Dead Men Talking (20 page)

Omitted, somewhat conveniently from his new autobiography, is any reference to his fantasies of raping his victims. This ‘Mr Clean Cut Con’, who sends me photos of him surrounded by the prison’s ‘shot-callers’ during yard time. Black, white, heavily tattooed guys…mean looking ‘mothers’ who would stick you in a heartbeat. Here is Mr Jesperson, all-coloured photos of him surrounded by his artwork, standing by a shiny car during a prison-sponsored auto-meet. Here is the man who viciously murdered so many innocent women.

And, it was when I received further information about Keith that I urgently called back this chapter from my publisher, a week before going to final edit. I learned that notably absent in his writings to me were any reference to the replies he sends to the women who are keen enough to want to write to and pledge their love to him. He actually draws an outline of his penis to impress them. In one letter he writes: ‘When you touch and stroke the page, please get wet for me.’ One woman who wrote to Keith because of her interest of serial killers, and who was studying for a Criminal Justice degree, broke off the correspondence on the insistence of her extremely agitated tutor, who went into even more grey-hair-inducing palpitations when he read: ‘We can touch hands…and I will slip my fingers down to the crack of your tight ass and finger you when the guards are not looking,’ he wrote. ‘I will taste you for hours afterwards.’ When I asked Keith about this matter, he replied: ‘She [name omitted for legal reasons] wanted to marry me. She was too possessive. She was a nut case so I dumped her and she kicked up a storm.’ It makes one’s heart bleed, doesn’t it?

Although the story of Keith Hunter Jesperson is, by its very nature, a sordid and gruesome one, I would like to end on a couple of more positive aspects of the case.

The first, and perhaps the most important, is the fact that Jesperson does have a remarkable insight into the minds of his serial killer breed and thinks outside the box, so to speak. He has provided me with perspectives on other serial killers and how their warped minds work; when one analyses Keith’s mindset, one comes to the conclusion that only the serial killer himself knows what makes him tick. I have since passed all of my research, his correspondence, and my findings onto the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit, Quantico, VA. They replied saying that it was, ‘of much interest, could be of immense value in the study of serial homicide. Can we move this one on?’ Whether Keith will seize this opportunity to work with the professionals is a matter for his own conscience. It would be a tragedy if he didn’t.

Secondly, Keith’s daughter, Melissa: here we find a young woman who, for years, has been trying to come to terms with the disgrace of knowing that her father was a brutal serial killer. I make no bones about this, and I speak here for Melissa, but as a little kid she loved her dad to bits. She tells me that, from her perspective, he was generally a good father and a hard worker who, on the whole, treated his family well. When Keith had money he spoiled his kids and they were denied nothing. However, when cash was in short supply, he felt that he had let them all down and family arguments were frequent. Melissa recalls that her father did torture animals, maybe as a child she’d understandably not dwelt on that aspect of her father’s life. If nothing else has come from my relationship with Keith Hunter Jesperson, at least I have gone some way to reunite him with Melissa, who had not written to Keith for years. But, of course, where they go from here is a personal matter between father and daughter.

There is something else, too: despite her struggle to comprehend how her beloved father become the Happy Face Killer, Melissa has married. She has found a quite wonderful man, and she now has children of her own. In the years to come, we will hear a lot more of her as, through the support of ‘responsible’ US TV, she is already an inspiration to all those who have been forced to endure the trauma of knowing that a father has become a monster.

*    *    *

This chapter is based on hundreds of letters from Keith Jesperson, documents, photos, correspondence from those close to him, and Keith’s ‘new’ autobiography… which, I can majestically assure you, will not be published any time soon.

A
s my regular readers will already know, I speak as I find, so I make no exception here, and pushing the boat out even more, I love the old rascal to bits. Sure, LeRoy (as he likes to be called) is a silly old fool these days, and a tad inventive when the mood takes him, but decades on Death Row will only serve to further unhinge even the most fragmented of minds, as I am sure you would agree.

Sadly, the door to LeRoy’s mind has long fallen from its rusty hinges and his sanity has all but bolted. It is absolute fact that he killed a cop, and shot to death a jewellery store clerk during a bungled robbery, and it is a tragedy that two lives were lost, with the pain and suffering heaped upon the next of kin, a sin. However, Mr Nash should never be on Death Row…he has done his time in spades, and if there is any forgiveness and compassion left in this world, LeRoy should be at the front of the queue when it is handed out.

Maybe I am being presumptuous here, but compared with JR Robinson, or the British sex-killer Ian Huntley, LeRoy is saintly. Actually, when you have read his story, you might want to write to him…even have him home for tea and give the old codger a big hug.

