November 30, 2018 • 36 mins
Melissa married her husband Sam hoping to find stability and distance herself from her father’s crimes - but her inability to open up emotionally is destroying their marriage - and it leads them both to question whether Melissa is capable of feeling compassion - a psychopathic trait she and her father seem to share.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Previously on Happy Face. My name is Lauren Bride Pacheco
and I've worked with Melissa Jasperson Moore for about four years.
My father is Keith Hunter Jesperson. He's known as the
Happy Face serial killer. My mom had just said that
her and my dad were separating, which I didn't believe.
I wanted to keep like you guys as baby pictures,
(00:23):
and he chucked out all up. There was just this
thing that people said in the family. They would say, Oh,
that's just Keith, that's just how Keith is, and it
seemed to be acceptable. One of the few people that
Keith opened up to about his childhood was psychologist Al Carlisle.
Any learning problems, No, not really for you intelligence. I'm
(00:46):
very intelligent, but I just didn't adapt myself to it.
I got pregnant my freshman year, so right after I
found out is when the news hit about my dad.
I was dating a guy named Nick. It was a
very dysfunctional relationship, so I felt like the only option
for me to break out of this was to not
have the baby. A couple months later, I got a
(01:07):
letter from my dad. He said, you're a killer, just
like me. He deserved to be in prison with me. Yeah,
the vines in the vines, well Son, you don't know
shine o shi ohne. My dad always said that he
(01:42):
was not like his dad and the way he disciplined
me and my siblings. There was a time when I
was stayed out too late and didn't come home and
I worried my family, and my dad said, you know,
you went past your curfew. So he made me bend
over my dad and he pulled my pants down so
my bum was bare, and he took off his leather
(02:05):
belt and he started like whipping it, you know, like
slapping it, so it made a slapping noise, and he
kept threatening that he was going to whip me with
it or spank me with it, and so I was
sobbing and pleading with him not to hit me, because
like the sound alone of the leather slapping was terrifying,
(02:27):
and just being so vulnerable with your tush in the air,
like I knew it was going to hurt really bad,
and he didn't. He just kept toying with the idea
that he was going to hit me. How old were
you It was at the farmhouse of six, about six
years old, and he made sure that there was always
(02:48):
the threat of being spanked, Like he would threatened to
spank us, and you just needed a threaten you'd whip
up real fast. I mean, because just his size and
how he made those sounds was terrifying. He must have
known the fear. Yeah, he must have. For all of
(03:15):
Melissa's happy childhood memories regarding her father, darker one surfaced
as our journey progressed. Although he never physically hit them,
Keith still managed to instill a sense of fear in
Melissa and her siblings. As the saying goes, not all
scars are visible. I'm Lauren Bray Pacheco. This is happy face.
(03:52):
My dad would be home on the weekends, Saturday morning
and Sunday morning, Like any weekend morning, we always want
to wake up our dad. So we would rush the
bed with my mom and dad in it, and we
would jump on him and tackle us, and it just
became a whole hour of tackling and tickling while he
was trying to get out of bed. So we would
(04:13):
get more and more aggressive, like with our tactics, Like
I would get a further running start and run and
then jump on the bed. And then I would jump
on the bed and then really try to pound on
my dad, like because he could handle it, because you
could see that he could hold Oh, just a young kid.
I was like five to seven or so, like really young.
(04:34):
I just would go and jump on him and he
could take him. My brother would get aggressive. I remember
him like elbowing him, and then my dad like pinning
him down and wrestling him. And with me, he pinned
me down and started tickling me, but it was to
the point of like I was gonna pay my pants,
and I kept screaming I was gonna pay my pants.
They kept tickling me, but it turned from like it
(04:58):
was funny, like let you go if you're like no,
really serious had to go, you know, you would let
your child go, But all of a sudden, it was
now like I control you, and it turned into like
now I'm sobbing because I'm it's becoming painful to be tickled,
you know. So you'd go from laughing to crying, yeah,
(05:19):
and then would he stop. He would eventually let me go,
but it was when he wanted to let me go.
That just was his way with us. Anything I was
afraid of or didn't like, he made sure to push
it and push me beyond my comfort, just to let
me know he had control. It may sound very harmless
(05:39):
or little to somebody else, but it was. It was
a message. He was giving me a message that he
controls me. I mean, there's so many is the little
tiny lessons of that. It's like touching the electric fence.
So we have around the perferle of the farm, we
had an electric fence and I asked him, Dad, is
the fence on. He's like, we'll touch it and find
out I touched it. And when you touch it, you
(06:03):
can't let go. Your hand will let go? Like my
hand I remember was on it and it was like
vibrating and I couldn't release my hand because it gripped it.
And he was laughing. It was all to tell me
that he could do what he wants and that you
were his yep. And I had to watch my feelings
(06:27):
around my kids. I had to watch because if they
did something wrong and made me want to feel like
punishing them because I know what my dad would do
to me. I feel like I had to really watch
myself that I didn't allow myself. See here, I'm a
murderer and I've been out here and I've been doing this.
I said, I've got to watch my emotions around people
I love. There is, like you say, maybe not a controller,
(06:50):
because I'm not. There are things that made setting me
off and I had to watch that. It was too
easily done, as times where I've gotten with people friends
of mine and I just sit there and said, I
can't stay here. You don't see it, but I do,
and I'm not going to stick around because I will
do something about it eventually. After her father's capture, enter
(07:19):
chaotic relationship with Nick, Melissa tried to find a sense
of security and safety and love, just a normal life.
But something was always missing. Why was that so important
to you that you create this stable home life. Well,
it actually goes back to the breakup with Nick. When
(07:42):
I broke up with Nick, it was a relationship that
I didn't want to repeat. So I made a list
of all the things that weren't working for me, that
were harmful. And I took a look at what my parents'
relationship was and my mom's new relationship was, and I
realized I didn't want to repeat that. In order to
do that, I had to make a list of what
(08:04):
wouldn't work for me. So I made this checklist and
I put it in my diary. And there's this moment
when I met Sam, and as he was talking, I
was checking off that list in my head of all
the things that I needed to ensure that I didn't
follow in my mom's footsteps. Give me an example. What
(08:26):
was on that list. Oh? Number one, he had to
be college educated. I didn't want to live in poverty
and I didn't want to be in a relationship that
if I was going to have children with someone that
it was unstable. Two travel the world, had a worldview.
