In her book, Moore discusses having a father who’s a serial killer.

Read an excerpt of the book below, and head to the “GMA” Library for more good reads.

Chapter 14: Return of the Knowing

Life finally seemed to settle into a smoother and easier routine. Every morning, I climbed out of bed, ready to tackle sixth grade. Every day I would come home to play in the neighborhood until bath time…

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When I was 15, my mother asked my brother, sister and me to meet her at the end of the stairs. “Your father is in jail,” she said. When my brother asked what for, my mom simply said, “Murder,” and walked back up the stairs. Stunned, I ran to my room and sobbed. It was way too much to comprehend, and for weeks I went into a state of denial.

My father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, is the infamous “Happy Face” serial killer. The media coined the title due to the hand-drawn smiley face he’d include at the bottom of his letters that contained clues about his murders.

Between 1990 and 1995, my father killed eight women while living a double life. In March of 1995, he was incarcerated for the murder of my stepmother, Julie Winningham. My dad is serving three life terms in Oregon State Prison.

Growing up, I thought my dad loved me. He said he loved me.

Suspecting Something Wrong

My parents divorced in 1990 when I was 11, after my mother learned that my father had had an affair with a waitress in California. My mom was distant growing up, and when my father would return from his job as a long-haul truck driver, he’d often be the one parent to show us love by showering us with presents and going out of his way to make our time with him a blast. He spoiled us with expensive electronics and outdoor play equipment for Christmas gifts. He’d take us bike riding, bowling, hiking, camping — he always wanted to make our days with him special. I mostly felt spoiled by his attention.

Despite his fun side, I never felt at ease or safe around my father. I’d get a sickening feeling that I couldn’t explain. There was no logical reason at the time for my sense of discomfort, so I thought something was wrong with me.

When I was 12, my dad started giving me clues about the murders. I just figured he was reciting details from his detective novels and crime magazines. But he was actually telling me things he’d done! I remember him saying, “I know how to kill someone and get away with it.” When I was 13, he told me that he would cut buttons off jeans so that there wouldn’t be any fingerprints; at another visit he said he could drag a body under his truck to get rid of the teeth so they couldn’t trace any dental records to the body.

Becoming Something Other Than My Father’s Daughter
After I learned the truth about my dad, I was consumed with guilt and shame for his horrific actions. For years, I’d have nightmares of him showing up at my door.

In order to heal, I had to learn to move on. I tried to focus on how I could make myself a better person. I met and married a wonderful man and started a family. I concentrated on being a wife and mother and stopped wasting precious energy thinking about my father. I had no control over what he did, and I realized that there was nothing I could do to change it.

Fortunately, I’ve learned to replace grief and pain with the joy I experience as a mother. Being a mother to my two children, Aspen, 8, and Jake, 5, has been therapy for me. My love for my children helps to keep me positive and looking toward the future.

Looking to the Future
One day in the spring of 2008, my daughter came home from school and asked w here my dad was. I was frozen with fear that I might give the wrong answer. Then I answered, “In Salem,” realizing that I could tell her where he lived without saying who he was. It was a turning point for me. As I watched my daughter run off to play on the swings in our backyard, I couldn’t help but wonder how I was going to handle such questions in the future. I knew I had to find a way to confront what happened in my life, and I found help through therapy, journal writing and other healthy relationships in my life.

While I dread the day when I have to tell my children about their grandfather, I’m no longer haunted by my own past. I’ve learned that we are not a product of our circumstances in life. We are free to decide our own future.

Melissa G. Moore is author of “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.“

When Melissa Moore concluded writing her book in June, she also put the finishing touches on a treacherous journey of healing.

Moore’s father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, is serving a life sentence for the three people he was convicted of killing while working as a truck driver in the early 1990s. After her father’s convictions, Moore spent more than a decade unsure of how to deal with her perception of her father being turned upside down, and the stigma that came with being his child.

The mother of two and convert to the Mormon faith said writing “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter,” released earlier this month, took her from a place of denial and shame to one of self-confidence and self-worth that finally offered her the healing she needed.