Born as long ago as 1915, only five years later than Bonnie Parker of Bonnie and Clyde, Nash was already serving two consecutive life sentences for murder and robbery in Utah, when, at the astonishing age of sixty-seven, he escaped from prison in October 1982. Three weeks later, on Wednesday, 3 November, he entered a coin shop in north Phoenix, Arizona, and demanded money from store employee, Gregory West. Mr West bravely refused and pulled a gun, firing off a shot at the elderly robber. West’s bullet missed Nash, who returned his fire and shot him with a .357 calibre Colt Trooper revolver, killing him.

In a letter to the author, dated 25 December 2001, the lively old jailbird gives his own account of the gunfight. He says: ‘I saw the flash from his gun and instantly jerked my torso aside so his bullet would not hit me. It went past me and ploughed through the wall into a beauty salon next door. Four women ran aside and watched. But my bullet not only knocked his gun aside, so he couldn’t shoot a second time, but the damned bullet bounced off his gun, entered his flank and went through his body, killing him.’

As LeRoy fled the scene, the proprietor of a nearby shop pointed a gun at him. The veteran hoodlum, despite his age, grabbed the weapon and struggled with the younger man. Police officers soon arrived and arrested LeRoy Nash.

Offering nothing in mitigation, Nash pleaded guilty at his trial, which was over in one day. Now, 26 years on, at the ripe old age of 93, he is seeing his days out on Death Row, Arizona State Prison at Eyman. One thing is certain, Nash, a survivor from a bygone era who has no sense of fear, will go to his execution – if that day ever happens – without a whimper. Having said that, the author nurses the hope that common sense will prevail and that he will be allowed to see out his days in better surroundings than ‘the green mile’.

Correspondence between the author and Mr Nash has shown him to be an intelligent and articulate man. Despite a heart condition and a partially crippled right hand, he produces copious amounts of carefully worded information, using just the refill of a biro – the condemned are not allowed the plastic outers for fear of them being used as weapons – he reveals that he has led a full and interesting life. His account of his beginnings as a bank robber during the Great Depression is a wonderful piece of social history, but are all of his accounts of his days on the lam and his crimes really true?

This six-foot-tall, life’s-chewed-upon-faced Nordic man describes himself as ‘a natural explorer who has travelled both the American continents, looking at everything, especially Mexico City’. He says that he was formerly ‘an Olympic-class athlete in the disciplines of swimming, tennis and running’.

For some reason, best known to the authorities, Viva Le Roy Nash, disabled and elderly with a heart condition, more recently enduring a major hip operation, is considered to be so dangerous that he lives in an escape-proof cell within a cell. Under lockdown, he is not allowed exercise privileges, media interviews or any visitors such as other inmates might have – or, that’s what he says.

In his own words, he says, ‘I am in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, every day,’ adding, almost humorously, ‘and I am partially hard of hearing.’

On an overcast Friday, 10 September 1915, three months before Francis ‘Frank’ Albert Sinatra came into this world, Mrs Nash had a breech birth, on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, producing a howling son whom she named ‘Viva’ on account of her release from the suffering. ‘That was me,’ says Nash.

LeRoy’s father was Wilbur Roy Nash, an uneducated man, but a professional auto mechanic and amateur home-builder. His mother, LeRoy describes as: ‘Marie K. Nash, a beautiful, brainwashed control-freak, who had two children from a previous marriage; a son, Fred, born 1907, and a daughter: Elva, born 1905. LeRoy also had a true sister in Louise M. Nash, who was born in 1917. ‘All of these people,’ LeRoy adds, ‘died of natural causes years ago. I married, had a son, and was divorced in 1960. She does not want to be mentioned in this book. Her privacy should not be violated or mentioned.’

The area where LeRoy was born and raised was in a ‘wooded or farm area three or four miles south of Salt Lake City. That area is now overgrown with miles of new neighborhoods – about four suburbs,’ he writes.

Reminiscing about those early days, LeRoy says almost with Country & Western music ringing in his ears:

To put this period into perspective, time-wise, gun-toting John Dillinger was twelve years old. Alphonse ‘Scarface’ Capone, soon to become ‘the Bootleg Emperor’ was 16 years old and Bonnie and Clyde were still eating cookies and vanilla ice cream. In 1915, Pluto was photographed for the first time, Albert Einstein published his theory of relativity, George V was King of England, and Woodrow Wilson was President. The Mafia boss, John ‘The eflon Don’ Gotti – so named because very few criminal charges stuck – would not be born for another 26 years.

‘Hey, you guys. I was fourteen at the time of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre [Thursday, 14 February 1929]’ says LeRoy, and this was the time of the Great Depression; the era of bootlegging, moonshine, speakeasies and Eliot Ness of
The Untouchables
fame. Joe ‘The Boss’ Masseria was the most powerful gangster in New York; buried in a $15,000 casket, he had a cortege of 40 Cadillacs.

