Where Is Melissa G. Moore Now? All About Her Life 30 Years After Learning Her Dad Was the Happy Face Killer

Melissa G. Moore has spent her life coming to terms with the fact that her father was a “stone-cold killer.”

As the daughter of Keith Hunter Jesperson, who came to be known as the “Happy Face Killer,” Moore spent her early years living under the same roof as the serial killer, unaware that her father secretly had a dark side. Moore's relationship with the convicted murderer will be brought to life in Paramount+'s Happy Face which is based on her podcast by the same name and premieres on March 20.

When Moore found out that her father had been arrested for murder when she was 16, her fond childhood memories of going camping and riding ATVs on her family’s sprawling property in rural Washington were all tainted.

His killing spree began in 1990, shortly after he and Moore’s mother, Rose Hucke, divorced. Over the course of five years, Jesperson killed at least eight women. It wasn’t until he murdered his then-girlfriend Julie Winningham that authorities connected him to the series of horrific crimes. At just 16 years old, Moore struggled to see her father as a criminal.

Related: Where Is Keith Hunter Jesperson Now? Inside the Happy Face Killer's Life Decades After His 5-Year Murder Spree

“I have memories of him playing with me, picking me up, spinning me around,” Moore shared on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2009. “Then to see that he was a stone-cold killer, I can’t fuse the two together.”

While Moore admitted that the “denial was so thick” for some time and that her father’s crimes seemed like a “fictional story,” she has now used the situation as a way to help families of other notorious killers.

“I’m OK, and I have rebuilt my life. But my dad got a life sentence; I got a life sentence,” Moore shared with Marie Claire in 2015. “I’m always going to be a daughter of a serial killer, and I have to choose how that’s going to affect me. I’m always having to make that choice: 'Do I want to hide today, or do I want to live today?' ”

So where is Melissa G. Moore now? Here’s everything to know about her life after discovering that her dad was the "Happy Face Killer."

Who is Melissa G. Moore?

Jesperson and Hucke welcomed two daughters, including Moore, and a son during their marriage. Moore and her two siblings were raised in the countryside community of Toppenish, Wash. and while the family sometimes struggled financially, Moore still has fond memories of her upbringing.

Recalling her childhood on A&E's Monster In My Family in 2024, Moore said that as a little girl, she believed they were the “average American family.” She remembered riding her bike through her rural neighborhood with her father trailing not far behind, going on camping trips and riding an ATV around their farm property.

“These were really good memories for me being out here in the country. I could smell the alfalfa still, I could hear the birds and hear the animal sounds, the horses, just like I did when I was a child. It makes me miss being a kid,” Moore said while visiting her hometown during a 2015 interview on 20/20.

But Hucke began to suspect that her husband was cheating on her when women started calling their home asking for Jesperson. The couple eventually separated and then divorced in 1990. Hucke later took their three children to live in Spokane, Wash. with her parents.

The family remained in Spokane for the rest of Moore’s adolescence while her father worked as a truck driver. Just as Moore was entering the local high school she learned of the double life her father was living on the road.

Who is Keith Hunter Jesperson?

Jesperson was born in Canada but spent much of his childhood in Washington. He came from a troubled background with an allegedly abusive father and a distant mother, per Monster In My Family. He allegedly set fires and tortured animals during his childhood.

Jesperson met Hucke when he was 20 years old and they married in 1975. The couple then welcomed three children and Jesperson began working as a long-haul truck driver.

“He was not a good husband,” Hucke told 20/20. “He was very distant with me. He was not [abusive]. If he was angry he would walk away.” After becoming suspicious that Jesperson was cheating, Hucke and the children moved to Spokane.

In 1990, the same year he and Hucke finalized their divorce, Jesperson committed his first known murder, sexually assaulting, beating and killing a woman named Taunja Bennett after meeting her at a bar near Portland, Ore. It was the first of at least eight killings over a period of five years.

Amid the investigation into Bennett’s murder, a woman named Laverne Pavlinac falsely confessed to killing the woman with her then-boyfriend John Sosnovske, per The New York Times. The couple were charged with murder — which drove Jesperson to make a confession of his own. He wrote a note on the wall of a bathroom truck stop, claiming to be the actual murderer and signing it with a smiley face.

When it didn’t draw the attention he hoped, Jesperson began writing to media outlets, including a six-page letter to The Oregonian in which he confessed to subsequent murders as well. He signed each letter with a smile, earning himself the nickname the "Happy Face Killer," per CNN.

Jesperson's killing spree went on until 1995 across six states: California, Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and Florida.

Did Melissa G. Moore have a good relationship with her father growing up?

As a little girl, Moore recalled having a positive relationship with her father. She told 20/20 that he “never spank or hit” her and they often spent time together when he was home from his trucking job. But as Moore grew older, she began to see glimpses of his dark side.

On one occasion, Moore said she remembers her father hanging kittens by their tails from an outdoor clothesline. She claimed that he tortured the kittens until they died. Moore told 20/20 that her father appeared to enjoy it, finding it “funny” to watch her “grimace and be tortured” by his actions. On another occasion, he allegedly broke the neck of a stray cat.

“I think I caught a glimpse of the sociopath, the part of him that felt in control over me and that he enjoyed it. I got the sense that there was another side to him,” Moore shared in a 2010 interview with 20/20.

