December 21, 2018 • 29 mins
How has this journey changed Melissa’s life? And were she and her father tormented by his ghosts or their shared inner demons? Melissa now has an answer.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Previously on happy Face. Today I find out if my
worst fears and insecurities are true. If I'm capable of
being like my dad, you would never do what your
father's done, and you could never be what he is.
I would like to tell my story, the writer of
the letter begins. The exclamation point is all his, so
(00:24):
is the labored printing and the odd mixture of capital
and lower case letters. People, But I'm scared you're not
like him. Because of that, our universe has a plan
for each and every one of us. I wish we
could see that. I will. I want to help you
feel it. You gotta have to let me. The letter
(00:45):
has a happy face at the top of the first page,
two tiny circles for eyes, an upturned sliver of a
moon from mouth. Have a nice day. Dr James Fallon
is a neuroscientist at the Never See of California. So
here you are, and here's the normal, And it turns
(01:07):
out here's just completely normal. That's amazing. Yeah, un don't know, shine,
Oh nice. You told me once that being the daughter
(01:43):
of a serial killer isn't something you grow out of,
it's something you grow into. Yes, you just can't run it.
You can't even when he dies. One day, when he dies,
those webbers will still be there. I mean, I don't
think about the future with my dad in it. I
(02:04):
lived my life by desires and by attentions, and I
could get everything I want, except forgetting things as Arthur
Golden Rights and memoirs of a Geisha. After all, when
(02:25):
a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues
quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.
I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is happy face. While
having the brain scan last week removed certain doubts from Melissa,
(02:47):
the healing is still a process. Even simple things like
a happy memory of her dad and the smell of
house paint as he painted the walls of her childhood
home are tainted by his crimes. I remember when we
took possession of the house, my dad painting the walls white,
and it came to my mind. Sorry, it came to
(03:12):
my mind. Um. This weekend, I am. I bought a
fixer upper in Ohio, and when I entered the fixer upper,
I thought, this needs gallery white walls. I just see
(03:32):
it's had beautiful arches. I saw white the walls. We
need to be white. So I started painting the walls white,
and for hours, as I was painting, I saw my
dad and the smell of the fresh paint and my
dad's care and painting the walls white in this farmhouse.
Um is one of those good memories you know of
(03:53):
of my dad taking care of a property. And he's
the one who taught me, or or instilled in me
this love for real estate and this love for fixing
up properties. And and that's something that I've had to
reconcile because a lot of things that I love are
rooted back to my dad. Now, every time Melissa looks
(04:14):
at white paint, those good memories are overridden by what
she learned that Keith used paint to cover over the
splattered blood after killing Tanya Bennett. And that's not the
first thing that happened. But on my birthday was just
a couple of weeks ago, and my boyfriend bought me
(04:36):
a roadbike. And I grew up with my dad's cycling,
and he bought me the cycling shoes. And the first
thing that went into my mind was Tony Bennett and
my dad saying I would wear my cycling shoes. So
when I leave the soul print and and I it's
(04:57):
it's so hard because I love these things. Yeah, everything
I love. I have tried. I've tried to run. I
can't and I'll never I'll never put those shoes, all
(05:19):
those cycling shoes and not think of Tanya. I'll never
be able to. I want to. But Melissa, you didn't
kill Tanya Bennett. I know. Maybe it's a question of
going back to those memories and just trying to take
(05:43):
the good from them. You cannot take responsibility for your
father's actions. For Keith's family, shaking off guilt isn't easy.
Here's Melissa's mother Rose talking about it as well. Everybody
assumes you are guilty by association just because you knew him.
(06:06):
Because I was his wife. I knew everything that he did.
I knew he murdered those women. I knew, and I
had no clue he had a second life. Over the years,
accusations have come in that Melissa wants attention for her
father's crimes. People attack her on social media or flood
(06:28):
the comments sections on websites. Even her own father has
accused her of trying to profit off of his murders
in his letters to her. But the truth is, Melissa's
whole career has been a way to atone for her
father's sins, and that's true of her whole family. One
of her siblings is a nurse, another has enlisted to
protect the country, her mother spends her days trying to
(06:52):
resettle families in desperate situations, and Melissa, of course, is
working to speak out for victims and give them a voice.
What's interesting is that as much as the family has
tried to distance themselves from Keith's horrific crimes, Keith is
also constantly reminding the public that they are his own.
(07:12):
It's important to him. No one else takes credit for them.
