GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Welcome back to SNAP JUDGMENT, the "Infamous" episode. Today, we're exploring stories where people do in fact achieve a level of notoriety for all the wrong reasons. And our next story takes us to some very dark places. As such, sensitive listeners and those with small children are advised.
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MELISSA MOORE: So I remember when I was 15 years old looking out the window and seeing my dad's semi-truck pull up in the front of our house. My parents had been divorced at this point for about five years, and my dad's visit was unexpected. He wanted to take us out to breakfast that morning. My sister and my brother were really excited to see him. He always brought gifts from on the road and take time to just hear what their needs are and be a proactive dad. When my dad wasn't around, there was a lot of violence in my home from my mom's new marriage.
DAVEY KIM, BYLINE: Melissa's family lived in Section 8 housing in poverty, so Melissa's dad tried to help out as best he could. He brought home food and money and took them to fun places like the city fair.
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MOORE: So when my dad came, he was essentially a savior to our family. We got a break from the violence in our home. He did have two rules - one, that we wouldn't smoke or steal. He had been caught stealing from a previous employer, and so that's where that wisdom and that rule came from. But no smoking and drugs, and no stealing. I really felt proud to be his daughter.
So we all gather up into his semi-truck. Once up there, my brother had taken the passenger front seat. And so I sat up there on the mattress, and my sister sat up there with me. My brother and my sister are chatting away. They're trying to catch up my dad. My dad, he looked content and happy to be in the presence of his children. And I hear my brother open up the glove box, shuffling, looking for gum. And while he's doing that, he finds a pack of cigarettes. And he grabs the pack of cigarettes and holds it up in accusation, like, are you smoking, Dad? And my dad looked over to my brother and said, no, no. Those are for my friends. And my brother was like, yeah, right. These are not for your friends. He's like, yeah, those are for the hitchhikers that I pick up along the way. And we always knew my dad picked up hitchhikers, and I believed him.
So as we're going along, we turn a corner sharply. And as my dad did that, this large commercial duct tape rolled out from underneath my dad's pillow, and it hit my left leg. This is a lot of duct tape. So I just put it back in the corner of my dad's cab. And I also wondered when I did that, like, why was it under the pillow? And then my mind kind of justified it as, well, there's not a lot of space and storage in this semi-truck, so maybe that's why it's there.
KIM: Melissa's dad drops her younger siblings off at school and then takes Melissa out to a nice breakfast at Denny's. They find a window-side table, order coffee and food, and Melissa's really excited to spend what she thinks is going to be some quality father and daughter time.
MOORE: We talked about this and that, and then he surprised me by saying that the road has been hard. He goes into the details of him wanting to settle down and how he has met this fabulous woman. Her name is Julie Winningham, and he's eager for me to settle down in this home with her. I was excited to hear that he was dreaming about the future, and I could go into that with him because I was excited to be saved from the violence in my home life. I felt like - I felt that he really loved me and heard my needs and heard my call for help.
KIM: While Melissa and her dad are busy brainstorming for the future, all of a sudden, her dad drops out from the conversation. He looks at her and says...
MOORE: You know Missy, not everything is what it appears to be. And so I look at my dad, expecting him to explain. And he says, you know, I really want to tell you, but I know you'll tell the police. I just felt sick to my stomach. I thought, what? And so I decided to excuse myself to go to the restroom. I remember breathing heavy into the stall. In my mind, I thought, is this where he's going to tell me about the rumor that I heard in my family about him stealing welding equipment when I was just a young, little baby?
I didn't want to know because I was afraid that it would be something that would be hard to confront. From the bathroom, I go back to the booth that we were sitting at, and I was happy to see that our food arrived. I was relieved that my dad was willing to drop the previous conversation as well. We went back to just talking about the future, about what we would be doing.
KIM: After Melissa and her dad finish breakfast, he drops her off at her high school. Then he's off for another long trucking gig. It would be a while before he could visit again.