I wanted to see the world. I had this stream
(08:46):
of traveling. Three that he was transparent and honest and
I could count on them and know that everything that
he says would be truthful. Those are the top ones.
And I first met him. The first thing he said
is he's in college and he's getting his degree in
international relations. And then he already lived in Portugal for
(09:08):
two years. So he, to me, was the best man
that I had ever met in Spokane. On paper, he
was everything that I needed. The hymn Melissa refers to
is Sam, her estranged husband and father of her two children.
We spoke to Sam about how the relationship began and evolved.
(09:33):
So tell me how you and Melissa first met. How
old were you and where was it. Oh, it was
a while ago. I was twenty five or twenty six
right in there, and Melissa was like twenty one, and
it was pretty unique. I grew up Mormon, and so
every Friday there would always be an activity at dance
(09:56):
for singles. I remember I had just broken up with
a girl and I didn't want to go out. I
didn't want to go hang out with anybody, and I
had two roommates and they wanted me out of the house.
They're like, time fore to go do something. We're going
to go to the dance. It was in West Plains
in Spokane, Washington. It's a big gymnasium full of people.
Knew most everybody there because it's all of my peers,
(10:17):
the people I hanged out with, and I was kind
of reluctant to even be there, but I also was
enjoying the music. So I went and sat up on
the stage and I was just watching everybody dance, and
I was looking around the room trying to figure out
if I was going to date again. And then I
(10:38):
remember it very clearly. Side doors of the gym opened,
up and beautiful blonde walked in. Everything was dark. I
had never seen her before. I was very, very interested,
so at that moment I decided to probably be open
(10:58):
to dating again. I was sitting on the stage trying
to be a loner, which isn't my normal personality actually,
and I would just watch her mingle with some people.
And then after a little while she approached me. She
came up to me on the stage and she sat
next to me. I was right next to the speakers,
(11:20):
so you couldn't really hear each other. So she started
trying to talk to me, and as she tried, I
moved closer to her so that we could hear each other,
and she started talking in my ear, and I was smitten.
I asked her for her phone number, and I asked
for a chance to be able to catch up with her,
(11:41):
and she left. I left. I think we went to
Sherry's as a group. Usually after dances, as a collective
Mormon group, you always go like to Denny's or Sherry's
or something like that. And I remember the whole night,
I just kind of stop thinking about her, and I
didn't call her for like two or three days. Was
(12:02):
that calculated? No? I was just turned nervous. It's a
glow group break, no, mm hmmm. For Melissa, Sam's greatest
(12:46):
appeal was that he represented everything her father did not.
Were your first impressions of Sam physically, Oh, he had
a goateee that was kind of long, and and he
was wearing a leather jacket not normally like stylistically, and
(13:06):
maybe as girls like we all can relate to this,
you're like, Oh, that's changeable. The closer changeable. It's really
the antithesis of your father physically though too, and in
terms of emotionally, your dad six foot six, Sam was
probably closer to five foot six. Yeah, he's five ' six.
(13:29):
He instantly did he feel safe, Uh, yeah, because he
wasn't pursuing me. Well, it felt like he wasn't pursuing
me at all, like I had to be the pursuer.
So that felt incredibly safe. Yeah. He put my phone
number in his flip phone and then he never called me,
never did And I worked at Victoria's Secret and then
(13:49):
one day he just shows up at my job. So
she worked on the makeup side of Victoria's Secret, and
so I showed up to the makeup side and I
asked for help to like for a perfume or something,
but really the goal was to get to meet Melissa
and she I don't know if she asked me or
(14:10):
if I asked her. I was like, hey, can oh,
I asked her? I remember now he says, you know, like, hey,
you know I was talking to Lisha, your friend, and
she said that you could use a good guy in
your life, and do you want to go out? I
said sure, and so I gave them a day. We
set the date up, and then like in a few
(14:31):
days when it was supposed to happen, I was trying
to like make sure it was going to happen, and
she told me that she kind of go out, like
one of her friends asked her to like watch their kid.
So I told him like, oh, you know, I forgot,
I'm babysitting. And then he thought I was, you know,
making up an excuse to turn him down and not
to go out with him. And I said, well, actually
you want to just come with me. She goes, but
(14:51):
you're welcome to come watch the kid with me, and
I obviously said yes, and I just thought it was
a good guy. And we went out to Denny's where
everybody hung out, like if you didn't want your day
to end, you just go to Denny's or Sherry's. And
I remember we were talking about the I don't know
why I came up, but one of my favorite fables
(15:13):
was the Sirens fable, and so we were talking about that,
The Sirens. Yes, I don't know why I like that fable.
Maybe because the female house the power. It's subtle, but
even on their first date, Melissa's tiny exertion of control
has echoes of her father. We were on our date
(15:36):
at Sherry's and I remember she did something that no
other girl was capable of doing. I really detest ranch dressing.
There was no way I was ever going to eat
ranch dressing. And she was eating like a piece of chicken,
and she asked me to eat it, and I told
her no. I go, I don't like ranch dressing. And
(15:56):
then I ate ranch dressing. And I remember, like no
girl had ever had that kind of power over me,
and I found it really attractive that she didn't take
no for me. Did you guys get serious? Really quickly?
We did, so instead of taking her home, I took
her back to my place. And in the Mormon community,
that's not a normal next step. I took her back
(16:19):
to my place and while we were there and we
didn't do anything, we made out, but still that was
the fastest relationship that I've ever had, like to move
that quickly on paper. Sam was everything Melissa would want
in a partner, but her fear of vulnerability always overshadowed
her desire for connection. This is somebody who physically doesn't
(16:43):
look like my dad, doesn't act like my father in
any shape or form, so he felt safe in all
of those categories. I craved to have everything that I
was missing growing up, but I emotionally couldn't connect to it.
What was your fear during that time? My biggest fear
(17:05):
was that everybody would find out about my past and
that it would take this life that I curated and
make it crumble down, that it would fall apart, that
everything I worked for and survived for would fall apart,
and that people would find out that I'm just like
my father and I would lose everything. You know, It's
(17:28):
interesting to go back and meet with people that I
dated in the past and then this to be a
common thread that I was emotionally just in the relationship
that they constantly had to work to find out what
I was feeling. Yes, I was a very emotionally removed person.
