‘Happy Face Killer' wants Bryan Kohberger as potential cellmate to solve ‘security issues'

News.com.au

2 days ago

America's 'Happy Face Killer' Keith Jesperson says he wants to be prison bunkmates with Bryan Kohberger, who was sentenced this week to life without parole for murdering four University of Idaho students in 2022.
Jesperson, incarcerated for life for killing at least eight women between January 1990 and March 1995, wrote in a letter to a podcaster and former prison minister Keith Rovere, who shared the note with Fox News.
A transfer to the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, Jesperson said, might save the cold-blooded killer's life.
'His best hope is to be transferred (sic) to here, the max prison in Oregon, to be away from those who want to make a name for themselves by killing him,' Jesperson wrote, the New York Post reports.
'This prison gets inmates from other states in order to protect them from the drama.'
Kohberger, who managed to avoid the death penalty for the brutal murders of Madison Mogen, 21, Kaylee Goncalves, 21, Xana Kernodle, 20, and Ethan Chapin, 20, is expected to be housed at the Idaho Maximum Security Institution in Kuna.
Jesperson, whose victims were discovered in Washington, Oregon, California, Florida, Nebraska, and Wyoming, warns that Kohberger could become a target if placed in the prison's general population.
'He will be singled out right away to be made a target for those who see him as weak for the crimes of that kind of murder,' Jesperson said in his letter.
'Most likely, Idaho will put him in protective custody like [Jeffrey] Dahmer. But we all know how that ended.'
In 1994, Dahmer, who practised necrophilia and cannibalism before he was convicted of killing seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991, was beaten to death by another inmate at the Columbia Correctional Facility in Portage, Wisconsin.
At trial, Kohberger's defence pointed to social awkwardness and autism, with his lawyers writing to the court that their client 'exhibits slow verbal processing and weaknesses in certain areas of executive functioning, including cognitive flexibility and organisational approach.
The Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) stated that Kohberger, like all inmates, will undergo a potentially two-week Reception and Diagnostic Unit (RDU) process to assess his needs and determine an appropriate housing placement, an IDOC spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
Authorities in Oregon have not publicly indicated if they'll consider housing the two convicted murderers as roommates.
'The safety and security of staff and the population are a priority in everything IDOC does, including placement,' said Blake Lopez, public information officer for the Idaho Department of Corrections.