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Happy Face Killer's final victim named as woman aged 34 years after her body was found in California

Keith Hunter Jesperson had referred to McWhorter only as 'Claudia' for three decades before DNA and genetic genealogy finally confirmed her identity this week.
Keith Hunter Jesperson had referred to McWhorter only as 'Claudia' for three decades before DNA and genetic genealogy finally confirmed her identity this week.
Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter, 26, vanished from Texas in the early 1990s and was found along Highway 95, seven miles north of Blythe, California, after an argument about money in Jesperson's truck.
Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter, 26, vanished from Texas in the early 1990s and was found along Highway 95, seven miles north of Blythe, California, after an argument about money in Jesperson's truck.

Lydia Jane Wade McWhorter, a 26-year-old woman from Texas who vanished in the early 1990s, has been named as the last unidentified victim of serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, with DNA analysis and genetic genealogy closing a case that had remained open for 34 years. Her sister Brenda Burks had gone decades without learning what had become of her. A public tip in 2024 led investigators to a maternal relative, and a DNA sample collected this week confirmed the match.

Jesperson, who knew her only as 'Claudia', confessed that she had been hitchhiking when he picked her up and that he killed her following an argument about money.

Jesperson pleaded guilty to McWhorter's murder in Riverside County in 2010, yet she remained unidentified for a further 16 years after that conviction.

Half-sister Summer Gonzales, who had been conducting her own independent research in parallel, says: 'I am very confident that Lydia is my half-sister.'

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