[Keith speaking]
Welcome to Very Scary People.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg.
He was a long haul truck driver with a wife and kids
who spent most of his time on the road.
Travelling state to state, he would hear tales of other drivers
literally getting away with murder.
But that wasn't him.
He was a family man.
So when a young woman went missing in 1990 on a cold day in Portland, Oregon,
no one would suspect this friendly mild mannered trucker.
But there would be several more bodies to come.
This is part one of The Happy Face Killer.
[Doug] The Colombia Gorge is a scenic wonder.
It draws a lot of tourists in Oregon and Portland.
Soaring whitecap mountains,
huge river,
second only to the Mississippi in terms of size.
[Judge] It's a kind of a unique geographical formation.
100 foot high walls of rock.
It's covering out this wide valley.
The carving out of the Gorge left
sort of a plateau and
you have a number of waterfalls that come off at the plateau.
The biggest of which is Multnomah Falls.
Columbia River gorge is a very popular place for
sight-seeing and hiking.
It's a really beautiful place.
Unfortunately, probably also a good place to get rid of a body.
[Keith speaking]
It was just a nude woman with no clothing there and no, um, forms of identification.
They lift her fingerprints and match them to a set in the system.
[Monty] We were able to detect her identity as Julie Winningham.
When they said they found my mom,
I had lost it.
She was truly a kind hearted free spirited loving and caring person.
She didn't do people wrong.
I... just couldn't, I couldn't believe it.
The killer dumbed this woman's body off of the highway into the Columbia River Gorge.
[Joey] But this wasn't the first time.
[Michelle] I was her big sister.
My family,
you know, even though I had two older brothers,
they were supposed to babysit us. No.
It was me and my sister, Taunja.
Because they were working or my mom was working.
We get out of school, go home, no one's home.
We grew up poor, so it was oatmeal,
cream of wheat, whatever we had in the refrigerator, in the cupboard I made.
We were just always together.
[Alafair] Taunja Bennett was a 23 year old resident of Portland.
She lived with her mother, um she was described as being mildly mentally disabled.
She was kind of slow but she wasn't to me.
She went all the way to high school and graduated.
So, she had intelligence there.
And she was known for walking around with a Walkman,
being very cheerful, kind of a neighborhood local.
[Keith speaking]
[Michelle] Taunja said she had to go to the dentist.
I was like, on a Sunday?
The... the dentist doesn't open on a Sunday.
So I said, "Oh, since you are going to the dentist,
could you drop off the movies?
'Cause it's on the way."
And she... "Okay I will, I will."
[Alafair] Instead, Taunja had left her house
to walk over to a local tavern called the B & I bar.
And went by herself
wearing a jacket carrying her purse,
carrying her Walkman.
Back then, you know what it was, Madonna.
The tape of Madonna in 1990.
Whenever she came out, that was it.
[Casey] Her sister described her as being very trusting and maybe a little bit slow.
But this just means that she was very vulnerable.
She went in and would go around hugging people, very social.
[Keith speaking]
She went in and was playing with two men.
[Keith speaking]
[Casey] Later the two men that Taunja was playing pool would leave,
and Taunja would leave.
Nobody could say for certain when she left or with who.
[Monty] That was the last time that she was seen alive.
[Alafair] Her mother reported that Taunja Bennett had left her house
to walk over to a local tavern called the B & I Bar
and then she did not come home.
[Michelle] I said, "Oh, my God, my sister's gone."
Where could she go?
Said, "I went to go look for her and she's gone, mom.
I don't know where she went."
[Judge] I got a call from the Chief Deputy who makes the assignments of murder cases
that we have a body in the Columbia Gorge,
it looks like a homicide, we need you to go out to the scene.
[Chris] The location where the body was discovered,
was on the scenic highway which parallels Interstate 84
that runs east and west out of Portland.
I found where the police vehicles where,
and then, uh, walked into the forest I would estimate 25 feet.
There was, uh, her body.
