October 19, 2018 • 30 mins
Melissa was 15 years old when she found out her father was a serial killer, and the news couldn’t have arrived at a worse time: she just found out she was pregnant. Melissa confronts her high school boyfriend to get a better grasp on the time.
Melissa G. Moore: IG @melissag.moore; Tik Tok @melissa.g.moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco: www.LaurenBrightPacheco.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Keith fell in high school. I believe it was twenty
five feet. When they interview killers, they have found that
a large percentage of them damaged their front bealob before
they were twenty two, changes their whole personality.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Keith's father, Lass was a very resourceful, ingenious man, but
he could be a monster.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
He was horrible. I hated him less told him, this
is the way what you're going to say in court
for the mobile art or absolutely he did.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
He dragged me to a nursing home to visit one
of his hunting buddies. He said, my friend's smitt. He's
not doing too good with his lung cancer. Keith talk
to him, son. Nobody likes to die alone. I never
feared a dead person after that.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
One of the few people that Keith opened up to
about his childhood was psychologist al Carlisle swe Can.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
By the age of eight, it was a lot of anger.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
If you do me wrong, I was going to I
was bound and determined to get even.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Any learning problems.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
No life for you intelligence.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I'm very intelligent, but I just didn't adapt myself to it.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I received a letter a week before he got arrested
it said, Rose, what I did is bigger than ol J. Simpson,
that I'll probably be in hell forever, in the bie Keith.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
In love fin with the sun.
Speaker 7 (01:21):
I don't know, shine, oh.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The subconscious mind often knows the truth long before we do.
I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is happy face.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was driving in a car down the road, and
this is after your dad and I were separated. Actually
it was not officially divorce, but we were separated. And
they had on the news that they were searching for
the Green River Killer. And I go, hmm, I wonder
if that's Keith. Why did I say that? But I
(02:13):
think you internally know things that you don't stake, you
don't acknowledge, so.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Intuitively, I just said it out loud. I go, I
wonder if that's Keith.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And then I guess, like, oh, why did I think that?
I don't know, because I think by time we were separated,
I had so many more pieces of the puzzle, and
I was starting to connect things, because before it was
I got a piece here and a piece here. I
(02:47):
think I got enough pieces that I was beginning.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
To connect it. Melissa also remembers having thoughts she couldn't explain.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
There was a time where I actually had a vision
of my father behind bars, and there's nobody I could
tell to because nobody would believe me. It was when
I was in seventh grade. I was walking to school
and I had a mental image pop up in my
(03:20):
mind of my father being behind the glass and having
a telephone, and my stomach sunk and I felt sorrow
and sadness. I just remember thinking that was a very
intense emotion attached to the vision.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
We've gone too far.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
From I the Making of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen.
Dawn was coming and pretty soon the traffic could be
too heavy for me to unload her on the shoulder.
I thought back to when I first met her and
loved her and to her for all time. I needed
to do one more killing and then end this murder
machine for good. I put my fist against her throat
(04:10):
for the last time, just before she passed out. I
told her, you're number eight, and yes, I will get
away with it. She didn't breathe again.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It's especially hard for Melissa to process some of her
seemingly happy memories now, even something as harmless as watching
television together.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Growing up with my dad something that we used to
do together as we used to watch true crime shows,
even when I was like a young girl. I remember
him sitting on the brown velvet couch and I would
crawl up on his lap, and then because he was
so tall, I would actually crawl up on the back
of the couch and sit on his shoulders and we
would watch like Unsolved Mysteries. I remember that was seem
(05:00):
to be our favorite show, and I would always be
terrified at the end of the program as a young girl, thinking,
oh my gosh, there's there's a million ways I could
be abducted, and like just terrified, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Terrified as you're sitting on the yeah, as.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
I'm sitting on the shoulders of my father, thinking I
hope something like that never happens to me. I hope
that I know how to keep myself safe. And I
think that's partially why I watched these programs, as I
was looking for ways of like what did the victim
do that could have saved her life. I was analyzing this,
(05:38):
and ironically, I think my father was analyzing how to
get away with murder and what tools did the detectives have.
It is eerie to me to see the time my
timeline of events in my father's timeline of his murders,
because there's moments where we were to gather and then
(06:03):
knowing he had just committed a murder and now was
taking me to McDonald's like it was nothing. How was
he able to do that? Soon after my parents' divorce,
my dad would spend summer vacations with us, and during
(06:25):
his visitations he would say things.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
That were.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Or alarming, were odd and bizarre and explicit.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
What and was it targeted towards you?
Speaker 5 (06:40):
Yeah, he would target it towards me. I didn't see
my brother and my sister getting the same treatment. Maybe
because I'm the oldest I was his confidant.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It was just.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Peppered throughout our conversations. These things he would say that
were startling. He would say, I know how to commit
the most perfect murder.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
How old were you?
