Speaker 1: Carl Jung once said that knowing your own darkness is
Speaker 1: the best method for dealing with the darkness of other people.
Speaker 1: But what if that other person is your father. This
Speaker 1: story covers two lives, a father and his daughter, and
Speaker 1: two paths, a killer and a victim. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco,
Speaker 1: and this is happy Face.
Speaker 2: I got a phone call. You guys were in bed.
Speaker 3: I got a phone call, and this guy gets on
Speaker 3: the phone and he says, I know where you're at.
Speaker 3: You're in the kitchen and you're wearing this. I was petrified.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. So I closed the door to the
Speaker 3: kid's room and I turned off all the lights because
Speaker 3: I didn't want him to know where I was at.
Speaker 3: But whoever called me exactly where I was in the house,
Speaker 3: and he knew exactly what I was wearing, so I
Speaker 3: knew he could see me for wherever he was. So
Speaker 3: I turned the lights off and I called nine one one,
Speaker 3: and they said, well, if they haven't broken in anything,
Speaker 3: there's nothing we can do.
Speaker 2: I go, oh, you're still comforting, you know.
Speaker 3: But the fortunate thing for me is I was babysitting
Speaker 3: my sister's two dogs and I was sitting on the Countain,
Speaker 3: and I said, oh, my god, Lord, if you take me,
Speaker 3: if he kills me.
Speaker 2: Just don't let my kids find me in the morning.
Speaker 2: Please don't let them find me.
Speaker 3: And I sat with the dogs next to me. I
Speaker 3: can see the door handle turning and the dogs went ballistic.
Speaker 3: And whoever it was left.
Speaker 2: Do you think he got something to oh? He said
Speaker 2: he did. Keith states that he hired someone.
Speaker 4: How did you know that it was him that was
Speaker 4: trying to put a.
Speaker 2: Hit on you? Because that was the only who else
Speaker 2: knew where I lived.
Speaker 5: It's been a long long Thanks God, Mesta, you stay
Speaker 5: since Durren, the dream of you bell leto you be
Speaker 5: let go.
Speaker 1: Fagged Upso No, I'm on the road with Melissa Moore,
Speaker 1: the daughter of the happy faced serial killer Noel. Our
Speaker 1: producer is also in the car with us, and we've
Speaker 1: just left her mother, Rose's office. Rose told us this
Speaker 1: terrifying story about how Keith had threatened her even from prison,
Speaker 1: he had hired somebody to possibly even murder her, and
Speaker 1: Melissa's beginning to realize that none of her childhood homes
Speaker 1: were truly ever safe.
Speaker 5: Let's actually go there.
Speaker 6: I want to go to the first place I stopped
Speaker 6: when we came to Spokane. Are you okay with that?
Speaker 6: If I take you there, it worse. I'm on Hamilton Road,
Speaker 6: which is the road my mom took when we got
Speaker 6: to Spokane to head over to my grandma's house. And
Speaker 6: everything was new to me. I have never seen so
Speaker 6: many buildings so close to each other.
Speaker 5: There's so many cars.
Speaker 6: This was a site that I've never seen before, and
Speaker 6: it was thrilling to me as a young girl. It
Speaker 6: was absolutely exciting, despite knowing my mom had just said
Speaker 6: that her and my dad were separating, which I didn't believe.
Speaker 5: It didn't feel real.
Speaker 6: I felt that this was a temporary situation, that they
Speaker 6: would get back together, that this was just going to
Speaker 6: be like a summer vacation.
Speaker 1: When you moved to your grandparents' house, how did your
Speaker 1: day to day change.
Speaker 5: My grandma, you.