Here's reporter Phil Stamford talking about it. Have you written
to my father since our conversation? No, I haven't been
in touch with him for years. I've done a number
of things since then. But you know, to say the least,
we're dealing with a split personality here, someone driven by
(07:34):
some pretty serious unconscious compulsion. So that's one side of it,
and the other side of it was every once in
a while, this uh monster from the unconscious would break through.
At one point, Keith was allegedly offered the opportunity to
give false testimony against Phil in exchange for favorable treatment
in prison, and to his credit, driven by some strange
(07:59):
moral code, he refused. But there's also the chance that
someone who's mentally unusual is obviously he was, might also
have been interested in just playing more games and keeping
people in the air. He did confess to murders that
he didn't commit, so he was playing fast and loose
(08:21):
with the truth at some point, trying to get more attention,
which I think is one of the deeper reasons behind
some of these killings, just getting attention, getting recognition as
some sort of person that he felt had been denied
him all his life. When you met jessperson, you had
read those letters. So was there that moment of authenticity
(08:45):
that you knew he was the author? And what did
that feel like? Because I can imagine that those letters
were terrifying to read. I knew from my own research
that he had to be the guy. I mean, there
were times when I was talking with him, when he
was talking to me about what he had done, that
I had those skin crawling moments, that's for sure. When
(09:07):
he talked about chilling one of the truck stop whores
in the cab of his truck and he watched it
from twenty ft above. That's when I realized that this
is a very strange person. And regardless of everything Melissa
has undertaken and tried to prove, that very strange person
(09:29):
will always be her father. Well, how I even started
my whole beginning was when my daughter asked me a question.
She got off the school bus. She was learning about
genealogy and the family tree, and they were being basic.
Of course, the family tree is going up to your grandparents.
So she failed out her dad's side, you know, Sam, Sidemanna, Papa,
(09:53):
and then on my side Grandma rose me and that
you realized there's a miss grandfather here. She said, you know, mom,
everybody has a daddy. Where's your daddy? And I wasn't
expecting that she was six kindergarten. It just took me back.
I thought, how am I going to answer this for her?
And so I said, yes, I have a daddy lives
(10:15):
in Salem. And I left at that, and I gave
her the name to put, just the first name to
put in. I didn't want the last name. From there,
I went to the libraries, I went everywhere, just scouring
for information about how do I reconcile this for myself
so that I can tell my child this in a
(10:38):
way that she can understand without terrifying her. And I
didn't want to be public because at this point I
had nobody knew I had a business, Nobody knew who
my father was. We had bought our house, our first home.
Daughter was happy, and while adjusted in kindergarten. None of
my friends knew. My church groups didn't know. But I
(11:01):
kept thinking about my daughter's question, what do you want
your children to take away from your journey? Finding out
that I'm on a psychopath liberated me to as a
parent because my son was scared, and I think my
(11:22):
son was asking a very complex question when we asked
like is it a choice or is it something that
you are? He wants to know more about his grandfather,
my dad, and I had to keep telling him you're
nothing like him, You're nothing like him. As both Leroy
(12:02):
and Don Finley made a huge impact on the Happy
Face team, and he stayed in contact with both Melissa
and me. Is it Dawn or is it Leroy? Well,
you know what, after talking to you, I started telling
people my real name really, Yes, ma'am, Why did you
(12:23):
start doing that. Someone pointed out to me that, well,
if LeRoy's really healed, why don't you just start introducing
people who don't know you as who you are. Because
I'm back to where I was before it happened, and
I saw myself changing. I felt it in my energy.
(12:45):
I people who are They're like, something's different about you.
So this whole thing was like because of meeting Melissa,
amazingly lifted off my shoulders, because she answered the questions
that I needed answered. And God, the universe has rewarded
(13:06):
me in so many ways. He's like, I put you
through hell, You've come out smelling like carnations. Now it's
time for you to be rewarded. So I've turned into
a whole different person. But at the same time, I'm
still same spirit and soul. So it sounds like you
went back to your former name, but you've gotten a
(13:26):
new life, yes, ma'am. And it would seem that Don
had left a huge impression on Melissa as well. You're
in my thoughts last night actually, when I went to
this floating restaurant on the water and I thought, oh,
the last time I was here was that Puffins with Dawn,
(13:46):
and I remembered the whole experience and how intense it
felt leading up to that moment. I was terrified, absolutely
terrified to meet up with you because it didn't know.
I didn't know what you would think of me, And
I've already dealt with so many people having preconceived notions
(14:07):
of me and criticizing me. And I'm not saying this
to like feel sorry for myself that I had enough
already on my plate I didn't need on some level,
don I think Melissa's biggest fear was that twenty years ago,
when she read your words in the newspaper, she knew
(14:28):
that you were speaking the truth. She knew that you
saw through everything, and the narrative that she had been
fed by her father all those years was not the truth.