“As I wrote each chapter, I was uncovering more and more things,” said Moore, a Spokane, Wash., native. “It was very therapeutic to get each layer out.”

Watch a short video about Melissa Moore’s book, “Shattered Silence.”
Co-authored by M. Bridget Cook and published by Cedar Fort, a regional publishing house based in Springville, Utah, “Shattered Silence” is already proving to have a lot of interested readers, including Oprah Winfrey, who is featuring Moore on her show today.

Moore was 15 in 1995 when she first learned her father was not who she thought he was. He was arrested for the murder of his girlfriend (he and Moore’s mother divorced in 1990), and confessed to other slayings. In the years to come, police would link Jesperson to a total of eight murders and he would be dubbed the “Happy Face” serial killer for the token smiley faces he would draw at the end of letters he anonymously leaked to the press before he was arrested.

Media reports during 1995 naturally focused on the victims and their families, but Moore said there was also a lot of hurt within her own. When the truth began to surface, everyone wanted to know how Jesperson became the sociopath he was, with many people associating his behavior with his relatives.

“I think people look to the family and ask, ‘Who created this monster?’” she said. “People look to me and say, ‘Your father was a sociopath, so what does that make you?’”

Moore’s family dealt with such speculation by burying it. They didn’t talk about the obvious struggles they were going through, even among themselves, and Moore, who was just a teenager at the time, felt a lot of shame and guilt, worrying that she might possess some of his same traits.

Her one outlet was her journal, in which she wrote regularly throughout her adolescence. She referred back to her teenage journals while writing “Shattered Silence” and was saddened by her young, anguished tone. She thought she was being chastised by God, that some unknown sin caused her world to crumble.

“I thought I was being punished,” she said. “That’s a common theme through my journal, wondering what I had done wrong. … I was kind of really sad to see that I felt that way.”

This harsh view of God would eventually change, however, when Moore went away to college and began dating her eventual husband, Sam. The pair had been married for two years when she saw some missionaries near their home and decided it would be best for her to learn about her husband’s faith. Through studying with them and keeping an open mind, she found truth and the help she needed to relearn how to view herself. She joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in December 2002.

“It made sense to me,” she said. “I knew it was true, I knew I wanted to be baptized.”
In addition to helping her reshape her spiritual self, Moore said the church offered a great support system.

Melissa Moore, author of “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.” Photo courtesy of Melissa Moore.

“As a young mother, I was able to look at the Relief Society sisters as a positive example to me,” she said. “I was able to see how they ran a healthy home. They were silent mentors. I was able to break the chains of abuse by having a positive role model.”

Even with her newfound faith, Moore couldn’t get away from the past she refused to acknowledge. As welcoming as her new community was, she didn’t let them in on her father’s identity.

“I felt inferior to other church members,” she said. “I just didn’t want to be judged by his actions.”

Then one day, her young daughter asked her where Moore’s father was, and she realized that if she couldn’t confront the truth about her father, she’d never be able to answer that question adequately for her little girl.

She knew she needed to talk to someone who could offer her counsel and in 2008 began researching. She came across Dr. Phil McGraw’s Web site and decided to send an e-mail asking for help. She was invited onto his show, titled the “Get Real Retreat,” and it was on national television that she first spoke openly about her father and the pain his callousness had caused.

“It was terrifying,” she said.

While appearing on television might sound like a rash decision, Moore said it was right for her because it “made it so that I was accountable to healing.”

The counsel she received from Dr. Phil, along with the self-discovery she experienced through writing the book, helped her to get past her hurt once and for all.

“We don’t have to be products of our circumstance. I’m at a point now that I can walk with my head held high. I can look to the future,” she said.

That’s the main message in “Shattered Silence,” she said, that people, regardless of the circumstances they’ve been born into, can rise above them.

Today’s episode of “Oprah” featuring Moore is being billed as “Dr. Phil Returns to Oprah.”

Cedar Fort publicist Liz Carlston said having a book featured on the show is a first for the small company, and “It’s very exciting for us.”