Speaker 6: Know, didn't expect to be hosting a family in her house,
Speaker 6: and so there's no way she could have prepared. Even
Speaker 6: if she could have prepared, So her basement was an
Speaker 6: unfinished basement, was all cement, cement floors, and there was
Speaker 6: a canning cellar with this old reclaimed wood, and there
Speaker 6: was no There was one bedroom that was finished in
Speaker 6: the basement with like particle board. But my area that
Speaker 6: I picked was the cellar room, and I had a
Speaker 6: room for a cot, and then there was no room
Speaker 6: for any furnishings. We didn't have any furniture, so I
Speaker 6: used shoe boxes to organize my underwear.
Speaker 5: And my socks my cardboard.
Speaker 6: Yeah, cardboard shoe boxes, And that was kind of like
Speaker 6: my makeshift dresser. I thought I was going to last
Speaker 6: just a week or two, but it quickly turned into
Speaker 6: the whole summer, and then summer quickly turned into I
Speaker 6: was going to fifth grade now. My mom was registering
Speaker 6: me at Evergreen Elementary here, and once she registered me
Speaker 6: for fifth grade here, it now felt like, oh, this
Speaker 6: isn't changing, and especially when my dad showed up.
Speaker 1: But when Keith came, it was a huge disappointment for Melissa.
Speaker 1: She suddenly realized he wasn't this superhero or this mythological
Speaker 1: figure she'd always romanticized him, as.
Speaker 6: He had a trailer of all our belongings, and it
Speaker 6: was like halfway through, like he didn't even having care.
Speaker 6: When he showed up, it was a disaster. It was
Speaker 6: just like tossed in there, like it was trash, our belongings.
Speaker 6: I actually didn't even recognize it as my own bedroom
Speaker 6: furniture because it was so broken down and so ruined
Speaker 6: by the transport.
Speaker 1: Rose remembers this well, and it's even worse from her perspective,
Speaker 1: while Melissa focuses on her bed and her possessions. Rose's
Speaker 1: sadness comes from losing something irreplaceable.
Speaker 3: When we had left, he had given everything away from
Speaker 3: our house, like I wanted to keep, like you guys's
Speaker 3: baby pictures and her She had a cute little gown
Speaker 3: at Little Rose Buzzle that your grandma had bought for you,
Speaker 3: and in a quilt that was made for you.
Speaker 2: And he chucked that all up, gave it away.
Speaker 7: Phil Stanford The Oregonian, May twenty sixth, nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 7: One day about November ninety two, he says he picked
Speaker 7: up a girl named Claudia in California on the way
Speaker 7: out of la My mind went with the thought of
Speaker 7: a sex slave, and when I stopped at a rest area,
Speaker 7: I took her. I taped her up and raped her
Speaker 7: again and again. I kept her for four days alive.
Speaker 7: Then I killed her and dumped her body about seven
Speaker 7: miles north of blyth On ninety five.
Speaker 6: I was still happy to see him because I thought
Speaker 6: that every time my dad came, I could persuade him
Speaker 6: to get back together with my mom, and like everything
Speaker 6: would go back to normal and I could have my
Speaker 6: life back. I thought, if I could just manipulate and
Speaker 6: convince my father, I would try every tactic possible. And
Speaker 6: maybe you know other kids when they go through a divorce,
Speaker 6: go through the same thing. That's what I did with
Speaker 6: my dad. I wanted him back. I wanted him to
Speaker 6: fix the situation, you know.
Speaker 5: But she registered that.
Speaker 8: Like he wasn't treating your things with respect, that there
Speaker 8: was sort of a coldness there.
Speaker 5: You registered that.
Speaker 6: I registered that, but I thought it was because of
Speaker 6: his anger situation.
Speaker 5: I didn't take it personal. I thought it was.
Speaker 2: Would you blame your mom?
Speaker 6: Yeah? Yeah, I blamed my mom. That's what I regret
Speaker 6: is I blamed her.
Speaker 5: She shouldn't deserve that at all.
Speaker 2: How did you meet him again? How did you guys
Speaker 2: start dating?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 9: I know the sorry You were working at a burger
Speaker 9: place and you were doing the takeout window and then
Speaker 9: my dad drove through the takeout and then you didn't
Speaker 9: put the meat in his hack.