‘But, names such as these were always front-page news, when I was young,’ says LeRoy. ‘I was one of the original “Angels with Dirty Faces’’,’ he recalls. Reeling off a list of infamous criminals as if they were imprinted on his mind: Vito Genovese, Salvatore ‘Lucky’ Luciano; Paul Kelly’s ‘The Five Points Gang’; ‘The Black Hand’; Benny ‘Bugsy’ Siegal; Peter ‘The Clutching Hand’ Morella; Ignazio ‘The Wolf’ Saietta, who ran ‘The Murder Stable’, where he systematically tortured and murdered his victims, were characters that everyone back then knew well.

‘These were not cowardly, bottom-feeding guttersnipes who steal for small change and a mobile telephone, who pass themselves off as criminals today,’ rails LeRoy. ‘All of these names and many more were familiar to me. Then there were the enforcers such as Little Davie Betillo, the beautiful dolls and molls, beautiful, voluptuous sirens, Polly Adler, the raven-haired Virginia Hill, Igea Lissoni (an Italian ballet dancer at La Scala Opera), and countless more “CLASS A” acts that fell at the feet of the organised crime figures.’

By the age of twelve, LeRoy was already robbing stores. His father was overseas in the army. ‘My family was destitute, along with about seven other families whose men were drafted into the army,’ he says. ‘None of us got any welfare or any other subsistence from the government. So, we boys joined forces when our families began starving and decided that, one way or another, our families were going to be fed. We all learned to be burglars, thieves, liars and sneaky people. There was no thought about our group violating the law. It was merely a matter of survival and to hell with anyone who didn’t like it. Careering along in a stolen Model T Ford, me and my pals were so small we could hardly see over the steering wheel, and because we committed crime to help feed our families, we were called “The Angels with Dirty Faces”.’ The exploits of these kids inspired the 1938 Warner Brothers’ movie of the same name, starring James Cagney and Pat O’Brien.

‘That attitude carried over for years,’ remembers LeRoy. ‘Even after our fathers came home, got jobs and were supporting their families. By that time I was nearly twelve years of age and despised local cops and anyone else who disliked we kids, especially after word got round about our illegal proclivities. That led, eventually to my leaving home, completely ignorant of civilised social patterns of working for wages and knowing nothing about how people used electoral or commercial methods as natural rights that everybody was presumed to know.’

*    *    *

In those days, the Depression had crippled the country. After the worldwide flu epidemic had devastated the country along with most of Europe, there were millions of Americans out of work and hundreds of thousands of unemployed people, mostly men and boys, either living in the hundreds of hobo camps, spread across the USA, or riding the rails from town to town.

‘There was a rule, at the time,’ says LeRoy, ‘that, if a father, or any breadwinner in a family had lost his job and had deserted his family, then that family was entitled to welfare, especially if children were involved.’

LeRoy is at pains to point out that they knew nothing at all about the US Constitution, or its attached Bill of Rights, back then, ‘nor that we had as many legal rights as anyone else’. He adds: ‘So, it should be no surprise that at least eight of the twelve boys in our “kid group” eventually were known convicts. Most of them became hobos or tramps, experienced at being down and out, homeless predators, rouges, vagabonds, common beggars, who felt complete contempt for the law, because of the brutality that many had experienced, or witnessed, while in various prisons.

‘So, when a breadwinner lost his job and couldn’t find employment, he deserted his family so that they could at least get welfare. That was one of the main reasons that thousands of men and boys were on the road. Every one of the major cities in America at that time had one or more “hobo jungles”’.

And many of those hobo jungles were of such a nature that the activities within them, seldom regulated by police, made them into some of the most degraded and lawless places in America.

Wishing to dispel any myths surrounding the hobo camps, LeRoy has this to say: ‘The general public, at that time, and many still do, even today, had the romantic notion that there hobo jungles were places where impoverished men would share and share alike, in some fraternal style. Disenfranchised men who share equally? Wow! Not true. The only ones who shared were those who gathered together, in small groups, mostly for protection from crazed hopheads, mentally ill people or brutes of one kind or another. Many were sick dope addicts, many of whom were also active homosexuals. Hoboing, at that time, was considered by many people to be a marginally viable lifestyle for the intermittently employed. Towards the end of the Depression thousands of ignorant American youngsters joined the hobo life. Few recovered.

‘However, the same wasn’t true for the majority of Americans and tens-of-thousands starved to death during this era, many disappearing without trace, having perished from despair, hunger and exhaustion, separated by hundreds of miles from their homes and families. Homelessness was at epidemic proportions with banks foreclosing on mortgages and loans and repossessing houses and farms across wide swathes of the country. This was the era in which bank robbers, such as Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd were, for a time, regarded as folk heroes by much of rural America, enjoying the sort of status generally afforded to legendary figures such as Robin Hood.’