That scared me, but that was a vulnerability that was
(17:48):
trained out of me. If I was vulnerable with my dad,
he exploited it. If I was vulnerable with these boyfriends,
what would happen. It scared me to think that I
wasn't capable of love, and that's a precursor to psychopathy,
that I could be a psychopath if I couldn't have
empathy or love. And I honestly didn't feel when I
(18:11):
left a lot of these relationships, I didn't feel sad
to leave them. I was relieved to leave these relationships.
So it caused me to further wonder if I was
just like my dad. In Sam, Melissa saw the stability
she desperately craved, and his religious upbringing provided stark contrast
(18:35):
to her father's crimes. But in reality, Sam was very
much questioning his faith and rebelling against it. Melissa became
part of that rebellion. What did you know about her family?
Do you remember? Yeah? I remember when she first told me.
I think we were at a mom's place where you've
(18:56):
been now. They used to have like a trampoline in
the front of the yard. I think we were on
the trampoline and we were like looking up at the stars.
That's when Melissa told me who her dad was, and
once again I was so smitten. To be honest, I
didn't really care, and I don't think I understood the magnitude,
like the gravity of what her father was, and I
(19:19):
didn't see it as a reflection of who she was.
Like I would hate for somebody to ever think that
my parents a reflection of me. I mean, obviously we are,
but like, I don't want to be judged for that.
When was the first time Sam said you aren't there emotionally?
When was the first time that he doubted? It was
always the elephant in the room, the lack of connection.
(19:45):
I thought, if we don't acknowledge it, then it doesn't exist,
and therefore everything's normal. Don't bring it up. And so
there wasn't anything verbally spoken about it until three years ago.
We had a conversation about where things were at in
our marriage and that was his complaint. And what did
(20:05):
he say. He said, you never a look in my eyes,
and you never kissed me, and it really bothered him.
And it's true it's true, and it has nothing to
do with him. I don't blame him. It was nothing
to do with him at all. It was everything to
(20:27):
do with me. In the freaking shish in for a secco,
I did no you dog, Senes. In what must have
(20:55):
been one of the most surreal moments in their marriage,
one day, Melissa is sad I did to visit Keith.
Melissa and I were at home one day and I
think she had either just received a letter or maybe
had come across the letter, and she asked me if
it was weird that she hadn't seen her dad, and
(21:17):
I was like, I don't know. I don't know if
it's weird, Army, he is in prison for murder. So no,
I don't think it's that weird. She goes, how would
you feel if I was to go see him again?
And I was like, whether you want to or not,
I'm here for you. And uh, I said, we'll just
think about it, and she did. She thought about it
for a little while, and then she goes, I think
(21:37):
I'm gonna do that, and so I took some time off.
We told her when we were going on a trip
to Oregon, and we didn't tell anyone what we were
going to go do, and we ended up getting to
the prison with our kids, and so we ended up
like following the guards through this like may of like
(22:00):
sales like where they would open up a gate and
you open up another gate and you're kind of like
following them through. And then they brought us into this
like lobby which had like couches laid out, and I
was trying to figure out how it was working, and
I was waiting for them to come get us, and
I was trying to figure out, so Melissa, when you
go see your dad, I'll just stay here with the kids.
(22:21):
And then I started looking around the room and there
was guards at the doors with guns, and all the
men in the room were wearing denim and I wasn't
wearing dunim. I was like, man, that must be the
style and Oregon or something, so naive I am, oh,
(22:46):
And then I started noticing that they're like pretty tied
it up. And it was when we were in the
room then I realized that we were going to meet
Melissa's dad in person. I had no idea, and like
after a little while, Melissa's dad came in and he's massive,
like he is such a big man. I mean, I
(23:07):
knew he was big, but I don't think I knew
how big he was. I remember I stood up, Melissa
stood up, and the kids were with us, and I
don't remember if he hugged Melissa, but I remember his
interaction with me. He shook my hand and he said,
thank you for taking such good care of my daughter.
That was the very first thing he said, and I
(23:28):
was like, oh, I might be able to handle this guy.
So he sat down next to us. I think he
asked us if we wanted to have the kids go
play over in the play area or not, and we're like, no,
we'll keep them here. And I wasn't very cognizant of
even what my kids were enduring, or even what Melissa
was feeling, because my anxiety level was really high. I
didn't know if I had to move it like into
(23:49):
a protective mode or like into a kindness mode. I
was really distraught. I didn't know what to do. Was
it crazy? It was, because like I wasn't expecting it
to look like that, And he was actually pretty genuine
and pretty kind. The banter back and forth between Melissa
and her dad seemed kind of normal. He asked if
we wanted to go outside. I guess there's an outside
(24:11):
area that you could go sit in, and we just
had a dialogue back and forth. That was weird. What's
going through your mind at any point? Are you looking
at this face and hearing this voice and hearing the
small talk and thinking this man murdered people? Yes? Absolutely.
I was able to sit next to a horrible, horrible
(24:31):
person that could killate women, and I wasn't able to
even distinguish that that's what he was. And I used
to consider myself pretty good at reading people, like assessing
who they are, and at that very moment, I realized
that most it'd be easy for all of us to
be prey. And that blew my mind. That was going
(24:52):
through my head the entire time while he's talking to
Melissa as like he murdered a people from I the
creation of a serial killer by jack Olson. My size
intimidated the guards and they chained me up whenever I
was moved. I explained that I wasn't going to harm anyone,
(25:15):
but they'd heard that story before. It didn't matter how
nice and polite I acted. I was assumed to be
a cold blooded killer who would murder anyone he could
get his hands on. This took some time to get
used to. Melissa and Sam had gone to visit her
(25:45):
father in prison, not knowing what to expect, and they
left with a very surreal souvenir. Explain to me the picture.
