How Melissa Moore Overcame Dad Keith Jesperson’s ‘Happy Face’ Serial Killer Past: ‘I Can’t Run Forever’

He was, she remembers, “a really great dad.”

When Melissa Moore thinks back to what life was like with her father, Keith Jesperson, growing up in Washington state in the ’80s, many of her memories are happy ones.

“He was doting. He was hands-on. He would read bedtime stories to me and sometimes come up with [his own]. And he would tuck me in like a burrito,” she tells In Touch. “He wanted to instill good values and good character, which is ironic — the hypocrisy of it all.”

Because unbeknownst to his family, Keith was a serial killer. In 1990 — the same year Keith divorced Melissa’s mother — his crime spree began. Over five years, the 6-foot-8 long-haul truck driver murdered at least eight women, earning the nickname Happy Face Killer because of the signature smiley face he used to sign letters he sent to the media and police detailing his crimes.

Melissa was a 15-year-old high school student when Keith, 69, was finally arrested 30 years ago; he’s serving a sentence of life without parole for his crimes.

“It was deeply shameful, embarrassing,” she tells In Touch, especially when darker memories surfaced, like her dad “hanging kittens on the clothesline.”

So she changed schools, got married, had kids — and tried to bury her shocking past.

“Nobody knew about my father. I didn’t tell anybody about it. It was a secret.”

Melissa Moore Had to Face the Truth About Her Dad

She was finally forced to confront her trauma when her daughter came home from kindergarten with a family tree project and asked about her grandfather. It made Melissa realize, she explains, that “I can’t run from my past forever.” She started writing, which allowed her to have “my own reckoning with it.”

Her thoughts eventually became the 2009 book Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter. Ten years later, she launched the “Happy Face” podcast. They’re the inspiration behind Happy Face, a new Paramount+ crime drama series, which explores how a killer’s actions affect not only his victims’ families but also his own loved ones.

“How we’re all connected,” Melissa explains, “and how a crime like this reverberates.”

She last spoke with Keith, who is in an Oregon prison, in 2005.

“One of the first things he said to me was, ‘Missy, do you want to know why?’” But she told him she wasn’t ready. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to know,” she says. “It’s just that I felt that whatever he would say wouldn’t be the truth.”

She’s since cut contact. Though Keith still sends her letters, she no longer reads them.

“I guard my heart,” she adds. “If I’m not reading his letters, he can’t manipulate me. That’s helpful.”
She’s also been able to heal by connecting with other serial killers’ loved ones who, like her, are grappling with a unique anguish.

Melissa has forged a relationship with Kerri Rawson, the daughter of convicted BTK Killer Dennis Rader. “There aren’t any support groups” for the families of serial killers, Melissa tells In Touch. “[I’m] trying to just connect with other people [like me] so we don’t feel alone.”

In 2023, Melissa started a GoFundMe for suspected Long Island, New York, serial killer Rex Heuermann’s family. (He pleaded not guilty.) His wife, Asa Ellerup, “reminded me of my mother,” she says, “and I knew she needed help for herself and her children [Victoria and Christopher].”

“I’m just choosing every day,” she adds, “to be the best person I can be.”