Few folks may remember that back in the mid 1990′s when Robert Yates was busy pestering Spokane city prostitutes, another serial killer, nicknamed as ‘Happy Face Killer’ had been making the big news for his regular visits to the city and now, after almost 16 years, the daughter of this serial killer is again making national news as she gives new insight into her father’s double life.
Keith Jesperson, the guy who admits killing at least eight Spokane city women, got the nickname ‘Happy Face Killer’ because the clues, he used to leave for police, included a happy face.
Melissa Moore, the eldest of three children of the ‘Happy Face Killer’ who adored her father right through her childhood but also confessed that some shocking early memories of her dad are surely hard to forget, says “it was at a long-since-closed Denny’s restaurant on 2nd Avenue in Spokane that my father took me and made a chilling confession to be the ‘Happy Face Killer’ over breakfast”.
She further added “at that point police has already questioned him about one murder so; I guess that’s why, my dada decided to share his terrible secret with me. However, somehow I already knew”.
According to her, prior his confession, like many other little girls Melissa Moore, who not even once at some stage in her early childhood did imagine her father to be capable of becoming ‘Happy Face Killer’, worshiped her father until one day when she found a box full of kittens and brought them to her dad, who took the kittens and hung them on the clothesline by their tails.
“It was horrific to the extent that I still remember it 15-16 years later” said Melissa.
Prompted with that incident and a series of other such infidelities, the wife of ‘the Happy Face Killer’ moved away from his life and began a new life in a new city.
Melissa, who was adjusting well until Portland Police began asking her mother questions about the ‘Happy Face Killer’, said “So I did not know at that time in 1995 when detectives came to our home that he was being investigated for multiple murders”.
Soon, the news broke out, the ‘Happy Face Killer’ was identified and finally Melissa found some peace. Afterwards she began to make entries in her daily journal and those writings became the foundation of her book “Shattered Silence”.
It was her way of reaching out to the children of other mass murder suspects.
Happy Face Killer
