. In the minute the poor, 15-year-old girl gets into the car, he starts thinking about raping her. He drives to a secluded area surrounded by woods, and the girl starts getting nervous. As soon as he parks, she reaches for the door, jumps out, starts running away, and Keith reacts quickly. He reaches out, grabs her, rips off her sweater in the process, exposing her bra. She sprints about 50 feet. Before realizing, oh no. I'm wearing just a bra in the rain and

I don't have my bike and what's depressing is, think about any other person other than Keith that might stop. They're going to do things to her. Like there's a chance someone out there is waiting for a moment like this. So she turns around and demands for her stuff back. And Keith kind of ways it out in his head and he realizes yeah it is getting out of hand. So he throws her sweater and her bike and takes off. And for the next week he couldn't sleep, he was so paranoid thinking he was going to get arrested for attempted rape. Even the birds chirping

sounded like police sirens. But eventually the threat was gone and he felt like the girl never called the police. So Keith stopped being scared. In fact he was angry, so he started lighting cats on fire. And soon he started playing a rough version of the death game. He would hold a dog's head underwater until it was unconscious. Then he would let it up for air and right before it was on the brink of death he would do it again and again and it made the process of death take a lot longer and that gave him an erection.

And Keith just like his father, remember how his dad had killed his beloved dog, Duke? Well, Keith kills his kid's dog. He's like it has hemorrhoids. I'm tired of taking care of it. Now he doesn't shoot the dog, which I don't know if it's better, but he takes the dog out and smashes its head. The kids cried for days. And there, Keith's life became this vicious cycle of cheating on his wife with sex workers,

killing stray animals, setting things on fire. And the guy was just upping the ante with everything that he did. He would do random truck driving gigs and drive all the way from Washington to Florida, across country drive with no sleep, no rest, just caffeine. He would doze off at the wheel, and he was incredibly lucky to not have killed someone. So the guy is just chronically sleep deprived, pumped with caffeine, and incredibly irritable. If someone on the road just as so much as honked at him, or flicked him off, he would drive

them off the road. He bragged that he was a one man wrecking crew. And then he met Peggy, and that changed everything. Peggy was a waitress that he cheated on his wife with, and Keith said that their sex was out of this world. It was amazing. And Keith felt like Peggy was the only woman that could actually match his sex drive. And within a few weeks, they're going around telling everyone, hey, we're a couple. So it only felt appropriate to tell her, hey, Peggy, just so you know, I'm married.

She was shocked, but she shrugged and was like, well then just get a divorce then. A divorce? Keith had cheated on his wife more than, I don't know, more times than he could count, but they were together for 13 years. She was the mother of its children. He wanted to keep the family together, but,

but, sex with Peggy was great. And in the end, Keith let his penis decide. He went home, nervous to tell Rose that he wanted to divorce her. They laid in bed and he broke it. Rose, she's not happy with our lives, with the way it's going. I want some major changes. Yeah, what kind of changes? I want a divorce. I'm tired of coming home to problems. Rose, states island, and eventually she rolled on tired of coming home to problems. Rose stayed silent and eventually she rolled on her side and went to sleep. Keith was honestly sad. He expected her to beg him to stay. I don't know where he got that impression being the world's worst husband ever, but he was sad. He was like why I'm such a catch.

She doesn't want to be with me. That's weird. So he moves in with Peggy, and yeah, he soon realized it was just all sex. I mean, it was a disaster. They decided to go 50, 50 as trucking partners, because they thought it would be fun. They thought it would be romantic to be on the road together. But Peggy was the worst trucking partner anyone could ever ask for.

She drove 15% of the time. And only when the roads were nice and straight and the weather was clear. That was it. She refused to drive in bad weather or over winding roads or harsh conditions. So Keith is pulling the whole team. Meanwhile Peggy is just sitting there and using the truck CB radio to flirt with other male truckers in front of Keith. And when he would get a noise, she would just say, I'm literally messing with them. Like, it's a prank. It's funny. One time Keith was so exhausted, he pulled over

and was like, I gotta sleep. Like, either you drive or we just can sleep right now. Okay, well he wakes up and they're at a new rest stop. He's like, how did we get here? Where's Peggy? She's not in the truck. So he goes into the rest stop restaurant. Maybe she's in the bathroom.

