Investigators have identified the final unknown victim of the "Happy Face Killer" over 30 years after her remains were discovered along a California highway. The victim has been identified as Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter, who disappeared from Texas in the early 1990s.
McWhorter's body was found on August 30, 1992, along Highway 95, approximately seven miles north of Blythe, California. At the time, investigators referred to her as "Claudia." Her identification was confirmed this week using DNA and genetic genealogy, according to the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.
Keith Hunter Jesperson, 71, is currently serving multiple life sentences after confessing to killing at least eight women across the United States in the 1990s. He earned the nickname "Happy Face Killer" for the smiley faces he drew on letters sent to investigators and reporters.
In 2023, investigators with the Riverside County Regional Cold Case Homicide unit interviewed Jesperson about McWhorter at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Jesperson, who worked as a long-haul truck driver at the time of the murder, told investigators he met McWhorter near Victorville, California, in August 1992. He stated they argued about money, after which he killed her in his truck before driving to Blythe to abandon her body. He described her as being between 20 and 30 years old, approximately 5'6" to 5'7", and of medium build.
McWhorter was found wearing a T-shirt with a motorcycle print and had a tattoo of two small dots on her left thumb. While investigators were able to identify her biological father and several half-siblings over the years, they could not locate her biological mother, preventing a formal identification. The breakthrough came when one of McWhorter's maternal sisters submitted a DNA swab.
"I wanted to do [the test] because I knew if I did the swab that it would prove whether or not the lady that they found was actually my little bitty sister that’s been missing," Brenda Burks, McWhorter's maternal sister, told the Los Angeles Times.
Jesperson pleaded guilty to McWhorter's murder in Riverside County in 2010 and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison, but her identity remained unconfirmed until now. He has admitted to killing eight women between 1990 and 1995 in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Nebraska, and Wyoming. He is serving four life sentences without the possibility of parole in Oregon.