Melissa G. Moore breakfast with her father, Keith Jesperson, in a restaurant when he almost exposed his secret double life.
The high school student, who was preparing to get her driver’s license, stumbled about getting her freedom. She was also excited to spend time with her father, a truck driver who was divorced from Moore’s mother at that time.
“I was about to turn 16,” Moore recalled Fox News Digital. “He made an unannounced visit and asked my brothers and sisters and me if we wanted to go for breakfast before the school started. My brothers and sisters had other obligations, so they couldn’t come to us … We spoke about what my first car would be. I remember that he said he would buy a pontiac and I debated with him.
Melissa G. Moore is the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, known as the “Happy Face” serial killer. (Storm Santos)
“Then the subject began to turn until the next time I would see him,” Moore shared. “He looked forward to seeing us during the summer holidays. But the way he spoke, it sounded like it was Wishful Thinking. … Then he started saying:” I have to tell you something, but you will tell the authorities. ” It stopped me.
Melissa G. Moore said there were signs early that something was wrong with her father, Keith Jesperson. (AP Photo/Don Ryan)
“At first I thought,” It must be the rumors that my mother had told me about that he had been fired because he had been stolen from his employer. ” Did he press on it and said, “You could tell me.” He is like: “No, no, I can’t tell you.” I started to feel sick in my stomach.
“Looking back on that conversation, I feel that he knew his crimes were catching up with him.”
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“Happy Face” is inspired by the story of Melissa G. Moore. She wrote the autobiography ‘Shattered Silence’. (Paramount+)
Moore was 15 when Jesperson, a productive serial killer for drawing Smiley faces in letters on the media and prosecutors, was captured. The case is now the subject of a Paramount+ True-Crime drama, “Happy Face” with Analeigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid.
Moore previously shared her story The best -selling memoirs, “Shattered Silence” And the Podcast 2018 “Happy Face”.
Dennis Quaid and Melissa G. Moore Wonen Paramount +’s “Happy Face” New York Premiere at MetroGraph March 18, 2025 in New York City. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
“I am proud of this series because I think the family members of victims will feel seen, and that also applies to perpetrators family,” she explained. “I have never seen anything like that. If you look at a show about a serial killer, they will not show the complex nature of the relationships they have with their own family.”
This is a Clark County Sheriff’s Office booking photo of serial killer Keith Jesperson, circa 1995. (AP photo)
Moore described her youth as “fairly normal” In the Washington countryside. Her father, who stood on a towering 6-foot-6, 300 pounds, worked as a long-distance car driver. Her mother stayed at home with the three children of the couple.
“I grew up in the countryside where we had the freedom to roam,” said Moore. “When my father would come home from his long -distance car, he was very enthusiast. He was very sweet.”
View: Happy Face Serial Killer admits that he killed an eighth victim in an interview with Florida officials
“He used to love cycling and he always wanted us children with him,” she shared. “He was a very practical father. He would read us before bed. He would play games with us. He would hang out with us as much as possible.”
Dennis Quaid as Keith Jesperson in “Happy Face”. (Katie Yu/Paramount+)
But there were signs that her home life was not so idyllic. Moore said that when she was 5 years old, she witnessed ‘animal abuse on our property’.
“My father would kill animals for sport,” she explained. “He would kill cats. He would kill dogs. That was something that, if a young person … You just feel that that is not right. But it was not something that was really discussed. It was just Keith like Keith. It is not that we accepted it, but nobody really wanted to recognize it.”
View: ‘Happy Face’ Ster Dennis Quaid reflects on playing real serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson
Jesperson was arrested in 1995 On suspicion of killing his girlfriend in the state of Washington. He eventually confessed that between 1990 and 1995 he killed eight women in California, Washington, Oregon, Florida, Nebraska and Wyoming. The victims, who include his girlfriend, acquaintances and sex workers, were sexually abused and strangled.
Keith Hunter Jesperson, 40, right, listens to his lawyer, Tom Phelan, just before he pleads guilty for charges on October 18, 1995, in the Clark County courthouse in Vancouver, Wash. (AP Photo/The Columbian, Troy Wayrynen)
He was arrested just before Moore’s birthday.