Where even are we? Well, what do you know? Peggy is sitting at a table with a bunch of male truckers flirting. And he's looking around, Keith realizes that he's in the wrong town. They're supposed to be in Seattle by midnight, but she drove them 200 miles off course to meet some random truckers. Keith was pissed. He asked the truckers, you want her?

Well, you can have her. And he stormed off. Peggy ran after him crying and apologizing and all it took was a quickie in the back of the truck and Keith took Peggy back. Sex truly with the only thing keeping them together. And the rest of the relationship consisted of Peggy running off with another trucker, realizing that she couldn't get him to do all the work, then she would run back to Keith, who would take her back and open arms. then she would run back to Keith, who would take her back and open arms.

Let's talk about the button. Keith looked around, a pool of sweat forming above his eyebrow. He looked around proudly and announced with his hands on his hips. Well, this is it! Your home. Not too shabby, eh? He thought he liked the place. He picked it out, honestly, was perfect. But he got no response, not even a thank you. Well, I mean, I guess that made sense. Because how could she say that she loved her new home when she was dead? Let's talk about Keith's first murder. At this point, Keith has ultimately brought himself to a very low point in his life. He was semi-drable, slow, and didn't even have somewhere to go.

He said that day he left the house to kill time. He never intended to kill time. He never intended to kill someone. But somehow he ends up with a local tavern around 2 p.m. He's playing this pool game when this really pretty woman comes up to him and gives him a hug. Her name was Tanya Bennett. And unfortunately, there's just not much known about any of his victims, including Tanya, but she was 23 years old. She operated mentally on a much younger level. When she was young, she had this medical condition, and it briefly deprived her brain of oxygen.

So it kind of forever altered her brain structure. She was known to be incredibly trusting and just someone that wanted to be nice to you and have fun with you. Now, after this initial hug, nothing happens. In fact, Keith goes home for about an hour. And as he's sitting there, he can't stop thinking about her and how she reminded him of Rose, his ex-wife. So he ends up going back to the tavern. He sees Tanya coming out as he's pulling up and he's like,

oh hey, how are you? Do you remember me? From like two hours ago, yeah, you hugged me. Yeah, I remember you. Do you need anything? Well, I was going to head out and eat somewhere, would you like to come and have a bite to eat? Maybe we could play pool after. Sure, I guess that sounds fun. Keith had no intention of buying Tanya food. He was broke. He just wanted to have sex with her, and he decided in that moment he was going to one way or another.

When Tanya gets in the car, he dramatically takes out his wallet and goes, look inside, look! I forgot my money, shoot! But I have $20 on my dresser at home. It's like six blocks from here. Do you mind coming with me for a few minutes? I'll just get the money. When they pull into the driveway, Keith is like, come inside!

It's gonna take me a little longer. I want to use the restroom and I want to shave up a little. Oh, all right, I guess. And in that moment, Keith actually wanted to take her on a date. She seemed nice. He was certain that if he turned on his charm and bought her lunch, they would have sexual relations. That was his misogynistic assumption.

But there was that voice in the back of his head that was stopping him. The one that wanted to experience what he had done with the cats and the dogs, but with a real human, killing them slowly. The death game. So together, they go inside the house and Keith starts thinking about how he really wanted to chain her up and keep her as a sex slave. He said he wanted total possession, no bullsh-

at no back talk. He said, I'll just keep her for a couple weeks and then kick her out. You know, I had read about Ted Bundy keeping his woman. He said, his woman. For a long time before he killed them, some woman had a common. Tanya notices that there's a mattress on the floor in the living room, and he explains to her, oh, I like to sleep and watch TV, it just feels more comfortable.

And he comes up behind her and tries to kiss her neck. She runs straight for the door, but Keith is fast. He grabs her, pulls her back and says, I guess sex is out of the question then. And he throws her down onto the mattress and starts assaulting her. Tonya tries to fight back, but she realized that there's no way to overpower this guy. She decides the best move was to play along and hope that it was over as fast as possible. I mean, how about we do this after dinner, right? Let's just...

Yeah, we could finish this after dinner. Which is smart, because she's not caring about dinner, she's just trying to get away. But this pissed off Keith. He claimed that this brought back his trauma, his anger of all these girls that had used him when he was younger. Sure. Now, Keith claims he wanted to knock her out with a single punch to the face, like he had seen in the movies.