So her fear in facing you was that you would
look in her face and you would see the face
of her father, and that you would blame her for
(14:49):
his horrible crimes. And I fully understand that because people,
like I said, don't know how to take me. And
everybody in society always pre judges everybody and assumes that
they know about everybody, but they don't know about themselves.
And now Melissa learned that none of it's true. Everybody
(15:11):
has assumptions, everybody's going to come up with their own ideas,
but it's only us as individuals that we can do
for ourselves. I'm trying to word this the right way,
but we all know I'm the Stone or Yogi so perfect.
But they understand it's cool they don't. That's their problem, Melissa,
because they're not the ones having to live in our
(15:32):
body or walk our shoes. As we set out to
make this series, we wanted to give Melissa the tools
and opportunity to understand and confront her dad, the man
she hadn't seen in so many years, but still had
(15:53):
such control over her and her life choices. What Melissa
ultimately got, though, was actually much better, a release from
Keith's manipulation and the confidence to create her own narrative.
In the end, it was Melissa's choice not to confront Keith.
She knew she didn't need to see him, or read
(16:15):
his letters, or let him invade her life anymore, and
that realization set her free on so many levels. And
it was a direct result of her meeting with Don.
I'm trying to find words of what that experience was.
I think that I have found that meeting to be
(16:37):
a sacred meeting, and I felt like it was a
crossroads moment in my life. That was a gift. Um.
I thought you would blame me and see my father
and me, and I said, I wanted to go to
this doctor to find out if I am biologically hardwired
to be like my dad. And you said, well, your
(16:59):
brain maybe, but your your heart isn't. Said you may
have his blood, but you don't have his heart, mind
or soul, because you wouldn't do what you do for others.
So when you told me that you were going to
go to the doctors and get that checked out, I
(17:19):
believe I told you that you're not and I never
got the answer to see if I was correct or wrong. Well,
you were correct. My brain is perfectly normal and not
hardwired to be a psychopath. And what gave me the
courage to go do that was actually your statement to
me after that though. I mean, it is like history
(17:45):
just erased. Like there's this pressure that I always felt
walking around this world, feeling like I have to prove myself.
That's a lot of energy to take into every encounter,
and it's unconscious at the point it's been decades. So
it's just well left this void like this open space,
(18:06):
and I felt it all of a sudden, these wonderful
things in the world just started to pour into that space.
And I didn't know I was going to meet you
this summer. I didn't know that the universe had this
in store for me, and I didn't know that was
worthy of this gift. You don't have to say no more.
(18:29):
I am so happy. I am. I'm not scared of
my dad anymore. The lies that he has told me,
I believed them, and I allowed him to shape me
and put me in this place, this box. And I
was terrified of him because everybody believed as narrative always,
(18:50):
and so I couldn't outrun even his lies. And now
he could say whatever he wanted to say, and I
would be fine. During that conversation, Melissa brought up the
fact that my dad, my father, had taken very seriously ill.
(19:12):
She expressed her sentiments and almost envy that he had
the benefit of being surrounded by his loving, proud family
during this painful time and the sharp contrast to her
own reality. You know, Lauren, sitting across from me and
her dad right now is in the hospital or in care,
(19:34):
and Lauren and I have had quiet an opposite of upbringing,
and the love that she has for her father and
the care that she has for her father and that
he has for her makes it so that she's right
now currently in the most intense grief and pain, and
(19:57):
that her father is surrounded by beautiful daughters, a beautiful
family that loves him. And my dad will never get
that because he didn't deserve that, because he didn't create
the life that her dad created. And that's what I know.
You know what, I bet you, There's gonna come a
(20:17):
day where my dad passes away and I won't even
know it, Like I won't even know my dad died
because all these years will have passed and I didn't
say a word to him, and he never said a
word to me. To be honest, I initially crunched and
immediately felt protective of my privacy. Then my dad died
(20:39):
the next day. Now that I've had the time to reflect,
I realized Melissa was also grieving with me and for
her father. Keith didn't just murder eight women. He killed
the man Melissa thought she knew and the father she
dearly loved. Melissa's dad died when she was fifteen, and
(21:03):
she's still grieving that loss. In that moment of mentioning
my dad, she clearly expressed empathy and remorse, confirming she's
truly the antithesis of a psychopath. But for Melissa's mom Rose,
even her life with Keith was filled with a sort
(21:24):
of grief. She struggled to articulate and understand. You know,
an intimate partner, you hold each other and kind of
each other. It's like, Okay, I'm gonna go watch TV.
