Gilroy Cold Case Murder Victim Identified After Nearly 30 Years

By Kiley Russell, Bay City News Foundation

GILROY, CA — Santa Clara County Sheriff Office detectives working a cold case homicide have identified one of the victims of a notorious serial killer linked to at least eight killings in the 1990s.
Using DNA and "advanced investigative genetic genealogy" techniques, detectives last week identified Patricia Skiple as one of Keith Hunter Jesperson's victims, according to sheriff's officials.

Skiple was classified as a "Jane Doe" after her body was discovered in June 1993 on the side of the road along state Highway 152, also known as the Pacheco Pass Highway, in an unincorporated area of Santa Clara County near Gilroy.

For years investigators referred to Skiple, who was about 45 at the time of her death, as "Blue Pacheco" since she was found wearing blue clothes, sheriff officials said in a news release Monday.

Jesperson was dubbed the "Happy Face Killer" because of his penchant for signing the anonymous letters he sent to media outlets and law enforcement agencies with a happy face symbol.

Jesperson claimed to have killed several people and has been definitively linked to the murders of eight women, mostly on the west coast, over the course of about five years, sheriff's officials said.

He was sentenced to life in prison in 1995 and is currently in a state prison in Oregon.

In 2006, Jesperson sent a letter to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office admitting to sexually assaulting and killing an unknown woman along a dirt turnout on Highway 152 between Dinosaur Point Road and El Toro east of Gilroy, according to Santa Clara County Sheriff's Deputy Russell Davis.

The following year Jesperson pleaded guilty to killing the woman now identified as Skiple, sheriff's officials said.

Skiple, who was known as "Patsy" to friends and family, was a mother of two and a long-time resident of Colton, Oregon, where she worked as a nurse's aide and in local canneries, according to her older sister Gloria White.

"She was a good person, quiet, a good mom," White said. "She was a good person all the way around."

White thinks it's likely that Jesperson, who was a truck driver, offered her sister a ride and then took her down to Santa Clara County, where she had no connections, no reason to visit.

"She just wanted to go from point A to point B," White said.

Santa Clara County sheriff's investigators worked with detectives in Oregon and Canada on the case, as well as the DNA Doe Project, a nonprofit organization that works with law enforcement agencies to help identify unknown crime victims.

White said not knowing what happened to her sister for all those years was difficult for the family and that finally learning Skiple's fait has made her feel a little bit better.

"It's really sad but it's a form of closure, not the kind we wanted of course, but it is," she said. "It does make you feel better just knowing, but it's still unreal."

White also praised sheriff's office officials for sticking with the case for so long.

"I am very impressed with the law enforcement down there," she said. "They were so compassionate but professional, too. They were awesome as far as I'm concerned."

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