RIVERSIDE - A 54-year-old serial killer is scheduled to be arraigned today on a murder charge for the 1992 slaying of a woman whose body was found in the desert near Blythe.

Keith Hunter Jesperson, who is known as "The Happy Face Killer,'' will be asked to enter a plea to one count of felony murder when he appears in a Riverside court this afternoon.

Jesperson was brought to Riverside County Tuesday from Oregon, where he was serving a life sentence after pleading no contest for a November 1995 murder. He has also admitted to slayings in Washington and Wyoming, said Sgt.

Michael Lujan of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department.

The body of the woman whose slaying is a the root of the current case was found by Advertisement

[ Berry-Bell and Hall Mortuary ] deputies on Aug. 30, 1992, west of state Route 95 near Blythe, Lujan said. She has yet to be identified.

The sergeant said the body was in an advanced stage of decomposition.

She was 5 feet 3, blond, between 20-30 years old, authorities said.

The initial investigation went cold until 1994, when Jesperson was identified as a possible suspect, but he was not arrested.

In 1996, Jesperson provided a written account of the murder and the specific location near Blythe where he discarded the body of the victim, whom he referred to as "Claudia,'' according to Lujan.

Jesperson was charged with felony murder in September by the Riverside County District Attorney's Office. He is being held without bail at the Robert Presley Detention Center in Riverside.