It was it was robotic? Or did you feel used? No,
I just because I mean I never had man. I
(21:46):
don't know why. I'm a howa friend? Yeah? How how
men are? I thought that was the norm, of the norm.
You must have been so lonely. I was extremely lonely.
A matter of fact. I would go to church and
I knew my life was out of balance, but I
just couldn't figure out why it was out of balance.
(22:06):
But then I used to have a neighbor when we
lived in Zealand, and there was a little old couple
and and summertimes they would sit out in the patio
and play cards and they had their little lights on,
you know, and I sit there and I listened to
their conversation because they were so close, and I just thought,
that's what a relations should be like, that you enjoy
(22:26):
each other when you're even that old, and they laugh
and they would just crack up jokes between them, and
I thought, that's what it is, That's what I you know,
that's what it's supposed to be. Like Melissa and Don
(22:55):
were initially linked by Keith, but they're both to term
and to transcend his effects on their lives. Our gift
now is too pass on the words of survival and
that when you do make it through the tough times
that are put in front of you, that are out
(23:17):
of your control, if you handle them in the right way,
you will be rewarded. Whether you believe in God, the universe, aliens, birds,
gypsian cats, you will be rewarded. And we are a
proof of that because both of us have lived in
deep dark places. I just you know, for me, it
(23:39):
really is humbling to watch. It is the triumph of
good over evil. Ultimately, I mean, I really hope we
can help not just each other grow further in our
lives and stay connected, but to help other people. And
I did tell you will love and you will care.
(24:02):
So I said those words, but I didn't believe them
a hundred percent. I had to tell myself that stuff
for years to get through it, and when I met Melissa,
all those words were proven right. Does any of that
make sense? Absolutely? Absolutely. The most telling change in Don
(24:27):
was evident when confronted with the idea of being face
to face with Keith present day. If I met him
in person, I would hope that my power and my
strength would hold me back and I would say you
lose me and your daughter win. But in honest reaction,
(24:51):
at this very moment, my anger side still would want
to put him in some kind of other pain, but
not killing. You know, I'm not trying to be mean
or angry, but my good side would say we win,
you lose. I think that part is stronger than my
angry part, so I wouldn't do that, is what I
(25:14):
feel in my heart. You know, I'll be honest, I
really haven't even thought about you know. I used to
think about the guy and so forth, but he ain't
even in the back of my mind anymore. Like he's
not living rent free in your brain anymore. He's not
(25:34):
controlling your thoughts and that's all part of I think
your acceptance of yourself and going back to Don and
letting Lee Roy go. Right, that's a great metaphor. I
don't know how I didn't come up with it, but yeah,
I am able to be more free than I've ever been. Now,
(26:01):
what Melissa ultimately regained through the journey through Dawn, through
Everything was to regain control of her own story without Keith.
At points, you thought that you needed answers from your dad.
How do you feel now, Yeah? I thought that I
(26:23):
asked my dad really honest questions and that he would
give really honest answers. But through this journey, I found
that he doesn't tell honest. He tells his own narrative,
and that changes depending on what he wants from you.
And even if I was to meet with him, he
(26:44):
would spind me a tale. I don't need any more
of his narrative. Uh, that's control. So has this journey
given you the narrative back? Yeah, it's good me the
freedom to tell my own story to myself, like who
I really am who I intuitively thought I was, Like,
(27:06):
this identity is really about our self beliefs, and we
operate our lives by the beliefs we carry about who
we are. And for so many years I operated my
life with the story I told myself, which is I'm
the daughter of a serial killer, Therefore I am bad.
(27:26):
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I am
part of that tree. And now that's no longer my story.
I'm Melissa More, a mother, a woman, and that's what
I am. There's no tagline like I don't. I don't
(27:46):
have to carry daughter serial killer like I don't. It's
just Melissa More. Just like you're Lauren. You don't have
a banner behind you. You know that's that liberating, you know,
it's liberating. As sensational and at times surreal as Melissa's
(28:09):
story has been, there's something very universal about her journey.
It's really about the triumph of the human spirit over fear, shame,
and ultimately grief. In the end, it's about hope, the
hope that good can triumph over evil, or at least
lesson its sting. Oh hey, can it be another way
(28:43):
to punish me? A thousand lives, Light years fly, dark
years wander slowly by my broken voice. It calls to me,
read feels, what notes, I'll never me, I'll drift in words,
(29:06):
way out to see, way out until I'm his story.
Oh Happy Faces, a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, mangesh A ticket
Ur and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music
(29:30):
by Claire Campbell, Page Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chacogne. Special thanks
to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian Newspaper, and
the Carlisle family.