[Chris] She was dumped in a very steep hillside.
The hillside was probably a 45 degree hillside
of off the... of off the paved road.
And it was very rugged covered with trees and brush.
[Alafair] Her body was found partially unclothed,
pants have been pulled down, her top was up.
One arm was out of the sleeve of her jacket.
[Judge] So we, of course, from the very beginning
suspected sexual assault.
[Casey] The woman had a rope around her neck.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Casey] And curiously somebody had removed the fly,
like, the button and zipper area of the jeans, they've been cut away.
Because there was no identification on the body police had no clue as
to who this woman was.
The only clues were that nearby there was a small Swiss Army Knife
and the headphones to a Sony Walkman.
[Judge] She'd been strangled,
she'd been beaten badly,
we didn't know for sure what race she was,
'cause her face was so badly beaten.
[Chris] It's hard to imagine that you can
kill a... a helpless person and that you can beat them to the point
uh, where their face is essentially unrecognizable.
I have no words to describe what kind of a...
what kind of an animal does that sort of thing to another human.
[Judge] We were just needing to gain all the clues we could
to help us find out who was responsible.
And there was a head hair that was taken into evidence
that was found, I believe on her leg
or somewhere under the clothing.
And the head hair wasn't hers.
And she didn't have her purse.
That becomes significant later.
[Jeff] This was a news story
on the fact that a body was found in the Columbia River Gorge.
The victim had been raped and killed. That just didn't happen.
Now, Portland was a much more innocent place at that time.
[Chris] Identifying bodies in criminal investigations, police investigations,
uh, oftentimes clearly one of the ways you identify
a body is if someone can recognize a person's face.
[Casey] Police composed a sketch of the female victim
and put it out on the news media.
The neighbor came down and she told me to watch the news.
Because [gasps] she's seen something on the news about a girl getting killed,
I was like,
no.
But the portrait they have, didn't even look like her.
Nothing like my sister,
but what they had her clothes, that's what did it.
Taunja's sister saw the sketch on the news along with photographs of the clothing
and got in touch with police.
[Michelle] Wanted to identify her.
So I had to think of something to identify her.
And there... at that time all I could think of is she had very flat feet
and she had a mole on her hand.
[Casey] She confirmed that it was indeed her sister Taunja Bennett.
[Chris] Once someone who is am unidentified victim is identified,
then what detectives do is they start
working closely with everybody that knew that person.
Whether it be a family member, whether it be a, uh, roommate,
whether it be a spouse and...
and you have to start building the story from the ground up
trying to determine why this person was murdered.
[indistinct chatter]
[Chris] She went to a tavern in the east Multnomah called the B & I tavern.
And, uh, apparently she was a fairly regular customer in that...
in that particular location because people knew her.
People from the bar recalled seeing her playing pool with two men.
Police are interested in these two guys and are trying to track them down.
[Alafair] After Taunja Bennett's body was identified
the police had setup a tip line and they had placed,
it was Crime Stopper, notices in the newspaper with her picture
asking people about any information about where she might have been that night
and who she might have been with.
[Chris] Law Enforcement started getting calls
from a woman who wanted to remain unidentified.
And she was pointing the fingers towards her boyfriend.
And her boyfriend was somehow involved in the death of Taunja Bennett.
[Joey] The body of 23 year old Taunja Bennett is found brutally murdered
in the Columbia River Gorge outside of Portland, Oregon.
Investigators are looking for any clue from the public as to who could've done this.
[woman speaking]
[Alafair] After Taunja Bennett's body was identified
the police setup a tip line and they had placed, was Crime Stopper,
notices in the newspaper with her picture asking people
for any information about where she might have been that night
and who she might have been with.
And a woman made a phone call to the parole officer, of her live in boyfriend
a man named John Sosnovske,
saying that she believed that he may have been involved in Taunja Bennett's murder.
[woman speaking]
[Casey] Police learned that John Sosnovske, who is 39 years old,
has an older girlfriend named, Laverne Pavlinac who happens to be 57.