Speaker 5 (07:02):
I was a young woman. I was in my early teens,
and I remember thinking this is odd, but it was
one of the first times I heard him say something
like that. He would say, I would cut the buttons
off of her jeans so that my fingerprints wouldn't be
on them. I would then wear my cycling shoes so
that I wouldn't leave a soule print in the dirt,
(07:24):
and then I would make sure her belongings were other places.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
From I the Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen,
I drove to a spot on the downhill side of
Highway fourteen on the Washington State side of the Columbia Gorge,
across the river from where I threw Tanya Bennett's body
in Oregon. I carried her over past a guardrail in
some garbage sacks and pitched her down a fifteen foot embankment.
(07:54):
I stared at her crumpled body in the weeds and thought,
how she'd only lasted five days with me. What a waste.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Nineteen ninety five, the year Keith Jesperson was arrested, was
already an incredibly traumatic one for Melissa for a variety
of reasons. To get further insight into what she was
going through, we traveled to meet with her high school
boyfriend Nick.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
We're close to Shadele, so this is where I went
to high school in nineteen ninety five. When I heard
the news about my dad, I was going to the
school and I was dating a guy named Nick. He
was actually my first boyfriend. When I started my freshman
year here he was in my English class, and he
(08:50):
was just actually kind of simuch to my dad in
the sense that he was a jokester. He was funny,
everybody laughed, he was charismatic. He just seemed to an edge,
and like I thought that he was a misunderstood person.
I was out to prove that people didn't get him right.
And my friends and everybody said that he's bad news.
But he had been arrested. I had heard rumors about
(09:15):
drug deals. He had a pager. He had money all
the time, cash all the time. He had a money
club with lots of one hundred dollars bills.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
I found that appealing.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
He asked me to dance that fall, and before I
knew it, he just became a part of my life,
you know. And I got pregnant. I got pregnant my
freshman year. Something was off with my body, and I
could just tell something was up, and so I got
a pregnancy test and I went into the bathroom stall
(09:48):
here at Shadle, right here. It was after classes, and
the pregnancy test turned positive, and I was alone and thinking,
holy shit.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Like what do I do?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
How did he react to finding out you were pregnant.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
Not well, not well at all.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
He didn't handle it well. I mean, like he's a
teenage boy too, so like I'll give him that. But
I didn't handle it well either. I was in panic
mode at that point. Once I found I was pregnant,
I was terrified. I had no idea what to do.
I couldn't tell my mom. I felt like if I
told my mom, she would think I was a whore.
And so right after I found out that was pregnant
(10:33):
is when the news hit about my dad.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
With her mother and siblings living in poverty, Melissa found
herself once again, back in her grandmother's basement, young and
scared and having to face a really difficult choice.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
You only have believe it's twelve weeks, and every week
that would pass, it was just like getting closer to
that deadline and the pressure is building.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
But also at the same time, while I was going
through that, I was learning about my dad and his
crimes and now we're living in the basement of my
grandmother's house. That's where Nick actually became a really critical
part in my.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Life because he had a car.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
He would actually come to the north side of town
and come pick me up and take me to school.
He made it so much more convenient to get to school,
and I was in my relationship with him. It was a
very dysfunctional relationship. It was extreme highs and lows, and
when things were good, they were good. When things were
(11:42):
bad they were extremely bad. Physical and he was very
possessive of me. He would hold my when we walk
around high school. He would hold my belt loop and
just like he always had his hands on me, was
always claiming me with his space. And we were constantly
(12:05):
together and never had a break. It was a very
codepententent abusive relationship. I would say.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
From I the Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen,
I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies
I planned to tell when I was arrested. I took
myself back to when I killed Tanya and tried to
figure out what made me cross the line into murder.
Was it the things I read about in the detective magazines,
arson animal abuse that I killed to make up for
(12:40):
a wasted life, for my own fuck ups. Was it
dad's fault, my brother's, my mother's. It was too easy
to blame the rest of the family. Maybe I was
just a no good son of a bitch that got
off on killing women. Maybe it was my nature.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I was living a nightmare and it became my only
option in my mind. When I came home one day
saw my sleeping bag on the cot and thought, a
crib does not fit here next to a cot. I
just couldn't see it, and that's when the choice was
made for me. I don't see how a baby bed
could be right there, and it couldn't bear the thought
(13:23):
of being financially dependent on Nick or welfare like my
mom was. So I felt like the only option for
me to break out of this poverty was to not
have the baby. If anybody says nineteen ninety five, some
people will think, oh Jay Simpson. Some people will think
you know Menanda's brothers or something like that. I think
(13:46):
of the time I was in that dark bathroom stall,
seeing I was pregnant and the news hitting of my
dad and losing everything in my life. I really thought
everything was against me.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
As Melissa began to put the pieces of her past
back together after more than twenty years, she decided to
visit Nick, maybe to confront him, maybe foreclosure. It was
hard to tell, maybe just to remember.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
How far away from the house.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
We're just about a minute a walk.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Okay, I just haven't seen him for at least twenty years.
I'm so nervous. Your destination is on the left.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Oh right now, right there.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Well, it's a cute house. Oh there he is on
the fort. Oh my god, he sees us. Okay, he's
dressed nice too. Okay, Hey, Nick, how are you a
long time?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
No?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
See, I'll go to say so. Thanks for agreeing it.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
So is the SR place?