Previously on happy Face. Today I find out if my
worst fears and insecurities are true. If I'm capable of
being like my dad, you would never do what your
father's done, and you could never be what he is.
I would like to tell my story, the writer of
the letter begins. The exclamation point is all his, so
(00:24):
is the labored printing and the odd mixture of capital
and lower case letters. People, But I'm scared you're not
like him. Because of that, our universe has a plan
for each and every one of us. I wish we
could see that. I will. I want to help you
feel it. You gotta have to let me. The letter
(00:45):
has a happy face at the top of the first page,
two tiny circles for eyes, an upturned sliver of a
moon from mouth. Have a nice day. Dr James Fallon
is a neuroscientist at the Never See of California. So
here you are, and here's the normal, And it turns
(01:07):
out here's just completely normal. That's amazing. Yeah, un don't know, shine,
Oh nice. You told me once that being the daughter
(01:43):
of a serial killer isn't something you grow out of,
it's something you grow into. Yes, you just can't run it.
You can't even when he dies. One day, when he dies,
those webbers will still be there. I mean, I don't
think about the future with my dad in it. I
(02:04):
lived my life by desires and by attentions, and I
could get everything I want, except forgetting things as Arthur
Golden Rights and memoirs of a Geisha. After all, when
(02:25):
a stone is dropped into a pond, the water continues
quivering even after the stone has sunk to the bottom.
I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco, and this is happy face. While
having the brain scan last week removed certain doubts from Melissa,
(02:47):
the healing is still a process. Even simple things like
a happy memory of her dad and the smell of
house paint as he painted the walls of her childhood
home are tainted by his crimes. I remember when we
took possession of the house, my dad painting the walls white,
and it came to my mind. Sorry, it came to
(03:12):
my mind. Um. This weekend, I am. I bought a
fixer upper in Ohio, and when I entered the fixer upper,
I thought, this needs gallery white walls. I just see
(03:32):
it's had beautiful arches. I saw white the walls. We
need to be white. So I started painting the walls white,
and for hours, as I was painting, I saw my
dad and the smell of the fresh paint and my
dad's care and painting the walls white in this farmhouse.
Um is one of those good memories you know of
(03:53):
of my dad taking care of a property. And he's
the one who taught me, or or instilled in me
this love for real estate and this love for fixing
up properties. And and that's something that I've had to
reconcile because a lot of things that I love are
rooted back to my dad. Now, every time Melissa looks
(04:14):
at white paint, those good memories are overridden by what
she learned that Keith used paint to cover over the
splattered blood after killing Tanya Bennett. And that's not the
first thing that happened. But on my birthday was just
a couple of weeks ago, and my boyfriend bought me
(04:36):
a roadbike. And I grew up with my dad's cycling,
and he bought me the cycling shoes. And the first
thing that went into my mind was Tony Bennett and
my dad saying I would wear my cycling shoes. So
when I leave the soul print and and I it's
(04:57):
it's so hard because I love these things. Yeah, everything
I love. I have tried. I've tried to run. I
can't and I'll never I'll never put those shoes, all
(05:19):
those cycling shoes and not think of Tanya. I'll never
be able to. I want to. But Melissa, you didn't
kill Tanya Bennett. I know. Maybe it's a question of
going back to those memories and just trying to take
(05:43):
the good from them. You cannot take responsibility for your
father's actions. For Keith's family, shaking off guilt isn't easy.
Here's Melissa's mother Rose talking about it as well. Everybody
assumes you are guilty by association just because you knew him.
(06:06):
Because I was his wife. I knew everything that he did.
I knew he murdered those women. I knew, and I
had no clue he had a second life. Over the years,
accusations have come in that Melissa wants attention for her
father's crimes. People attack her on social media or flood
(06:28):
the comments sections on websites. Even her own father has
accused her of trying to profit off of his murders
in his letters to her. But the truth is, Melissa's
whole career has been a way to atone for her
father's sins, and that's true of her whole family. One
of her siblings is a nurse, another has enlisted to
protect the country, her mother spends her days trying to
(06:52):
resettle families in desperate situations, and Melissa, of course, is
working to speak out for victims and give them a voice.
What's interesting is that as much as the family has
tried to distance themselves from Keith's horrific crimes, Keith is
also constantly reminding the public that they are his own.
(07:12):
It's important to him. No one else takes credit for them.
Here's reporter Phil Stamford talking about it. Have you written
to my father since our conversation? No, I haven't been
in touch with him for years. I've done a number
of things since then. But you know, to say the least,
we're dealing with a split personality here, someone driven by
(07:34):
some pretty serious unconscious compulsion. So that's one side of it,
and the other side of it was every once in
a while, this uh monster from the unconscious would break through.
