'Happy Face Killer' case tapes reveal the lengths woman went to frame boyfriend

Meanwhile, the real killer carried out a series of murders over five years.

Before serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson, known by his nickname "Happy Face Killer," turned himself in, authorities believed they had solved the murder of his first victim Taunja Bennett.

A jury had convicted a Portland woman named Laverne Pavlinac based on her detailed confession to police that she helped her boyfriend John Sosnovske rape and kill the 23-year-old.

Sosnovske would later plead no contest to the murder charge.

But it was all a lie. Pavlinac had made the whole thing up. When she recanted, Pavlinac said she falsely confessed because she was stuck in a volatile relationship with Sosnovske, desperately seeking a way out and wanting him in prison. But in the process, she also falsely implicated herself.