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Yeah, we'll go.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Melissa didn't think that Nick would sit down and meet
with her, and when I called him and reached out,
he immediately responded with such positivity. The first thing you
thought of when you walked through the door was it
was so bright and cheerful and didn't look like a
(15:45):
bachelor pad at all. The house was spotless, almost as
if it were staged for a real estate photo.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I've got lots of spare room because I'm hoping to
get my kids coming soon. I'm working on it, working
on getting here.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
There was something very tidy and cheerful about the house,
and something very sad too, because you could feel the
absence of his kids. It's like he had built this
house for his children to enjoy, and they weren't there, so.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
State, No, they're with their mom right now. And it's
a long story. I was married for seven years, have
four kids, and all I want is my weekends, and
I just want the kids to know that I've been
trying and then I never stopped and I've never given up.
And whatever their mom says to them, they're going to
(16:42):
know something else someday too. And that's about all I
want to say about it right now, because it's it's
a mess. Sorry about that. Oh, it's okay, and life
and life happens. So yeah, And then I got one
more spot.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
At the end of the tour. We settled down at
this impeccably clean dining room table to talk about his
pastor with Morssa.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Do you remember my members a little glory me too
on some of that.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
What do you remember from maybe just maybe you could
just tell me what you remember of that time frame?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And then well, I remember one day you just coming
out and telling me that there was something about your
dad you wanted to tell me, and you weren't sure
if if the information was true or what to believe,
and you told me what you knew. It was shocking
to me, but I didn't know what to say or
what to do to help you.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Time one murder, it was Julie Winningham, I didn't even
know her name yet, and we went to the library.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
We did several times and we would look up the
articles and I remember you had said you weren't sure
what to believe in it was shocking, and you also
had heard it after he was arrested. He had wrote
a letter to his family that had stuff in it
that you didn't get to know what was in it,
(18:02):
but you heard that he had made a lot of
statements that would have would be admissions. And I didn't
know what to think either. Yeah, we were just young.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
I was fifteen. How old were you seen fifteen as well?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Both age. I remember just being stunned. I'm not sure
what to believe.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, I just I trust to do and I didn't
feel judgment from you about it at all. Well. I
remember one paper in particular, there was a statement from
the son of Julie Winningham, the victim, that was towards
the end, towards the trial, and that was pretty devastating
where he talked about obviously he's torn up and devastated,
(18:44):
rightfully so, and wanted my dad to be killed, like
he wanted him dead. And I remember thinking, like, this
is really hard. At the time, you know, it was
a transition, like I still loved my dad and was
trying to figure out how to reconcile my mind these
crimes and then also wanted to not believe it, and
then reading that was hard.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
So that's what I remember, just as you said it.
And it was hard to help you in any way
other than just kind of being your friend to listen
and be there if I could. You didn't want to
believe it. I remember that out of all of the
talking that we did, most of it you didn't want
it to be true.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Do you remember meeting him?
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yes, once. He was a real nice guy, just calming
and there was nothing, nothing to abnormal at all about him.
And I didn't realize.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Because you were my boyfriend at the time, no or
was he just like nobody.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Pulled me into the kitchen and asked me, you know
how I felt about you.
Speaker 9 (19:41):
And I really, yeah, I remember that, and I told
him that I cared about you a lot and you
were really cool, and uh, I just told him that
it was nice to meet him, and I thanked him
and I tried to keep it.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Cool, yeah, because you know I was nervous. You know,
I've never met him before. But he didn't didn't immediate
me at all. He didn't scare me in any way.
I didn't feel any Why would I have.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
From The Oregonian March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety five by
John Painter Junior, a long haul trucker told a Clark
County Sheriff's Office detective by phone that he strangled Julianne Winningham,
forty one, while raping her in the sleeper cap with
his rig after gagging her with duct tape. During the autopsy,
(20:36):
smokelike stains were found on parts of her body, suggesting
the corpse had been hauled around before being dumped. Keith H. Jesperson,
forty made his admission Friday to Detective Rick Buckner in
a telephone conversation. In an earlier phone message to Buckner
on Thursday, Jessperson, who is six feet six inches tall
(20:58):
and weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, that he'd tried
to kill himself a couple of times and it hasn't worked.
Not enough pills in the damn country.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
While Melissa has very strong recollections about what transpired between
her and Nick, Nick's memories are much more fond and kinder.
What becomes clear is that they went through a very
difficult situation as two young teenagers and it's still hard
as adults.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Something that I haven't really talked about a lot, though,
is that we got pregnant.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Do you remember that? Yes, And I haven't talked to
anybody about that. I tried not to think about it then,
and it came back years later. I mean, I had
a lot of emotions that came from it, and it
was when I had children later that's when things came back,
(22:07):
and that's when I started thinking about it again because
I would get too much emotions to think about it.
So I didn't and I probably should have. Now looking
back on it, I wish I would have go with
(22:29):
it better and maybe talk to you more about our options.
And I don't know, I have.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
No blame, Like we're young kids.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Is there a physical side to your relationship?