At one point, Keith was allegedly offered the opportunity to
give false testimony against Phil in exchange for favorable treatment
in prison, and to his credit, driven by some strange
(07:59):
moral code, he refused. But there's also the chance that
someone who's mentally unusual is obviously he was, might also
have been interested in just playing more games and keeping
people in the air. He did confess to murders that
he didn't commit, so he was playing fast and loose
(08:21):
with the truth at some point, trying to get more attention,
which I think is one of the deeper reasons behind
some of these killings, just getting attention, getting recognition as
some sort of person that he felt had been denied
him all his life. When you met jessperson, you had
read those letters. So was there that moment of authenticity
(08:45):
that you knew he was the author? And what did
that feel like? Because I can imagine that those letters
were terrifying to read. I knew from my own research
that he had to be the guy. I mean, there
were times when I was talking with him, when he
was talking to me about what he had done, that
I had those skin crawling moments, that's for sure. When
(09:07):
he talked about chilling one of the truck stop whores
in the cab of his truck and he watched it
from twenty ft above. That's when I realized that this
is a very strange person. And regardless of everything Melissa
has undertaken and tried to prove, that very strange person
(09:29):
will always be her father. Well, how I even started
my whole beginning was when my daughter asked me a question.
She got off the school bus. She was learning about
genealogy and the family tree, and they were being basic.
Of course, the family tree is going up to your grandparents.
So she failed out her dad's side, you know, Sam, Sidemanna, Papa,
(09:53):
and then on my side Grandma rose me and that
you realized there's a miss grandfather here. She said, you know, mom,
everybody has a daddy. Where's your daddy? And I wasn't
expecting that she was six kindergarten. It just took me back.
I thought, how am I going to answer this for her?
And so I said, yes, I have a daddy lives
(10:15):
in Salem. And I left at that, and I gave
her the name to put, just the first name to
put in. I didn't want the last name. From there,
I went to the libraries, I went everywhere, just scouring
for information about how do I reconcile this for myself
so that I can tell my child this in a
(10:38):
way that she can understand without terrifying her. And I
didn't want to be public because at this point I
had nobody knew I had a business, Nobody knew who
my father was. We had bought our house, our first home.
Daughter was happy, and while adjusted in kindergarten. None of
my friends knew. My church groups didn't know. But I
(11:01):
kept thinking about my daughter's question, what do you want
your children to take away from your journey? Finding out
that I'm on a psychopath liberated me to as a
parent because my son was scared, and I think my
(11:22):
son was asking a very complex question when we asked
like is it a choice or is it something that
you are? He wants to know more about his grandfather,
my dad, and I had to keep telling him you're
nothing like him, You're nothing like him. As both Leroy
(12:02):
and Don Finley made a huge impact on the Happy
Face team, and he stayed in contact with both Melissa
and me. Is it Dawn or is it Leroy? Well,
you know what, after talking to you, I started telling
people my real name really, Yes, ma'am, Why did you
(12:23):
start doing that. Someone pointed out to me that, well,
if LeRoy's really healed, why don't you just start introducing
people who don't know you as who you are. Because
I'm back to where I was before it happened, and
I saw myself changing. I felt it in my energy.
(12:45):
I people who are They're like, something's different about you.
So this whole thing was like because of meeting Melissa,
amazingly lifted off my shoulders, because she answered the questions
that I needed answered. And God, the universe has rewarded
(13:06):
me in so many ways. He's like, I put you
through hell, You've come out smelling like carnations. Now it's
time for you to be rewarded. So I've turned into
a whole different person. But at the same time, I'm
still same spirit and soul. So it sounds like you
went back to your former name, but you've gotten a
(13:26):
new life, yes, ma'am. And it would seem that Don
had left a huge impression on Melissa as well. You're
in my thoughts last night actually, when I went to
this floating restaurant on the water and I thought, oh,
the last time I was here was that Puffins with Dawn,
(13:46):
and I remembered the whole experience and how intense it
felt leading up to that moment. I was terrified, absolutely
terrified to meet up with you because it didn't know.
I didn't know what you would think of me, And
I've already dealt with so many people having preconceived notions
(14:07):
of me and criticizing me. And I'm not saying this
to like feel sorry for myself that I had enough
already on my plate I didn't need on some level,
don I think Melissa's biggest fear was that twenty years ago,
when she read your words in the newspaper, she knew
(14:28):
that you were speaking the truth. She knew that you
saw through everything, and the narrative that she had been
fed by her father all those years was not the truth.
