The daughter of the 'Happy Face' serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson has described how, at age 15, she discovered a roll of duct tape in the sleeper cabin of her father's long-distance truck—a moment she dismissed at the time but which later haunted her.
Melissa Moore, now 34, recounts in a new essay for BBC News that as a child she witnessed her father hang her pet kittens on a clothesline and torture them to death, ignoring her screams. On another occasion, he pinned a cat down and twisted its neck until it snapped, with a look of 'enjoyment' on his face.
Moore also recalls a breakfast meeting in 1994 when her father seemed on the verge of confessing. He said, 'Not everything is what it appears to be, Missy,' and added, 'I have something to tell you, and it's really important.' But he stopped himself, saying, 'If I tell you, you will tell the police. I'm not what you think I am, Melissa.' She felt violently ill and ran to the bathroom; when she returned, he changed the subject.
Jesperson, a long-haul truck driver, killed eight women in the 1990s, often targeting prostitutes and homeless women. He gained notoriety by sending confessions signed with a smiley face. He was convicted in 1995 and is serving life sentences in Oregon State Prison.
Moore and her husband visited him in prison in 2005 with their children, but they have had no contact since. She reflects on the breakfast encounter, wondering what would have happened had he confessed then.