Because I look at that, I'm like, that is the
craziest family portrait I've ever seen. Yeah, so when done,
there was an option to get a picture taken, and
so we did. We got a picture with Melissa's dad,
(26:06):
and to be honest with you, google the internet. That
will probably be the first thing that pops up is
a picture of Melissa's dad, my daughter, my son, and me,
and you could see the size gap of me versus him,
and he's just a massive man. It must have been
a blessing that the kids were too small to ask
oh completely, you know, I Melissa and I were sensitive
(26:28):
for a long time because people assess, how could you
ever take your children around such a horrible person. And
I think people don't understand what it was like. The
whole room was full of children, Like kids were playing
with their dads because their dads are coming to visit
their children, and so I think what was stranger is
the fact that Melissa's dad, who murdered eight people, would
be in general population, which is normal criminals. I think
(26:53):
that's the real question is how could somebody do such
horrific things and be amidst people that maybe like smoked
weed and they were treated equally. Eventually, Melissa's inability to
connect with Sam and to truly reciprocate his love took
its toll. There was a comfort as roommates. We got
(27:17):
along great, and we were good friends. We still are
good friends, so it was easy to stay longer and
longer in this relationship because we're such good friends. But
I knew when he brought up three years ago that
he wanted someone to be passionately in love with him,
that he would find it, probably with someone else. You
(27:37):
guys just weren't happy. Yeah, I don't think we. If
he was honest, he would say he wasn't happy. He
wouldn't say that he wasn't happy with me. He wasn't
happy with living without those things that he wanted in
his life. Sam said neither. He simply acknowledged a burden
(28:00):
Keith's crimes placed on Melissa and how much he'd seen
her struggle to atone for them, but he never blamed her.
I think it has compelled Melissa to have to be
harder on herself than the average person. And we're all
pretty hard on ourselves as it is, Like, take whatever
you are as a person and magnify that. I can
(28:22):
only imagine she's had to deal with people saying that
she was collecting blood money by sharing her story, that
we were irrational bad parents by taking our kids to
visit a serial killer in a prison. I mean, you
put it in words, yeah, absolutely could build an argument
to that, but when you put it into actuality of
(28:42):
what really happened, it's the furthest thing from the truth.
Our children have always come first from Melissa, and I
think it's compelled her to have to over exaggerate her
feelings for other people, for herself, for our kids, always
kind of on the defensive to prove that she's not
like her father. The burden she carries must be immense.
(29:05):
And what's your take on Jess person as opposed to
your take on Melissa, Like, if you had to be
brutally honest about your take on him, So, if I
was to be brutally honest, I would say that he
definitely corrupted his family, and he made it so that
they were in pain and in trauma, and that pain
and trauma is carried over into her future relationships, and
(29:27):
it's made it so she's had to overcompensate to define
who she is, to separate herself from who he is,
and it's put her in a really difficult situation. And
to say that there wasn't an impact would not be honest.
What's Melissa's biggest fear? Abandonment? I think I think she's
(29:48):
afraid that she'll be alone and that she would end
up being a lot like her dad, that what everyone
has said is true. I think that's probably her biggest fear.
But anything that's changing, like, I think she's becoming way
more self aware. I've seen how strong she was, and
I really just thought she could change the world, and
(30:09):
I thought by her sharing her story, other people could
have hope. When I was eighteen nineteen, I was naive,
still naives to the world on crime and everything I was.
I was basically a good person that wouldn't never push
(30:30):
anything past anything. I would never do anything. When did
you stop hearing well my divorce, the different problems with
my girlfriend and trucking in the jobs and everything kind
of escalating. I can't trust nobody around me, and I
(30:51):
only trust myself, and you know, the cruelty of life
just basically caused me to think, well, hell, what would
you say if you could confront jessperson on what he's done? Okay,
send Melissa to his family. If he's listening to this,
(31:13):
what do you hope he hears? I would tell him
that the way he treated his daughter complicated my marriage,
complicated Melissa's life, but didn't make it so it didn't
get better, and he has no control of anything. Who
(31:34):
he is is really insignificant, and because of the experiences
that we've all gone through because of him, we're actually
stronger and better. And it's okay that he's not remorseful
for what he's done, because everyone else's remorse makes up
the difference. And if he goes away, he goes away
(31:57):
alone and without everything hurts about building a life with
someone and then deciding to separate. I really discredited hearing
from other people when they said they went through a divorce.
(32:18):
It just seemed almost so casual because I was so
removed from their lives. But the pain is actually more
intense than I ever thought was possible. It's mourning, yeah,
it's absolutely grieving. There's anger. There are the five stages
of grief for sure, and I've gone through all of
(32:39):
them and I've read every book I could read, and
they say it takes like two years for you to
feel normal again. And it's probably very similar to someone
who lost someone that they loved to death in some ways,
just because you're used to the little things, the day
to day things like calling after a meeting or when
you get home having the dishes, I'm all ready for you,
(33:01):
or you know those, you can lean on that person,
and then when you divorce and separate, then now you
have to create a new life, a new normalcy. She
always talks about how she's leaned in on me, but
I've always leaned in on her, like she went through
such trauma and so much pain, and she found her
(33:21):
voice even when it's not easy to do. She still
continuously puts herself in situations that most people want to do.
She's so brave and watching her be brave, as I'll
be be brave. I like kids. I like my kids,
but I wasn't really a family man. I really didn't
(33:43):
want to be the family man. I didn't want the
I didn't want to end up like well, put my
kids through what I went through, and here I am
putting through, putting them through worse and what I went through,
you know, a lot of things because you're they have
to be raised with the idea that dad's a killer, murderer.
(34:06):
My fear still to this day, is that I'm incapable
of loving in the way that people expect me to
love them. You know, Sam swears that I probably could
love him the way he wants to be loved, but
I don't believe. I just don't want to lie to people.
I don't want to feel like a fraud of living
too many years feeling like a fraud, and I feel
like the best policies just to be up front and
(34:28):
let people decide if this works for them or not.
And so with Sam, I've been really transparent with him
to let him know that this is where I stand,
this is what I am, and my level of being
able to give. Is it about control, though? Is your
fear of love about losing control, about letting go, about
(34:52):
having something have power over you? Absolutely, because if you
fall in love, you give up your loverage you give up.
You can be blindsided in a hot moment, and I
don't want to ever be that vulnerable, to be blindsided,
and I just don't want to risk that again. On
(35:20):
the next Happy Face, Melissa faces her greatest fears and
her father's demons. But it seems now that you want
the world to know who you are, not Melissa More,
but the daughter of the Happy Face Killer. I've created
a monster in you. This is why I don't lead
(35:44):
these letters. Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works.
Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco Mangesha Ticketur,
and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is no Brown. Music by
Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
(36:05):
Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicogne. Special thanks
to Phil Stanford, the publishers of The Oregonian Newspaper, and
the Carlisle family.
