Melissa's father seemed like the perfect dad. Then his chilling secret was exposed.

Melissa Moore had a happy childhood.

She lived in a house in the countryside in Washington State with her two siblings, a stay-at-home mum and a dad who drove trucks. She felt loved, provided for and adored.

When Keith Hunter Jesperson would pull into the driveway, all three kids would run to greet him. He was always bringing them back change and tokens from his work trips, and it became a much-loved routine seeing what bits and bobs he had in his pockets.

Watch the trailer for Paramount+ new true crime drama, Happy Face, based on Melissa's life. Post continues below.

In 1990, when Melissa was 11, her parents split up. She and her siblings would still see their father on occasion, and when he'd visit he'd often stay at their home and do things like fill the pantry with groceries for his ex-wife.

But as she got older, her dad started to make her feel anxious. While she "loved him", she didn't really "enjoy being around him", she recalled in a piece for the BBC. 

"It was just a feeling that something was building, seething beneath the surface. I had once tried to articulate it to a school counsellor but it didn't come out right. I mean, a lot of kids think their dad is weird," she said.

One of the things she hated was the way he'd talk about sex. Melissa was just a teenager but her father would describe in graphic detail sleeping with her mother and make lewd remarks to women in the street in her company.

Little did she know, while Jesperson was playing the loving family man, he was also violently raping and murdering women.

The Canadian-born trucker killed at least eight women across the US between 1990 and 1995, but he claims he killed as many as 185.

Keith Jesperson with Melissa. Images: ABC News.

In hindsight, there were things about Melissa's father that were off all along.

Writing for the BBC, she remembered seeing him casually hanging kittens on the clothing line when she was five. He began to torment them, while she screamed at him to stop. She later found the cats dead.

In 1994 when she was 15, her dad asked her and her younger brother and sister if they'd like to go for breakfast. They hopped in his truck, and Melissa and her sister sat in the back in the sleeper cab on top of the mattress. As they turned a corner, a big roll of duct tape rolled out of the sleeping compartment.

"Why does my dad have duct tape by his pillow?" she remembered thinking, but brushed it off, assuming it was just because of the small living quarters in the truck.

At breakfast that morning, he told her, "You know, I have something to tell you, and it's really important," before pausing and saying, "I can't tell you, sweetie. If I tell you, you will tell the police. I'm not what you think I am, Melissa."

By this point, he'd already murdered multiple women, and he would murder two more before being arrested in March 1995, just a few months after that breakfast.

Keith Jesperson in prison. Image: AAP.

Looking back now, Melissa realises Jesperson was referring to the murders he had committed and was struggling to maintain his double life.

"He was on the verge of telling me and had he told me and I was alone with him, he would've had to drive me back to school," she told People.

"And I don't think he would've driven me back to school, I think he would've regretted telling me and would've had to resolve the problem, which would be to end my life."

When she actually found out what her father had done, she was living with her mother and two siblings in the basement of her grandparents' home. She remembers her mother breaking the news to her, as life as she knew it shattered.

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The Happy Face Killer.

Jespersen earned the nickname the 'Happy Face Killer' because of the smiley faces he drew in letters to police and media, where he boasted about his murders.

He started doing that because a couple were wrongly convicted of one of his crimes, so he started leaving confessions in the toilets of truck stops and bus stations signed with a smiley.

In one letter he wrote: "I would like to tell my story! I am a good person at times? I always wanted to be liked … I always have wanted to be noticed … so I started something I don't know how to stop."

His first known victim was Taunja Bennett, who he strangled to death with his hands on January 21, 1990, after inviting her home to his house from a bar.

His second known victim, known only as Claudia, was murdered in August 1992. He met her at a truck stop and gave her a ride, before duct-tapping her mouth and hands, raping and strangling her.

Convicted murderer Keith Jesperson after his arrest in 1995. Image: AAP/Don Ryan.

Sex worker Cynthia Lyn Rose was also murdered in his truck just a month later. In November that year, he killed Laurie Ann Pentland, reportedly because she tried to double charge him for sex.