Speaker 4: On the grill on the left, and then he circled
Speaker 4: back because he didn't have meat in his hamburgers.
Speaker 2: Two buns, right, yeah, he goes up. I did order
Speaker 2: a hamberger, there.
Speaker 5: Was no meat in it.
Speaker 2: I go, oh, okay.
Speaker 5: He still sitting on the grill.
Speaker 2: So he asked me out and I said no.
Speaker 3: Every time he come in he'd ask me, and Macfin goes,
Speaker 3: I'll just go out with him once.
Speaker 2: Why didn't you want to do him?
Speaker 3: I was not really attractive to him, you know, the
Speaker 3: whole thing. I don't even know I even married him.
Speaker 5: To be honest with.
Speaker 1: You, seemingly inappropriate laughter seems to be a trait of
Speaker 1: the Jesperson women. It's almost gallows humored.
Speaker 2: Years later, I was like, what did you even see
Speaker 2: in this guy that you married him?
Speaker 3: I guess I just I road it for the underdog,
Speaker 3: so long I married it.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: He wasn't exactly a faithful husband, oh, absolutely not from
Speaker 2: day one. From day one, actually literally day one. Yeah,
Speaker 2: tell me about your wedding day.
Speaker 3: Got ready for the wedding, we got married, and they
Speaker 3: were doing pictures of me and I guess he was
Speaker 3: outside kissing the bridesmaids my best friend, Pam, Pam, how can.
Speaker 2: You find out about that? She told me? Maybe years later?
Speaker 2: She goes, I felt so bad. I wanted to tell you,
Speaker 2: but Dad didn't tell you.
Speaker 4: Oh when when you were married and we were living
Speaker 4: in Yakima, did you ever since say he was unfaithful?
Speaker 2: I knew it. I knew it. I was getting phone
Speaker 2: calls every day. Hi, is Keith here?
Speaker 3: I said, no, who is this? She goes, oh, I
Speaker 3: can't remember what her name was, And she goes, oh,
Speaker 3: would you tell Keith that I called?
Speaker 2: She goes, oh, who are you his wife? Oh? And
Speaker 2: then she'd hung up. So they were phoning the house.
Speaker 2: They were phoning the house. Did you ever confront Dad
Speaker 2: on these women calling?
Speaker 5: I did.
Speaker 3: He would say things like, if you only knew, like
Speaker 3: we'd be driving down the road, because if you only knew,
Speaker 3: And I go, if I only knew?
Speaker 2: What? Because if only you knew.
Speaker 7: After the second murder, the happy Face killer says he
Speaker 7: realized he liked what he was doing. This triggered something
Speaker 7: in me. He says, it was getting easy, real easy.
Speaker 7: A week or two later, I stopped in Turlock, California,
Speaker 7: at a rest area a hooker became my next victim.
Speaker 7: This time I just strangled her right there without sucks.
Speaker 7: She was in my truck only five minutes. I dropped
Speaker 7: her body off behind the Blueberry Hill Cafe a ten
Speaker 7: miles south on ninety nine. I placed her body in
Speaker 7: the dirt and stepped on her throat to make sure
Speaker 7: she was dead.
Speaker 6: I just couldn't understand why we kind of get together,
Speaker 6: Like I couldn't understand because our car came from my dad.
Speaker 6: When we needed anything, my mom would ask my dad,
Speaker 6: and my dad would buy us a new car, or
Speaker 6: my dad would provide the things that we needed.
Speaker 5: So it felt like we just weren't competent on our.
Speaker 6: Own without him, Like somehow he was competent and knew
Speaker 6: how to make things happen, and he got money so
Speaker 6: fast and so effortlessly.
Speaker 5: It looked like, you know, but our dad.
Speaker 1: Was that now looking back, you know, as a mom
Speaker 1: now looking at he'd.