He put all of his strength into one punch, but Tanya was still staring back at him when he looked at her. He was so confused, so he hid her again. So he hid her again. She was still conscious. He kept punching her and punching her and more and more because it felt good. And he said, because it felt like I was paying back all the woman in my life, which as you and I both know, they were pretty decent. Again, Keats mom was so much nicer to him than his father and there were no reports of specifically woman being rude to him. I mean sure girls might have used him, but so did his guy friends, so did his dad, his

male coaches. So he continues to punch Tanya. He said that when he finally looked down, her nose was broken and her teeth were sticking out through her lips. But she was still conscious. She even clawed at the blankets and cried for her mother. Even her eyes were bloody. He said at this point, he still wanted to keep her alive as a sex slave, but because she

was in so much pain, and him being the nice guy that he is, he wanted to put her out of her misery. So he choked her. He fell back, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and decided he needed to get his head together before he decided what to do. He made himself a cup of coffee, leisurely sipped on it. He saw the blood all over the floor, the walls.

And he's thinking, well, I should probably dress Tanya. And he thought maybe the metal buttons on her pants would keep his fingerprints, so he cut those off. And then he sat with her for a while, just enjoying his power. And then, to clear his hat, he masturbated onto her dead body. He said he wanted to do other things with her dead body, but the clammyness of her skin was throwing him off. So he drags her body into the trunk of his car, drives to a local embankment, drags her

down 60 feet from the road and announces, this is it, so you're home. Her murder was all over the news. If Keith had stopped there, if he never killed again, he would have gotten away with it, and another couple would have taken the fall for his murder. Remember in the beginning of the pod, we talked about 57-year-old Le Verne and 39-year-old John? The couple that went to prison for life at the murder? Well, let me give you the full story.

Le Verne and John's relationship was toxic, abusive, terrifying. Leveren was constantly walking around with black eyes because John would threaten to beat her until she died, as well as kill her kids. So Leveren is scared to do anything about it because I mean, you see what happens. You report someone for domestic violence. They get arrested for a day or two, and then they get out. And guess who doesn't care about your safety then? The police. You're sitting duck essentially

So instead of waiting for her death and her kids death she decided to make sure John was put away for good She had seen on the news that a woman's body was discovered nearby Perfect, I'm gonna say he did it So she made multiple anonymous calls to the police station and they did nothing Then she started spicing up the story because the police were doing nothing. She said, I'm the girlfriend. I helped him get rid of the body. She read that the victim had a piece of her jeans cut out.

So to prove that it was them, she brought a pair of jeans like a little piece that was cut out. It didn't match. Then she brought another pair and it didn't match. But for some reason, the police were like, okay, well, I guess you want to show us where you left the body then? And they were skeptical, but Laverne was about 90 feet off from where the body was dumped.

And the cops were like, you know what? Close enough. Laverne, you are under arrest as an accomplice to first-degree murder. And when she realized what was going on, the consequences, she starts retracting her confession, like, wait, wait a minute. Please, I lied. I just need to have locked up. I'm so scared. retracting her confession, like, wait, wait a minute, please, I lied, I just need to unlock it, I'm so scared. And they're like, yeah, yeah, we heard that one.

How did you know where the body was dumped then? Because I saw the red splotch of crime scene paint along the broken branches. And this, this isn't really a place where people drive, but I saw the tire tracks were ending near here. She had no clue that she's going to jail. Yeah. So the prosecutor already put together a story for the murder.

They liked the way it sounded. They saw John the guy and he was a frail man who was always drunk. He had weak knees. So of course, Leverein had to help him carry Tonya's body down to the embankment. So yeah, they were both guilty in the eyes of the law. The couple were tried separately. Leverein went first. She was found guilty, given 15 years to life.

John's attorney encouraged him to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty. So he got life in prison. Well, when Keith read about their confession in the news, he was a bit disgruntled. He was annoyed that someone was taking credit for their work. So he starts fantasizing about doing it again. I mean, he did have more confidence now

that he was in court. And this part is so inviurating. Keith wanted a sex slave, and he thought that one of his old girlfriend's name Nancy would be perfect. But he found out that Nancy had been raped and beaten to death by an ex-husband of hers. It's just great being a woman in this world. And Keith felt sorry, sorry that he hadn't done it first. A few weeks later, he goes to a mall in California and he sees

a woman walking past him breastfeeding her six-month-old. And she notices Keith is staring at her, so she's like, what are you looking at? It's natural. My baby is hungry. This is how it works. And Keith noticed that she was kind of slurring her words she seemed tipsy. So he invites her over to his car and the two of them sat there with the baby in the back and they were sharing a 12 pack of beer. And eventually the conversation turned to sex, where she claimed that she had the best oral skills in the whole county. So they put it to the test with her baby in the back seat. Now just before Keith orgasmed, her baby starts crying and I think, let's call her Jamie.