And that the two of them are in a very codependent
possibly abusive relationship.
A relationship that Laverne says she wants to get out of.
[Laverne speaking]
John Sosnovske works the local lumberyard but he had no criminal history
other than a DUI.
I think she kind of supported him, it's her house that he lived in rent free
and they had a kind of a difficult relationship.
He was by all accounts a very heavy drinker.
[Laverne speaking]
[Casey] Police go to interview Laverne
and she confirms that she is the person who made that anonymous call.
And that she knows John killed this girl.
[Chris] She started telling a story about John Sosnovske,
was a regular at J & B Lounge and Wilsonville, Oregon.
And that he was talking about the fact that he had met Taunja Bennett
down at the J & B lounge.
And that he had ultimately killed her down there.
[Casey] She says that on the night of Taunja's murder
John came home at about one o'clock in the morning.
He came in and took off all his clothes and jumped into the shower, something that was
very unusual for him to do.
Police gets a warrant and search Laverne's home, the she shares with John.
They find really nothing except a piece of paper that has the words,
"T Bennett, Good piece" written on it.
The T Bennett, good piece seem like a really an improbable item to find.
And then based on that, of course, went out to interview John Sosnovske.
[Corson] Today is Friday. February 16, 1990.
Time now is 6:40 p.m.
They spend quite a bit of time interviewing him.
He denied.
In fact he continued to deny that he knew anything about it.
When he was confronted with the fact that Laverne was accusing him of doing this,
he denied ever meeting Taunja Bennett.
He certainly denied killing her.
[Joey] They didn't have enough to arrest John Sosnovske.
So they let him go.
But not before they took a hair sample which they tried to match
to evidence from the crime scene.
Then detectives hear from Laverne Pavlinac again.
[Alafair] When he still had not been arrested
she continued to press the issue and said that she had found
more evidence incriminating him.
[Judge] Laverne told the detective she'd found some things in the trunk.
She had found a purse in the trunk and a piece of fabric
from the crotch of the jeans.
[Alafair] She said that she found a section of denim jeans
that had been cut away.
The button and zipper area of a pair of jeans.
And of course that caught Law Enforcement's attention
because that lined up to the condition of Taunja Bennett's
jeans when her body was found.
Subsequently that fly was sent to the State Police's Crime Lab.
By then we'd know one other piece of evidence had developed,
which is that his head hair was consistent with the head hair found on Taunja Bennett.
It's not a fingerprint.
It's not DNA, it doesn't have that power to discriminate.
But it was indication to us to try and to look at all the evidence,
and see that's a piece of evidence that supports Laverne Pavlinac's description
in her statement.
Then police came back with a decision on the evidence
that Laverne said she found in the trunk of her car.
A purse like Taunja Bennett's missing purse,
and a piece of denim similar to the denim cut from Taunja's jeans.
[Jeff] The interesting this is, the purse was not a match.
And the denim was not a match
to what Taunja Bennett had on her person.
Investigators thought what's going on here?
[Casey] When police confront Laverne about all of these inconsistent evidence
she admits that she planted the purse and planted the ripped out jeans
denim fly.
And then she tells them a new story.
And that's when she started to tell them that,
she knew that John Sosnovske had killed Taunja Bennett,
because she was there.
Welcome back to Very Scary People.
The brutal and senseless murder of Taunja Bennett
devastated her family,
and sent shockwaves through Portland.
With few leads, investigators are focusing on a tip from a 57 year old woman
named Laverne Pavlinac pointed the finger on her 39 year old boyfriend.
Could this women's tip being the key to solve this horrific crime?
Or was it just another dead end?
[Judge] Laverne gave three or four different statements.
There was an evolution, a progression to her statements.
[Casey] There is no consistent forensic evidence to prove.
It's all just Laverne's testimony against John.
Now Laverne tells police a whole new story.