Speaker 6: Have to pay anything, like all his resources, his full
Speaker 6: time job, didn't go to supporting a family and went
Speaker 6: to himself and his lifestyle.
Speaker 1: Did you at one point try to go on the
Speaker 1: road with him.
Speaker 3: There's some story he told, Yeah, so so you guys,
Speaker 3: stay with your grandparents.
Speaker 2: We go to Arizona.
Speaker 3: So we're in near Aza, semi truck in a semi truck.
Speaker 3: It was a blazing hot day, so we were gonna
Speaker 3: stop at a restaurant and neat.
Speaker 2: So he parks the vehicle. We walk and there was.
Speaker 3: I call him Pimps, but they had a huge black
Speaker 3: lemmo and they were washing it. He physically picked me
Speaker 3: up and put me in the arms of that man.
Speaker 2: He said, you can have her and walked away. And
Speaker 2: that was the end of our marriage. That was it.
Speaker 2: That's when I left.
Speaker 3: I don't I don't even know why. I got back
Speaker 3: in the truck with him and went back home.
Speaker 2: Mentally for you, at that moment, that was it. I
Speaker 2: was totally done. So basically told.
Speaker 3: Pemps that you can have my wife pick me up,
Speaker 3: physically pick me up and put me in the arms
Speaker 3: of a guy like what like?
Speaker 2: I couldn't think. I was in so much shock, I
Speaker 2: couldn't figure out.
Speaker 3: We never talked, by the way the whole way back,
Speaker 3: never said a word to each.
Speaker 5: Other, smelled too this world was fall Your nas been clean,
Speaker 5: our s dream.
Speaker 6: Of fire.
Speaker 5: Un released, spent.
Speaker 3: Oh you.
Speaker 2: Brid how did he feel about being a dad?
Speaker 3: Well, he said he really was happy, and I mean
Speaker 3: he held you and stuff, but he was never home.
Speaker 2: So what he said when he did was two different things. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that makes sense.
Speaker 5: It's always been the case.
Speaker 3: I think I spent the first year it was like,
Speaker 3: I don't know how to explain it.
Speaker 2: The first year she was born, I was like, there
Speaker 2: was some dark force that was trying to kill us.
Speaker 2: I don't know how to explain it to you. I
Speaker 2: went the first year with Melissa, had went through two fires.
Speaker 2: Didn't I save the family by waking up? Yeah? Like
Speaker 2: I was.
Speaker 3: I was sleeping and she was playing in her crib.
Speaker 2: I go, what the heck?
Speaker 3: And I looked over, Oh, she's playing in a crib.
Speaker 3: I heard her audible voice tell me Rose, it's three
Speaker 3: o'clock in the morning. Why can't you see your child
Speaker 3: playing in the crib? I shot straight up. The whole
Speaker 3: bathroom was on fire. I grabbed her, ran out, I
Speaker 3: nudged Keith, ran out the door with her, and.
Speaker 9: The whole mobile home belt burned down And it didn't
Speaker 9: burn down.
Speaker 2: But it caught the whole roof on fire, wasn't it
Speaker 2: the vent?
Speaker 3: Keith taped the vent. It got so hot that the
Speaker 3: fan the melt. It melt, plastic melted, and I had
Speaker 3: a little toilet cover, a shag covered, and it caught
Speaker 3: it on fire. And the whole bathroom was in golf
Speaker 3: before the smoke detectors went off. I was already out
Speaker 3: the door before the smoke dectors went off.
Speaker 1: When did you remember having the first feeling like, oh
Speaker 1: my god, I made a mistake in terms of marrying him.
Speaker 3: I think when I went through the second fire. It
Speaker 3: was like three months after that. Your dad had a
Speaker 3: contract with tobacco to do irrigation pipes for a huge
Speaker 3: orchard up in Winneanchi.
Speaker 2: So we borrowed.