Previously on Happy Face. My name is Lauren Bride Pacheco
and I've worked with Melissa Jasperson Moore for about four years.
My father is Keith Hunter Jesperson. He's known as the
Happy Face serial killer. My mom had just said that
her and my dad were separating, which I didn't believe.
I wanted to keep like you guys as baby pictures,
(00:23):
and he chucked out all up. There was just this
thing that people said in the family. They would say, Oh,
that's just Keith, that's just how Keith is, and it
seemed to be acceptable. One of the few people that
Keith opened up to about his childhood was psychologist Al Carlisle.
Any learning problems, No, not really for you intelligence. I'm
(00:46):
very intelligent, but I just didn't adapt myself to it.
I got pregnant my freshman year, so right after I
found out is when the news hit about my dad.
I was dating a guy named Nick. It was a
very dysfunctional relationship, so I felt like the only option
for me to break out of this was to not
have the baby. A couple months later, I got a
(01:07):
letter from my dad. He said, you're a killer, just
like me. He deserved to be in prison with me. Yeah,
the vines in the vines, well Son, you don't know
shine o shi ohne. My dad always said that he
(01:42):
was not like his dad and the way he disciplined
me and my siblings. There was a time when I
was stayed out too late and didn't come home and
I worried my family, and my dad said, you know,
you went past your curfew. So he made me bend
over my dad and he pulled my pants down so
my bum was bare, and he took off his leather
(02:05):
belt and he started like whipping it, you know, like
slapping it, so it made a slapping noise, and he
kept threatening that he was going to whip me with
it or spank me with it, and so I was
sobbing and pleading with him not to hit me, because
like the sound alone of the leather slapping was terrifying,
(02:27):
and just being so vulnerable with your tush in the air,
like I knew it was going to hurt really bad,
and he didn't. He just kept toying with the idea
that he was going to hit me. How old were
you It was at the farmhouse of six, about six
years old, and he made sure that there was always
(02:48):
the threat of being spanked, Like he would threatened to
spank us, and you just needed a threaten you'd whip
up real fast. I mean, because just his size and
how he made those sounds was terrifying. He must have
known the fear. Yeah, he must have. For all of
(03:15):
Melissa's happy childhood memories regarding her father, darker one surfaced
as our journey progressed. Although he never physically hit them,
Keith still managed to instill a sense of fear in
Melissa and her siblings. As the saying goes, not all
scars are visible. I'm Lauren Bray Pacheco. This is happy face.
(03:52):
My dad would be home on the weekends, Saturday morning
and Sunday morning, Like any weekend morning, we always want
to wake up our dad. So we would rush the
bed with my mom and dad in it, and we
would jump on him and tackle us, and it just
became a whole hour of tackling and tickling while he
was trying to get out of bed. So we would
(04:13):
get more and more aggressive, like with our tactics, Like
I would get a further running start and run and
then jump on the bed. And then I would jump
on the bed and then really try to pound on
my dad, like because he could handle it, because you
could see that he could hold Oh, just a young kid.
I was like five to seven or so, like really young.
(04:34):
I just would go and jump on him and he
could take him. My brother would get aggressive. I remember
him like elbowing him, and then my dad like pinning
him down and wrestling him. And with me, he pinned
me down and started tickling me, but it was to
the point of like I was gonna pay my pants,
and I kept screaming I was gonna pay my pants.
They kept tickling me, but it turned from like it
(04:58):
was funny, like let you go if you're like no,
really serious had to go, you know, you would let
your child go, But all of a sudden, it was
now like I control you, and it turned into like
now I'm sobbing because I'm it's becoming painful to be tickled,
you know. So you'd go from laughing to crying, yeah,
(05:19):
and then would he stop. He would eventually let me go,
but it was when he wanted to let me go.
That just was his way with us. Anything I was
afraid of or didn't like, he made sure to push
it and push me beyond my comfort, just to let
me know he had control. It may sound very harmless
(05:39):
or little to somebody else, but it was. It was
a message. He was giving me a message that he
controls me. I mean, there's so many is the little
tiny lessons of that. It's like touching the electric fence.
So we have around the perferle of the farm, we
had an electric fence and I asked him, Dad, is
the fence on. He's like, we'll touch it and find
out I touched it. And when you touch it, you
(06:03):
can't let go. Your hand will let go? Like my
hand I remember was on it and it was like
vibrating and I couldn't release my hand because it gripped it.
And he was laughing. It was all to tell me
that he could do what he wants and that you
were his yep. And I had to watch my feelings
(06:27):
around my kids. I had to watch because if they
did something wrong and made me want to feel like
punishing them because I know what my dad would do
to me. I feel like I had to really watch
myself that I didn't allow myself. See here, I'm a
murderer and I've been out here and I've been doing this.
I said, I've got to watch my emotions around people
I love. There is, like you say, maybe not a controller,
(06:50):
because I'm not. There are things that made setting me
off and I had to watch that. It was too
easily done, as times where I've gotten with people friends
of mine and I just sit there and said, I
can't stay here. You don't see it, but I do,
and I'm not going to stick around because I will
do something about it eventually. After her father's capture, enter
(07:19):
chaotic relationship with Nick, Melissa tried to find a sense
of security and safety and love, just a normal life.
But something was always missing. Why was that so important
to you that you create this stable home life. Well,
it actually goes back to the breakup with Nick. When
(07:42):
I broke up with Nick, it was a relationship that
I didn't want to repeat. So I made a list
of all the things that weren't working for me, that
were harmful. And I took a look at what my parents'
relationship was and my mom's new relationship was, and I
realized I didn't want to repeat that. In order to
do that, I had to make a list of what
(08:04):
wouldn't work for me. So I made this checklist and
I put it in my diary. And there's this moment
when I met Sam, and as he was talking, I
was checking off that list in my head of all
the things that I needed to ensure that I didn't
follow in my mom's footsteps. Give me an example. What
(08:26):
was on that list. Oh? Number one, he had to
be college educated. I didn't want to live in poverty
and I didn't want to be in a relationship that
if I was going to have children with someone that
it was unstable. Two travel the world, had a worldview.
I wanted to see the world. I had this stream
(08:46):
of traveling. Three that he was transparent and honest and
I could count on them and know that everything that
he says would be truthful. Those are the top ones.
