Riverside County, California – The identity of a woman known only as “Claudia” may finally be revealed as investigators continue their efforts to identify the final victim of the notorious “Happy Face Killer.” Convicted serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson admitted to murdering the woman he referred to as Claudia, along with seven other women in the early 1990s. Though Jesperson was convicted in 2010, the victim has never been formally identified.
DNA and genealogy have linked the victim to her late father, Alfonso Sandana Gonzales, who hailed from Cameron County, Texas, and had ties to Santa Barbara County, Oregon, and Washington. The Riverside County District Attorney’s Office is using the anniversary of Jesperson’s conviction as an opportunity to renew interest in the case and seek to identify the victim, who was found along Highway 95 in 1992.
The Riverside District Attorney, Mike Hestrin, expressed hope that someone with information about the victim or her family will come forward. Authorities are seeking to provide closure to her family and reunite her with any living relatives, as her father has passed away and they have been unable to locate other living relatives on her mother’s side.
Investigators believe that the victim’s mother may have been living in Santa Barbara at the time the victim was conceived, and they are asking for the public’s help in identifying her. Anyone with information about Sandana Gonzales and his dating life in the 1970s or ’80s could potentially provide the link to connect the victim to her maternal family and uncover her identity.
Jesperson, now 68, is serving multiple life sentences without parole for murders in Oregon, California, and Wyoming. Anyone with information about the victim is encouraged to contact Riverside County’s Cold Case Hotline at 951-955-5567 or via email at coldcaseunit@rivcoda.org.
The efforts to identify “Claudia” represent a continued pursuit of justice for the victim and her family, as authorities seek to bring closure to a case that has remained unsolved for nearly three decades.