Jamie snaps back to reality and she gets up and she's like, oh I don't know what I'm doing here, I'm married, I don't need this, can you please drive me home. And Keith is so upset by this, he pushes her back down and ejaculates on her face. And when she starts screaming, he tries to choke her, but he couldn't get enough leverage in the car. His goal was to snap her neck and kill her. But as she's screaming, the baby is crying, Keith said that, oh this is reality, I don't want to kill the baby. Personally, I don't want to kill the baby.

Personally, I don't think that's what happened. I don't think that he has such a big conscious he doesn't want to kill children. I think having a baby involved makes the case a lot more serious and significant in the eyes of the public and the eyes of the law. So he's like, is it really worth it? So he lets Jamie go.

And when the police come knocking, looking for him, because of course they do, Keith played the good old bros, You know how it is. I had jackalated on her face It was a goofy mistake, but she was pissed and as she was jerking up I accidentally had my arm there and she twisted her neck So obviously that pissed off even more so she ran and told you guys that I would turn try to kill her And the police say that's a good one the police police were like, ah, shit happens, you know. We've been there on that, the old ball and chain. The charges were dropped.

And soon after Keith was back on the road. Literally, he got another trucking job. And he started writing the happy face letters to take credit for his quote work. None of them would receive public attention and that killed his pride. Keith was realizing it was harder and harder to kidnap someone. So he decided to stick with sex workers.

He believed they were easier to kill. Keith met his next victim, a woman named Claudia. She has never been formally identified, but allegedly, Claudia was her name. Claudia wanted to get to Phoenix and Keith had agreed. So she gets into the truck and he notices that she has no luggage. And he said this is very, very bad because he knew that meant that she had nowhere to go and nobody was waiting for her. So he knew that she would be the second victim. He drove her to Coachella, the area, not the festival, Coachella, California.

And in the back of his truck, he forced himself onto Claudia. He said that she tried to pretend to like it to defuse the situation to make sure that there was no violence, but he wasn't fooled. He knew what she was doing. And from there, he tied her up with duct tape through her in the back of the truck and periodically at rest stops would assault her. Then he started his death game. He would choke her, let her wake up, choke her again, let her wake up. And he said it was amusing. In between rounds, he would even say things like, take a deep breath, okay? Now count to ten, hold your breath, like it was some sort of yoga class. Eventually, Claudia went limp and passed.

He said that the difference between his first and second murders were insane. He didn't even feel guilt anymore. He just dumped her body in a canyon and drove off. Keith did mention that there were a few more times he wanted to kill. Like when a woman approached him at the truck stop and she was very flirtatious with him, but Keith was scared of her. He thought to himself, what if she's a serial killer? Around this time, a sex worker turned female serial killer was convicted of murdering truck drivers

who sought out her services. Eileen war knows. So he was worried that this was another one of those female serial killers. Yeah, he was so scared he would make sure to lock up his door's real tight that night. But I guess it didn't work because the woman named Cynthia Lynn Rose kicked open his passenger door and stormed into his truck while he was asleep. Keith was so pissed and so scared that she rudely broke him up, he jumped on her, grabbed her, slammed her on the ground of his truck and strangled her.

There was no death game, no talking, nothing. Keith was so upset with himself for not having sex with her first. He killed Cynthia and left her near an abandoned parking lot. That makes no sense. So it's suspected that Cynthia, if she did do this, that maybe she was scared of something or someone else. That's so weird. So, I mean, imagine a rest stop with like, maybe she was a sex worker, right?

Maybe there were a lot of sex or truck drivers that were terrifying her. Yeah, I just feel like his story doesn't sound right. Exactly. Now, Keith still had sex with other women. One of his favorite people was Lori Pentland. She was a sex worker. And Keith just seemed to click with her.