The publishing house is printing 50,000 copies of the book, which is as big a print run as the company has had, and is currently in its third printing. Carlston said she anticipates Moore’s appearance on Oprah will spur significant interest, and she hopes Cedar Fort will have the right number of books to fit the demand.

Moore’s story isn’t typical of the Mormon-centric books Cedar Fort generally publishes, but Carlston said she thinks it still fits in with the company’s efforts to “pursue books that are going to make people better after reading them.”

Moore said she’s had quite the transformation in recent years and hopes she can inspire people like her, who through no fault of their own are dealt life-changing blows, to keep their heads held high and stay positive.

“I think I’m an example that you can overcome adversity and still have a good life.”

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She turned and looked at me, shaking her head. “He just called last week and said he’ll be in California, dear. Don’t get your hopes up. I don’t see how he can make it up here to Spokane.”

I did not tell my mother the truth—that I wasn’t really hoping for him to come. In fact, it was actually quite the opposite. My stomach had been doing nervous jumps all morning, and my insides felt edgy and anxious. It was too familiar and too uncomfortable.

“Mom, I can feel it. He’ll be here.” I spoke in a matter-of-fact way. The feeling had been building for a few days, until it felt like I was suffering from a form of paranoia. Just yesterday afternoon I had begun looking out my window every few minutes, watching for my father’s car or truck to park in front of my home. This growing, deep-seated anxiety was so strong, it had prompted me to tell my mother.

As I prepared to walk out the door, I stopped to give her a hug. “He will be here very soon.”

“We’ll see,” she responded. Her tone reflected how skeptical she was. If I hadn’t been feeling so serious, it would have made me laugh. This was the fourth or fifth time we’d had this conversation, and every time I told her, she was skeptical until the second she answered the door and my dad was standing on her porch.

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Melissa G. Moore spent most of her life in shame, crippled by a horrible secret she kept from friends, employers and associates:

Moore’s father is Keith Hunter Jesperson, also known as the Happy Face Killer, who admitted to torturing and strangling eight women in Oregon and around the Northwest. He earned his nickname for signing confessional letters he wrote to the media with happy faces. He’s now serving three consecutive life sentences in a Oregon prison.

A couple of years ago, Moore decided to share her story with television therapist Dr. Phil McGraw. About a year later, Moore told her story to Mountain Green author M. Bridget Cook, who worked with Moore to write the newly released “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter” (Cedar Fort Inc., $16.99).

And on Thursday, Moore tells her story again, this time when Dr. Phil presents her to Oprah Winfrey and the talk show host’s viewing audience of about 47 million. Moore’s appearance also will promote the book she co-authored with Cook. The episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” airs at 4 p.m. Thursday on KUTV Channel 2.

“I knew when I read ‘Skinhead Confessions’ that Bridget was the one who could help me tell my story,” said Moore, from her home in Spokane, Wash.

“I was trying to find an author in the true crime genre, but it wasn’t a good fit,” Moore explained. “I wanted something more spiritual, more emotional. I wanted to tell a transformational story about my journey.”

In Cook’s 2008 book, “Skinhead Confessions: From Hate to Hope” (Cedar Fort), she and co-author T.J. Leyden told his transformational story of going from one of the most powerful men in the White Power Movement to becoming an anti-hate, anti-gang activist, as well as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Moore had converted to the LDS church after marrying her husband, Sam.

Cook remembers opening an e-mail from Moore.

“If anybody had told me a few years ago I would be writing about skinheads and the daughter of a serial killer, I would have said, ‘Yeah, right!,’ ” said Cook, who writes part time, works as a publicist and manages the trucking business she co-owns. “But I learned in working on the book with T.J. that it was possible to portray both sides of what the human soul is capable of. And the minute I read Melissa’s e-mail, I knew how poignant her story could be.”

A daughter’s story

Moore grew up the oldest of three children in a dysfunctional home. Her mother was emotionally unavailable. Moore’s father, Jesperson, was the misfit of his family, targeted by his parents for emotional abuse. But Jesperson, seemingly a gentle giant at 6-feet 6-inches and nearly 300 pounds, was a supportive and attentive father to his own three children.