And I first met him. The first thing he said
is he's in college and he's getting his degree in
international relations. And then he already lived in Portugal for
(09:08):
two years. So he, to me, was the best man
that I had ever met in Spokane. On paper, he
was everything that I needed. The hymn Melissa refers to
is Sam, her estranged husband and father of her two children.
We spoke to Sam about how the relationship began and evolved.
(09:33):
So tell me how you and Melissa first met. How
old were you and where was it. Oh, it was
a while ago. I was twenty five or twenty six
right in there, and Melissa was like twenty one, and
it was pretty unique. I grew up Mormon, and so
every Friday there would always be an activity at dance
(09:56):
for singles. I remember I had just broken up with
a girl and I didn't want to go out. I
didn't want to go hang out with anybody, and I
had two roommates and they wanted me out of the house.
They're like, time fore to go do something. We're going
to go to the dance. It was in West Plains
in Spokane, Washington. It's a big gymnasium full of people.
Knew most everybody there because it's all of my peers,
(10:17):
the people I hanged out with, and I was kind
of reluctant to even be there, but I also was
enjoying the music. So I went and sat up on
the stage and I was just watching everybody dance, and
I was looking around the room trying to figure out
if I was going to date again. And then I
(10:38):
remember it very clearly. Side doors of the gym opened,
up and beautiful blonde walked in. Everything was dark. I
had never seen her before. I was very, very interested,
so at that moment I decided to probably be open
(10:58):
to dating again. I was sitting on the stage trying
to be a loner, which isn't my normal personality actually,
and I would just watch her mingle with some people.
And then after a little while she approached me. She
came up to me on the stage and she sat
next to me. I was right next to the speakers,
(11:20):
so you couldn't really hear each other. So she started
trying to talk to me, and as she tried, I
moved closer to her so that we could hear each other,
and she started talking in my ear, and I was smitten.
I asked her for her phone number, and I asked
for a chance to be able to catch up with her,
(11:41):
and she left. I left. I think we went to
Sherry's as a group. Usually after dances, as a collective
Mormon group, you always go like to Denny's or Sherry's
or something like that. And I remember the whole night,
I just kind of stop thinking about her, and I
didn't call her for like two or three days. Was
(12:02):
that calculated? No? I was just turned nervous. It's a
glow group break, no, mm hmmm. For Melissa, Sam's greatest
(12:46):
appeal was that he represented everything her father did not.
Were your first impressions of Sam physically, Oh, he had
a goateee that was kind of long, and and he
was wearing a leather jacket not normally like stylistically, and
(13:06):
maybe as girls like we all can relate to this,
you're like, Oh, that's changeable. The closer changeable. It's really
the antithesis of your father physically though too, and in
terms of emotionally, your dad six foot six, Sam was
probably closer to five foot six. Yeah, he's five ' six.
(13:29):
He instantly did he feel safe, Uh, yeah, because he
wasn't pursuing me. Well, it felt like he wasn't pursuing
me at all, like I had to be the pursuer.
So that felt incredibly safe. Yeah. He put my phone
number in his flip phone and then he never called me,
never did And I worked at Victoria's Secret and then
(13:49):
one day he just shows up at my job. So
she worked on the makeup side of Victoria's Secret, and
so I showed up to the makeup side and I
asked for help to like for a perfume or something,
but really the goal was to get to meet Melissa
and she I don't know if she asked me or
(14:10):
if I asked her. I was like, hey, can oh,
I asked her? I remember now he says, you know, like, hey,
you know I was talking to Lisha, your friend, and
she said that you could use a good guy in
your life, and do you want to go out? I
said sure, and so I gave them a day. We
set the date up, and then like in a few
(14:31):
days when it was supposed to happen, I was trying
to like make sure it was going to happen, and
she told me that she kind of go out, like
one of her friends asked her to like watch their kid.
So I told him like, oh, you know, I forgot,
I'm babysitting. And then he thought I was, you know,
making up an excuse to turn him down and not
to go out with him. And I said, well, actually
you want to just come with me. She goes, but
(14:51):
you're welcome to come watch the kid with me, and
I obviously said yes, and I just thought it was
a good guy. And we went out to Denny's where
everybody hung out, like if you didn't want your day
to end, you just go to Denny's or Sherry's. And
I remember we were talking about the I don't know
why I came up, but one of my favorite fables
(15:13):
was the Sirens fable, and so we were talking about that,
The Sirens. Yes, I don't know why I like that fable.
Maybe because the female house the power. It's subtle, but
even on their first date, Melissa's tiny exertion of control
has echoes of her father. We were on our date
(15:36):
at Sherry's and I remember she did something that no
other girl was capable of doing. I really detest ranch dressing.
There was no way I was ever going to eat
ranch dressing. And she was eating like a piece of chicken,
and she asked me to eat it, and I told
her no. I go, I don't like ranch dressing. And
(15:56):
then I ate ranch dressing. And I remember, like no
girl had ever had that kind of power over me,
and I found it really attractive that she didn't take
no for me. Did you guys get serious? Really quickly?
We did, so instead of taking her home, I took
her back to my place. And in the Mormon community,
that's not a normal next step. I took her back
(16:19):
to my place and while we were there and we
didn't do anything, we made out, but still that was
the fastest relationship that I've ever had, like to move
that quickly on paper. Sam was everything Melissa would want
in a partner, but her fear of vulnerability always overshadowed
her desire for connection. This is somebody who physically doesn't
(16:43):
look like my dad, doesn't act like my father in
any shape or form, so he felt safe in all
of those categories. I craved to have everything that I
was missing growing up, but I emotionally couldn't connect to it.
What was your fear during that time? My biggest fear
(17:05):
was that everybody would find out about my past and
that it would take this life that I curated and
make it crumble down, that it would fall apart, that
everything I worked for and survived for would fall apart,
and that people would find out that I'm just like
my father and I would lose everything. You know, It's
(17:28):
interesting to go back and meet with people that I
dated in the past and then this to be a
common thread that I was emotionally just in the relationship
that they constantly had to work to find out what
I was feeling. Yes, I was a very emotionally removed person.