Even when her prices kept going up, he never complained. Some of the other truckers did, but not Keith. On that particular day, the two had sex for an hour, and Lori told him that she needed to charge him another $40, because she only gives people 15 minutes, but this was taking too much of her time. Keith said he was beside himself. He started strangling her, and the death game commenced. For an entire hour, Keith let Lori fall in and out of consciousness, and when he decided he was satisfied, he strangled her until she went limp. He stole all her cash and dumped her in a dumpster.

When Keith laid eyes on his next victim, he said, and I quote, I don't know what clicked in my head, but I decided right then and there that I had to take this woman. Why did she remind me of schoolteachers I liked or hated? Did she remind me of my mother or my aunt or some neighbor woman I knew as a kid? I don't know. This was one of those perfect opportunities that only came because I was driving a truck. Her name was Patricia.

Keith bought her dinner. He said she ate like a famished rat. She asked if he was going through Sacramento because she had a sister there and she could stay with her sister. She was going through a really rough time and she promised to be the best guest ever. He wouldn't even notice her in the truck. He thought that she was just asking to be killed by saying things like that. Of course he couldn't pass up on the offer.

So Patricia gets into his truck that night. No luggage. In that night, the two start having consensual sex, and afterwards Patricia wraps the blanket around herself and says, This is so cozy and warm, let's just spend the night here. And Keith said, But you won't be around to enjoy it. She said up and said, Wait, what does that mean? That means I'm going to kill you.

She was in shock, and Keith started to force himself on her, he raped her, and then the death game commenced. He discarded her body in a thick brush along the highway. And for the next year, Keith stopped killing. He took a break. He said it was because he read a book on serial killers, written by an XFBI agent, and he read that the dark triad, the serial killers usually had three habits in common. They wet the bed when they were younger, they tortured animals, and they like to set things

on fire. So that got him thinking, maybe the animals weren't doing it enough. Maybe he needed to focus on setting fires. So he would get a book of matches, light a cigarette between the two halves like a little tent, throw it into bushes, and that would usually give him 8-10 minutes to evacuate. Nothing in California, Oregon, or Washington was safe. He was literally setting everything on fire. They called him the I-5 Firecracker Bandit. He would even call the firefighters because watching them put out the fire gave him an erection. Yeah. He said he knows that he caused unspeakable damage and harm, but lighting things on fire, he thought it saved

a few lives because he wasn't killing that year. Yeah, it saved a few lives. By not taking those lives, he's still fantasized. But the death game was irresistible according to Keith. He had to keep playing. His next victim was an unidentified woman. He believes her name was Susanna. She was catching a ride in his truck where at night he proceeded to rape her and told her, do what I say or you'll be killed. He said for the next few hours, Susanna tried.

He almost forgot that she was putting on a show. And eventually, they fell asleep in each other's arms. But he woke up and he realized he wasn't done after all. He got on top of her and started strangling her. Keith got a new girlfriend, Angela. They got along well. She always caught rides from him. She was kind of a style. She

uh, but the thing with Angela is that she was dating a lot of other guys and Keith knew it. Keith was okay with it. And one day she said, hey, can you drive me to Indiana where I can meet my other boyfriend? And he's like, yeah, I mean, I'm passing through so it's fine. And during this card, right, she opens up and says, I'm pregnant. Oh, how do you know? I missed my last two periods. I've been feeling really sick, and now that my other boyfriend from Indiana wants me back, I'm just gonna make love to him over and over and over again.

And now it's gonna be his baby. Keith was not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was picking up on what she was saying. And he said, oh, I guess if your boyfriend told you to get lost, you would have tried to claim the baby was mine, Ben. Yeah, I mean, the thought crossed my mind, but you're a romantic and you would want to marry me. And I never want to be a boring old married lady with a baby.

So basically you just saw me as a free ride. Hey, but you enjoyed screwing me, no? And the two of them start doing it. But after a while Angela turned to Keith and said, can we hurry it up? And that injured Keith's ego. He knew he was going to kill her, maybe not now, but before they got to Indiana that was for sure. So during this trip he bound up Angela with duct tape, put it over her mouth, raped her, and played the death game. Afterwards,

he went through the McDonald's drive-thru and he ate while talking to Angela's corpse. And he would tell her, if you just played straight with me, you could be eating right now. And he laughed. He was in a good mood. Then he knew that he had to make sure the cops couldn't identify Angela. They had been seen together too many times. So he tied her up under his truck and drove for 12 miles, going 60, 70, 90 miles per hour. He completely obliterated her body until she was unrecognizable. What did that just leave like a trail of blood? Yeah, so he believed that it looked like roadkill.