Speaker 8 (22:43):
There was a couple of incidents, do you remember, what
do you mean? Like we were we had kind of
a violent relationship a little bit. There are some aspects
that were were not healthy.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Probably arguing more than we should about certain things, not
knowing how to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I remember
we had some some heated discussions about what we know,
what we wanted to do, and how we were going
(23:20):
to move forward. I do remember that.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Do you think this was out of fear? Yeah? Probably.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You could tell that there was a pain, a hesitation
when Nick spoke about his own emotions regarding Melissa's pregnancy,
and it seemed like it was something that deeply bothered
him even now. Did you follow her father's case at
all over the years, do you remember?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
No? I didn't, only only because I was dealing with
my own emotions about stuff with her and I then
at that time I hadn't processed all the way yet. Anyways,
The last time I really thought about you, though, mostly
was when I was first married and had my first kid.
I was talking to my wife about you.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Yeah, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
I won't forget those those times. It's going to be
with me forever. Of course, it was a It was
an impact on my life too. Yeah, And like I
told you, I cared about you. So you were one
that one that got away for.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Me from I The Making of a Serial Killer by
Jack Olsen. My fourteen year old son Jason and my
fifteen year old daughter Melissa visited me through glass, and
it only made things worse. The phone connection was bad
and the guards rushed me away before we really started talking.
(24:55):
I cried as they led me off. I felt sorry
that my kids had to see me this way. I
couldn't even tell them I loved them. I had a
feeling I wouldn't see them again.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
After we left, we spoke a bit about what it
was like for Melissa to see Nick again and what
she took away from meeting with him.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I could tell you didn't want to talk about that.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
You know.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
You always tell me hurt people hurt, and I'm starting
to see maybe where his hurt came from. Yeah, you know,
I want I want the best for everybody. I want
(25:47):
people to be I want to think that people could
be reformed. I want to think that good things gonna
happen to people, and that there is redemption, there are changes,
there are like you know, I want to believe in that,
and if it's possible, then I hope he gets that.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
This ah, this moment from the Salt Lake City Tribune,
August twenty first, nineteen ninety five. When Julie smiled, it
was like sunshine came out of her mouth. She just
(26:29):
loved everybody and everything. Her sister Joni says in an
interview trucking was her way of life, and she wanted
to die on the road, but not like this, not
to be killed by some monster. With all the evidence
against me, it looks like I'm truly a black sheep.
His March twenty fourth letter reads, I'm sure they will
(26:50):
kill me for this. I'm sorry that I turned out
this way, he scrawled, I've been a killer for five
years and have killed eight people, assaulted more. I guess
I haven't learned anything.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I can see A spoke by afraid to be.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
When I found out I was pregnant and all that
was happening, and I decided I was going to have
an abortion. I told myself, this is going to be
a second chance in life. I'm gonna turn my life
around and everything's gonna be very intentional. I'm gonna come
up with a plan. And I promised myself I was
going to graduate high school, which I was the first
in my family to graduate, and I was going to
go to college, and I was going to get an
(27:44):
education so that I never have to live like this
ever again, and never be dependent upon a man ever again.
And I told myself I was going to start over
with my life.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Your dad's in prison at the time.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Yeah. Because I didn't have anybody to talk to, and
I didn't want to tell my mom, I wrote him
a letter and I said, I vented out like all
of my anger about what he did to our family
and to the victims families, and how much he's hurt everybody,
and that like I'm about my sorrow. I explained how
alone I felt to my sorrow. I remember the letter
(28:24):
being tear soaked. I sobbed and released everything that happened
to me. I told him I was an abusive relationship,
that I got pregnant, that I made the difficult choice
during the time of his incarceration to have an abortion.
My biggest fear is that I can be like my father.
(28:49):
I look like my father. Every night in the woods,
I wonder about DNA.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Sits alone, someome fight.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I know I'm not capable of murder. I know that
I could never cross that line.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
And he screams money.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
And so I was surprised.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
A couple months later, I got a letter from my
dad back in response.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And the sound feels oh.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
And when I open up a letter, first he he
mocks me for feeling sorry for myself. That's the first
part of the letter. It's just like I'm having a
pity party. And then the second part of the letter,
he said, I deserve to be in prison with me.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
You're a killer just like me.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, Mangesha Ticketer, and
Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by Claire Campbell,
Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor
is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown.
Assistant editor is Taylor Chiquoyne.
Previously on Happy Face.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Keith fell in high school. I believe it was twenty
five feet. When they interview killers, they have found that
a large percentage of them damaged their front bealob before
they were twenty two, changes their whole personality.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Keith's father, Lass was a very resourceful, ingenious man, but
he could be a monster.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
He was horrible. I hated him less told him, this
is the way what you're going to say in court
for the mobile art or absolutely he did.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
He dragged me to a nursing home to visit one
of his hunting buddies. He said, my friend's smitt. He's
not doing too good with his lung cancer. Keith talk
to him, son. Nobody likes to die alone. I never
feared a dead person after that.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
One of the few people that Keith opened up to
about his childhood was psychologist al Carlisle swe Can.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
By the age of eight, it was a lot of anger.
Speaker 5 (00:54):
If you do me wrong, I was going to I
was bound and determined to get even.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
Any learning problems.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
No life for you intelligence.
Speaker 5 (01:01):
I'm very intelligent, but I just didn't adapt myself to it.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I received a letter a week before he got arrested
it said, Rose, what I did is bigger than ol J. Simpson,
that I'll probably be in hell forever, in the bie Keith.
