The daughter of the ‘Happy Face’ serial killer has opened up about the moment she learned her father was a murderer, recalling how he had smiled with pleasure as he strangled a cat in front of her when she was a child years before.
Crime correspondent Melissa Moore reflected on her childhood in Yakima, Washington, during her appearance on Vice Australia’s podcast Extremes, detailing how her father Keith Hunter Jesperson’s sudden bouts of cruelty marred her otherwise happy upbringing.
‘There were two sides to my father, one very much opposing the other. On the surface he was a bubbly, charismatic man, but then there was something underneath that. There was just something “off” about him,’ she said.
Looking back: Melissa Moore, daughter of the ‘Happy Face’ killer, has opened up her childhood with her father Keith Hunter Jesperson and the moment she learned he was a murderer
Monster: Jesperson killed eight women while traveling as a long-haul rig driver. He is pictured in his 1995 mugshot (left) and in jail in 2009 (right)
Moore, the eldest of three children, was about six years old when she witnessed her father callously kill a black stray cat her brother had found.
‘My dad grabbed the cat and put it cat on his lap and started petting it. Then all of a sudden, he took his huge hands and started to strangle it,’ she recounted. ‘The cat’s reaction was to fight for its life, and it started to claw him, but my dad was absolutely enjoying himself.
‘I remember the smile on his face. And I could see blood coming off of my dad’s forearms, but that didn’t seem to faze him. He just continued, until all of a sudden the cat went limp.’
Moore said life was ‘mostly idyllic’ despite her father’s unpredictable nature, explaining that she had a fairly normal routine. She was in elementary school when her mother announced that they were leaving, and she was divorcing her father.
Her mother told her: ‘You know, your dad doesn’t want us anymore. So we’re getting a divorce, and we’re going to your grandma’s house.’
Jesperson murdered his first known victim 23-year-old woman Taunja Bennett in January 1990, the year he and Melissa’s mother officially divorced.
Cruel: Moore recalled how her father smiled with pleasure while strangling a cat in front of her and her brother when she was about six years old
He met her a billiards place and started playing pool with her before inviting her back to his house. Moore said her father ‘unleashed his rage’ when Bennett started to reject his advances.
‘From what I’ve heard, he just completely smashed her face—brutalized her—to the point where detectives found teeth in different locations around the house,’ Moore said. ‘Then, once he’d gotten that taste of blood, he couldn’t be stopped.’
Jesperson killed eight women during his years traveling America’s highways and isolated truck-stops as a long-haul rig driver in the 1990s.
Horrific: Jesperson murdered his first known victim Taunja Bennett in 1990, the year he and Melissa’s mother officially divorced
The serial killer earned his notoriety by sending confessions describing his heinous crimes to police and journalists and signing them with a smiley face.
He often targeted prostitutes and homeless women, raping them before strangling them to death with his bare hands as he had done with so many animals.
Jesperson was finally caught in March 1995 after strangling his long-time girlfriend Julia Ann Winningham, who he claimed did not love him but only wanted his money. She was the only victim that he could be connected to.
‘I’ll never forget the day I found out,’ Moore said. ‘I’d come home from school and my mom called out for me and my siblings. Then she said, “Your father’s in jail.” My brother asked, “For what?” And she said, “For murder.”‘
The Shattered Silence author recalled crying in her room, wondering if he had accidentally killed a man in a fight while trying to make sense of the situation.
‘But then I pictured him strangling, and somehow that was easy. For some reason I could clearly visualize him strangling a woman,’ she said.
Estranged: Moore was joined by her then-husband and two children when she visited her father in jail in 2005. It was the last time she saw her serial killer dad
Moving forward: After years of self-work and therapy, the crime correspondant said she is happy and rarely thinks about the past
Moore’s mom tried to protect her by concealing information, but when she went to the library, she learned that her father had murdered eight women.
She said her ‘world changed after that,’ and it changed how she saw herself. When she was in high school, she had friends whose parents them to stay away from her.
Even though she never went to her father’s trial, she ‘felt guilty by association’ and that something was ‘wrong’ with her—feelings she held onto until she was an adult.
Moore said she never talked about what happened until after she had children. She explained that it took her daughter, Aspen, asking her about her father to realize that she needed to learn to accept her past.
After years of self-work and therapy, she said she is happy and rarely thinks about the past, but she does wonder if she should contact him.
She explained that he had never apologized and believes ‘he was a good father except for his “eight errors in judgment.”‘
‘It’s been decades since we spoke, and if I reach out to him, does that mean he won? Does that mean he got his way? I don’t know,’ she said.
‘The only thing I can be thankful for is that he is in a place where he can’t ever hurt anybody again.’