That scared me, but that was a vulnerability that was
(17:48):
trained out of me. If I was vulnerable with my dad,
he exploited it. If I was vulnerable with these boyfriends,
what would happen. It scared me to think that I
wasn't capable of love, and that's a precursor to psychopathy,
that I could be a psychopath if I couldn't have
empathy or love. And I honestly didn't feel when I
(18:11):
left a lot of these relationships, I didn't feel sad
to leave them. I was relieved to leave these relationships.
So it caused me to further wonder if I was
just like my dad. In Sam, Melissa saw the stability
she desperately craved, and his religious upbringing provided stark contrast
(18:35):
to her father's crimes. But in reality, Sam was very
much questioning his faith and rebelling against it. Melissa became
part of that rebellion. What did you know about her family?
Do you remember? Yeah? I remember when she first told me.
I think we were at a mom's place where you've
(18:56):
been now. They used to have like a trampoline in
the front of the yard. I think we were on
the trampoline and we were like looking up at the stars.
That's when Melissa told me who her dad was, and
once again I was so smitten. To be honest, I
didn't really care, and I don't think I understood the magnitude,
like the gravity of what her father was, and I
(19:19):
didn't see it as a reflection of who she was.
Like I would hate for somebody to ever think that
my parents a reflection of me. I mean, obviously we are,
but like, I don't want to be judged for that.
When was the first time Sam said you aren't there emotionally?
When was the first time that he doubted? It was
always the elephant in the room, the lack of connection.
(19:45):
I thought, if we don't acknowledge it, then it doesn't exist,
and therefore everything's normal. Don't bring it up. And so
there wasn't anything verbally spoken about it until three years ago.
We had a conversation about where things were at in
our marriage and that was his complaint. And what did
(20:05):
he say. He said, you never a look in my eyes,
and you never kissed me, and it really bothered him.
And it's true it's true, and it has nothing to
do with him. I don't blame him. It was nothing
to do with him at all. It was everything to
(20:27):
do with me. In the freaking shish in for a secco,
I did no you dog, Senes. In what must have
(20:55):
been one of the most surreal moments in their marriage,
one day, Melissa is sad I did to visit Keith.
Melissa and I were at home one day and I
think she had either just received a letter or maybe
had come across the letter, and she asked me if
it was weird that she hadn't seen her dad, and
(21:17):
I was like, I don't know. I don't know if
it's weird, Army, he is in prison for murder. So no,
I don't think it's that weird. She goes, how would
you feel if I was to go see him again?
And I was like, whether you want to or not,
I'm here for you. And uh, I said, we'll just
think about it, and she did. She thought about it
for a little while, and then she goes, I think
(21:37):
I'm gonna do that, and so I took some time off.
We told her when we were going on a trip
to Oregon, and we didn't tell anyone what we were
going to go do, and we ended up getting to
the prison with our kids, and so we ended up
like following the guards through this like may of like
(22:00):
sales like where they would open up a gate and
you open up another gate and you're kind of like
following them through. And then they brought us into this
like lobby which had like couches laid out, and I
was trying to figure out how it was working, and
I was waiting for them to come get us, and
I was trying to figure out, so Melissa, when you
go see your dad, I'll just stay here with the kids.
(22:21):
And then I started looking around the room and there
was guards at the doors with guns, and all the
men in the room were wearing denim and I wasn't
wearing dunim. I was like, man, that must be the
style and Oregon or something, so naive I am, oh,
(22:46):
And then I started noticing that they're like pretty tied
it up. And it was when we were in the
room then I realized that we were going to meet
Melissa's dad in person. I had no idea, and like
after a little while, Melissa's dad came in and he's massive,
like he is such a big man. I mean, I
(23:07):
knew he was big, but I don't think I knew
how big he was. I remember I stood up, Melissa
stood up, and the kids were with us, and I
don't remember if he hugged Melissa, but I remember his
interaction with me. He shook my hand and he said,
thank you for taking such good care of my daughter.
That was the very first thing he said, and I
(23:28):
was like, oh, I might be able to handle this guy.
So he sat down next to us. I think he
asked us if we wanted to have the kids go
play over in the play area or not, and we're like, no,
we'll keep them here. And I wasn't very cognizant of
even what my kids were enduring, or even what Melissa
was feeling, because my anxiety level was really high. I
didn't know if I had to move it like into
(23:49):
a protective mode or like into a kindness mode. I
was really distraught. I didn't know what to do. Was
it crazy? It was, because like I wasn't expecting it
to look like that, And he was actually pretty genuine
and pretty kind. The banter back and forth between Melissa
and her dad seemed kind of normal. He asked if
we wanted to go outside. I guess there's an outside
(24:11):
area that you could go sit in, and we just
had a dialogue back and forth. That was weird. What's
going through your mind at any point? Are you looking
at this face and hearing this voice and hearing the
small talk and thinking this man murdered people? Yes? Absolutely.
I was able to sit next to a horrible, horrible
(24:31):
person that could killate women, and I wasn't able to
even distinguish that that's what he was. And I used
to consider myself pretty good at reading people, like assessing
who they are, and at that very moment, I realized
that most it'd be easy for all of us to
be prey. And that blew my mind. That was going
(24:52):
through my head the entire time while he's talking to
Melissa as like he murdered a people from I the
creation of a serial killer by jack Olson. My size
intimidated the guards and they chained me up whenever I
was moved. I explained that I wasn't going to harm anyone,
(25:15):
but they'd heard that story before. It didn't matter how
nice and polite I acted. I was assumed to be
a cold blooded killer who would murder anyone he could
get his hands on. This took some time to get
used to. Melissa and Sam had gone to visit her
(25:45):
father in prison, not knowing what to expect, and they
left with a very surreal souvenir. Explain to me the picture.