Speaker 6 (01:17):
In love fin with the sun.
Speaker 7 (01:21):
I don't know, shine, oh.
Speaker 4 (01:28):
Oh nice.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
The subconscious mind often knows the truth long before we do.
I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is happy face.
Speaker 2 (01:50):
I was driving in a car down the road, and
this is after your dad and I were separated. Actually
it was not officially divorce, but we were separated. And
they had on the news that they were searching for
the Green River Killer. And I go, hmm, I wonder
if that's Keith. Why did I say that? But I
(02:13):
think you internally know things that you don't stake, you
don't acknowledge, so.
Speaker 4 (02:21):
Intuitively, I just said it out loud. I go, I
wonder if that's Keith.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
And then I guess, like, oh, why did I think that?
I don't know, because I think by time we were separated,
I had so many more pieces of the puzzle, and
I was starting to connect things, because before it was
I got a piece here and a piece here. I
(02:47):
think I got enough pieces that I was beginning.
Speaker 3 (02:50):
To connect it. Melissa also remembers having thoughts she couldn't explain.
Speaker 5 (03:00):
There was a time where I actually had a vision
of my father behind bars, and there's nobody I could
tell to because nobody would believe me. It was when
I was in seventh grade. I was walking to school
and I had a mental image pop up in my
(03:20):
mind of my father being behind the glass and having
a telephone, and my stomach sunk and I felt sorrow
and sadness. I just remember thinking that was a very
intense emotion attached to the vision.
Speaker 7 (03:41):
We've gone too far.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
From I the Making of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen.
Dawn was coming and pretty soon the traffic could be
too heavy for me to unload her on the shoulder.
I thought back to when I first met her and
loved her and to her for all time. I needed
to do one more killing and then end this murder
machine for good. I put my fist against her throat
(04:10):
for the last time, just before she passed out. I
told her, you're number eight, and yes, I will get
away with it. She didn't breathe again.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
It's especially hard for Melissa to process some of her
seemingly happy memories now, even something as harmless as watching
television together.
Speaker 5 (04:38):
Growing up with my dad something that we used to
do together as we used to watch true crime shows,
even when I was like a young girl. I remember
him sitting on the brown velvet couch and I would
crawl up on his lap, and then because he was
so tall, I would actually crawl up on the back
of the couch and sit on his shoulders and we
would watch like Unsolved Mysteries. I remember that was seem
(05:00):
to be our favorite show, and I would always be
terrified at the end of the program as a young girl, thinking,
oh my gosh, there's there's a million ways I could
be abducted, and like just terrified, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Terrified as you're sitting on the yeah, as.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
I'm sitting on the shoulders of my father, thinking I
hope something like that never happens to me. I hope
that I know how to keep myself safe. And I
think that's partially why I watched these programs, as I
was looking for ways of like what did the victim
do that could have saved her life. I was analyzing this,
(05:38):
and ironically, I think my father was analyzing how to
get away with murder and what tools did the detectives have.
It is eerie to me to see the time my
timeline of events in my father's timeline of his murders,
because there's moments where we were to gather and then
(06:03):
knowing he had just committed a murder and now was
taking me to McDonald's like it was nothing. How was
he able to do that? Soon after my parents' divorce,
my dad would spend summer vacations with us, and during
(06:25):
his visitations he would say things.
Speaker 4 (06:28):
That were.
Speaker 5 (06:30):
Or alarming, were odd and bizarre and explicit.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
What and was it targeted towards you?
Speaker 5 (06:40):
Yeah, he would target it towards me. I didn't see
my brother and my sister getting the same treatment. Maybe
because I'm the oldest I was his confidant.
Speaker 3 (06:50):
It was just.
Speaker 5 (06:51):
Peppered throughout our conversations. These things he would say that
were startling. He would say, I know how to commit
the most perfect murder.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
How old were you?
Speaker 5 (07:02):
I was a young woman. I was in my early teens,
and I remember thinking this is odd, but it was
one of the first times I heard him say something
like that. He would say, I would cut the buttons
off of her jeans so that my fingerprints wouldn't be
on them. I would then wear my cycling shoes so
that I wouldn't leave a soule print in the dirt,
(07:24):
and then I would make sure her belongings were other places.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
From I the Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen,
I drove to a spot on the downhill side of
Highway fourteen on the Washington State side of the Columbia Gorge,
across the river from where I threw Tanya Bennett's body
in Oregon. I carried her over past a guardrail in
some garbage sacks and pitched her down a fifteen foot embankment.
(07:54):
I stared at her crumpled body in the weeds and thought,
how she'd only lasted five days with me. What a waste.
Speaker 3 (08:10):
Nineteen ninety five, the year Keith Jesperson was arrested, was
already an incredibly traumatic one for Melissa for a variety
of reasons. To get further insight into what she was
going through, we traveled to meet with her high school
boyfriend Nick.
