48: Catching Killers - The Happy Face Killer

Shear Crime Podcast

On this week's episode, Kenzie and Ame cover the two-part installment on The Happy Face Killer in the Netflix series Catching Killers. On a cold January day in 1990, the body of an unidentified female is found along a mountain road in Oregon with a rope around her neck and the fly missing from her jeans. A composite sketch is released and shortly after they were able to determine that the young women was missing 23-year-old Taunja Bennett. Police are immediately pointed in the direction of a man named John Sosnovske when his girlfriend Laverne calls in a tip stating he'd confessed the killing to a friend at the bar, and she had found evidence linked to the murder in their home. After several interviews, however, Laverne's story turns more and more sinister and eventually lands both of them in prison. But a few years later, the local newspaper gets a letter from a man claiming he was actually the one responsible for the death of Taunja Bennett, as well as 7 other women. Police now have to track down the leads contained in the letter to determine if this was truly the man they'd been looking for, and if a couple of innocent people were doing time for a crime they didn't commit.