MOORE: Couple months later, my mom gathered us three children at the bottom of my grandmother's basement. I thought she was going to tell us that she had found a place for us to live, that we could move out of this basement at my grandmother's home. I thought that she had big news. But instead, it was something quite different. She looked like she had been crying. She said, your dad's been arrested. And my brother, he had the courage to ask, for what? For murder.
I just started running and flopped onto my cot and just started sobbing. I'm wrestling between all these thoughts that I have about my dad. I remember him putting me in a blanket and tossing me around, as in a game. I remember him taking us to go get our first bikes. But then, murder. Like, how could he murder someone? Maybe he accidentally hurt someone and killed them on accident. And then I thought about the cats. When I was 6, I thought about him strangling this black cat that we had on our farm property that my brother found. And then I thought about the duct tape and the cigarettes. And then my mind thought, he strangled the woman.
KIM: Melissa's mom refuses to give any more details, so they all go to bed, or they try to.
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MOORE: So the next day, I go to school hoping it would be a regular, normal day. But I heard my last name whispered in the hallways - Jesperson. And I could hear them, like, can you believe that? And then as I would pass them, people would become silent and just look at me. And then I was eager to go to lunch because I could sit with all my friends and I could feel like life is back to normal again. But instead, when I sat with my friends, they all looked somber and said, you know, my mom and dad know about what happened with your dad, and they told me that they don't want you around me anymore. I felt so ashamed.
KIM: After school, Melissa takes a bus to the public library to see if she could find out more about her dad's crimes.
MOORE: So I pulled up The Oregonian paper and found out that it was for Julie Winningham. And then I find out that there's more murders - a long list of other victims.
KIM: Melissa's dad, Keith Jesperson, was known as The Happy Face Killer. Only eight of his murders have been confirmed, but he claims to have killed as many as 160 people. After taking their lives, he would send letters to the media confessing of his crimes. Then he'd sign off with a smiley face.
MOORE: And I remember reading the print, and it was the family members of Julie Winningham saying my dad's a monster. My head said, yes, they have every right to call him a monster. And my heart said, he's my dad.
KIM: When Melissa finally gets the chance to see her dad for the first time since his arrest, she asks so many questions.
MOORE: Was he sorry? Did he have remorse? I wondered if he really loved me, and I wondered what was real in our relationship and what was not.
KIM: Melissa and her family shuffle into the visitor's room. It's divided by thick Plexiglas, with phones hanging on each side.
MOORE: First, I saw this heavily guarded sheriff open up the door. And I see men with their hands cuffed shuffling, being prodded by the sheriff. And it was so startling to see my dad being submissive to another man.
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MOORE: And my dad sat down, and he talked to me first. And he said, Missy, my best advice is that you change your last name. You know, we're not going to have these fun summers anymore, and that you and your brother are going to have to take care of yourselves. And it's going to be just you guys together. You're going to have to take care of each other.
(Crying) Sorry, I just want to go back there, you know? I couldn't believe this was my life. I thought he was going to make my life better.
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MOORE: When I left the jail, there was a part of me that still believed that he was capable of love, that he advised me to go into hiding to protect myself. I thought he was still Keith Jesperson, my dad.
KIM: Melissa began to write her dad letters. She would also call him and update him about her life.
MOORE: I would tell him about my grades. I would tell him about the dances that I was going to at school. And also, I would ask him for advice. I really wanted to have fatherly advice and wisdom just like he used to give me. My father's advice was really good most of the time. I felt like the letters that I received from my dad were a different side of him. Instead of him signing the letter with a smiley face, he was signing, love, Dad. Thick or thin, I would still be his daughter, and he would still be my dad. Even though he can't physically be there for me, he could maybe be there emotionally for me.
KIM: As time goes by, Melissa goes to college, gets married, has two kids. And for 10 years, she tried her best to keep him in the loop. Still, she never mentioned him to her kids. Melissa says that most people won't understand. But she knew that her dad, Keith Jesperson, was a serial killer - one of the worst ones. And still, she also knew that the same man was a loving father.