So her fear in facing you was that you would
look in her face and you would see the face
of her father, and that you would blame her for
(14:49):
his horrible crimes. And I fully understand that because people,
like I said, don't know how to take me. And
everybody in society always pre judges everybody and assumes that
they know about everybody, but they don't know about themselves.
And now Melissa learned that none of it's true. Everybody
(15:11):
has assumptions, everybody's going to come up with their own ideas,
but it's only us as individuals that we can do
for ourselves. I'm trying to word this the right way,
but we all know I'm the Stone or Yogi so perfect.
But they understand it's cool they don't. That's their problem, Melissa,
because they're not the ones having to live in our
(15:32):
body or walk our shoes. As we set out to
make this series, we wanted to give Melissa the tools
and opportunity to understand and confront her dad, the man
she hadn't seen in so many years, but still had
(15:53):
such control over her and her life choices. What Melissa
ultimately got, though, was actually much better, a release from
Keith's manipulation and the confidence to create her own narrative.
In the end, it was Melissa's choice not to confront Keith.
She knew she didn't need to see him, or read
(16:15):
his letters, or let him invade her life anymore, and
that realization set her free on so many levels. And
it was a direct result of her meeting with Don.
I'm trying to find words of what that experience was.
I think that I have found that meeting to be
(16:37):
a sacred meeting, and I felt like it was a
crossroads moment in my life. That was a gift. Um.
I thought you would blame me and see my father
and me, and I said, I wanted to go to
this doctor to find out if I am biologically hardwired
to be like my dad. And you said, well, your
(16:59):
brain maybe, but your your heart isn't. Said you may
have his blood, but you don't have his heart, mind
or soul, because you wouldn't do what you do for others.
So when you told me that you were going to
go to the doctors and get that checked out, I
(17:19):
believe I told you that you're not and I never
got the answer to see if I was correct or wrong. Well,
you were correct. My brain is perfectly normal and not
hardwired to be a psychopath. And what gave me the
courage to go do that was actually your statement to
me after that though. I mean, it is like history
(17:45):
just erased. Like there's this pressure that I always felt
walking around this world, feeling like I have to prove myself.
That's a lot of energy to take into every encounter,
and it's unconscious at the point it's been decades. So
it's just well left this void like this open space,
(18:06):
and I felt it all of a sudden, these wonderful
things in the world just started to pour into that space.
And I didn't know I was going to meet you
this summer. I didn't know that the universe had this
in store for me, and I didn't know that was
worthy of this gift. You don't have to say no more.
(18:29):
I am so happy. I am. I'm not scared of
my dad anymore. The lies that he has told me,
I believed them, and I allowed him to shape me
and put me in this place, this box. And I
was terrified of him because everybody believed as narrative always,
(18:50):
and so I couldn't outrun even his lies. And now
he could say whatever he wanted to say, and I
would be fine. During that conversation, Melissa brought up the
fact that my dad, my father, had taken very seriously ill.
(19:12):
She expressed her sentiments and almost envy that he had
the benefit of being surrounded by his loving, proud family
during this painful time and the sharp contrast to her
own reality. You know, Lauren, sitting across from me and
her dad right now is in the hospital or in care,
(19:34):
and Lauren and I have had quiet an opposite of upbringing,
and the love that she has for her father and
the care that she has for her father and that
he has for her makes it so that she's right
now currently in the most intense grief and pain, and
(19:57):
that her father is surrounded by beautiful daughters, a beautiful
family that loves him. And my dad will never get
that because he didn't deserve that, because he didn't create
the life that her dad created. And that's what I know.
You know what, I bet you, There's gonna come a
(20:17):
day where my dad passes away and I won't even
know it, Like I won't even know my dad died
because all these years will have passed and I didn't
say a word to him, and he never said a
word to me. To be honest, I initially crunched and
immediately felt protective of my privacy. Then my dad died
(20:39):
the next day. Now that I've had the time to reflect,
I realized Melissa was also grieving with me and for
her father. Keith didn't just murder eight women. He killed
the man Melissa thought she knew and the father she
dearly loved. Melissa's dad died when she was fifteen, and
(21:03):
she's still grieving that loss. In that moment of mentioning
my dad, she clearly expressed empathy and remorse, confirming she's
truly the antithesis of a psychopath. But for Melissa's mom Rose,
even her life with Keith was filled with a sort
(21:24):
of grief. She struggled to articulate and understand. You know,
an intimate partner, you hold each other and kind of
each other. It's like, Okay, I'm gonna go watch TV.