Even as a grade-school child, Moore knew her father was different from the other dads, who didn’t enjoy torturing and killing animals, including a daughter’s cherished kittens.

“Shattered Silence” begins with Moore’s earliest memories, of racing to her unresponsive mother, begging for help in saving the tiny kittens Jesperson had hung on the clothes- line. Moore wrote of running back outside, to find an empty clothesline, with the kittens — “my babies” — bashed, bloody and broken, dead on the ground underneath.

Moore’s mother divorced Jesperson when the child was in fifth grade, and moved her children from Oregon to Washington state. Moore visited her father every summer.

“He would tell his children about his exploits with women,” Cook said. “He would go through phases, and try to model himself after a movie star. He would read detective magazines, and tell Melissa he knew how to commit the perfect murder and get away with it. She thought it was just another of his phases.”

One scenario Jesperson described involved picking up a woman and strangling her with a rope, then tying her from the bottom of a big rig like he drove as a trucker. Jesperson told his daughter someone could then drive, dragging the body until all distinguishing features were worn away.

That description fit one of his crimes. Jesperson eventually led officers to the place he disposed of the battered corpse, which was identified by a Tweety bird ankle tattoo as belonging to drifter Angela Subrize, 21.

Hitting bottom

Moore was 16 and a high school freshman when her father was caught and brought to trial. With her disgraced father all over the media, Moore found herself pregnant, and without hope of emotional or financial support. She ended the pregnancy, a decision she still regrets, Cook said.

Moore finished high school, and began trying to make better decisions for her life, choosing more friends who had a better outlook on life and avoiding out-of-control environments, such as bars and wild dance parties.

“I knew that I had gone through some really dark places, but I started to see I could to go a really beautiful place in my life,” she said.

“Melissa is not a victim,” Cook said. “I want to be clear about that. She has moved beyond victim to victory. The book is not about wanting people to see the horrendous things she has been through, it’s about how she began to make new choices for her life. She told herself, ‘This is the way my father did it. This is the way my mother did it. I don’t have to do it that way. I don’t have to live in guilt and shame.’”

Moore, now a happy wife and the mother of two, spends much of her time to helping at-risk children and women, and hopes to become an inspirational speaker.

“Shattered Lives” is available at Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. After hearing the book would be shown on “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Wal-Mart signed on, and should have the book in stock by Thursday.

Moore and Cook both hope their book will help people with all kinds of troubling backgrounds to heal and move forward in their lives.

“There’s a voice in all of us telling us, ‘You can move past this to a better life,’” Cook said. “All we have to do is be willing to listen.”

http://ldsliving.com/article/149821/Woman-Overcomes-Father%E2%80%99s-Dark-Past-with-Family,-Gospel

Melissa Moore was 15 in 1995 when her life changed forever.

Her mother sat her and her siblings down in their grandmother’s basement, where they had lived since their parent’s divorce, and broke the news. Their father, Keith Hunter Jesperson, a man who Moore remembers as generally well mannered, playful and gregarious, if sometimes odd, had been jailed for the murder of his fiancée.

But it didn’t end there. By the end of the investigation, Jesperson had confessed to eight murders in all over the course of five years and had been given four life sentences for the murders the court had tried.

Moore was devastated. As she tried to move on, she focused on school because it was the most structured thing in her life.

Greater stability came following high school, after an LDS friend invited her to a dance where she met Sam Moore. The two began dating in April 2000, and it was during that summer that Sam mentioned that he’d never seen her father. Moore decided to tell him about her father.

“He was really patient and understanding,” Moore said. “He didn’t shun me or judge me, which I found really impressive. So it gave us the foundation for me to start talking more about who my father was.”

In November 2000, she and Sam married, with his parents apprehensive to have their son marry a non-member girl and daughter of a serial killer.

At the wedding, though, Moore was impressed by the support a lot of LDS members gave them, even though she wasn’t LDS. Though she had never been open to learning about the Church, after the couple’s daughter Aspen was born, Moore began to question what religion her daughter should be raised in.