She says that she got a call from John in the middle of the night
and that he head a request.
He needed her to come down to the J & B truck stop
and bring a shower curtain.
[Casey] And when she got there, there was a body lying right there on the pavement.
She had found him in a dark corner of the parking lot.
At his feet was Taunja Bennett's dead body.
[Casey] She says she asked John looking at the body,
"Is she okay?"
And then John replied, "It's worse than that. She's dead."
[Casey] Laverne says that John made her wrap that body into the shower curtain
and lift it and put it into the trunk of that car
and then together they drove to the Columbia River Gorge
where they threw the body over the embankment.
Detectives asked her, "Could you show us where the body was?"
And she said she could.
[Alafair] She took them out to the Columbia River Gorge.
They were driving on these winding roads and,
she told them to stop the car and pointed and said, "This is where we left her body."
She pointed to the exact spot where Taunja's body was dumped.
[Judge] Well I have to say, I'm not sure I could've found it,
I was there but there's all these switchbacks and
I don't know if I could've correctly identified it.
[Alafair] And that seemed, to Law Enforcement at the time, to really
suddenly shore up her credibility.
Um, and the reliability of her confession.
But when that still didn't get the result she wanted, she went further.
At some point she called detectives and said it's correction time.
[Judge] They went out to speak with her the next day.
She proceeded to change her story again to say, he called her
she'd gone to the J & B truck stop,
he was there with Taunja Bennett.
[Judge] And he'd said we're giving her a ride home.
They get in the car and as she's driving,
he directs her out to the Columbia Gorge and to the observation point.
[Judge] He then gets out of the car with Taunja Bennett and they go around the corner.
He comes back and he's getting something out of the trunk and she asks him what he's doing?
He says come see.
And so she implicated herself as an accomplice.
[Alafair] She probably didn't realize, she hadn't watched enough Law & Order
or taken a law school class in aiding and abetting
but she put herself right there helping him
which makes her just as guilty as him under the law.
[Judge] And the detectives arrested her.
That began then the next phase of the case,
indicting her and John Sosnovske.
As Laverne Pavlinac's jury trial was commencing,
a truck stop reported a disturbing piece of graffiti.
Somebody scrolled on the wall,
January 21st, 1990. Killed Taunja Bennett in Portland.
Two people got the blame so I can kill again.
Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske are charged with
the murder of 23 year old, Taunja Bennett.
But as the trial of Laverne is about to begin bizarre messages
stun the authorities.
[Jeff] It comes to light that graffiti was found at a
rest stop bathroom in Montana,
and in a remote section of Oregon at another bathroom
confessing to the crime of killing Taunja Bennett.
[Chris] The one in Livingston Montana reads,
"I killed Taunja Bennett, January 21st, 1990 in Portland, Oregon.
I beat her to death, raped her and loved it.
Yes, I'm sick, but I enjoy myself too.
People took the blame and I'm free."
The one from Umatilla, Oregon, which is just east of Portland
on that bathroom it said, "I killed Taunja Bennett in Portland.
Two people got the blame so I can kill again.
Cut buttons of jeans as proof."
It's unsettling. Why would somebody do that?
But, you don't know what to make of it, right?
[Chris] When the detectives involved in this case
were made aware of those writings
they immediately notified through the District Attorney's office
the court that those things have been found because it was significant,
that someone was writing that on a wall.
We did a forensic evaluation. Didn't find anything that would help us.
But Wendell Birkland, Laverne's attorney,
moved to introduce it into evidence.
Of course the problem was at that point, it could've been any friend of Sosnovske's
or Pavlinac's doing that to short circuit their own issues.
[Judge] We objected, it's hearsay. It's the statement of someone who is not in court,
not subject to cross examination,
and it's been offered to prove that Laverne Pavlinac didn't commit the murder.
A judge decided that it was inadmissible, because, uh, it was
hearsay was being offered for the truth and there was no way to know who
wrote it and there was no indicia that it was credible.