It was it was robotic? Or did you feel used? No,
I just because I mean I never had man. I
(21:46):
don't know why. I'm a howa friend? Yeah? How how
men are? I thought that was the norm, of the norm.
You must have been so lonely. I was extremely lonely.
A matter of fact. I would go to church and
I knew my life was out of balance, but I
just couldn't figure out why it was out of balance.
(22:06):
But then I used to have a neighbor when we
lived in Zealand, and there was a little old couple
and and summertimes they would sit out in the patio
and play cards and they had their little lights on,
you know, and I sit there and I listened to
their conversation because they were so close, and I just thought,
that's what a relations should be like, that you enjoy
(22:26):
each other when you're even that old, and they laugh
and they would just crack up jokes between them, and
I thought, that's what it is, That's what I you know,
that's what it's supposed to be. Like Melissa and Don
(22:55):
were initially linked by Keith, but they're both to term
and to transcend his effects on their lives. Our gift
now is too pass on the words of survival and
that when you do make it through the tough times
that are put in front of you, that are out
(23:17):
of your control, if you handle them in the right way,
you will be rewarded. Whether you believe in God, the universe, aliens, birds,
gypsian cats, you will be rewarded. And we are a
proof of that because both of us have lived in
deep dark places. I just you know, for me, it
(23:39):
really is humbling to watch. It is the triumph of
good over evil. Ultimately, I mean, I really hope we
can help not just each other grow further in our
lives and stay connected, but to help other people. And
I did tell you will love and you will care.
(24:02):
So I said those words, but I didn't believe them
a hundred percent. I had to tell myself that stuff
for years to get through it, and when I met Melissa,
all those words were proven right. Does any of that
make sense? Absolutely? Absolutely. The most telling change in Don
(24:27):
was evident when confronted with the idea of being face
to face with Keith present day. If I met him
in person, I would hope that my power and my
strength would hold me back and I would say you
lose me and your daughter win. But in honest reaction,
(24:51):
at this very moment, my anger side still would want
to put him in some kind of other pain, but
not killing. You know, I'm not trying to be mean
or angry, but my good side would say we win,
you lose. I think that part is stronger than my
angry part, so I wouldn't do that, is what I
(25:14):
feel in my heart. You know, I'll be honest, I
really haven't even thought about you know. I used to
think about the guy and so forth, but he ain't
even in the back of my mind anymore. Like he's
not living rent free in your brain anymore. He's not
(25:34):
controlling your thoughts and that's all part of I think
your acceptance of yourself and going back to Don and
letting Lee Roy go. Right, that's a great metaphor. I
don't know how I didn't come up with it, but yeah,
I am able to be more free than I've ever been. Now,
(26:01):
what Melissa ultimately regained through the journey through Dawn, through
Everything was to regain control of her own story without Keith.
At points, you thought that you needed answers from your dad.
How do you feel now, Yeah? I thought that I
(26:23):
asked my dad really honest questions and that he would
give really honest answers. But through this journey, I found
that he doesn't tell honest. He tells his own narrative,
and that changes depending on what he wants from you.
And even if I was to meet with him, he
(26:44):
would spind me a tale. I don't need any more
of his narrative. Uh, that's control. So has this journey
given you the narrative back? Yeah, it's good me the
freedom to tell my own story to myself, like who
I really am who I intuitively thought I was, Like,
(27:06):
this identity is really about our self beliefs, and we
operate our lives by the beliefs we carry about who
we are. And for so many years I operated my
life with the story I told myself, which is I'm
the daughter of a serial killer, Therefore I am bad.
(27:26):
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. I am
part of that tree. And now that's no longer my story.
I'm Melissa More, a mother, a woman, and that's what
I am. There's no tagline like I don't. I don't
(27:46):
have to carry daughter serial killer like I don't. It's
just Melissa More. Just like you're Lauren. You don't have
a banner behind you. You know that's that liberating, you know,
it's liberating. As sensational and at times surreal as Melissa's
(28:09):
story has been, there's something very universal about her journey.
It's really about the triumph of the human spirit over fear, shame,
and ultimately grief. In the end, it's about hope, the
hope that good can triumph over evil, or at least
lesson its sting. Oh hey, can it be another way
(28:43):
to punish me? A thousand lives, Light years fly, dark
years wander slowly by my broken voice. It calls to me,
read feels, what notes, I'll never me, I'll drift in words,
(29:06):
way out to see, way out until I'm his story.
Oh Happy Faces, a production of How Stuff Works. Executive
producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, mangesh A ticket
Ur and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music
(29:30):
by Claire Campbell, Page Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Story editor is Matt Riddle. Audio editing by Chandler Mays
and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chacogne. 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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