“At the time we were living next to some Mormon missionaries,” Moore said. “They were just so kind and friendly, and I decided one day when I ran into them that I’d ask them more about the Mormon faith.”

Moore invited the missionaries to visit and share more. She was resistant at first.

“I would listen to their discussions but I wouldn’t pray or read the scriptures,” Moore said. “I kind of took it half hearted until they got to the discussion where the missionary talked about Jesus coming to the ancient Americans and Nephites and showing him them his the marks in his hands. I remember feeling this burning in my chest and I felt that it was true, that Jesus loves all of humanity.”

When the missionaries left, they asked Moore to pray and ask if the LDS Church was true. She did, and she was baptized on Dec. 29 of 2002. The family was sealed on the couple’s wedding anniversary in 2004.

Being new in the church, she looked to the Relief Society sisters as mentors. “I would see how they would treat their children,” Moore said. “They were so kind and loving. They took care of their husbands and their households and still had time to do service. It was so impressive to me . . . I wanted to become like them.

“Overall I feel gratitude for the Church because … I didn’t have counseling, but the Church became that to me,” Moore continued. “I started to feel that I was of value. I knew that I was a child of God—that I had worth.”

Even though she was finding more meaning in her life, about a year and a half ago Moore decided that she was still missing something in her life.

“I felt that I really hadn’t dealt with my past. I felt so inferior to other Church members and to other people in society,” Moore said. “[One Sunday] I prayed that I’d be able to recover and move forward with my life.”

Not long after praying for help Moore came across an article in the Ensign by Elder Richard G. Scott titled “Healing the Tragic Scars of Abuse.”

“It gave me hope for the first time,” Moore said. “It said that scars need not be permanent. . . . I thought that I could never get over my past, until I read that article and then I knew . . . I could recover from my past.”

She also knew she needed more help when her daughter Aspen, who was seven at the time, came home from school and asked her where Moore’s dad was. While searching for a way to explain her past and come to terms with it, Moore was inspired to write a book. But she didn’t want it to be about the horrible details of her father’s life. She wanted it to be a benefit to other people.

“I said another prayer,” Moore said. “Soon after the thought came to me that if I shared my experiences . . . I could be proof that scars don’t have to be permanent.”

Moore is grateful for the gospel and how it has changed her life. She wants others to know that when life takes a tragic turn, it may not seem like life will get better, but it does. She said her situation has shaped her into the person she is today.

“I feel that it’s given me more compassion for others,” Moore said, “and it’s opened up my mind to seek opportunities to help other people, to try to comfort other people because I was such a young age and I was left uncomforted. . . . I want to seek and help other people now.”

Moore’s book, Shattered Silence, was released on Sept. 8. Moore will be appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show Thursday, September 17, to talk about her story.

LDS Living, Inc., 2009. Photo courtesy of Melissa Moore (pictured: Melissa with daughter, Aspen, and son, Jake.)

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705330305/Utahns-book-featured-on-Oprah.html

Published: Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009 6:13 p.m. MDT

A book co-written by Utah author M. Bridget Cook will be featured on “Oprah Winfrey” on Thursday (4 p.m., Ch. 2) as part of a special show with Dr. Phillip McGraw.

The book is titled “Shattered Silence: The Untold Story of a Serial Killer’s Daughter.” Cook wrote the book with Melissa G. Moore, whose father murdered at least eight women in the early ’90s and was labeled the “Happy Face” serial killer.

The book describes Moore’s experiences growing up, how she learned about her father’s crimes, and how she overcame the shame of being associated with him. During the “Oprah” show, Dr. Phil will introduce Moore to the audience and help her tell her story of healing.

Cook does not appear on the episode but was backstage during the taping. She said it was an amazing experience to see her book in Winfrey’s hands and to see how Melissa “shone” as she told her story.

“This is a classical story that can inspire anyone,” Cook said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, you can literally write your own ending to your own story.”

“Shattered Silence” was released earlier this month by Utah publisher Cedar Fort. It’s available in most major bookstores and online.

— Nicole Warburton