TGF 057 The Happy Face Killer: Rewired

Keith Hunter Jesperson wanted the world to know his name.He wanted the spotlight, the ink, the infamy—so badly that when his first murder was pinned on someone else, he couldn’t stand it. That’s when the crude smiley faces started showing up on letters to police and the media, signed by the man who would become known as the Happy Face Killer.But in this ReWired episode, we dig beneath the sensational headlines and handwritten taunts to ask the bigger questions: What makes someone so desperate for recognition that they risk everything just to be seen? How do ego, power, and psychological compulsion turn into a deadly cocktail?And why does society sometimes feed the very monsters it claims to fear? From truck stop highways to the dark corners of a killer’s mind, Dani pulls apart Jesperson’s calculated confessions, his manipulative tactics, and the sociological threads that tie this case to a culture obsessed with notoriety.It’s a story about murder, ego, and the uncomfortable truth about our fascination with both.This isn’t just the story of a killer—it’s the anatomy of an attention addict.