Speaker 5 (08:28):
We're close to Shadele, so this is where I went
to high school in nineteen ninety five. When I heard
the news about my dad, I was going to the
school and I was dating a guy named Nick. He
was actually my first boyfriend. When I started my freshman
year here he was in my English class, and he
(08:50):
was just actually kind of simuch to my dad in
the sense that he was a jokester. He was funny,
everybody laughed, he was charismatic. He just seemed to an edge,
and like I thought that he was a misunderstood person.
I was out to prove that people didn't get him right.
And my friends and everybody said that he's bad news.
But he had been arrested. I had heard rumors about
(09:15):
drug deals. He had a pager. He had money all
the time, cash all the time. He had a money
club with lots of one hundred dollars bills.
Speaker 6 (09:23):
I found that appealing.
Speaker 5 (09:25):
He asked me to dance that fall, and before I
knew it, he just became a part of my life,
you know. And I got pregnant. I got pregnant my
freshman year. Something was off with my body, and I
could just tell something was up, and so I got
a pregnancy test and I went into the bathroom stall
(09:48):
here at Shadle, right here. It was after classes, and
the pregnancy test turned positive, and I was alone and thinking,
holy shit.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
Like what do I do?
Speaker 3 (10:05):
How did he react to finding out you were pregnant.
Speaker 6 (10:09):
Not well, not well at all.
Speaker 5 (10:10):
He didn't handle it well. I mean, like he's a
teenage boy too, so like I'll give him that. But
I didn't handle it well either. I was in panic
mode at that point. Once I found I was pregnant,
I was terrified. I had no idea what to do.
I couldn't tell my mom. I felt like if I
told my mom, she would think I was a whore.
And so right after I found out that was pregnant
(10:33):
is when the news hit about my dad.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
With her mother and siblings living in poverty, Melissa found
herself once again, back in her grandmother's basement, young and
scared and having to face a really difficult choice.
Speaker 6 (10:54):
You only have believe it's twelve weeks, and every week
that would pass, it was just like getting closer to
that deadline and the pressure is building.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
But also at the same time, while I was going
through that, I was learning about my dad and his
crimes and now we're living in the basement of my
grandmother's house. That's where Nick actually became a really critical
part in my.
Speaker 6 (11:19):
Life because he had a car.
Speaker 5 (11:21):
He would actually come to the north side of town
and come pick me up and take me to school.
He made it so much more convenient to get to school,
and I was in my relationship with him. It was a
very dysfunctional relationship. It was extreme highs and lows, and
when things were good, they were good. When things were
(11:42):
bad they were extremely bad. Physical and he was very
possessive of me. He would hold my when we walk
around high school. He would hold my belt loop and
just like he always had his hands on me, was
always claiming me with his space. And we were constantly
(12:05):
together and never had a break. It was a very
codepententent abusive relationship. I would say.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
From I the Creation of a Serial Killer by Jack Olsen,
I went back to my truck and rehearsed the lies
I planned to tell when I was arrested. I took
myself back to when I killed Tanya and tried to
figure out what made me cross the line into murder.
Was it the things I read about in the detective magazines,
arson animal abuse that I killed to make up for
(12:40):
a wasted life, for my own fuck ups. Was it
dad's fault, my brother's, my mother's. It was too easy
to blame the rest of the family. Maybe I was
just a no good son of a bitch that got
off on killing women. Maybe it was my nature.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
I was living a nightmare and it became my only
option in my mind. When I came home one day
saw my sleeping bag on the cot and thought, a
crib does not fit here next to a cot. I
just couldn't see it, and that's when the choice was
made for me. I don't see how a baby bed
could be right there, and it couldn't bear the thought
(13:23):
of being financially dependent on Nick or welfare like my
mom was. So I felt like the only option for
me to break out of this poverty was to not
have the baby. If anybody says nineteen ninety five, some
people will think, oh Jay Simpson. Some people will think
you know Menanda's brothers or something like that. I think
(13:46):
of the time I was in that dark bathroom stall,
seeing I was pregnant and the news hitting of my
dad and losing everything in my life. I really thought
everything was against me.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
As Melissa began to put the pieces of her past
back together after more than twenty years, she decided to
visit Nick, maybe to confront him, maybe foreclosure. It was
hard to tell, maybe just to remember.
Speaker 5 (14:28):
How far away from the house.
Speaker 3 (14:30):
We're just about a minute a walk.
Speaker 5 (14:33):
Okay, I just haven't seen him for at least twenty years.
I'm so nervous. Your destination is on the left.
Speaker 6 (14:44):
Oh right now, right there.
Speaker 5 (14:49):
Well, it's a cute house. Oh there he is on
the fort. Oh my god, he sees us. Okay, he's
dressed nice too. Okay, Hey, Nick, how are you a
long time?
Speaker 3 (15:06):
No?
Speaker 5 (15:06):
See, I'll go to say so. Thanks for agreeing it.
Speaker 8 (15:19):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (15:20):
So is the SR place?
Speaker 5 (15:22):
Yeah, we'll go.
Speaker 3 (15:24):
Melissa didn't think that Nick would sit down and meet
with her, and when I called him and reached out,
he immediately responded with such positivity. The first thing you
thought of when you walked through the door was it
was so bright and cheerful and didn't look like a
(15:45):
bachelor pad at all. The house was spotless, almost as
if it were staged for a real estate photo.
