The childhood memories she holds are, by her own admission, filled with a painful irony. For years, she knew her father as a loving parent, a man who built treehouses and taught her to ride a bike. It was only as a teenager that the foundation of her world collapsed, revealing the man she called “Dad” to be one of the nation’s most notorious serial killers.
Keith Jesperson, the long-haul trucker convicted of multiple murders in the 1990s and infamously known as the “Happy Face Killer,” remains incarcerated for life. For his daughter, Melissa Moore, the journey from a sheltered childhood to public reckoning has been a decades-long process of confronting a buried trauma.
“I believed he was a really great dad,” Moore has reflected, describing a swirl of bittersweet recollections from her youth in Washington. That perception shattered when she was 15, learning the man she loved was responsible for a horrific series of crimes, often taunting authorities with letters signed with a smiley face.
The weight of the secret was immense. “It was deeply shameful, embarrassing,” she has said, describing her desperate attempts to escape her past by changing schools, marrying, and building a new life where “nobody knew.” The turning point came unexpectedly when her own young daughter brought home a school project about family history and asked a simple question about her grandfather.
That innocent inquiry forced a confrontation Moore could no longer avoid. “I can’t run from my past forever,” she realized. This moment of reckoning sparked a cathartic journey into writing, culminating in a memoir that shared her unique and harrowing perspective. A decade later, she channeled her experience into a podcast, which has since inspired a dramatic television series exploring the devastating ripple effects of violent crime on a perpetrator’s own family.
Moore last spoke to her father in 2005. While he offered to explain his motives, she declined, believing any explanation he provided would lack truth. She has since cut off all communication, choosing not to read his letters as a form of self-preservation. “I guard my heart,” she explained. “If I’m not reading his letters, he can’t manipulate me.”
Finding no formal support network for individuals in her situation, Moore has sought connection with others who share her unique burden, forming bonds with people like the daughter of another infamous killer. She has also extended support to the families of other accused individuals, seeing in their plight echoes of her mother’s experience.
Her path forward, she states, is built on a daily choice: to move beyond the shadow of her father’s crimes and define her own life. “I’m just choosing every day to be the best person I can be,” she asserted, focusing on a future forged not by the secrets of the past, but by her own resilience.