MOORE: So my daughter was in kindergarten, and one day, she came home on the bus. And the doors opened, and this bustle of children and energy just, like, shooted out of the bus. And then I saw my daughter coming down the stairs, and she was so excited to tell me about this new thing she learned at school. She was learning about families. And she said, you know what, Mommy? Everybody has a daddy. She's like, where's your daddy, Mom?
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MOORE: I completely froze. And I said, he's in Salem. He lived in Salem, but I didn't mention in a penitentiary. And then I saw her run off and go play, and in my mind, I thought, what am I going to do? This is way earlier than I thought I would have to tell her. I'm not prepared.
KIM: Melissa didn't know what else to tell her daughter, so she visits her own grandfather - her dad's dad - to see if she can find some answers.
MOORE: I sat on his couch, and I asked him questions about my dad's childhood and about their relationship. And then eventually, we ran out of things to talk about, and there was silence. And then my grandfather looks at me and says, you know, one time when I went to visit your dad, he said something that really surprised me. Your dad told me that he had thoughts of killing you children.
When my grandfather told me that, I went back to the past, back to the time that I last saw my dad at the diner. And now I knew for sure it was just an illusion. Keith Jesperson that was the gregarious and fun dad was not two separate beings, a stranger and a loving dad, but he was Keith Jesperson that brutalized and tortured eight women. I was too stunned to say anything else, and so I said my goodbyes to my grandpa and left. But as I'm heading home, the whole time, his words just percolating and going over and over in my head.
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KIM: After visiting her grandfather, Melissa stopped. She no longer took his calls, and she doesn't ever plan on taking her kids to visit him.
MOORE: Yeah, I cut him out of my life completely. Because he was my dad, I thought that I owed him visits, I owed him my time. That he was my dad, I had to respect my elders. But now he's no longer my dad, the man that I remembered. He was gone.
If anything haunts me today, it's just the traditions that my dad passed on to me. When I was younger, my dad would tuck me in in, like, a burrito. And my dad was a really good storyteller. And so I keep that tradition alive with my children. The only thing that haunts me about that is just seeing my kids light up, and I think back, oh, when I was a child, I was just as excited to hear these stories when I was with my dad. But I think that's a good ritual to preserve in my life.
Even though my dad's a serial killer, I believe that my dad was and has a good person within himself when he was younger, which probably would surprise a lot of people, but I do. I believe that people are inherently good. The only evil thing about us is our own selfishness.
KIM: So what do you do with your dad's letters now?
MOORE: Now when I receive letters from my dad, instead of opening them, I would keep them. I didn't care what was in the letters anymore. And if I could, I would have just changed my address and not receive any letters at all. So instead, today, I have a box full of unopened letters.
KIM: It's interesting to me that you still keep the letters.
MOORE: Yeah.
KIM: Are you planning on reading them one day?
MOORE: I don't know why I keep the letters in a box. I don't know what I hope to get out of them.
KIM: OK. I ask because you've basically cut him off.
MOORE: Yeah, yeah.
KIM: But still, could it be that you're still holding out for something?
MOORE: OK, I see it like insurance. So the letters are insurance to me of not having any regrets. Maybe when he's gone, maybe I will care. So just in case, I just save them. Maybe there might be something I want to read in the future in those letters. But today, there isn't anything.
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WASHINGTON: Big thanks and love to Melissa for sharing her story on the SNAP. Melissa now reaches out to other trauma survivors. And to learn more about Melissa and her father, check out her book "Shattered Silence" on our website, snapjudgment.org. That piece was produced by Davey Kim, with sound design by Leon Morimoto.
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WASHINGTON: Now, when SNAP JUDGMENT, the "Infamous" episode, returns, an adventure in the world's largest department store - and I promise, you will not see this one coming - in just a moment. Stay tuned. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.