Speaker 4 (15:53):
I've got lots of spare room because I'm hoping to
get my kids coming soon. I'm working on it, working
on getting here.
Speaker 3 (16:01):
There was something very tidy and cheerful about the house,
and something very sad too, because you could feel the
absence of his kids. It's like he had built this
house for his children to enjoy, and they weren't there, so.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
State, No, they're with their mom right now. And it's
a long story. I was married for seven years, have
four kids, and all I want is my weekends, and
I just want the kids to know that I've been
trying and then I never stopped and I've never given up.
And whatever their mom says to them, they're going to
(16:42):
know something else someday too. And that's about all I
want to say about it right now, because it's it's
a mess. Sorry about that. Oh, it's okay, and life
and life happens. So yeah, And then I got one
more spot.
Speaker 3 (16:53):
At the end of the tour. We settled down at
this impeccably clean dining room table to talk about his
pastor with Morssa.
Speaker 4 (17:03):
Do you remember my members a little glory me too
on some of that.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
What do you remember from maybe just maybe you could
just tell me what you remember of that time frame?
Speaker 4 (17:13):
And then well, I remember one day you just coming
out and telling me that there was something about your
dad you wanted to tell me, and you weren't sure
if if the information was true or what to believe,
and you told me what you knew. It was shocking
to me, but I didn't know what to say or
what to do to help you.
Speaker 5 (17:34):
Time one murder, it was Julie Winningham, I didn't even
know her name yet, and we went to the library.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
We did several times and we would look up the
articles and I remember you had said you weren't sure
what to believe in it was shocking, and you also
had heard it after he was arrested. He had wrote
a letter to his family that had stuff in it
that you didn't get to know what was in it,
(18:02):
but you heard that he had made a lot of
statements that would have would be admissions. And I didn't
know what to think either. Yeah, we were just young.
Speaker 5 (18:13):
I was fifteen. How old were you seen fifteen as well?
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Both age. I remember just being stunned. I'm not sure
what to believe.
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, I just I trust to do and I didn't
feel judgment from you about it at all. Well. I
remember one paper in particular, there was a statement from
the son of Julie Winningham, the victim, that was towards
the end, towards the trial, and that was pretty devastating
where he talked about obviously he's torn up and devastated,
(18:44):
rightfully so, and wanted my dad to be killed, like
he wanted him dead. And I remember thinking, like, this
is really hard. At the time, you know, it was
a transition, like I still loved my dad and was
trying to figure out how to reconcile my mind these
crimes and then also wanted to not believe it, and
then reading that was hard.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
So that's what I remember, just as you said it.
And it was hard to help you in any way
other than just kind of being your friend to listen
and be there if I could. You didn't want to
believe it. I remember that out of all of the
talking that we did, most of it you didn't want
it to be true.
Speaker 3 (19:21):
Do you remember meeting him?
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Yes, once. He was a real nice guy, just calming
and there was nothing, nothing to abnormal at all about him.
And I didn't realize.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Because you were my boyfriend at the time, no or
was he just like nobody.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
Pulled me into the kitchen and asked me, you know
how I felt about you.
Speaker 9 (19:41):
And I really, yeah, I remember that, and I told
him that I cared about you a lot and you
were really cool, and uh, I just told him that
it was nice to meet him, and I thanked him
and I tried to keep it.
Speaker 4 (19:55):
Cool, yeah, because you know I was nervous. You know,
I've never met him before. But he didn't didn't immediate
me at all. He didn't scare me in any way.
I didn't feel any Why would I have.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
From The Oregonian March twenty ninth, nineteen ninety five by
John Painter Junior, a long haul trucker told a Clark
County Sheriff's Office detective by phone that he strangled Julianne Winningham,
forty one, while raping her in the sleeper cap with
his rig after gagging her with duct tape. During the autopsy,
(20:36):
smokelike stains were found on parts of her body, suggesting
the corpse had been hauled around before being dumped. Keith H. Jesperson,
forty made his admission Friday to Detective Rick Buckner in
a telephone conversation. In an earlier phone message to Buckner
on Thursday, Jessperson, who is six feet six inches tall
(20:58):
and weighs two hundred and fifty pounds, that he'd tried
to kill himself a couple of times and it hasn't worked.
Not enough pills in the damn country.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
While Melissa has very strong recollections about what transpired between
her and Nick, Nick's memories are much more fond and kinder.
What becomes clear is that they went through a very
difficult situation as two young teenagers and it's still hard
as adults.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Something that I haven't really talked about a lot, though,
is that we got pregnant.
Speaker 4 (21:43):
Do you remember that? Yes, And I haven't talked to
anybody about that. I tried not to think about it then,
and it came back years later. I mean, I had
a lot of emotions that came from it, and it
was when I had children later that's when things came back,
(22:07):
and that's when I started thinking about it again because
I would get too much emotions to think about it.
So I didn't and I probably should have. Now looking
back on it, I wish I would have go with
(22:29):
it better and maybe talk to you more about our options.
And I don't know, I have.
Speaker 5 (22:38):
No blame, Like we're young kids.
Speaker 4 (22:41):
Is there a physical side to your relationship?