Speaker 3: Your grandparents' brand new travel trailer and we parked it
Speaker 3: under the hill and there was just dry grass all
Speaker 3: the way up the hill, and then there was a
Speaker 3: beach and then a lake, and I remember looking up
Speaker 3: and the hill was on fire and it was all
Speaker 3: dry grass between me and that trailer.
Speaker 2: It was tall, dry grass. Do you know that he
Speaker 2: was an arsonist? He set fires? He didn't think of that.
Speaker 2: He did it through childhood.
Speaker 4: Do you think he set the trailer off?
Speaker 2: But that's after that that's kind of coincidence to fire.
Speaker 4: Exactly do you think guys having second thoughts of being
Speaker 4: a dad who was trying to kill kill us?
Speaker 3: I have no idea, but I think about it, like
Speaker 3: I told you, a dark force was trying to get
Speaker 3: rid of us.
Speaker 2: So Dad was gone. You didn't see him. And there
Speaker 2: this fire happens on the hill and it's coming straight
Speaker 2: down for us. And then what do you do?
Speaker 3: You have me in the lake, and I grabbed the
Speaker 3: hose from behind the camper and saturated the grass as
Speaker 3: much as I.
Speaker 2: Could with the water from the hose. I mean, it
Speaker 2: was gonna be our life.
Speaker 3: So and I had a visual point that if the
Speaker 3: fire broke past that line, I was gonna just leave
Speaker 3: the hose there and as.
Speaker 2: I run the lake and I was gonna go deeper
Speaker 2: with you in it. And then did it ever reach
Speaker 2: that point? They did not. I saw the fire truck
Speaker 2: come down, WoT it out. When did Keith come back, Oh,
Speaker 2: maybe fifteen minutes after that? How did he know? I
Speaker 2: have no idea.
Speaker 1: It was an incredible moment just watching them come together.
Speaker 1: It was as if they were putting together the pieces
Speaker 1: of a puzzle that they'd been trying to solve for years.
Speaker 2: Then you said that was the moment when you regretted
Speaker 2: marrying him. Why because it was.
Speaker 3: This is the second fire, like within three and I
Speaker 3: felt like this dark, oppressive force was after me, and
Speaker 3: I felt that that force was your dad.
Speaker 2: Then shortly after that, like a month.
Speaker 3: After, we go camping to you and I and we're
Speaker 3: at a church camp and so he decides to sleep
Speaker 3: in the car, but you and I sleep in the cabin.
Speaker 2: And then I heard a.
Speaker 3: Bear and it's going around and around our cabin, and
Speaker 3: I was like, oh my god. I mean I wanted
Speaker 3: to grab you put it in my bed, but I
Speaker 3: didn't dare stir you. And then the bear stood up
Speaker 3: on the door and was pushing on the door and
Speaker 3: there was only a leather latch between that bear and us,
Speaker 3: and so I laid there and I said, oh God,
Speaker 3: please don't let Melissa make one sound. Please don't make
Speaker 3: your one sound. And then I heard another bear going
Speaker 3: around and around.
Speaker 2: That's not an accident.
Speaker 4: He must have planted fish.
Speaker 5: He did. He did.
Speaker 2: He cleaned fish in front of the cabin.
Speaker 3: You can see paws all over the place. And he
Speaker 3: was sleeping in the car, and this bear was pushing
Speaker 3: on this door and was pushing on this door, and
Speaker 3: I just thought, oh my god, if that latch on hooks,
Speaker 3: we're dinner.
Speaker 2: I know that dad knows not to clean fish. It's
Speaker 2: one on one. It's one on one.
Speaker 4: You don't prepare your food in your camp base, right,
Speaker 4: or clean fish.
Speaker 2: You're supposed to even put your trash up a tree. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he knew, he knew that.
Speaker 3: I mean, he packed horses with his dad. They've they've
Speaker 3: been camping since they were little. They know the bush
Speaker 3: better than anything.
Speaker 4: It's apparent to me three incidents, he's conveniently in a
Speaker 4: different location.