Moore’s adolescence became one of “walking on eggshells” anytime she was around her allegedly “chauvinistic, controlling, verbally abusive” father. Moore told Marie Claire that she was often “on edge,” unsure of Jesperson’s mood at any given time.

Unbeknownst to Moore, Jesperson had begun his killing spree when he made visits to her and her siblings in Spokane after his divorce from Hucke — but in her gut, she knew there was something not right about her father. On The Oprah Winfrey Show, Moore said, "When I was around him, I felt this intense stomach-turning feeling.”

During his visits, Moore said that Jesperson told her an uncomfortable amount of information about his dating life, being incredibly explicit about his sexual relationships. In a 2014 piece penned for BBC News, Moore wrote that her father would “leer” at women in public and make “lewd remarks.” She wrote that he would even go into “graphic detail about what it had been like sleeping with [her] mother.”

The final time Moore saw Jesperson before he was arrested was just before her 16th birthday in the fall of 1994. Looking back, Moore said she believes her father was going to confess his crimes to her at their final meeting. While sitting at a diner with her dad, she said her father admitted to having a secret.

“The conversation turned to, ‘Melissa, I have something to tell you, but you’ll tell the police.' I didn’t know what it was. I thought maybe stealing. I thought misdemeanors. I wasn’t thinking murder,” she said on The Oprah Winfrey Show. “I went to the bathroom and tried to calm myself down. I went back to the booth, I sat down, and we resumed normal conversation.”

When did Melissa G. Moore find out about her father’s crimes?

Several months after Moore’s final meeting with Jesperson at the diner, Hucke told her three children that their father had been arrested for murder — but was unwilling to talk to them about any of the details.

Hucke later shared on The Oprah Winfrey Show that at the time, she was “paralyzed with fear and pain.” Looking back at the moment she heard the news, Moore said she was overcome with grief and had a hard time processing that her father was capable of such a crime.

“It was just overwhelming, and I ran to the bed I was sleeping on and started crying. I couldn’t fathom how my dad could have done such a thing,” Moore wrote for BBC News.

She continued, “It was like there was another Keith Jesperson. I had caught glimpses of this other man, but I also remembered when my dad came home from long-haul truck drives he would be so doting and kind. He seemed like such a good dad at times."

Jesperson is now serving three consecutive life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary.

Does Melissa G. Moore still have a relationship with her father?

After Jesperson was sent to prison, Moore grappled with having a relationship with her father. She visited him during his trial in 1995 and in the years that followed, Jesperson repeatedly reached out to her through letters.

As Moore got older and started her own family, she debated introducing her husband and children to her father behind bars. In 2005, the family made the trip, believing it would be a good experience — but it ended up being a major regret.

“I went to the prison with my kids thinking that it would be safe ... My little girl starting clinging to my leg, and she was so scared," Moore said on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "I felt regret that I was taking my kids to a prison to see my father — who I was just thinking of as my father, not a serial killer.”

Since then, Moore has decided not to have a relationship with Jesperson and release the guilt she held for being related to him.

“He was my father and didn’t have a conscience; he didn’t show remorse for the victims,” she explained on The Oprah Winfrey Show. “I took it upon myself to feel that burden, that guilt, for him, and I didn’t realize I did that.”

Moore explained in her BBC News essay that she was finally able to find closure in her relationship with her father after a conversation with her grandfather while writing her 2009 book Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter. She wrote that her grandfather revealed that during a prison visit, Jesperson had admitted to once having thoughts about killing Moore and her siblings.

“Maybe people won’t understand this, but hearing that gave me freedom. It allowed me to see that in truth there had been no double life — there had only ever been one Keith Jesperson and he had been able to manipulate everyone around him and present different facades to the world,” Moore wrote.

She continued, “And finally I knew the answer to the question that had been bothering me every time I thought about our last breakfast together in the diner. 'Would he have killed me if I had told the police about his crimes?' Yes, he would. Understanding that allowed me to say goodbye to him.”

Where is Melissa G. Moore now?

While Moore did not open up to anyone about her father’s crimes for years, she has now spent much of her life advocating for the families of serial killers. She has created a network of more than 300 people who are related to killers, spending time speaking with them on the phone and in person. She wrote for BBC News that it has given her “life meaning and direction.”

“All these people have their own story, and each of them is on his or her own journey of recovery. But there are some emotions and processes we all go through. We all have a period of denial, we all ride that pendulum of shock and grief. Then comes the anger,” Moore wrote.

At the urging of Dr. Phil, Moore also wrote a book about her experiences titled Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter. She followed up the bestselling book with WHOLE: How I Learned to Fill the Fragments of My Life with Forgiveness, Hope, Strength, and Creativity in 2016. Moore also created two podcast series called Happy Face and Life After Happy Face.

She currently works in television as a host and Emmy-nominated executive producer, according to her LinkedIn. She helped create the A&E series Monster In My Family, which explores the lives of people connected to notorious criminals and how it has impacted their path.

Moore also executive produced several episodes of the crime series Friends Speak as well as two television series about Gypsy-Rose Blanchard’s life: Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up and The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard.

On March 20, a series chronicling her and her father's lives called Happy Face is set to premiere on Paramount+.

This article was written independently by PEOPLE’s editorial team and meets our editorial standards. Paramount+ is a paid advertising partner with PEOPLE.

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