Speaker 8 (22:43):
There was a couple of incidents, do you remember, what
do you mean? Like we were we had kind of
a violent relationship a little bit. There are some aspects
that were were not healthy.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Probably arguing more than we should about certain things, not
knowing how to talk about it. Yeah, yeah, I remember
we had some some heated discussions about what we know,
what we wanted to do, and how we were going
(23:20):
to move forward. I do remember that.
Speaker 5 (23:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (23:26):
Do you think this was out of fear? Yeah? Probably.
Speaker 3 (23:31):
You could tell that there was a pain, a hesitation
when Nick spoke about his own emotions regarding Melissa's pregnancy,
and it seemed like it was something that deeply bothered
him even now. Did you follow her father's case at
all over the years, do you remember?
Speaker 4 (23:50):
No? I didn't, only only because I was dealing with
my own emotions about stuff with her and I then
at that time I hadn't processed all the way yet. Anyways,
The last time I really thought about you, though, mostly
was when I was first married and had my first kid.
I was talking to my wife about you.
Speaker 5 (24:12):
Yeah, I got it, I got it.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
I won't forget those those times. It's going to be
with me forever. Of course, it was a It was
an impact on my life too. Yeah, And like I
told you, I cared about you. So you were one
that one that got away for.
Speaker 1 (24:32):
Me from I The Making of a Serial Killer by
Jack Olsen. My fourteen year old son Jason and my
fifteen year old daughter Melissa visited me through glass, and
it only made things worse. The phone connection was bad
and the guards rushed me away before we really started talking.
(24:55):
I cried as they led me off. I felt sorry
that my kids had to see me this way. I
couldn't even tell them I loved them. I had a
feeling I wouldn't see them again.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
After we left, we spoke a bit about what it
was like for Melissa to see Nick again and what
she took away from meeting with him.
Speaker 5 (25:22):
I could tell you didn't want to talk about that.
Speaker 7 (25:25):
You know.
Speaker 5 (25:26):
You always tell me hurt people hurt, and I'm starting
to see maybe where his hurt came from. Yeah, you know,
I want I want the best for everybody. I want
(25:47):
people to be I want to think that people could
be reformed. I want to think that good things gonna
happen to people, and that there is redemption, there are changes,
there are like you know, I want to believe in that,
and if it's possible, then I hope he gets that.
Speaker 1 (26:07):
This ah, this moment from the Salt Lake City Tribune,
August twenty first, nineteen ninety five. When Julie smiled, it
was like sunshine came out of her mouth. She just
(26:29):
loved everybody and everything. Her sister Joni says in an
interview trucking was her way of life, and she wanted
to die on the road, but not like this, not
to be killed by some monster. With all the evidence
against me, it looks like I'm truly a black sheep.
His March twenty fourth letter reads, I'm sure they will
(26:50):
kill me for this. I'm sorry that I turned out
this way, he scrawled, I've been a killer for five
years and have killed eight people, assaulted more. I guess
I haven't learned anything.
Speaker 7 (27:06):
I can see A spoke by afraid to be.
Speaker 5 (27:23):
When I found out I was pregnant and all that
was happening, and I decided I was going to have
an abortion. I told myself, this is going to be
a second chance in life. I'm gonna turn my life
around and everything's gonna be very intentional. I'm gonna come
up with a plan. And I promised myself I was
going to graduate high school, which I was the first
in my family to graduate, and I was going to
go to college, and I was going to get an
(27:44):
education so that I never have to live like this
ever again, and never be dependent upon a man ever again.
And I told myself I was going to start over
with my life.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Your dad's in prison at the time.
Speaker 5 (27:59):
Yeah. Because I didn't have anybody to talk to, and
I didn't want to tell my mom, I wrote him
a letter and I said, I vented out like all
of my anger about what he did to our family
and to the victims families, and how much he's hurt everybody,
and that like I'm about my sorrow. I explained how
alone I felt to my sorrow. I remember the letter
(28:24):
being tear soaked. I sobbed and released everything that happened
to me. I told him I was an abusive relationship,
that I got pregnant, that I made the difficult choice
during the time of his incarceration to have an abortion.
My biggest fear is that I can be like my father.
(28:49):
I look like my father. Every night in the woods,
I wonder about DNA.
Speaker 4 (28:56):
Sits alone, someome fight.
Speaker 5 (28:59):
I know I'm not capable of murder. I know that
I could never cross that line.
Speaker 7 (29:05):
And he screams money.
Speaker 6 (29:10):
And so I was surprised.
Speaker 5 (29:12):
A couple months later, I got a letter from my
dad back in response.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
And the sound feels oh.
Speaker 5 (29:19):
And when I open up a letter, first he he
mocks me for feeling sorry for myself. That's the first
part of the letter. It's just like I'm having a
pity party. And then the second part of the letter,
he said, I deserve to be in prison with me.
Speaker 6 (29:44):
You're a killer just like me.
Speaker 1 (29:55):
Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, Mangesha Ticketer, and
Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by Claire Campbell,
Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer. Story editor
is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays and Noel Brown.
Assistant editor is Taylor Chiquoyne.
Happy Face News
Hosts And Creators
Melissa Moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco
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