‘Happy Face Killer’ Keith Jesperson believes Bryan Kohberger would be safer sharing a cell with him in Oregon after the latter took a plea deal for killing four university students.
Jesperson, 70, fears Kohberger, 30, will face grave danger if he stays housed in an Idaho prison as fellow inmates will want to teach him a lesson.
‘His best hope is to be transferred to here, the max prison in Oregon to be away from those who want to make a name for themselves by killing him,’ he wrote to Keith Rovere, a crime podcaster, according to Fox News Digital.
‘This prison gets inmates from other states in order to protect them from the drama.’
The former criminology student is currently being housed at the Idaho Maximum Security in Kuna, which is nearly 500 miles from Jesperson’s lockup, the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.
Oregon, among other states, houses prisoners from other states when a security concern is present. Idaho is not part of the agreement, so it’s unclear if the murderer will be able to seek reprieve in a different state.
Authorities have acknowledged that Kohberger could face security concerns as his case made national headlines and many have strong opinions about the quadruple murder.
Earlier this month, Kohberger pleaded guilty to killing Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin, Kaylee Goncalves and Xana Kernodle in their university housing in Moscow, Idaho, in November 2022.
Jesperson, who is serving multiple life sentences, killed at least eight women in the 1990s. He garnered his nickname ‘Happy Face Killer’ after often putting smiley faces on letters to investigators and reporters.
Kohberger is expected to be housed in isolation while corrections determines where he will spend his life sentence.
The 30-year-old’s legal team had repeatedly brought up Kohberger’s social awkwardness and autism as a reason he could be targeted in prison as well.
‘In the 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,’ the Happy Face Killer wrote to Rovere.
‘Most likely, Idaho will put him in protective custody like Jeffrey [Dahmer]. But we all know how that ended.’
Dahmer, a cannibalistic serial killer, was beaten to death by his cellmate in a Wisconsin prison at the age of 34.
‘I will write to the Idaho Department of Corrections to tell them to consider sending Kohberger here to save them the high-risk security issues in protecting him in Idaho,’ Jesperson wrote to Rovere.
Kohberger took a controversial plea deal that spared him the death penalty, but will see him serve four consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
The deal left unanswered lingering questions that a trial might have explored, such as Kohberger’s motives, and divided the victims’ families, with some left outraged that the quadruple killer now cannot be sentenced to execution or death by firing squad.
The deal also had Kohberger give up his right to appeal the case.
Several of the victims’ loved ones shared their desire for Kohberger to be attacked in prison during their addresses to the court.
And even though his fellow inmates already ‘think he is a ‘f**king weirdo,’ a former police investigator warns, murder is not something Kohberger has to fear.
Kohberger is ‘vulnerable’ being confined in the general population unit, retired NYPD inspector Paul Mauro admitted to Fox News, but can find some safety in the fact that ‘Idaho is a death penalty state’.
‘If you’re in for life, and you kill somebody, well, that’s going to get you to death penalty,’ Mauro explained, suggesting that for most prisoners murder is too risky.
The State of Idaho has not indicated that it will send Kohberger to a different state.