At 15, Melissa found duct tape in her father's truck. Months later, he was arrested for murder.

This post deals with murder and sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers.

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. 

Images: ABC 20/20.

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. 

Watch: Melissa Moore talking about her father, the serial killer, on CNN.

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'd murder two more before being arrested in March 1995, just a few months after that breakfast. 

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.  

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.

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

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.

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 the 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..." 

Grappling with having a serial killer as a dad.

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 reads, "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 one recent video she tells her audience that her mum died a year ago 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 about if 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?"

She 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.

She does still grapple with her father's crimes to this day, telling her TikTok she goes to therapy weekly. 

Feature image: TikTok/ABC 20/20.