Because I look at that, I'm like, that is the
craziest family portrait I've ever seen. Yeah, so when done,
there was an option to get a picture taken, and
so we did. We got a picture with Melissa's dad,
(26:06):
and to be honest with you, google the internet. That
will probably be the first thing that pops up is
a picture of Melissa's dad, my daughter, my son, and me,
and you could see the size gap of me versus him,
and he's just a massive man. It must have been
a blessing that the kids were too small to ask
oh completely, you know, I Melissa and I were sensitive
(26:28):
for a long time because people assess, how could you
ever take your children around such a horrible person. And
I think people don't understand what it was like. The
whole room was full of children, Like kids were playing
with their dads because their dads are coming to visit
their children, and so I think what was stranger is
the fact that Melissa's dad, who murdered eight people, would
be in general population, which is normal criminals. I think
(26:53):
that's the real question is how could somebody do such
horrific things and be amidst people that maybe like smoked
weed and they were treated equally. Eventually, Melissa's inability to
connect with Sam and to truly reciprocate his love took
its toll. There was a comfort as roommates. We got
(27:17):
along great, and we were good friends. We still are
good friends, so it was easy to stay longer and
longer in this relationship because we're such good friends. But
I knew when he brought up three years ago that
he wanted someone to be passionately in love with him,
that he would find it, probably with someone else. You
(27:37):
guys just weren't happy. Yeah, I don't think we. If
he was honest, he would say he wasn't happy. He
wouldn't say that he wasn't happy with me. He wasn't
happy with living without those things that he wanted in
his life. Sam said neither. He simply acknowledged a burden
(28:00):
Keith's crimes placed on Melissa and how much he'd seen
her struggle to atone for them, but he never blamed her.
I think it has compelled Melissa to have to be
harder on herself than the average person. And we're all
pretty hard on ourselves as it is, Like, take whatever
you are as a person and magnify that. I can
(28:22):
only imagine she's had to deal with people saying that
she was collecting blood money by sharing her story, that
we were irrational bad parents by taking our kids to
visit a serial killer in a prison. I mean, you
put it in words, yeah, absolutely could build an argument
to that, but when you put it into actuality of
(28:42):
what really happened, it's the furthest thing from the truth.
Our children have always come first from Melissa, and I
think it's compelled her to have to over exaggerate her
feelings for other people, for herself, for our kids, always
kind of on the defensive to prove that she's not
like her father. The burden she carries must be immense.
(29:05):
And what's your take on Jess person as opposed to
your take on Melissa, Like, if you had to be
brutally honest about your take on him, So, if I
was to be brutally honest, I would say that he
definitely corrupted his family, and he made it so that
they were in pain and in trauma, and that pain
and trauma is carried over into her future relationships, and
(29:27):
it's made it so she's had to overcompensate to define
who she is, to separate herself from who he is,
and it's put her in a really difficult situation. And
to say that there wasn't an impact would not be honest.
What's Melissa's biggest fear? Abandonment? I think I think she's
(29:48):
afraid that she'll be alone and that she would end
up being a lot like her dad, that what everyone
has said is true. I think that's probably her biggest fear.
But anything that's changing, like, I think she's becoming way
more self aware. I've seen how strong she was, and
I really just thought she could change the world, and
(30:09):
I thought by her sharing her story, other people could
have hope. When I was eighteen nineteen, I was naive,
still naives to the world on crime and everything I was.
I was basically a good person that wouldn't never push
(30:30):
anything past anything. I would never do anything. When did
you stop hearing well my divorce, the different problems with
my girlfriend and trucking in the jobs and everything kind
of escalating. I can't trust nobody around me, and I
(30:51):
only trust myself, and you know, the cruelty of life
just basically caused me to think, well, hell, what would
you say if you could confront jessperson on what he's done? Okay,
send Melissa to his family. If he's listening to this,
(31:13):
what do you hope he hears? I would tell him
that the way he treated his daughter complicated my marriage,
complicated Melissa's life, but didn't make it so it didn't
get better, and he has no control of anything. Who
(31:34):
he is is really insignificant, and because of the experiences
that we've all gone through because of him, we're actually
stronger and better. And it's okay that he's not remorseful
for what he's done, because everyone else's remorse makes up
the difference. And if he goes away, he goes away
(31:57):
alone and without everything hurts about building a life with
someone and then deciding to separate. I really discredited hearing
from other people when they said they went through a divorce.
(32:18):
It just seemed almost so casual because I was so
removed from their lives. But the pain is actually more
intense than I ever thought was possible. It's mourning, yeah,
it's absolutely grieving. There's anger. There are the five stages
of grief for sure, and I've gone through all of
(32:39):
them and I've read every book I could read, and
they say it takes like two years for you to
feel normal again. And it's probably very similar to someone
who lost someone that they loved to death in some ways,
just because you're used to the little things, the day
to day things like calling after a meeting or when
you get home having the dishes, I'm all ready for you,
(33:01):
or you know those, you can lean on that person,
and then when you divorce and separate, then now you
have to create a new life, a new normalcy. She
always talks about how she's leaned in on me, but
I've always leaned in on her, like she went through
such trauma and so much pain, and she found her
(33:21):
voice even when it's not easy to do. She still
continuously puts herself in situations that most people want to do.
She's so brave and watching her be brave, as I'll
be be brave. I like kids. I like my kids,
but I wasn't really a family man. I really didn't
(33:43):
want to be the family man. I didn't want the
I didn't want to end up like well, put my
kids through what I went through, and here I am
putting through, putting them through worse and what I went through,
you know, a lot of things because you're they have
to be raised with the idea that dad's a killer, murderer.
(34:06):
My fear still to this day, is that I'm incapable
of loving in the way that people expect me to
love them. You know, Sam swears that I probably could
love him the way he wants to be loved, but
I don't believe. I just don't want to lie to people.
I don't want to feel like a fraud of living
too many years feeling like a fraud, and I feel
like the best policies just to be up front and
(34:28):
let people decide if this works for them or not.
And so with Sam, I've been really transparent with him
to let him know that this is where I stand,
this is what I am, and my level of being
able to give. Is it about control, though? Is your
fear of love about losing control, about letting go, about
(34:52):
having something have power over you? Absolutely, because if you
fall in love, you give up your loverage you give up.
You can be blindsided in a hot moment, and I
don't want to ever be that vulnerable, to be blindsided,
and I just don't want to risk that again. On
(35:20):
the next Happy Face, Melissa faces her greatest fears and
her father's demons. But it seems now that you want
the world to know who you are, not Melissa More,
but the daughter of the Happy Face Killer. I've created
a monster in you. This is why I don't lead
(35:44):
these letters. Happy Face is a production of How Stuff Works.
Executive producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco Mangesha Ticketur,
and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is no Brown. Music by
Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
(36:05):
Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chicogne. Special thanks
to Phil Stanford, the publishers of The Oregonian Newspaper, and
the Carlisle family.
Happy Face Presents: Two Face News
Hosts And Creators
Melissa Moore
Lauren Bright Pacheco
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