And I guess it did because nobody really reported it. Wow, that's crazy. I've never heard something like that. It's not even just about what's in the trucks now. It's what's under her. It's terrifying. So then Keith moves on to Julie winning him. They hit it off and within a few weeks,

Julie asked Keith to marry her. She said, I love you and I wanna be yours forever. And Keith thought, you know what, maybe this is it. The sex isn't great, but maybe I'll stop killing. But Julie was cheating on him. She was using him for money and he knew it. And eventually their sex life started to go downhill. Keith said that Julie would lie there like a rag doll.

And that made him homicidal. So during one of those times he tied her up and started screaming, you don't love me Julie, you never have, now you're going to die. Keith Rape turned Julie tried to calm him down by participating. He started to scream about how he killed a woman named Tanya and then more. He raped Julie while he talked about Angela's body and how he had tied her under the truck and drove around, letting pieces of her flesh fly off. He talked about the death game. And at the end, when he was done, he looked at Julian, said, time to go, Julie, say bye-bye.

He threw her corpse down in embankment, but he felt good, but he knew it was over. Too many people saw them together, and he knew it was done. So he wrote a letter to his brother confessing to being a serial killer. He mailed it, drove to the nearest phone booth and called the local detective. I think Keith knew he was going to get caught. I think he knew he couldn't outsmart the police.

And I think if he wanted to get caught, it's not because he wanted to stop killing. It's because he wanted people to know it was him. Like even with a happy face killer, letters, even the messages on the wall because he wanted to stop killing. It's because he wanted people to know it was him Like even with a happy face killer letters even the the messages on the wall He wanted people to know it was him. He wanted to take credit for these vicious murders I don't think it has to do with him having a conscious or being like I can't control myself So I'm gonna turn myself in. I don't believe that at all They're way too big of narcissists to be doing that zero killers So he turns

himself in, but then randomly he has a change of tune. He's like, I don't want the death penalty. Again, narcissism. It's just a thing. Like, he claims that he tried to take his own life so that he could stop killing. I don't believe that. Narcissists don't take their own lives. And most serial killers are narcissists. So he says, I don't want the death penalty. I'm threatening the community, all the taxpayers. If you guys want the death penalty. I'm threatening the community all the taxpayers. If you guys seek the death penalty, I will drag this out and you will be outraged at the expense of the trial. He's even opened up a website called self-starter serial killer kit. Yeah, with the help of a penpal. And he referred to his victims as

piles of garbage. And he referred to everybody else as his internet fans. I mean, the guy nobody likes him, including the jury, the judge, Keith was found guilty of four murders and sentenced to four life sentences. Now, this is why I think Keith is foolish. And the book he goes on to talk about how he was bullied for being a rapist in prison, and how he was afraid of being killed in prison. I mean, like, the guy is really nothing but a selfish monster. Like I want to turn myself into saved lives. I'm getting bullied for being a rapist. Like, the guy is really nothing but a selfish monster. Like, I want to turn myself into saved lives.

I'm getting bullied for being a rapist! Like, shut up. If you're also interested in the family drama between Keith and his dad after he was caught, you can read more about it in the book. Um, there's a lot of letters, like they go back and forth blaming each other for Keith being a serial killer. It's really intense. But oddly enough, his dad is the only one that stays around, I guess. And in 2008, Keith's daughter Melissa

went on Dr. Phil as well as the Oprah Winfrey show, as well as few true crime shows and published a book called Shattered Silence, the untold story of a serial killer's daughter, which side note it is in the source notes. I mainly read the Jack Olson book. I did skim through this one briefly, but I really commend her for her grace and just her ability to communicate such complicated feelings across two readers and viewers.

So I highly recommend checking that out as well. And that is the story of the happy face killer. You know, with cases like Ed Gain and Ed Kemper, I see, you know, their mom was incredibly abusive, overbearing, and really traumatized them. But with this case, it's like, I, you know, their mom was incredibly abusive, overbearing, and really traumatized them. But with this case, it's like, I- he just- I don't get it. And his abuse with animals is so extensive, like, probably one of the worst I've heard. Anyways, I will see you guys on Sunday for the mini-sode.

Stay safe. Bye. safe. Bye!