And that made it inadmissible in court.
I was trying this case and I'm going into court and looking at this
grandmotherly looking person that I'm trying for murder.
She went to trial claiming that her confessions had been false,
that she was just trying to implicate him saying that neither of them
had anything to do with Taunja Bennett.
Her defense was that she had made this up,
because she was in an abusive relationship with John Sosnovske
and didn't know how else to get out of it.
This is a very unusual circumstance where someone does
give a detailed statement to the police, then it's recorded
and then they go into the court room and say, well that's all a lie.
And of course what jurors would think in that instance, of course it's a lie
at this point at time because you just realized you're going to go to prison for murder.
I think the evidence was so overwhelming of guilt
that the jury unanimously found her guilty.
Of course what convicted her in the court room was her own
recorded statement saying that she was involved in Taunja's death.
Once she was committed of murder, John Sosnovske entered a no contest plea
um, to avoid the death penalty.
He certainly denied killing Taunja Bennett but with time,
his confidence in his recollections started to waver because
he became convinced that it was possible that he could've met Taunja Bennett
and even talked to her but forgotten about it because he was a heavy drinker.
[Judge] He had experienced blackouts in the course of his alcoholism
and when Laverne told him he had done it,
he was so,
I... I think impacted by his alcohol use that he wasn't sure.
No contest doesn't mean I admit that I'm guilty.
But it says to the court I'm choosing not to contest the charge
and I... I understand I'm going to be found guilty.
[Alafair] Laverne was sentenced to a life sentence but with a minimum
of only 10 years,
because the judge reasoned that John Sosnovske had been the major influence upon her
contact, and then he was sentenced, um, also to a life sentence with
a mandatory minimum of at least 25 years.
[Joey] It appears that the case of who killed Taunja Bennett is solved and closed.
But then in the spring of 1994, four years after Taunja's murder,
The Oregonian newspaper receives a letter that may change everything.
[Joey] Authorities believe that the mystery of who killed Portland native
23 year old Taunja Bennett had been solved.
The killers had been convicted and incarcerated.
But then in the spring of 1994, four years after Taunja's murder,
The Oregonian newspaper receives a letter that may change everything.
I remember that day, dark, haunting but, not forgettable.
[Doug] I recall we had a news aid who would bring me a stack of mail every morning,
on the top of her pile of mail was a handwritten letter six pages long,
stapled together, and she plopped this on my desk and said,
"You've got a weird one here today."
And I read it, just a few lines of it
and realized this is somebody trying to confess to a murder.
I'm reading a letter, sent to The Oregonian newspaper in Portland.
At the top of the letter is a happy face,
and it says, "All five of five.
I would like to tell my story. I am a good person at times.
I always wanted to be liked.
I've have been married and divorced with children.
I didn't really want to be married but it happened.
I have read your paper and enjoyed it a lot.
I always have wanted to be noticed.
So I started something I don't know how to stop."
My first thought was, yeah, it's a hoax.
I mean... we get these.
But I kept reading it.
[Chris] "On or around January 20th 1990,
I picked up Sonya Bennett and took her home.
I raped her and beat her real bad.
Her face was all broke up.
Then I ended her life."
[Jeff] He calls her Sonya Bennett.
But this letter to The Oregonian was very detailed
on how he met Taunja Bennett that night,
how exactly he killed her.
How he left her body.
He gave information in that letter that only a killer would know.
[Chris] "I went back home and dragged her out to the car.
I want to know that it was my crime.
So I tied a half inch soft white rope,
cut on one end...
The further down into this letter I went the more
detail was provided about crimes, horrific crimes.
[Jeff] He talks about how two people are falsely imprisoned for this killing.
But then comes the stunning news.
[Jeff] He confesses to a murder
in California describing exactly how he killed this person,
where he left the body.
[Chris] "One day in California I picked up a girl named Claudia.
I took her. I taped her up.
I kept her for four days alive.
Then I killed her and dumped her body about seven miles north of Blythe on 95."