Speaker 2: This is definitely him trying to make it look like
Speaker 2: an accident.
Speaker 3: I think after that point that I really believe you
Speaker 3: and I were protected, really spiritually protected you. And I
Speaker 3: felt that from the very beginning with all the kids.
Speaker 7: The happy face killer, if that's how he wants us
Speaker 7: to think of him, says he left his next victim
Speaker 7: in Salem Moregan. My next victim was a hooker I
Speaker 7: had used weeks earlier. I summoned her on the CB.
Speaker 7: She had a raincoat on. We went through the normal procedure.
Speaker 7: I felt so much power. I then told her she
Speaker 7: was going to die and slowly strangled her and dropped
Speaker 7: her off behind g I, Joe's and Salem. I put
Speaker 7: her against the fence under the BlackBerry vines and covered
Speaker 7: her with leaves.
Speaker 5: Do you believe her.
Speaker 8: When she says, your dad never abused her?
Speaker 6: I do, and I believe in the physical sense because
Speaker 6: he didn't physically abuse her. Was he abusive man, Yes,
Speaker 6: in a different way.
Speaker 5: He was abusive.
Speaker 6: Emotionally he was abusive, like controlling the money and controlling her.
Speaker 8: How did it make you feel hearing kind of putting
Speaker 8: the pieces together about those stories your mom told you
Speaker 8: about the fires because you obviously knew about it.
Speaker 6: You knew about the fires.
Speaker 5: He knew about one fire.
Speaker 6: I did not know about the bears or about the
Speaker 6: other fire. I didn't put the pieces together like this
Speaker 6: is like I've had these fragments, these little stories of
Speaker 6: just paint a picture of one particular thing. Now I
Speaker 6: feel like the pieces are coming together.
Speaker 5: And painting a bigger picture.
Speaker 6: I had assumed when he had thoughts of killing us
Speaker 6: kids that it was towards the latter years. Never would
Speaker 6: I have ever thought that it happened as I was
Speaker 6: a toddler.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't go that far back.
Speaker 1: When you look at Keith's history as a serial killer,
Speaker 1: you have to understand that his murders that we know
Speaker 1: of took place in a five year period. He started
Speaker 1: killing in nineteen ninety when Melissa was ten, and he
Speaker 1: stopped in ninety five when she was fifteen, And that
Speaker 1: history she shared with her father before he became a
Speaker 1: serial killer is something that's very difficult for her to process.
Speaker 6: You know, I guess I had put somewhat my dad
Speaker 6: in a box too, like he was the monster for
Speaker 6: five years. Now I'm seeing he was the monster for
Speaker 6: many years, decades, Like this is not all life.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the five years is not an isolated event. It
Speaker 5: was an escalation.
Speaker 2: Were you ever afraid of him? Was I afraid of
Speaker 2: your dad? No?
Speaker 3: Was I afraid of the person that picked me up
Speaker 3: and put me in the arms like another guy?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? I was afraid of that.
Speaker 1: Do you think he was born that way?
Speaker 2: I think he was groomed to be who he is.
Speaker 2: From less.
Speaker 10: So you last out, It's been long long, Thanks the
Speaker 10: best of.
Speaker 5: You stayed since The dream Lafer.
Speaker 8: Happy Face is a production of how stuff works Executive
Speaker 8: producers are Melissa Moore, Lauren Bright, Pacheco, mangesh A Tikedur
Speaker 8: and Will Pearson. Supervising producer is Noel Brown. Music by
Speaker 8: Claire Campbell, Paige Campbell and Hope for a Golden Summer.
Speaker 8: Story editor is Matt Riddle, Audio editing by Chandler Mays
Speaker 8: and Noel Brown. Assistant editor is Taylor Chaicoigne. Special thanks
Speaker 8: to Phil Stanford, the publishers of the Oregonian Newspaper and
Speaker 8: KATU News in Portland, Oregon.