“I found out through my mother,” said Moore. “In the series it is precisely depicted. I came home from school and my mother called us brothers and sisters together. She had something she had to tell us. She told us all that our father was in prison and that he was accused of murder. She gave no more details.
View: ‘Happy Face’ Stars James Wolk and Tamera Tomakili when working with Dennis Quaid in Serial Killer Series
“If an adult looks back, I imagine that … she probably didn’t feel comfortable to discuss those details with us.”
Melissa G. Moore has no relationship with her father, Keith Jesperson. (Jesse Grant/Variety via Getty Images)
News quickly spread in Moore’s hometown. Her friends described seeing Jesperson on TV while watching the news, wearing an orange jumpsuit and chained. He was called the “Happy Face Killer”.
“I was stunned about going to school and was embarrassed,” said Moore. “Every time I turned on the TV, there was my father’s face, flashed over. My friends told me that their parents had seen the news, and they didn’t want them to hang out with me.
For the series, Melissa G. Moore gave unread letters from her father. (Amy E. Price/SXSW Conference & Festivals via Getty Images)
“I internalized it,” Moore admitted. “I took it as if something might have been wrong with me. Maybe the apple was not far from the tree. It was the start of this deep descent to struggle with my own identity. I internalized his crimes in a way that finished it with my own identity.
Don Findlay (far right), son of murder victim Julie Ann Winningham, and Keith Jesperson (Orange Jumpsuit) before conviction on December 19, 1995 in the Court County courthouse, in Vancouver, Wash. (AP Photo/The Columbian, Jeremiah Coughlan)
“It took me years to reconcile,” added the 47-year-old.
Nowadays, Jespers, 69, serves different lifelong sentences without the possibility of conditional release.
“He never explained why,” said Moore. “I am still curious why he chose life that he did and chose to commit these crimes. I believe he felt a deep uncertainty in himself and wanted control. I would say it was about power and control. … it made this perfect monster.”
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Kate Maree as Melissa G. Moore and Dennis Quaid as Keith Jesperson in “Happy Face”. (Ed Aaquel/Paramount+)
In the show, viewers will see a letter from Jesperson e -mailed to Moore. She said the scene was accurate.
“He has been written to me since the first day since he entered the prison, and (those letters) are getting unanswered,” she said. “I don’t write it back. I collected them and I surrendered all the letters to (executive producer) Jennifer Cacicio. She used the letters for dialogue in the series.
‘Unfortunately, her house was one of that Lost in the Californian fires. Those letters were burned. They are gone. “
Keith Jesperson was nicknamed the serial killer “Happy Face” because he sent letters to the media about his crimes, which he committed about state lines as a long-distance car, with a smiley face signature at the bottom of each note. (Okaloosa Sheriff’s Office)
Today Moore has his own family. When sharing her story, Moore was able to create a network of more than 300 people who are related to murderers, with them on the phone and personally spoke for support, Mensmagazine reported. She said earlier BBC News That that project gave her ‘life of life and direction’.
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Over the years, Melissa G. Moore connected contact with others who are family of murderers and struggles to cope. (John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images)
“I am not proud of who my father is, but I no longer feel the need to hide,” said Moore. “I no longer attribute his crimes to who I am as a person. And I am not the only one in dealing with these unique problems. … There is no support group for perpetrators of perpetrators. There is not really a support group for families of victims. We are left to ourselves to find other people like us.
Speaking has also helped Moore to demonstrate her painful past.
Melissa G. Moore said she is no longer afraid of sharing her story in the hope that it will help others. (Jesse Grant/Variety via Getty Images)
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“My father gave me my greatest sorrow, that’s the trauma of growing up with him as a father,” she said. “I would say that the series is doing really good job to show this deep desire to have the father who no longer exists, the father of my childhood. He is no longer here. Maybe he never really existed.”
New episodes of “Happy Face” will fall on Paramount+on Thursday. The Associated Press has contributed to this report.