He confesses to another murder in California.
Once again leaves out details that only a killer would know.
Says exactly where he left the body.
[Chris] "This time I just strangled her right there without sex.
She was in my truck only five minutes.
I dropped her body off behind the Blueberry Hill cafe
10 miles south on 99.
I placed her body in the dirt and stepped on her throat to make sure she was dead."
Confesses to another murder?
[Chris] "I felt so much power
I then told her she was going to die and slowly strangled her.
And dropped her off behind GI Joe's in Salem.
I put her against the fence under the blackberry wines and covered her with leaves."
And then confesses to a fifth murder.
[Chris] "I stopped at a rest area near Williams and had her.
I put her body on or near a pile of rocks.
About 50 yards north of Highway 152 West bound.
About 20 miles from Santa Nella."
And perhaps the most chilling this is, he makes a happy face.
[Doug] I'd never seen anything like this before.
I read through the letter all the way to the end and found it
nauseating, upsetting and potentially credible.
The letter to The Oregonian was basically saying,
"Ha ha ha. You guys are so dumb you convicted the wrong people.
I'm the killer."
The letter detailed five homicides that they claimed responsibility for,
including Taunja Bennett, all of women in various states.
[Doug] The skeptic in me wanted to throw it into the recycle box,
and the editor part of me said,
better check it out.
So, I called one of the reporters on our team,
his name was Phil Stanford,
and I gave him the letter and I asked him to check it out.
He contacted every police agency and talked to every investigator he could
on the murder cases that could be identified from the letter
to try to find details that
would corroborate and authenticate
the confession letter.
He came back to me and he said, I don't think it's a hoax. I think they put
the wrong people in prison
for the murder that he's confessing to in here.
[Casey] So, in May of 1994,
The Oregonian decides to publish the six page handwritten letter that
they've received from somebody that they call "The Happy Face Killer."
[Doug] From day one, Phil and I
described the letters, The Happy Face Killer, letter
because of the happy face at the top of it.
[Jeff] So once the letter comes out in The Oregonian it becomes big news.
All the media is reporting on the letter sent to the newspaper
and speculating on is this real, is this a hoax?
And the focus turns to Laverne Pavlinac and John Sosnovske
who are sitting in prison.
[Doug] I wondered if we might
blow the lid off this story and get
the investigation reopened.
[Joey] If this letter is real, if the killer's claims are real
then Laverne and John are innocent.
And there's a serial killer on the loose.
[Jeff] He was claiming that he did these murders.
There was still no hard, hard proof.
They hadn't captured him.
So there was still that doubt that this could be a hoax.
[Doug] The Happy Face Killer story was lurid
and sensational and all the things that press critics
like to fault the media for doing.
But, uh, the end of the day this was news.
A serial killer at large,
killing women, that's the newspaper's job to report it when somebody
tries to confess to it.
[Chris] He was so proud of his work,
and he really wanted to be noted as a serial killer.
He basically, beat, raped and suffocated my mother
in the cab of his truck and then tossed her out of the truck
like a piece of garbage.
[man] It wasn't until we actually got into the interview room
that we told him we're investigating
the death of Julie Winningham.
[Chris] I've spent a lifetime looking at these kind of stories
and I have no explanation for how a person can be so demented that
that becomes a way of life for him.
[Jeff] He targeted sex workers, prostitutes,
people who sort of are on the fringe of society and are already forgotten.
[Jeff] As he's talked about how he killed these women, how he cleaned up
after the murders, he became the monster.
Two people are in prison for the murder of Taunja Bennett.
Four more women are dead.
Then an anonymous letter arrives at The Oregonian newspaper,
from a man who claims that he is responsible for all of the murders.
He signs the letter with a happy face symbol.
Is it a hoax? Investigators aren't certain.
If not, can they find him before he strikes again?
In part two of The Happy Face Killer.
I'm Donnie Wahlberg. Thanks for watching. Good night.