His other victims included a 21-year-old woman called Angela who he gave a lift too in January 1995, and 41-year-old Julia Ann Winningham, who was his last victim in March of that year.

Julia was actually his girlfriend, and it was this relationship that allowed police to trace the murder back to him.

Jesperson initially denied guilt, but ended up admitting to his crimes in a letter to his brother, who turned the confession over to police. To avoid the death penalty, Jespersen cut a plea deal to serve multiple concurrent life sentences.

He hasn't been shy about talking to media about his crimes over the years.

When asked by ABC News, "did you choke all of the women?", he casually replied: "That's what I had done with the first one, so I never changed. It'd worked the first time, so..."

In another interview with ABC News, Jespersen said: ""It became a nonchalant type thing, because I got away with it. It is everything like shoplifting. You're breaking the law but you're getting away with it. And so, there's a thrill of getting away with it."

Where is Keith Jesperson now?

In 1995, Jesperson was convicted of three murders and went directly to prison without trial.

He was eventually sentenced to six consecutive and concurrent sentences adding up to 120 years, according to true crime docudrama, Snapped: Notorious. 

Jesperson is serving his time at Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.

In a November 2023 podcast interview, he claimed to be pen pals with the Gilgo Beach serial killer suspect Rex Heuermann.

Melissa Moore is sharing her story. Image: Getty. 

Grappling with having a serial killer as a dad.

Melissa is estranged from her father, who she refuses to let have a relationship with her children.

"I don't want my dad to get into the psyche of my children and hurt them in any way because he is manipulative. He is a psychopath," she told ABC News.

"He has the potential, still, to hurt, even if not with physical violence or murder, but with his words."

Melissa believes her father would kill again if he was released from prison today.

"I don't believe my dad is sorry at all … what he is sorry about, though, is that he got caught."

Since 2008, Melissa has shared her story on multiple platforms, including in her own book and podcast and most recently on TikTok where she has amassed more than 200,000 followers.

In the viral videos, she talks about getting letters from her father in prison.

In 2022, Melissa got married, and her father wrote her a letter that said both she and her new husband are "fat," before asking why he wasn't invited.

@lifeafterhappyface #answer to @taylormillar951 #greenscreen letters my serial killer father send me…#happyface #truecrimetiktok #truecrime #truecrimecommunity ♬ original sound - Melissa Moore

The end of the letter read, "remember most of all daughter, I never stopped loving you."

For Christmas in 2021, he sent her a handbag made by a fellow inmate.

In a video from 2023, she told her audience that her mum passed away from cancer, and on her death-bed she told Melissa that she was her "dad's last victim, and that it just took her a lot longer to die."

Melissa has written about the realities of finding out her father was a serial killer, telling the BBC, she would read people calling for her dad to be executed and feel "daggers to my heart."

In high school at the time he was arrested, parents kept their children away from her, and she found herself being stared at all the time. She also worried whether she was capable of killing anyone.

"Didn't I share my father's DNA?" she wrote. "How does one become a serial killer? Could that evil be something that I was carrying around, and could I even pass it on to my children?"

Melissa Moore's story has inspired a new Paramount+ crime drama, starring Annaleigh Ashford and Dennis Quaid as her and Keith.

Melissa decided to start talking more openly about her experience after she had her own daughter, writing a book Shattered Silence, and appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009.

Since then, she's dedicated her life to helping other family members of violent criminals come to terms with their new lives and the murderers they shared a life with.

Now, in 2025, the terrifying tale is the subject of Paramount+'s upcoming true crime drama, Happy Face, starring Dennis Quaid and Annaleigh Ashford.

It's based on Melissa's 2018 podcast Happy Face, a 12-part exploration of her father's double life and how she accepted her father's horrific past to move forward for her family.

Jumping off Melissa's true-life story, the eight-episode show follows Melissa (Ashford) as her incarcerated father (Quaid) finds a way to force himself back into her life after decades of no contact.

By the sounds of things, true crime fans are going to love this one.

In a race against the clock, Melissa must find out if an innocent man is going to be put to death for a crime her father committed. I, for one, will be seated come March 20.

This article was published in January 2023 and has been updated.

Feature image: ABC News.